g amorphous.

HARDSHIPS OF STUDENTS IN OLD DAYS.

Those who think highly of the Scotch intellect, point with pride to the
fact that for many a year the Prime Minister, the leader of the
Opposition, and the Archbishop of Canterbury all hailed from the North.
For my own part, I am chiefly interested in cases where eminence has
resulted from the cultivation of literature on a little oatmeal. A few
months ago, I had the pleasure of chatting, over a cup of tea, with the
suave old gentleman who combines the postmastership of Dunvegan with the
office of factor to the Macleod of Macleod. He held me spell-bound for
an afternoon as he narrated in graphic language the hardships of the
Skye students in former times. Many a Skye youth, I was told, bent on
studying the humanities at Aberdeen, would mount his sheltie, traverse
thereon the rough roads of his misty island as far as Kyleakin, cross
the ferry there, ride on east through the ben-shadowed track of Glen
Moriston, and finally bear down on the streets of the Granite City.
There the o'erlaboured sheltie would be sold to pay the matriculation
fees.

HOMER IN SCALLOWAY.

Many little out-of-the-way townships in insular Scotland contain
scholars who would find themselves quite at home among a set of college
dons. In the course of my travels in Shetland I came to the tiny village
of Scalloway, and while standing on the pier gazing alternately at the
confusion of sea and island, and at the grim old ruined castle where
Earl Patrick, the wicked viceroy, once resided, I heard a conversation
on geology being carried on between a tall and brawny shopman and some
sailors. The latter, who were on board a ship, shouted their replies
over a few yards of water to the shopman, who was on the pier near me. I
was interested in the men's talk, which had to do with the subsidence of
the land at this part of the coast. One of the sailors alleged that his
grandmother's cabbage-patch was now covered by the water on which his
boat was floating. The big shopman, turning to me, quoted the well-known
passage of Tennyson (everyone can repeat it) of the sea flowing where
the tree used to grow. "O Earth, what changes thou hast seen." This
quotation led to a literary talk in which he remarked that of all poets
he preferred Homer. "What translator do you like best?" I enquired.
"Blackie's," he replied, "as being the most faithful to the original.
But I rarely read a translation, '_I prefer Homer in his