Very different again and quite unparalleled in history was the position occupied by Sir Andrew Mitchell, since 1756 British ambassador to the Court of Prussia. He was the only son of a clergyman at the church of St Giles, Edinburgh, and was born on the 15th of April 1708. The premature death of his young wife and his baby-daughter made him give up his reading for the Scottish Bar, and seek comfort and relaxation on long journeys through Holland and Belgium, France and Italy. After his return in 1742 he was made Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, member of parliament for the Elgin boroughs in 1754 and ambassador to Prussia in 1756. As King Frederick was then on the point of being engaged in the .memorable Seven Years’ War, this was a service of no small danger, hardship and difficulty. It was in Berlin that the thousand and one finely spun threads of European policy met. Only a man of uncommon intelligence and uncommon qualities of mind could hope in the intercourse with such a "fiery soul" as Frederick to extricate himself out of the maze of conflicting interests, to serve his country, and to save his soul alive. Mitchell succeeded by his sound common-sense, his manliness, his energy, his incorruptible and straightforward honesty, not to lose for one short moment the most complete confidence of his royal master and friend. He was an honour to his native country; hard-headed, sagacious, averse to all mere shows, but able to seize the fact, and stubbornly, if needs be, to hold to it; abundantly polite, watchful and discreet, full of common-sense and a certain rugged sincerity: in short, a man, whose true value Frederick immediately perceived and a resource, no doubt, to the King in his lonely roamings and vicissitudes in those dark years. Thus Carlyle describes him.

It was a matter of necessity that with a character thus differently constituted from and at variance with the old received pattern of a useful diplomatist, times of tension and friction with the Cabinet at London were not infrequent and might have ended in Mitchell’s recall, if it had not been for the powerful veto of the Prussian King. Once, when he had received a long letter from England reproaching him for omitting to communicate numerous and bitter sarcasms which, no doubt, escaped Frederick concerning the English, he replied that he considered himself as entrusted with the care of maintaining and strengthening the ties that existed between his country and a valuable ally; that his desire had been to prove a minister of peace and union; that if it were intended to make him a minister of hatred, pitiful bickerings and despicable tale-bearings, he wished nothing more than that the King would immediately name his successor. "It was his duty to remind the Cabinet that to judge accurately of a man so extraordinary, or even of his utterances, it was doing little, indeed, to collect the mere words he spoke, if to these were not added a knowledge of the time, in which they were pronounced, under what circumstances and with what." Finally he added: "I was born an enemy to falsehood, deceit and double dealing, and have ever had an equal contempt and abhorrence of those that practise either." "Honour," he writes an other time to the English Minister, "Honour, my lord, cannot be bought with money."

The same straightforwardness characterises his intercourse with Frederick. He was the only one who sometimes ventured a word of reproof, and the King, who was possessed of a piercing insight into human nature, not only forgave him but valued him all the more. The plain man, who shortly after his arrival at Berlin created quite an uncomfortable sensation by his inability to play at cards, soon occupied the envied position as one of the King’s most intimate friends, who accompanied him on his campaigns, to whom he had recourse in times of joy and sorrow. When in 1757 Sophia Dorothy, Frederick’s mother, had died, and the disconsolate King for two days refused all intercourse with the outer world, it was Mitchell whom he sent for first, seeking and finding comfort in his conversation. To him he poured out his grief, initiating him into the sad history of his youth. "I must confess," Mitchell writes after this meeting, "that it cut me to the quick, how the King abandoned himself to his grief; pouring out expressions of the most affectionate filial love; recalling to his mind how much he owed to his departed mother; how much she had suffered, how nobly she had borne it all, and how good she had been to everybody. His only comfort now was that he had tried to make her latter years more comfortable. I was glad to prolong my visit as he seemed to be amused, and to forget for a time that load of sorrow with which he was overwhelmed."

It was Mitchell again to whom the King turned first in the joy of victory. "You have shared the fatigues with me, I want you likewise to rejoice with me," he said to him after Rossbach. In very many letters he expressed to him his unshaken confidence and love and, when he returned to Berlin after a visit to England in 1766, he made the Duke of Brunswick write to him: "Mon cher M. Mitchell. Le roi attend sou bon M. Mitchell et non le ministre. Selon ce charactère il vous recevra a Berlin."

Whilst the King thus honoured the ambassador with his intimacy, England was slow to recognise his merit; and whilst his successor, Sir James Harris, a much inferior man, was made an Earl, the other had to content himself with the Order of the Bath, remaining to the end of his life plain Sir Andrew Mitchell. Plain also is his tomb: the inscription only telling the dates of his birth and death.

Let us now add some events in the life of the ambassador. It was the wish of King George II, that he should accompany the Prussian King on all his campaigns, thus sharing the dangers of the battle and the privations of camp-life. In his rare leisure-moments be loved to study German. When at Leipzig he took lessons from Gottscbed, then a celebrated critic, and tried to convince him of the genius of Shakespeare in spite of his supreme neglect of the long adopted and cherished canons of dramatic composition. He also knew Gellert, the poet, and procured him an interview with the King.

His diaries give a very vivid sketch of the Seven Years’ War with its victories and defeats; its diplomatic minings and counterminings. In the midst of all this Mitchell continued his straight course: to make Frederick’s interests those of his own country. In this he succeeded in so far as the English subsidies continued to be paid during Pitt’s administration, though a co-operation of the English fleet was found impossible. How deeply he felt the defection of England in 1762, when the pecuniary assistance was withdrawn, a letter of his reveals to his countryman Sir R. Murray Keith, the British ambassador at Vienna. "This goes by Walker," he writes on the ninth of June, "the messenger who has brought me an answer to my despatch of the 4th of May, and I will not detain him to give you a précis, because I imagine they will have sent you a copy of that most extraordinary piece. If they have not, let me know, and you shall, by the first sure opportunity, have a fair account of it. The news your own letters will give you, and I fancy it will be as unpalatable to you as it is to me. We must, however, obey and do our best; we are, indeed, the servi servorum, the beasts of burden, that must go as they are driven. Je suis las de mon s--- métier; mais des considerations réflechies m’empéchent de prendre encore aucune resolution subite. Aidez-moi, je vous prie, de vos conseils; la sante me manque et la situation des affaires m’accable de tristesse....

We are moving on firmer ground when we review the monastic erudition of the Scots. The Benedictines especially cultivated education and learning, and thus the Scottish monasteries in Germany, which followed, as we have seen, the rules of St Benedict, produced quite a series of eminent scholars. We have already spoken of Ratisbon and its famous abbots: Winzet, Stuart and Arbuthnot, as well as of the Benedictine University of Salzburg. At Erfurt the position of the Scottish abbots with regard to the University there was a very peculiar one. Since the year 1427 they bore the title of "Universitatis Studii Erfurtensis Protectores, Privilegiorum Conservatores, Matriculae Custodes."

Several instances are on record where these privileges have been exercised. Thus the abbots Dermicius in 1442, and Edmundus forty-eight years later, settle a quarrel that had arisen between the professors and the students of the University as: "Judices competentes per sententiam definitivam." In a similar manner abbot Cornelius relegated two "magistros," who refused to submit to the decrees of the Council of Basel (1485); and Jacobus exercised the same judicial office in 1532.

There were, moreover, attached to the monastery at Erfurt four Philosophical chairs, the Scottish occupants of which chiefly taught Mathematics, Algebra, Logic, Metaphysics, and Natural Philosophy. Very well known amongst them in his time on account of his experiments in electricity, was P. Andreas Gordon, a scion of the old ducal house of Gordon. He was a member of the "Académie des sciences" at Paris and of the "Royal Academy of Science" at Munich. Having been educated at Kehlheim, and at the Scottish Seminary of Ratisbon, he started on a two years’ journey through Austria, Italy and France. On his return in 1732 he became a priest, and afterwards Professor of Philosophy at Erfurt (about 1737). In his inaugural address he spoke of the "Dignity and the Use of Philosophy." The hostility which his writings display against the Scholastic Philosophy involved him in long controversies with the clerical scholars of the day. Other monastic scholars famous for their learning were Marianus Brockie, the author of a History of the Scottish Monasteries, Bernhard Grant, Hieronymus Panton, Superior of the Monastery and Doctor of Divinity (1711); Maurus Stuart, abbot (1720), and Bonjface Leslie, about 1730. Panton was elected Rector of the University in 1712 and died 1719; the others were Professors of Philosophy also.

Among the Scottish monks of Wurzburg mention must be made of the Abbot Jobannus Audomarus Aslon, who is said to have been Rector of the University there in 1646. About twenty years earlier Alexander Baillie, who later on became Abbot of Erfurt, was Prior of the Monastery (1622). He wrote a book against the heretics. In the knowledge of the history of their Order excelled Silvanus Maine, and Boniface Strachan from Montrose, who compiled a very valuable work on the "Propagation of Christianity in Germany by monks of the Scottish Nation," the plan of which had been suggested to him by Maine. To these must be added: Thomas Duffus (Duft), who died in 1636 and is called a "poeta celeberrimus," a very famous poet; and Marianus Irvin, a public teacher of theology.

Besides theology, medicine and natural philosophy have always proved a very attractive study for the Scots, even so long ago as the XVIth Century. Among the Scots in Germany we find three very eminent men in this province of leaning: Duncan Liddel, John Craig and John Johnston. The first of these was born at Aberdeen in 1561. When about eighteen he emigrated like so many of his countrymen in those times to the "land of promise," Poland. He went first to Danzig, and from there to Frankfort-on-the Oder, where John Craig, the Professor of Logic, became his friend. Under him he studied philosophy and mathematics for two years. When Craig returned to Scotland, Liddel went, furnished with letters of introduction, to Breslau, where he derived much benefit from the intercourse with the learned Hungarian convert Andreas Duditius and from the lectures of Paul Wittich, who initiated him into the secrets of the Kopernican system of astronomy. In the following year we find him again at Frankfort, but this time not as a student but as a teacher. Here he remained till 1585 when the plague scattered his pupils in all directions and compelled him to leave the town. He first betook himself to Rostock where he was immatriculated in the month of October. His residence there seems to have been rendered very pleasant through the kindness of Brucaeus, a famous physician and philosopher, and of the learned Professor Caselius. At first he taught privately, but after having received his degree as "Magister philosophiae" in 1587, when Nicolaus Goniaeus was Dean of the Faculty, he read publicly on the motions of the heavenly bodies according to the various systems of Ptolemy, Kopernikus and Tycho Brahe the great Danish astronomer. With the latter he had become acquainted on a visit to the island of Hveen where the Dane’s famous observatory had been built. Against the accusation of having claimed the honour of Tycho’s discoveries for himself; he defended himself most energetically, and maintained to have independently arrived at the same results. He owned, however, to have received his first suggestions from Tycho. In the year 1590 he went with his friend Caselius to the newly-founded University of Helmstädt where the latter had just been made Professor of Philosophy. He himself occupied the chair of mathematics and afterwards of geography and astromony. His mind, however, was chiefly inclined towards medicine. In 1596 he obtained his medical degree, having written a dissertation on "Melancholy." During his term of office he was several times elected Dean of the Philosophical and Medical Faculty. He was, moreover, physician to the Court of Brunswick and to many of the great country families. From the year 1604 onward, when he was elected Pro-rector, he limited himself to his medical lectures and to his medical practice. But the fame and the wealth thus acquired could not quench his desire to return to Scotland, especially since the political outlook in his adopted country seemed to become gloomier every year. Moved by these considerations he left Helmstadt in 1607 and went to Aberdeen, where he continued to reside until 1613, the year of his death. In his will he left a considerable sum for the endowment of a chair of mathematics, whilst he placed the rent of some of his lands in the neighbourhood of the town at the disposal of the University authorities for the maintenance of six poor students. He lies buried in the Church of St Nicholaus at Aberdeen, where a handsome brass of Dutch workmanship, beautifully engraved, shows him surrounded by his books and instruments. Of his writings the most important are:

1. Disputationum medicinalium Duncani Liddelii Scoti, Phil. et Med. Doctoris in Academia Julia, Pars Prima. Hehnstädt, 1605.
2. Ars media. Hamburg, 1608, 1728.
3. De febribus libri tres. 1610.

After his death appeared his much talked of essay, "De dente aureo" ("Of the golden tooth") Its origin is the following. A certain doctor and professor at Hehnstädt, with the name of Jacob Horst, had published an account of a boy born with a tooth of gold, explaining this curious fact by saying that the sun in conjunction with the planet Saturn in the constellation of Aries had produced such enormous heat, that one of the teeth of the boy had been melted into gold at his birth. Several other doctors supported this view, whilst Liddel opposed it asserting not without some slight humour, that the tooth in question, to examine which the parents of the child would not allow, was probably only gilded.

Liddel’s Artis conservandi sanitatem libri duo ("two books on the art of preserving the health") also appeared after his death. It was published by one of his pupils at Helmstädt, a Scotsman named Dun, in 1651.

A little earlier than Liddel, John Craig was Professor of Mathematics at Frankfurt a/O. He had taken his medical degree at Basel and became in time, after having resigned his professorship in 1561, Physician to King James. He is chiefly known on account of his controversy with Tycho Brahe, whose book on the comet of 1577 he very probably received through Liddel. Tycho had published a lengthy defence of his books against the attacks of Craig (1589) and had sent a copy of it to the Scot, who some three years afterwards undertook a refutation of the Dane denouncing "nec tam scotice quam scoptice" all those that dared to deny Aristotle’s teaching about the comets. The friendship between the two scholars, however, does not seem to have suffered much, at least not until the year 1588; for in that year Tycho sends a mathematical book to Craig with the Latin dedication: "To Doctor J. Craig of Edinburgh, the most renowned and most learned Professor of Medicine, the very distinguished Mathematician, etc., Tycho Brahe sends this gift." Three letters, which he wrote to the Danish scholar, are likewise couched in the most friendly terms. It is just possible that he accompanied King James VI on his visit to the isle of Hveen and its celebrated observatory.

In conjunction with Liddel and Craig must be mentioned John Johnston, called "Folybistor," a man of less ambition, but vaster and more profound learning. He was the son of a certain Simon Johnston, who about the end of the XVIth Century, emigrated from Annandale to Samter in Poland, together with his two brothers Francis and Gilbert. A birth-brief issued at Lanark in 1596, of which copies exist at Vienna and Breslau, testifies the legitimate birth of the brothers and their descent from the old race of the lairds of Craigieburn, and recommending them at the same time to the sovereigns of Holland and Poland. The mother of John Johnston was Anna Becker, a German lady, known by the beautiful designation of "Mother of Alms." At the school of the Moravian Brethren in Ostrorog, and later at the High School of Beuthen-on-the-Oder, and at Thom, the future scholar received his education. In 1622 he went to Danzig, and thence by way of Denmark to Scotland, the home of his father. Here he continued his studies in the College of St Leonard’s at St Andrews University, devoting himself especially to the study of Scholastic Philosophy, "not to his great profit," as he himself confesses. Moreover he learned Hebrew well, and attended the lectures on Church History by the then Rector Glaidstone. At different times on the occasion of academic ceremonies, he delivered orations "de Passione Dei"; "de Spiritu Sancto," and "de Philosophiae cum Theologia consensu." It was of great use to him during his stay at St Andrews that the Archbishop John Spottiswood received him among the twelve royal alumni, for by one of their rules, three professors had to share their meals in the morning and in the evening, and to enliven them by Latin discourses on various subjects. In this way Johnston became intimately acquainted with Hovaeus, Wedderburn, afterwards Bishop of Dunblane, and Melville, the Professor of Hebrew. He also enjoyed the protection of the Earl of Mar, the Marquis of Argyll, and Lord Erskine, as well as the friendship of John Arnold, the future Chancellor of the Archbishopric, and his brothers James, William, and George. During his stay at the University, he proved an indefatigable reader and mentions as a special favour, that the librarian allowed him to take books to his own house, and that he had the free use of Professor Glaidstone’s library. After his return from Scotland in 1625, he stayed for some time at Lissa in Poland, where he superintended the studies of the two barons of Kurzbach and Zawada, continuing at the same time his medical researches. Here also his zeal for reforming the educational methods of his time brought him into contact with that famous philosopher and pedagogue Johann Amos Comenius. His first work, the Enchiridion Historiae Naturalis (Handbook of Natural History) was very probably published at Lissa. Then commenced a long time of travels. Johnston visited the towns of Frankfurt, Leipzig, Wittenberg, Magdeburg, Zerbst and Berlin, not so much with the purpose of seeing their sights, but of conversing with their celebrated men. In 1629 he went to Hamburg and thence to the University of Franeker in Holland; in the following year to Leyden and England. In London he held friendly intercourse with John Wilson, Bishop of Lincoln, Dr Primrose, and John Pym, the famous leader of the Commons. In Cambridge also he was received by all the scholars "with great politeness." Indeed so great had his fame become by that time, that efforts were made in various quarters to secure his services. Primrose wanted to send him to Ireland in an official capacity, Vedelius offered him a chair in the University of Deventer, and the Woywode Belczky a professorship in Poland. Johnston accepted the latter call and embarked for Germany in 1631 in company with General Leslie. By way of Wolgast and Stettin, he arrived safely at Lissa and at Warsaw, where he remained till the following year engaged in his professional duties. But the longest journey of four years’ duration he undertook in 1632, as the companion and mentor of two Polish noblemen: the Baron of Leszno, who afterwards became Chancellor of the Exchequer of Poland, and a son of the Marschal of Lithuania, Wladislaw Dorostoyski.

The travellers visited the Netherlands, England, France and Italy. After having thus satisfied to the full his roving instincts, a desire for rest and rural seclusion took hold of Johnston which never left him. At first be settled in Lissa, where he married the daughter of the celebrated Polish Court-physician Matthaeus Vechnerus. But the restless and turbulent condition of the country, rendering the peaceful enjoyment of a country-life almost impossible, soon compelled him to exchange Poland for Silesia, where in 1652 he acquired the estate of Ziebendorf in the principality of Liegnitz. Here he spent his time in constant correspondence with the most learned men of Europe, diligently reading and writing the last twenty-three years of his life. He died in 1675 aged seventy years, honoured by many friends and lamented in numerous elegies. Sinapius says of him: "He was a man of sincere piety, old-fashioned honesty, without pride and frivolity, indefatigable in his industry, and in his conversation always lively and pleasing."

In connection with the above we must mention another doctor of medicine, the Konigsberg physician George Motherby, who gained great fame by first advocating vaccination in his city (about 1770). A namesake and doubtlessly a relation of this George was William Motherby, who studied medicine at Königsberg and took his degree at Edinburgh in 1797. He practically introduced vaccination by means of cow lymph, which he brought from Edinburgh. In defence of his method he published two pamphlets in 1801.

The passion for education, which forms such a prominent feature in the character of the Scots and earned for them the title of "the Germans of Great Britain," was carried with them to the land of their adoption. We have seen how eager the Scottish emigrants of the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries were to obtain their own places of divine worship. With the same eagerness we find them endeavouring to procure the best education for their children born in a strange land. In their church-records the school is continually and prominently mentioned. Or they send their children to schools already existing. At Tilsit Rector Dewitz in 1644 entered three Scottish boys as pupils of his "Provincial School": Thomas Sumerwel (Somerville), Nicolaus Beili (Bailie) and Johannes Medlen.

In 1699 the Scots in Königsberg—at the instigation, perhaps, of their countrymen and co-religionists in Polish Lithuania—complain that the Reformed, i.e. Presbyterian, school, which in former times had boasted of such a reputation as to attract even children out of Poland, now seemed to be on the decline. Even the towns-people took their children away and put them elsewhere. What was needed, they maintained, was a staff of new efficient teachers, and above all a rector well versed in the Polish language.

The matriculation-rolls of the German Universities at that time likewise show a considerable number of students, who were either born of Scottish parents or descended from Scottish families.

Not a few of these chose the study of divinity. Thus George Anderson, after having been rector, became pastor at Rastenburg (1699). Also one G. Douglas, a native of the small town of Schippenbeil near Konigsberg, was Presbyterian clergyman of Jerichow, in the district of Magdeburg, from 1758-1772. John William Thomson, born at Konigsberg in 1704, as the son of the rector of the Presbyterian school, became Court-preacher in 1732, and died on the 21st of December 1761; David Hervie, probably a grandson of the generous elder of the Scottish church at Konigsberg, of whom we have spoken previously, was Presbyterian clergyman at Pillau from 1738-1775; D. Wilhelm Crichton, the nephew of another Court-preacher, a native of Insterburg, studied divinity at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and at Konigsberg, and in due time became a chaplain himself.

Nor does the Lutheran Church in that district want Scottish names amongst her clergymen. It was but natural that the Scots in those places, where a Presbyterian service could not be had, should attach themselves to the Lutherans. We are told of one George Anderson, the son of a brewer at Angerburg of that name (1648), who afterwards became the Lutheran pastor of Rosengarten, near his native town. Andreas Murray, from Memel, in the first half of the XVIth Century was given the charge of first pastor of the German congregation at Stockholm; David Stirling, the son of a Scotsman at Osterode in Eastern Prussia, was ordained Lutheran clergyman in Konigsberg in 1740.

The above list could without doubt be enlarged; but enough has been said to prove that in the department of divinity also the Scottish have proved worthy of their traditions.

Of other scholars among those of Scottish birth and extraction in Germany mention must be made of the two librarians of Ulrich or Huldrich Fugger in Augsburg, whose wealth in those days favourably compared with the Rothschilds and Carnegies of our times, Henryson and Scrimgeour. The first named was a Doctor of Laws and Professor at Bourges in France. He came to Fugger about the year 1550, dedicated several of his books to him, notably a translation of Plutarch, and received for his faithful services an annuity from his patron.’ Henry Scrimgeour was born in 1506 and went, after he had studied at Paris and Bourges, to Italy as the secretary of the Bishop of Rennes. On his return he received and accepted a call as Professor of Philosophy to Geneva. Here he had the misfortune of losing all he had, including his books, in a conflagration. Under these circumstances he was only too glad to accept Fugger’s offer of a librarianship. After a stay of several years in Augsburg he returned to Geneva in 1563, where he was elected first Professor of Civil Law. He was one of the most learned Scotsmen of his day. His name is mentioned as one of the witnesses of the last will and testament of Calvin. He died in 1572.

In connection with these two great masters of the law, we may mention a third, who, though not a Scotsman by birth, was yet descended from an old Scottish immigrant and settler at Elbing in Prussia. Among the earliest Scottish names in that town we find, as we have seen above that of Thomas Auchinvale or Achinwall, as it was afterwards germanised, who died in 1653. His great-great-grandson, Gottfried Achinwall, was born at Elbing in the year 1719. After having studied the law in the universities of Jena, Halle and Leipzig, he became public lecturer on International Law, History and Statistics at Marburg, and since 1748 at Göttingen, where he soon obtained the proud position of one of the most celebrated professors of the University. He attracted a great number of hearers, chiefly on account of his lectures on Political Economy, a science which owes its existence and scientific treatment to him. Almost the only remarkable incident in an otherwise tranquil though honoured life seems to have been a long journey, undertaken with royal subsidies, to Switzerland, France, Holland and England. He died in 1772. His books on Political Economy were widely read and went through many editions. In all of them British candour and German thoroughness are most judiciously blended. The year of Achinwall’s birth was the death-year of another famous scholar of the law, Jacobus Lamb de Aberton, who was born at Elbing in 1665. He afterwards became Member of the Faculty of Law at Padua and Pro-rector. In 1701 he was made Doctor of Philosophy and Knight of St Mark, in 1702 Imperial Pfalzgraf. He died when on his home-journey in 1719 at Berlin.

In the province of philosophy and kindred branches, Thomas Reid, the secretary of King James II, deserves a niche to himself. He received his college education at Aberdeen, where he also qualified for his degree in about 1600. Having taught as Regent in the University for four years, he went to Germany for the completion of his studies. In 1608 he was admitted public teacher at Rostock and three years later appointed Professor of the Latin Language at the same University, with a salary attached of 80 gulden and a free house. Like other scholars of his time he excelled in debate and many were the so-called public disputations, especially with Arnisaeus, a Professor of Medicine at Frankfurt, that made the halls resound. Some time later he immatriculated at Leipzig, whence he returned to England. The last six years of his life were spent as Latin Secretary of the King. More than through his philosophical writings he will be gratefully remembered as the founder of the first public library in Scotland, for by his will he not only left his books to the city of Aberdeen, but the sum of six thousand merks besides to cover the expenses of a librarian, who was to keep the door "of the library patent and open on four dayes of the week the whole year."

Besides Reid we find other Scotsmen as teachers of languages in Germany. There is Benedictus Ingram, of whom we have already spoken, one of the eight last Scottish monks at Wurzburg, who, after 1803 became lecturer of English at the University of the town, and published an English grammar; and a little later Robert Motherby, a brother of William, the physician, who lived at Konigsberg as a teacher of languages. He is the translator of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor (1828) and issued a Dictionary of the Scottish Idiom.

Above all, mention must be made of Arthur Jonston, not in his quality as physician to King James and Charles I, but as one of the most excellent Latin poets Scotland ever produced. He was the son of George Jonston of Caskieben, near Keithall, in Aberdeenshire. Here, under the shadow of mighty "Big Benachie," in the invigorating atmosphere of the Highlands, he passed his youthful days. He was taught Latin at Kintore. When his father died in 1593, however, he, being a younger son, had to shift for himself. Like so many of his countrymen he turned his eyes towards the Continent, but we do not know the place he first emigrated to. Certain it is, that he and one Walterus Donaltsonus, both being then styled "Magistri," were immatriculated at Heidelberg on the 11th of September 1599 and that two years later he had obtained the dignity of regens or professor. As such we find him presiding at a public "disputation" in the philosophical lecture-rooms of the University (1601). But his stay at Heidelberg was not of long duration. He accepted a call of the Duc of Bouillon as professor at Sedan. And yet, the time spent at the beautiful Neckartown, the adopted home of a Scottish princess, had deeply impressed his mind. To the reader of his poem, or rather his cycle of poems, entitled Querelae Saravictonis el Biomeae, i.e. "The struggle between Austria and Bohemia," published at Heidelberg in 1620, this becomes at once apparent. He passionatety calls upon England and the whole of Europe to assist the Elector-King, and great is his anxiety for the fate of the Palatinate and its fair capital. As a Protestant Manifesto of the times the poem, even apart from its poetical beauties, is interesting and well deserving a perusal.

Jonston returned to Scotland in 1622, became Rector of Aberdeen (1637), and died in 1641 when on a visit to Oxford.

At this point of our survey we must not forget the grandfather of the great philosopher Emanuel Kant, who was born of Scottish parents. In the draft of an answer to a letter of the Swedish Bishop Lindblom, in which the Swedish descent of Kant’s father had been started, the philosopher says: "It is very well known to me, that my grandfather, who was a citizen of the Prusso-Lithuanian town of Tilsit, came originally from Scotland."

Now this notice gave rise to various doubts. First of all, Kant’s grandfather, Hans Kant, did not live at Tilsit, but at Memel, where he carried on the trade of a harness and belt maker. It had to be assumed, therefore, either that Kant wrote by mistake Tilsit instead of Memel, or that he confused grandfather and great-grandfather. For the latter view spoke the occurrence of one Balthasar or Balzer Kant, in a list of Presbyterian church members of Tilsit, a very aged Scotsman, who received relief out of the "Poor Box," in the year 1682.

Thus matters stood, when by the discovery of two manuscript-contracts, found at Königsberg amongst the so-called "house-books" of the district of Memel, a new light was shed on the question. According to these documents, Richard Kandt, the great-grandfather, a publican at Werdden near Heidekrug, then, in 1667, an old man, gives over to his daughter Sophia, and to her second husband, Hans Karr, in consideration of the latter’s claims against him, the whole of his well-furnished house, together with three hides of land, on condition, that the sum of 100 thaler be paid to his son Hans Kandt, then a journeyman harness-maker "in foreign lands," together with "six shirts of home-spun linen, six collars and twelve handkerchiefs," and that he himself was to receive board and lodging to the end of his life, whilst all his debts were to be paid by the said son-in-law.

Soon afterwards old Richard died, and his son Hans, returning from his travels, and feeling himself somewhat aggrieved by the settlement above, entered on June the 4th, 1670, "for the maintenance of peace and brotherly friendship," into a second agreement with his brother-in-law, which was drawn up at Memel. The 100 thaler were increased to 150, the six shirts and twelve handkerchiefs changed into ten yards of linen, at five shillings a yard, and for this magnificent prospect, Hans Kandt gave up all his claims to the public-house and its "pertinentia" "sine dolo" for himself and all his descendants.

Further discoveries in Memel confirmed the supposition of Hans Kandt’s residence in that city. He married there in 1694 had a house and workshop on the so-called "castle liberties," and by his wife another house situated in the old town, together with some fields on the common. He must have lived, therefore, in tolerably well-to-do, if humble, circumstances. It was in Memel also, that, the father of the philosopher Johann Georg was born and christened in 1682.

The year of Hans Kandt’s death cannot now be ascertained correctly. It is just possible that he succumbed to the plague during 170?, when the entries of deaths in the church books were very incomplete.

We therefore arrive at the final conclusion, that the supposition of Balzer Kant having been Kant’s great-grandfather can no longer be maintained, but that the philosopher erroneously wrote Tilsit instead of Memel. This error becomes all the more probable and excusable, as Hans Kandt or Kant had to go to Tilsit for the purpose of obtaining his certificate of master of his craft, which could not be got at Memel, because at that time no leather-cutters or harness-makers existed there. This certificate, issued at Tilsit, and, no doubt, preserved in the family, Emanuel Kant had in his mind when he wrote his answer to the Swedish bishop’s inquiries.

Among the Scottish scholars in Germany, Carl Aloysius Ramsay occupies a prominent position. He was the pioneer of shorthand and was till recently believed to be the son of a certain Charles Ramsay, town-councillor at Elbing in Prussia. But this seems to be erroneous as the historians of this city are silent about him, though mentioning many members of this old and widespread family. Certain it is that he lived the greater part of his life in Germany. He was in Leipzig and Frankfurt in 1677 and 1679, which is proved by the preface to his Latin translation of Kunkel’s German Treatises on Chemistry. His most important work was his Tacheography or the An of writing the German tongue as quickly as it is spoken. It appeared first in the form of articles written for a Frankfurt newspaper which were collected afterwards and published in book-form in 1678.

By this and his other books on shorthand in foreign languages, Ramsay became the most interesting of all early writers on the subject.

The last name in our gallery of eminent Scotsmen is that of Johann von Lamont, the famous astronomer at Munich. He was born at Braemar in 1805, as the son of an excise-officer, and spent part of his boyhood amidst the invigorating surroundings of his native scenery. But when his father died early, the boy, who showed good intellectual gifts, was sent by a kind priest to the Benedictine Seminary at Ratisbon in Germany, where he received an education well fitting for his future career. His strong bent for scientific research found ample scope and, what is more, enlightened encouragement. Prior Deasson recommended the young scholar to the Bavarian astronomer at Bogenhausen, not far from the capital, whose assistant he became. In 1852 the assistant was elected Professor of Astronomy at Munich, and soon his writings and discoveries brought him ample recognition at home and abroad. He was a member of many learned societies in Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Germany, England and Scotland. His Star Catalogue and his book on the Magnetism of the Earth (1849) are standard works. Full of years and honours he died in 1879.

We have now followed the traces of the Scots in Germany to the end. Many of them succumbed to the crushing revolutions of the wheel of time; many again have left their records in the dusty old parchments of German and Polish archives; many of them have handed down their names corrupted but uncorrupted deeds to a grateful posterity, that recognises in them much that was good and noble in Politics and Learning, in Peace and War.

The eastern and western parts of Prussia still retain their Simpsons, and Gibsons, and Macleans, and Murrays and Mitchells; the German Army list still embodies Douglases, Campbells, Hamiltons, Johnstons, Scotts, Spaldings and Ramsays, while the German nobility mix and mingle many a proud Scottish coat of arms with theirs.