inted,'--'such a one at least as was able to teach grammar and the
Latine tongue;' 'that there should be erected in every notable town,'
a 'colledge, in which the arts, logic, and rhethorick, together with
the tongues, should be read by masters, for whom _honest_ stipends
should be appointed;' and further, 'that fair provision should be
made for the [support of the] poor [pupils], in especial those who
came from landward,' and were 'not able, by their friends nor by
themselves, to be sustained at letters.' We know that the notable
towns referred to here as of importance enough to possess colleges
were, many of them, what we would now deem far from notable. Kirkwall,
the Chanonry of Ross, Brechin, St. Andrews, Inverary, Jedburgh, and
Dumfries, are specially named in the list; and we know further, that
what Knox deemed an 'honest stipend' for a schoolmaster, amounted on
the average to about two-thirds the stipend of a minister. Such, in
the sixteenth century, was the wise scheme of the liberal and
scholarly Knox, the friend of Calvin, Beza, and Buchanan. Are we to
recognise its counterpart in the middle of the nineteenth century, in
a scheme at least three-fourths of whose teachers are paid with yearly
salaries of from L10 to L13, 13s. 4d.--about half ploughman's
wages--and of whom not a fourth have passed the ordeal of a Government
examination, pitched at the scale of the lowest rate of attainment?
The scheme of the noble Knox! Say rather a many-ringed film-spinning
grub, that has come creeping out of the old crackling parchment, in
which the sagacious Reformer approved himself as much in advance of
his own age, as many of those who profess to walk most closely in his
steps demonstrate themselves to be in the rear of theirs.

Let us next mark how entirely the circumstances of the country have
changed since the days of the First Book of Discipline. With the
exception of the clergy, a few lay proprietors, and a sprinkling of
the inhabitants of the larger towns, Scotland was altogether, in the
earlier period, an uneducated nation. Even for more than a century
after, there were landed gentlemen of the northern counties unable, as
shown by old deeds, to sign their names. If the Church had not taken
upon herself the education of the people in those ages, who else was
there to teach them? Not one. Save for her exertions, the divine
command, 'Search the Scriptures,' would have remained to at least
nine-tenths of the nation a dea