here many years. We were talking
about the country and the people. "I should like both very well," said
I, "were it not for the language. I wish sincerely our Parliament, which
is passing so many foolish acts every year, would pass one to force these
Scotch to speak English." "I wish so, too," said he. "The language is a
disgrace to the British Government; but, if you had heard it twenty years
ago, captain!--if you had heard it as it was spoken when I first came to
Edinburgh!"'

'Only custom,' said my mother. 'I daresay the language is now what it
was then.'

'I don't know,' said my father; 'though I daresay you are right; it could
never have been worse than it is at present. But now to the point. Were
it not for the language, which, if the boys were to pick it up, might
ruin their prospects in life,--were it not for that, I should very much
like to send them to a school there is in this place, which everybody
talks about--the High School I think they call it. 'Tis said to be the
best school in the whole island; but the idea of one's children speaking
Scotch--broad Scotch! I must think the matter over.'

And he did think the matter over; and the result of his deliberation was
a determination to send us to the school. Let me call thee up before my
mind's eye, High School, to which, every morning, the two English
brothers took their way from the proud old Castle through the lofty
streets of the Old Town. High School!--called so, I scarcely know why;
neither lofty in thyself nor by position, being situated in a flat
bottom; oblong structure of tawny stone, with many windows fenced with
iron netting--with thy long hall below, and thy five chambers above, for
the reception of the five classes, into which the eight hundred urchins
who styled thee instructress were divided. Thy learned rector and his
four subordinate dominies; thy strange old porter of the tall form and
grizzled hair, hight Boee, and doubtless of Norse ancestry, as his name
declares; perhaps of the blood of Bui hin Digri, the hero of northern
song--the Jomsborg Viking who clove Thorsteinn Midlangr asunder in the
dread sea battle of Horunga Vog, and who, when the fight was lost and his
own two hands smitten off, seized two chests of gold with his bloody
stumps, and, springing with them into the sea, cried to the scanty relics
of his crew, 'Overboard now, all Bui's lads!' Yes, I remember all about
thee, and how at eight of every morn we were all