COLIN’S career at Oxford does not lie in the way of his present historian, though, to be sure, a few piquant particulars might be selected of the way in which a pair of young Scotch eyes, with a light in them somewhat akin to genius, but trained to see the realities of homely life on the Holy Loch, regarded the peculiar existence of the steady, artificial old world, and the riotous but submissive new world, which between them form a university. Colin who, like most of his countrymen, found a great deal of the “wit” of the community around him to be sheer nonsense, sometimes agreeable, sometimes much the reverse, had also like his nation a latent but powerful sense of humour, which, backed by a few prejudices, and stimulated a little by the different manners current in the class to which he himself belonged, revealed to him many wonderful absurdities in the unconscious microcosm which felt itself a universe;—a revelation which restored any inequality in the balance of affairs, and made the Scotch undergraduate at his ease in his new circumstances. For his own part, he stood in quite a different position from the host of young men, most of them younger than himself, by whom he found himself surrounded. They were accomplishing without any very definite object the natural and usual course of their education—a process which everybody had to go through, and which, with more or less credit, their fathers, brothers, friends, and relatives had passed through before them. Life beyond the walls of the University had doubtless objects more interesting than the present routine; but there was no such immediate connexion between those objects and that routine as Colin had been accustomed to see in his Scotch college.
As for Colin himself, he was aiming at a special end, which made his course distinct for him among his more careless companions; he was bent on the highest honours attainable by hard work and powers much above the average; and this determination would have acted as a moral shield to him against the meaner temptations of the place, even if he had not already been by disposition and habits impervious to them. The higher danger—the many temptations to which Colin, like other young men, was exposed, of contenting himself with a brilliant unproductive social reputation—was warded off from him by the settled determination with which he entered upon his work. For Scotch sentiment is very distinct on this question; and Colin understood perfectly that, if he returned with only a moderate success, his Alma Mater would be utterly disgusted with her pet student, and his reputation would fall to a considerably lower ebb than if he had been content to stay at home. He came upon that tranquil academic scene in the true spirit of an invader; not unfriendly—on the contrary, a keen observer of everything, an eager and interested spectator of all the peculiar habitudes of the foreign country—but chiefly bent upon snatching the laurel, as soon as that should be possible, and carrying home his spoil in triumph. He entered Oxford, in short, as the Czar Peter, had he been less a savage, might have been supposed to establish himself in the bosom of the homely English society of his time, seeing, with eyes brightened by curiosity and the novelty of the spectacle, various matters in a ridiculous light which were performed with the utmost gravity and unconsciousness by the accustomed inhabitants; and, on the other hand, discovering as many particulars from which he might borrow some advantage to his own people. Certainly, Czar Peter, who was at once an absolute monarch and the most enlightened man of his nation, stood in a somewhat different position from the nameless Scotch student, between whom and other Scotch students no ordinary observer could have discovered much difference; but the aspirations of young men of Colin’s age are fortunately unlimited by reason, and the plan he had conceived of working a revolution in his native Church and country, or, at least, aiming at that to the highest extent of his powers, was as legitimate, to say the least, as the determination to make a great fortune, with which other young men of his nation have often confronted the world.
Colin frequented the Oxford churches as he had frequented those in Rome, with his paramount idea in his mind, and listened to the sermons in them with that prevailing reference to the audience which he himself looked forward to, which gave so strange an aspect to much that he heard. To be sure, it was not the best way to draw religious advantage for himself from the teachings he listened to; but yet the process was not without its benefits to the predestined priest. He seemed to himself to be looking on while the University preacher delivered his dignified periods, not to the actual assembly, but to a shrewd and steady Scotch congregation, not easily moved either to reverence or enthusiasm, and with a national sense of logic. He could not help smiling to himself when, in the midst of some elaborate piece of reasoning, the least little step aside landed the speaker upon that quagmire of ecclesiastical authority which with Colin’s audience would go far to neutralize all the argument. The young man fancied he could see the elders shake their heads, and the rural philosophers remark to each other, “He maun have been awfu’ ill off for an argument afore he landed upon yon.” And, when the preacher proceeded to “our Church’s admirable arrangements,” and displayed with calm distinctness the final certainty that perfection had been absolutely attained by that venerated mother, the young Scotchman felt a prick of contradiction in his heart on his own account as well as that of his imaginary audience. He thought to himself that the same arguments employed on behalf of the Church of Scotland would go a long way towards unsettling the national faith, and smiled within himself at the undoubting assumption which his contradictory northern soul was so far from accepting. He was not a bad emblem of his nation in this particular, at least. He consented without a remonstrance to matters of detail, such as were supposed, by anybody who had curiosity enough to inquire into the singular semi-savage religious practices of Scotland, to be specially discordant to the ideas of his country; but he laughed at “our Church’s admirable arrangements” in such a manner as to set the hair of the University on end. The principles of apostolic succession and unbroken ecclesiastical descent produced in this daring young sceptic, not indignation nor argument, which might have been tolerated, but an amused disregard which was unbearable. He was always so conscious of what his Scotch audience, buried somewhere among the hills in the seclusion of a country parish, would think of such pretensions, and laughed not at the doctrine so much as at the thought of their reception of it. In this respect the young Scotchman, embodying his country, was the most contradictory of men.
He was not very much more satisfactory in the other region, where the best of Anglicans occasionally wander, and where men who hold with the firmest conviction the doctrine of apostolic succession sometimes show a strange degree of uncertainly about things more important. Colin’s convictions were vague enough on a great many matters which were considered vital on the Holy Loch; and perhaps he was not a much more satisfactory bearer in his parish church at home than he was in Oxford when there was question of the descendants of the apostles. But amidst this sea of vague and undeveloped thought, which was not so much doubt as uncertainty, there stood up several rocks of absolute faith which were utterly impervious to assault. His mind was so far conformed to his age that he could hear even these ultimate and fundamental matters canvassed by the calm philosophers about him, without any undue theological heat or passion of defence; but it soon became evident that on these points the young Scotchman was immovable, a certainty which made him an interesting study to some of his companions and teachers. It would be foolish to say that his faith procured for him that awe and respect which the popular mind takes it for granted a company of sceptics must always feel for the one among them who retains his religious convictions. On the contrary, Colin’s world was amused by his belief. It was, itself to start with, a perfectly pious, well-conducted world, saying its prayers like everybody else, and containing nothing within its placid bosom which in the least resembled the free-thinkers of ancient days. The Church was not the least in the world in danger from that mild fraternity, to which every kind of faith was a thing to be talked about, to evolve lines of thought upon, and give rise to the most refined, and acute, and charming conversation. But, as for Colin, they regarded him with amused observation as a rare specimen of the semi-cultivated, semi-savage intelligence which is always so refreshing to a society which has refined itself to a point somewhat beyond nature. He was “a most interesting young man,” and they found in him “a beautiful enthusiasm,” an “engaging simplicity.” As for Colin, he was quite aware of the somewhat unfounded admiration with which he was regarded, and smiled in his turn at his observers with a truer consciousness of the humour of the position than they could possibly have who saw only half of it; but he kept his shrewd Scotch eyes open all the time, and half unconsciously made himself acquainted with a great many new developments of that humanity which was to be the material of all the labours of his life. He had it in his power to remark the exact and delicate points at which Anglicanism joined on to the newer fashion of intellectualism, and to note how a morsel of faith the less might be now and then conciliated and made up for by a morsel of observance the more. And, at the same time, he became aware of the convenient possibility of dividing a man, and making him into two or three different “beings,” as occasion required; so that the emotional being—having sundry natural weaknesses, such as old association and youthful habit, and a regard to the feelings of others, not to speak of the affectionate prejudices of a good Churchman—was quite free to do his daily service at chapel, and say his prayers, even at the very moment when the intellectual being was busy with the most delicate demonstration that prayer in a universe governed by absolute law was an evident absurdity and contradiction of all reason. Colin for his part looked on at this partition, and smiled in his turn. He was not shocked, as perhaps he ought to have been; but then, as has been said, he too was a man of his age, and found many things which were required by absolute orthodoxy unnecessary impedimenta, as Lauderdale had called them.
But, with all this, the young man had never been able to cut himself in half, and he could not learn to regard the process as one either advantageous or even honourable now.
Such, apart from the work which was necessary in obedience to his grand original impulse, were the studies he pursued in Oxford. At the same time he had another occupation in hand, strangely out of accord at once with those studies and with his own thoughts. This was the publication of poor Meredith’s book, the “Voice from the Grave,” at which he had laboured to the latest moment of his life. In it was represented another world, an altogether contradictory type of existence. Between Colin’s intellectual friends, to whom the “Hereafter” was a curious and interesting but altogether baffling subject of investigation, and the dying youth who had gone out of this world in a dauntless primitive confidence of finding himself at once in the shining streets and endless sunshine of the New Jerusalem, the difference was so great as to be past counting. As for the young editor, his view of life was as different from Meredith’s as it was from that of his present companions. The great light of heaven was to Colin, as to many others, as impenetrable as the profoundest darkness; he could neither see into it, nor permit himself to make guesses of what was going on beyond; and, consequently, he had little sympathy with the kind of piety which regards life as a preparation for death. Sometimes he smiled, sometimes he sighed over the proofs as he corrected them; sometimes, but for knowing as he did the utter truthfulness with which the dead writer had set forth his one-sided and narrow conception of the world, Colin would have been disposed to toss into the fire those strange warnings and exhortations. But when he thought of the young author, dead in his youth, and of all the doings and sayings of those months in which they lived together, and, more touching still, of those conversations that were held on the very brink of the grave, and at the gate of heaven, his heart smote him. And then his new friends broke in upon him, and discussed the book with opinions so various that Colin could but admire and wonder. One considered them a curious study of the internal consciousness, quite worthy the attention of a student of mental phenomena. Another was of opinion that such stuff was the kind of nutriment fit for the uneducated classes, who had strong religious prejudices, and no brains to speak of. When Colin found his own sentiments thrown back to him in this careless fashion, he began to see for the first time the conceit and self-importance of his judgment; and many discussions followed, as might be supposed.
“When religion becomes a matter of self-interest,” said one of the young men met in his rooms on one such occasion, “I don’t see any attraction in it. I don’t understand what you can see in this rubbish, Campbell. Inflated humbug and sordid calculations——”
“Hush!” said Colin, with a sparkle in his eyes, “the writer was of the kind of man that saints were once made of—and I believe in saints for my part.”
“Well, yes,” said his interlocutor; “I don’t mean to be vulgar: one can’t help to a certain extent believing in saints—though our wise fathers you know thought otherwise.” Perhaps the young speaker would not have thought it necessary to be civil to them, if it had not been that a former generation had made fun of the saints.
“And as for self-interest,” said Colin, “I don’t see how a man can have an altogether generous and patronizing love for God. A child’s love for his father is always interested in a kind of way. The love that has no self-regard in it, is pity or patronage rather than love.”
“Oh, love!” said Colin’s friend, who had not been altogether thinking of that; and then another speaker broke in.
“For my part, it is the emotional aspect of religion that chiefly interests me,” he said; “in a philosophical point of view, you know. But the only way you can influence the masses is by working on their feelings. It would be different, of course, with a set of fellows like you.”
“We are superior to that sort of thing,” said Colin. “Perhaps we have no feelings. When a man becomes a Don, I don’t see what use he has for such superfluities.”
“You are going to be a Don yourself, I suppose,” said some one. “You are sure of your Fellowship, of course.”
Upon which Colin smiled with the pleasant arrogance of his age. “Something better than that,” he said. “I am not the kind of stuff that Dons are made of. I am going home to Scotland to the Kirk.”
Though his friends were all aware of this magnanimous intention, they could not but open their eyes at every new repetition of it.
“If you have set your heart on being a parson,” one of his companions said, “go into the Church, at least. Hang it! Campbell, don’t go and bind yourself to a conventicle,” said his anxious acquaintance; “a man has always a chance of doing something in the Church.”
“That is precisely my idea,” said Colin, “though you fellows seem to think it the last possibility. And, besides, it is the only thing I can do. I can’t be a statesman, as you have the chance of being, and I have not an estate to manage. What else would you have me do?”
“My dear fellow,” said another of his friends, “you are as sure of your Fellowship as any man ever was. Go in for literature, and send your old Kirk to Jericho—a fellow like you has nothing to do in such a place. One knows the sort of thing precisely; any blockhead that can thump his pulpit, and drone out long prayers—”
“Many thanks for your advice,” said Colin; “but I prefer my own profession, literature is all very well when a man is born to it, but life is better than literature at its best; and my own trade should be good for something, if any profession ever was.”
“Well, now, taking it at the very best, how much do you think you are likely to have a-year?—a hundred and fifty perhaps? No, I don’t mean to say that’s final;—but, of course, a thoughtful fellow like you takes it into consideration,” said Colin’s adviser; “everything is badly paid now-a-days—but, at all events, there are chances. If a man is made of iron and brass, and has the resolution of an elephant, he may get to be something at the Bar, you know, and make a mint of money. And, even in the Church, to be sure, if he’s harmless and civil, something worth having may come in his way; but you are neither civil nor harmless, Campbell. And, by Jove! it’s not the Church you are thinking of, but the Kirk, which is totally different. I’ve been in Scotland,” continued the Mentor, with animation; “it’s not even one Kirk, which would be something. But there’s one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom, and I defy any man to tell which is which. Come, Campbell, don’t be a Quixote—give it up!”
“You might as well have told my namesake to give up the Queen’s service after he had lost a battle,” said Colin. “Though I don’t suppose Sir Colin ever did lose a battle, by the way. I tell you I am not the sort of stuff for a Don—the atmosphere is too much rarified up here—I can’t breathe in it. Men who come of my race must work or die.”
“I can’t say that I feel the force of the alternative,” said Colin’s friend. “A man must think; it is the first condition of existence; but as for the other two— What have you in common with the unreasoning multitude?” asked the young philosopher. There were plenty of voices to take the other side of the question, but Colin’s mind was not political to speak of, and he had no inclination to take the democratic side.
“A few things,” Colin said, with a smile, “that don’t exist among the Illuminati. For instance, ignorance and want and some other human attributes; and we can help each other on down below, while you are thinking it all out above. The worst is that we will probably find time to live and die before you come to any conclusion. Let us talk it over ten years hence,” said this young prince of the future, with royal confidence. And this was how a great many such conversations came to an end.
Ten years was like to be an eventful period to the young men who were standing on the verge of life; but they all made very light of it, as was natural. As for Colin, he did not attempt to make out to himself any clear plan of what he attempted to do and to be in ten years. Certainly, he calculated upon having by that time reached the highest culmination of which life was capable. He meant to be a prince in his own country without, at the same time, following anything for his own glory or advantage; for in reality, the highest projects that could move the spirit of a man were in Colin’s mind. He had no thought of becoming a popular preacher, or the oracle of a coterie. What he truly intended indeed was not quite known to himself, in the vague but magnificent stirrings of his ambition. He meant to take possession of some certain corner of his native country, and make of it an ideal Scotland, manful in works and steadfast in belief; and he meant from that corner to influence and move all the land in some mystical method known only to the imagination. Such are the splendid colours in which fancy, when sufficiently lively, can dress up even such a sober reality as the life of a Scotch minister. While he planned this he seemed to himself so entirely a man of experience, ready to smile at the notions of undisciplined youth, that he succeeded in altogether checking and deceiving his own inevitable good sense—that watchful monitor which warns even an imaginative mind of its extravagance. This was the great dream which, interrupted now and then by lighter fancies, had accompanied Colin more or less clearly through all his life. And now the hour of trial was about to come, and the young man’s ambition was ready to accomplish itself as best it might.