The

even then probably fallen from its earlier grandeur. schools of Perth and Stirling were attached to the Monastery of Dunfermline, and we read of their existence so early as 1173. These, and others, were all Burgh or Grammar Schools. But there was another and higher class of schools within the walls of the monasteries, chiefly designed, no doubt, for the education of the clergy. To them, however, it would

appear that the sons of the nobility were occasionally sent, and in the cartulary of Kelso an instance occurs in the year 1260, of the grant by a noble-woman of a rent to the abbot and monks, on condition that they should board and educate her son with the best boys entrusted to their care. It was in these latter schools, which perished in the wreck and plunder of the Reformation, leaving no substitutes behind them, that the rudiments of the scholastic philosophy were taught, and that such men as John of Dunse* must have been prepared for the brilliant careers on which they immediately entered at Oxford, and Paris, and Bologna. Nor was this the only direction in which their influence may be traced. Law can scarcely have been taught at the Burgh Schools, and as, in 1496, the Universities of St. Andrews and Glasgow had only been recently founded, it has always seemed probable to us that it was to these monastic schools that the expression schules of art and jure,' which occurs in the remarkable statute of James IV. with reference to the education of the sons of barons and freeholders, was intended to apply. In this conjecture we have the support of Professor Mackay,† the latest authority on the subject. It is probable,' he says, that the 'masters of the schools of the monasteries may have given some instruction on this subject—and it is certain that the 'art of charter-writing must have been cultivated in them.' Many of the higher ecclesiastics were decorated with legal titles, and as by the help of the capacious net of the Canon Law they contrived to appropriate a large portion of the whole legal business of the community, nothing seems more natural than that the local schools of law should have served the

*The claim of Scotland to the Doctor subtilis is pretty well established by the date. The date of his birth is, indeed, unknown; but he died on Nov. 8, 1308, not six years before the battle of Bannockburn. By that time Scotus certainly meant a Scot. John Scotus Erigena on similar grounds, it would seem, must be given up to the Sister Island, as in the ninth century Scotus no doubt signified an Irishman.

History of Roman Law in Scotland, Journal of Jurisprudence,' Feb. 1876, p. 60.

double purpose of preparing the youthful aspirants for academical honours abroad, and communicating to the feudal aristocracy such humbler knowledge as might fit them for being 'sheriffs or judges ordinary under the King's Highness.' It may consequently not have been for his own use only that we find Archbishop Scheves commissioning books of the Law,' through Andrew Halyburton,* Conservator of the privileges of the Scotch Nation in the Netherlands, 1492-1503. But, be this as it may, the aspect in which these schools are chiefly important for our purpose is that of ultimate schools, to which admission was granted only to those who had already passed through the secondary schools. This characteristic of the graded system' is clearly brought out by the first part of the statute, which provides that, previous to the three years which are to be spent in them, the sons of the wealthier classes shall be sent to the grammar schools, fra they be sex or nine yeirs of age and shall there remain quhill they be competentlie founded and have perfite latine.' In so far as the interests of the laity were concerned, the universities, even before the Reformation, must have occupied the ground which had previously belonged to the schools of the monasteries. But on the other hand, it is to their existence we must look for an explanation of the fact that Scotland possessed no universities down to so late a period as the fifteenth century. Whilst the monasteries did their duty, it is easy to imagine that the want of local universities was little felt by men thus furnished with the means of asserting their place in the great schools of European learning.

What is further remarkable with reference to the educational arrangements of these early times is, that even what we are accustomed to call the modern side' does not seem to have been wholly absent in the burgh schools. We find merchants,' says Mr. Innes, writing and keeping accounts, and corresponding with foreigners in their own language, who must have received their education early in that century.' In corroboration of these assertions we may refer to the curious ledger of Andrew Halyburton, already mentioned. When to these business-accomplishments we add music, we shall pretty well have exhausted the bill of fare of our modern educationists, and got far beyond the aspirations of the 'Code.' From a very early period music was cultivated, and sang 'schools' existed in the cathedral towns, and in towns connected with the great abbeys, which gave first a musical education,

* Halyburton's Ledger, Preface, p. lxxv.

which must have included reading, and then a general education, which ultimately included grammar. Previously to the foundation of the parish schools by Knox, these cathedral schools appear to have been the sole organs of the primary instruction, which in singular contrast to the existing state of matters in Scotland must have stood in a very unfavourable position relative to the secondary. In towns like Jedburgh and Dunfermline, Mr. Innes believes these ecclesiastical singing schools to have been the germs of the Burgh grammar schools, and there seems every probability that they were the sources of the national music of Scotland. In 1579, shortly after the Reformation, an Act was passed ordaining that sang schools' be provided in burghs for the instruction of the youths in music and singing,quhilk is like to fall in great decay, without timous remeid be provided.' Provosts, baillies, and town councils, and the patrons and provosts of the colleges where'sang schools are founded (where foundations exist), are required to erect and set up ane sang school, with Iane maister sufficient and abill for instruction of the youth in 'the saide science of musick.'

6

That the pretty liberal course of instruction thus provided, extending to that of the burgh school at all events, was intended for the benefit of all classes, is a point on which Mr. Innes has no hesitation. Speaking of the 16th century, he says:• Andrew Simson taught Latin with success at the grammar 'school at Perth-the same foundation doubtless of which the • Dunfermline monks were the patrons three centuries earlier -where he had sometimes 300 boys under his charge; and although it is boasted that these included the sons of the principal nobility and gentry, it is more for our present purpose to observe they must have consisted of a large proportion of the burgher and peasant class, and a great number who cannot have been designed for the Church.'

6

In the interesting account which he has given of the educational condition of Scotland at and about the period of the Reformation, Mr. Innes has greatly toned down the expressions which lay before him in Row's history and similar works, and it may even be doubted whether he has not toned them. down too much. The Andrew Simson to whom he refers was really a man of considerable eminence. He was the author of a well-known Latin grammar, which kept its place in the schools till the days of Ruddiman, and he was one of the four members of the Commission of which Buchanan was president, for rectifying the inconvenience arising from the use of different grammars in the schools. The existence of a multi

tude of grammars sufficient to call for such a Commission is in itself no insignificant proof of the zeal with which learning was cultivated; and it would be well if a similar Commission were appointed to regulate corresponding manifestations of zeal in our own day.

But it was under Simson's immediate successors that the grammar school of Perth attained its highest celebrity, and for a reason which will be immediately apparent, we shall follow its history a little farther. Simson was rector from 1550 to

1560. In the latter year John Row, the Papal nuncio, who had been converted to the doctrines of the Reformation only two years before, became minister of Perth. His influence in promoting the higher education was very great, and whatever deductions our incredulity may tempt us to make from the accounts of his household which have come down to us, we can scarcely doubt that they contain an element of fact, more instructive than gratifying at the present day.

Many of the sons of persons of distinction who attended the grammar school were boarded in his house, and instructed by him in Greek and Hebrew. As nothing but Latin was spoken by the boys, in the school and in the fields (?), so nothing was 'spoken in Mr. Row's house but French.* The passages of Scripture read in the family, before and after meals, if in the • Old Testament, were read in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and English; if in the New Testament, they were read in 'Greek.' †

In 1637, Row's grandson became rector of the grammar school, in which he taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Greek had been taught in a private school at Montrose in 1534; and both Greek and Hebrew at Prestonpans in 1606. But the Burgh School of Perth was the first of the public schools of Scotland which became trilingual.' This fact produced the following encomiastic verses by the then principal of the University of Edinburgh which his learned successor certainly could not apply to the same subject:

'Perthana quondam Latialis linguæ Schola
Laude cluebat, fueratque unius labri;

*M. Francisque Michel has demonstrated in his 'Ecossais en France' that French must have been generally known as a spoken language in Scotland from the 13th century down to the Union. The extent of the connexion between Scotland and France which that work brought to light, was an astonishing revelation even to those best acquainted with the history of both countries.

† McCree's Life of Knox, p. 385.

Nunc est trilinguis, Latio jungens Græciam,
Et huic Palestinam; omnium linguis loquens.
O ter beatum te nunc Perthanam Scholam!
O ter beatum Rollum Rectorem tuum !'

This thrice-blessed rector-the well-known author of the Hebræ Linguæ Institutiones, and afterwards Principal of King's College, Aberdeen-was blessed with one apt pupil at any rate, for it must have been under his long reign that the Admirable Crichton attended the school.

From these early days till comparatively recent times, though it certainly made no progress, the Grammar School of Perth maintained a respectable character. When Adam Ferguson attended it (about 1733 to 1738), the rector was Mr. James Martin, a distinguished teacher, we are told, justly proud of having instructed the great Lord Mansfield. That he instructed him well was afterwards proved at Westminster and at Oxford; but it does not say much for the condition of the school that when Ferguson entered the University of St. Andrews, at the age of fifteen, he is said to have carried neither Greek nor mathematics along with him.*

With these notanda to guide us to a conception of its former condition, let us now turn to the picture of the present state of this venerable institution, as we find it in the pages of the Report. All that we learn of its recent history is that the school was extended and improved, particularly in 1760, when the mathematical and scientific departments were annexed; and that in 1806, a large and handsome new building was erected by subscription for the accommodation of all the classes, at an expense of upwards of 6,000l.' At this period a really vigorous effort seems to have been made for the revival of the school. The ground on which the still handsome buildings stand was generously presented to the public by the then provost, and in his deed he makes provision for the building in course of time becoming too small for the accommodation of the schools of the burgh. But it was an expiring effort: the good provost Marshall had no successor, and the seventy years which have since intervened exhibit nothing but steady, and latterly rapid, retrogression. As usual in Scotland, the Town Council are the parties most immediately to blame, and justly figure as the chief villains in the piece. Still one can scarcely regard, without feelings of indignation and contempt, a whole community sitting listlessly by and beholding, for so long a time, the destruction of an institution which their ancestors bequeathed

* Edinburgh Review, January, 1867, p. 57.