|
"Learning by study must be
won."
- Gay.
AFTER completing six years at
the Academy, I attended the University for mathematics, chemistry, and
natural philosophy, and learned much that has been useful to me in later
life, although I must confess I did not go deep into mathematics. In
chemistry I was much interested. Professor Gregory, son of the great Dr.
Gregory, of nauseous mixture memory, was in the Chemistry chair. The only
incidents worth recording were those of the laughing-gas day, the occasion
which combined amusement with instruction more than any other. It always
took place on a Saturday, and drew a very crowded house, great numbers of
students attending to enjoy the scene, who were not in the class of the
year, The fun was much enhanced by the fact that the Professor was a man
with little or no sense of humour. While we were all enjoying the wild
cantrips of those who had taken the gas, he prelected on the different cases
as mere scientific illustrations, 'he first student who drew the gas in from
the inflated bladder was in a moment on the top of the five-feet desk of the
front students" seat, and flying along the desks behind, whacking w < th the
bladder at everyone near. Absolutely unconscious, he nevertheless, though
running at speed up the sloping desks, never massed his footing, while he
banged his fellow-students, arid at last he woke up with his feet straddled
across two desks, and threw the bladder from him. We roared with laughter,
but not a smile passed over the professorial countenance. When quiet was
restored, he solemnly informed us that as the first experiment had resulted
in a display of violence, it would probably be found that the subsequent
cases would show a general tendency in the same direct on. And so it was,
much to the satisfaction of the row-loving student. No. 2 was a
powerful-looking advanced student. He applied his violence to the desk n
front of the Professor, driving his fists into the hard wood until his
knuckles streamed with blood, the Professor looking on him calmly from the
safe distance and the height of the broad demonstrating table, and evidently
well satisfied with the fulfilment of his prediction. lie experiments
brought out a remarkable instance of unconscious memory, a young lad under
the influence of the gas shewing a retention in the brain of what he could
not have reproduced by conscious effort. Professor Pillans, who taught the
Humanity class, was fond of introducing little speeches on the :important
topics of the day, regardless of their having any relation to his subject.
On the death of the Duke of Wellington, he delivered an oration upon the
deceased hero, and his words had impressed themselves on the lad When he had
taken his bladder-full of gas he turned round, and walking backwards and
forwards as Professor Pillans had done, he with good elocution and
appropriate action repeated verbatim many sentences of the oration, he
students of the Humanity class recognised at once what was happening, and
shouts of laughter went up from the benches, but were staled by the other
students who wished to hear.
The young reciter went on
without hesitation or break while the gas influence lasted, and I remember
that it was just as he uttered in loud tones 'before the walls of
Scringapatam that he woke up, amid roars of laughter. Here was another case,
similar to the drowning memory, in which an exciting cause drew from the
brain-shelves what the owner of the brain could not have brought up by
conscious intention. It was plain that what I had heard was an exact
reproduction from the Professor s speech.
The only other incident of
gas-day was one peculiar to the Professor himself. He was a strong believer
in mesmerism, and one student, after inhaling, planted his elbows on the
demonstrating table 1n front of the Professor, and looking him straight in
the face said, "Do you mean to say that you consider mesmerism to be a
branch of science? This raised such a shout from the irreverent students
that the Professor's reply was lost, and the interrogator suddenly
awaking—as the reporters say—"the incident closed."
The Natural Philosophy chair
was at that time held by Professor Forbes, a refined gentleman of the old
school, from whom the attentivee student could learn much, and who was
universally respected. If a student went to him personally to inquire on a
particular matter, he was most kindly received, and what he heard was always
clear and interesting. The Professor was a great contrast to his equally
kind, and perhaps even more instructive but externally more rugged
successor, my old school-fellow, Peter Guthrie Tart, of whom I have spoken
already in connection with the Edinburgh Academy.
It was while attending these
classes that I began to be a nuisance to my family. I have never been
able to content myself with learning about practical things by listening to
lectures, or reading text-books. I must dabble. And I did dabble, and filled
my room with apparatus and chemicals. I made stinks inexpressible in my
efforts at "practical chemistry, and succeeded once in making an unconscious
invention of an explosive, which blew the neck off a bottle and sent
everybody in the house coughing as in the last stage of consumption. My
pocket-money went for Woulff's bottles and retorts, and supplies of acid to
burn my clothes, and ammonia to cure the burns. I look back upon that time
with very great pleasure. Perhaps what I learned was desultory and
unsystematic, but I have often found the benefit of it since in professional
life. It is well for a lawyer to have a good smattering of many practical
subjects. He has often to master what ib intricate in natural science
Edinburgh from the mound, looking east,
on short notice, and it is no
small aid to him to beg, This study of the particular case with a general
though not exact and complete information. A want of knowledge of practical
things led to a colleague—a very learned lawyer—turning to me and saying:
"Macdonald, what on earth is a cam?' the debate up to that point having
turned a good deal on cam action in a machine. He was absolutely in the dark
as to what it was all about, and so put his plaintive word of appeal for
light to me. A. little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but only if it
engenders conceit. It may be, and often is, of great value to the man who
knows its limitations.
As regards my natural
philosophy tendencies, they went mainly in one direction—to electricity and
magnetism. My first introduction to electricity practically—putting aside
the impudent farce of Short's Observatory—was when my father, hearing that
his brother, the Adjutant-General, had died, spent 6d. in telegraphing, and
received a letter through the penny post before any answer arrived by
telegraph, after many hours of waiting, the telegraph was a little- believed
in wonder. History tells us that on the Electric Telegraph Company's office
being opened with a flourish on a certain morning, the large staff kicked
its heels the whole day, there being only two messages handed in up to two
o'clock. So disgusted and alarmed were the Directors, that sone of them went
round to the scientific instrument-maker, who had supplied two weighing
machines to weigh the hundreds of sovereigns which were expected, and begged
that one pair of scales be taken back at a discount. But the capture of the
Quaker murderer Tawell in a Great Western train at Slough, in consequence of
a message sent by railway telegraph from Paddington, stimulated my youthful
curiosity about electricity, and set me working with magnet to needles, and
coils of wire and batteries, at which I was expected not to waste my time,
and ;n reference to which I was rebuked for going to the famiould ever come
when the honour would be conferred upon me—unsolicited and unexpected—of
being elected a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, a position
which I prize more than many other good things which have come my way. This
subject interested me deeply, and I lectured on it as a young man to a great
many audiences in town and country. At that time there was displayed the too
common tendency of the distinguished men of science to express themselves
unfavourably to the hopes of the keen explorers of the field, and to declare
with emphasis that what the inventive mind was pushing after could not be
accomplished. It may interest the reader to know that at the time of my
student Here I read a declaration by Bunsen—one of the greatest scientists
of that day—that to suppose that motive power on a large scale could ever be
provided electrically was a Utopian dream. I knew that at the very time he
thus wrote eager minds were working at the problem; and I remember a
fellow-student telling me that an engineer of his acquaintance had assured
him that h s experiments made him confident of success. It is probable that
friends took a pleasure in thrusting Bunsen's dictum before him, with that
air of "kindness-to-the-poor-young-enthusiast," which too often covers a
desire for indulgence of self-importance, and the hope of being able to say
later, "I told you so." Bunsen was wrong. The reason he gave for his opinion
was unsound. Being the inventor of a most excellent electric battery, he
assumed as a fact that development of electrical energy was only to be got
from galvanic batteries, and as consumption of zinc was necessary to the
operation of the battery, and zinc cost a certain sum per pound, he declared
it to be impossible to obtain energy for mechanical work on a large scale,
except at a price too great for economical use. His first premiss was wrong,
as the event has proved, and there are hundreds of thousands of practical
refutations of his utterance to-day.
Another curious instance of
want of foresight which I came upon in my study of the literature of
electricity was in a scientific work published in 1848, in which the author
described how duplex telegraphy could be effected—both two messages in
opposite directions, and two messages in the same direction over one w*re.
An asterisk at the passage indicated a note, and the note at the bottom of
the page said: "But these, of course, are mere electrical toys, which can
never be of any practical use."III This reads strangely, knowing as we do
that not only duplex, but quadruplex telegraphy has been in practical use
for many years.
It was the same in the case
of the telephone at a later date. One of the highest officials in the
Government telegraph service declared before a Parliamentary Committee that
he did not think the telephone would ever be much used n this country—that
in the United States they had a scarcity of message boys, but we had "plenty
of message-boys and things of that sort" (sic), and therefore the telephone
would not come to any great extent into use.!!!
I learned from all this that
sometimes the most injurious person to the interests of scientific progress
was the scientific man himself. Many other cases could be quoted, but they
would take up space, and the above are sufficient foi illustration.
After my year at science
classes in the college, the only long break in my life in Edinburgh
occurred. At that time I had chosen the Army as a profest on, and it was
thought well to send me abroad to acquire the French and German languages
:in preparation for the Army Entrance Examination, and from the autumn of
1853 down to the autumn of 1856 I was resident abroad, coming home for short
intervals twice. My Edinburgh life was resumed on my final return. The
intention of entering the Army was abandoned. The Crimean War had come to a
close, and there was little prospect of any rapid rise in the profession.
Had I known that the Indian Mutiny was to break out so soon, bringing the
army once more into active service, I might have held on to my intention.
One thing which influenced me was that I came to know that my father, who
was not in strong health, wished that he might have a son at home, my only
brother being already in the service. And the prospects at that time were
such that my old uncle, General Alexander Macdonald—who, I may say in
passing, was Ramsal's subaltern in the celebrated dash of his R.H.A. battery
through the French cavalry regiment— told me that in his judgment I never
did a wiser thing than in giving up the intention to enter the military
profession. It would be affectation to say that I did not think I could do
well in the army. Many friends have said to me since that I ought to have
been in the service. My reply always has been that I am glad I was not; that
I might have been a ten-year subaltern grumbling at being held in the leash
of routine—the terrible routine of that time—and that as it turned out I had
as much soldiering, indeed more, than if I had been a regular, and enjoyed
very much more of my own way than could ever have been the case had I had to
make my way slowly, and possibly be compulsorily retired while still in full
vigour and fond of the work.
It was at this time that I
learned to realise that my delicacy of boyhood had been but a growing
weakness, although I had been told by the "kind friend' —from whom I was not
saved, notwithstanding that I echoed the poet's prayer, "Save, oh save me
from the candid friend"—that I had a "miserable constitution," that I would
be "a martyr to dyspepsia before I was forty." &c. &c. That these
prophecies, made doubtless from a sense of duty, by persons who knew, and
therefore must speak, have been falsified, makes me grateful. I am somewhat
in the position of Sir Henry Duncan Littlejohn, who on the occasion of his
being presented with his portrait when he had passed the span allotted to
man, told us of his having a consultation of two learned special its been
reported on as uninsurable. I remember the quiet, humorous way in which he
said: "And I had the melancholy satisfaction of belying their prophecy, as
many years later I followed the remains of both these gentlemen to their
final resting-place."
May I go back a little in
time, and speak of another lime, that of my own father, who at forty-five
years of age got his death-sentence for heart disease from the highest in
the medical profession. All that could be said was that he should support
himself with port wine and brandy, and that a year might see the end. I
remember his calling us round his bedside, and solemnly telling us of the
warring he had received. After he had done this, he added that he had heard
of the great skill in disease of Mr. Gully, the hydropathy doctor of
Malvern, and that as nothing could be done for him in Edinburgh, he did not
see why he should not make an experiment. Accordingly he journeyed by
stages, aided by sfimulant to ward off fainting. He arrived in Malvern in
the afternoon, and Dr. Gully came to examine him the same evening. After a
careful investigation he put away his stethoscope, saying, "Mr. Macdonald,
you have no more heart disease than I have," and he proceeded to put him
under drastic treatment—eight-feet cold douche bath, sweating bath with
plunge into cold water, &c. a deadly treatment to any man with serious
organic heart disease. The brandy and port wine were stopped from that day.
The following year, 1848, my father returned home. He rode his horse, and
was able to do as others— attending to his affairs, joining in any amusement
suitable to his age with zest, able to play foursomes at croquet, in games
that lasted for many hours, up to a good old age entertaining his friends,
including Lord Robertson, whose utterance apropos of his recovery has been
quoted. He lived for more than thirty years after his sentence of death, and
ultimately died of pure senile decay at eighty-six, his heart doing its work
vigorously, till the failure of the rest of his body made death inevitable.
What he really had suffered from was an overstreched brain—he being a very
hard worker indeed, and a terribly hasty feeder—leading to an exceptionally
dyspepiic state, affecting the heart, but not so as to bring it into an
organically diseased condition.
In my boyhood I had a very
panting heart. Climbing a stair produced great breathlessness, and for a tme
I had been unfit for the activities of schoolboy life. Belng abroad had done
wonders for me, and I was fit for anything on my return. Since then no one
has had more cause for thankfulness for sound bodily health. Thus I entered
on study for my profession with no drawback of weakness, and began the most
strenuous work of my life. I chose the Bar, and attended logic and law
classes. I have already confessed that my inclination is not naturally
towards close and continuous application to one class of subject. But when I
was faced with examinations in three languages, logic and metaphysics, and
civil law, Scots law and conveyancing to follow, and all within two years,
the necessity of the case was realised and study was paramount, social
engagements were declined, and amusements, except on a Saturday, shunned. "I
suspect you have been burning midnight oil, John,' said my brother when he
came home on leave from his regiment. Well, I had. With the aid of a teapot,
in which tea stewed for hours in the fender, and to which I applied time
after time, I kept myself awake, and worked late as well as early. I came
out sixth in order of merit in Scots law, in a class of about one hundred,
which was far above what I had expected to attain, and it gave me hope of
passing creditably when I should come up to be examined for the Bar. I
believe that my surviving that teapot's contents, consumed in quarts, is the
best proof of how robustness had taken the place of delicacy. My teachers
were Professor Fraser—now a nonagenarian, who so ably filled the Logic
chair; Professor Shank More, who lectured on Scots Law ; Professor Campbell
Swinton, who was in the Civil Law chair; Professor Bell, who taught
Conveyancing; and Professor Traijl who lectured on Medical jurisprudence. I
also went to the Watt Institution to learn the practical arts of joinery and
carpentering and turning, a knowledge of which has been most useful to me in
many ways, professional and otherwise. As regards Medical jurisprudence, I
have often regretted, having come to know Dr. Littlejohn so well, that I did
not take his class at the College of Surgeons, but Professor Trail! was a
charming old man, and his lectures and exhibits very instructive. Although
there was no examination to be passed on his subject, its highly practical
character made it most interesting to me, and I learned much which was of
great utility in my criminal practice afterwards. I will confess that, with
the exception of the Civic Law, I found the law lectures very dry. Mr. Bell
I still seem to hear in the Conveyancing class, repeating: "Morison 2755,
Mor son 2755/ the reference being always uttered twice in monotonous tone.
And the Scots Law lectures were also terribly humdrum in character. Only one
touch of relief do I remember, when the law on slavery was stated, and the
dear old modest Professor More, who never looked at the class, but glanced
up at the end of every utterance to the upper left-hand corner of the
class-room, said in most sober tone; "And so ' (head up) "as the sun can
never set on the British Dominions," (head up) "so that sun can never rise
upon a British slave."
The worthy gentleman blushed
as he looked for the last tine at the corner, when for once the room
resounded with a round of applause, possibly irroni.cal to some extent, but
kindly as well.
There is one story connected
with his name which may bear repetition. A junior counsel had been asked for
his opinion on the memorial of a client. He wrote below It::
"Your case docs not seem to
me to have a leg to stand upon. Perhaps it would be as well to take in the
assistance of one Shank More."
It's also told of him that
his good-nature led him on the occasion of an examination, when in answer to
his question the student had said, "Yes ' firmly, he gently responded:
"Right, but rather 'no."
It was about this time, when
King Edward was a lad, that he came to Edinburgh for a season for education.
Of course his incognito was respected, but one saw him occasionally. I
remember his being violently struck by one of his future subjects, There
were several witnesses to the blow, but there was no arrest, and the eager
reporter got no "copy" out of it. The Prince was playing racquets in the
racquet-court in Rose Street, and getting in the way of the ball, his
partner hit him a hard stroke on the shoulder, which made him wince and rub,
and made the partner not know what to say. Of course it was the Prince's own
fault, and he bore it well. It was probably the only occasion in his life
when one of the Queen's subjects made—without intention—an assault so
violent upon him. His royal shoulder must have for many days been changing
from black to blue, and from blue to yellow. Had the ball struck him behind
his ear, or on the temple, he might never have sat on the throne. |
