come for education from the distant recesses of the Highlands are almost invariably attracted to the old gray walls of its elder brother. In 1529 the foundation was considerably increased under the auspices of its munificent endower.

This university seems to have partaken of the partly monastic partly eleemosynary character which pervaded the educational institutions of the age. Much scandal has been thought to attach to the state of education in Scotland by a clause in an old act of parliament classing among illegal and sturdy mendicants "all vagabond scholars of the Universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, not licensed by the rector and dean of faculty of the university." But the same characteristics pervaded the other universities of the day, and were not foreign even to the magnificent institutions of England. An article in the regulations, prohibitory of public indecorums and of armed encounters, is, at the same time, as curiously descriptive of the manners of all such institutions as of this particular one.* A Scotsman of the early part of the seventeenth century, named David Camerarius or Chambers, has left a very magnificent account of the wealth of the establishment and its fine discipline; but it is evident that he was actuated more by the desire of national glory than a strict regard to truth, for he tells us that there are six colleges, of which King's-which he not inaccurately describes-is but one, and he evidently fills up the list by enumerating the several classes, or departments of instruction there pursued, which give him the Physician's College, the College of Jurisprudence, &c. His appreciation of what must have been his native seat of learning is very different from that of his foreign contemporary, Freher, who, in his Theatrum Clarorum Virorum, introduces Aberdeen as a place celebrated for its two universities and the multitude of its salmon. And yet all its glory must have been sadly dimmed in the eyes of Camerarius, who, being a vehement Roman Catholic, had to record of what he calls its magnificent library-Sed (quod dolendum est) cum hæresi furente, religiosa omnia profanata sint, et illa etiam, a Sathanæ ministellis, partim combusta, partim in cloacas injecta cernitur.†

Bishop Elphinstone left considerable estates to his favourite institution, and at the period of the Reformation it was rich in houses and lands. It might, perhaps, have at this day vied with the great colleges of England, but it was deprived of much of its property through the grasping spirit of Queen Mary's courtiers. It received some countenance and protection from Charles I. In the year 1641 he granted a charter incorporating with it the Marischal College, and appointing both to form part of" the Caroline University," a title adopted from his own name. This arrangement was confirmed by act of parliament. Cromwell, who was munificent to learning, confirmed the incorporation, and largely increased the revenues of the university. But after the Restoration, not only were the Protector's proceedings generally annulled, but all acts of the last few years of Charles the First's reign were rescinded, as granted under the pressure of unlawful power; and the colleges were thus again disunited, the older taking the name of King's College, from the countenance given to it by Charles I. ‡

A curious painting preserved in the college, with other delineations, show us the appearance it

*

“Item volumus et ordinamus ut omnes in dicto collegio, tam majores quam minores, honeste vivant. Prohibimus ac interdicimus, in virtute sanctæ obedientiæ, ut non habeant publicas concubinas, nec, infradictum collegium aut universitatem antedictam, arma gladios seu digas portent, clam seu palam. Non sint noctivagi, lenones, aut scurri vagabundi, sed bonis moribus et studiis optimis dediti et occupati."-Report of Commissioners on the Scottish Universities, p. 307. + De Scotorum Fortitudine, Doctrinâ, et Pietate, p. 57.

Ibid., New Statistical Account, Aberdeen, p. 1141.

had in the seventeenth century. Its form was a complete quadrangle, with two additional towers, part of one of which still remains. These towers appear to have been surmounted by pinnacles of a very curious kind, more like Oriental than British architecture, and it is to be regretted that they have not been preserved. The painting is traditionally attributed to George Jameson, "the Scottish Vandyke," who studied with that great painter under Rubens, and it is the only landscape with which his name is connected. The walls of both King's and Marischal College display many specimens of his skill as a portrait-painter; and a set of female heads from his brush, called "The Sibyls," hanging in a row in the hall of King's College, attract the notice of every observer by a certain sweet, fantastic airiness in the ideas, and a delicacy in the touch.