of to-day. Of the specific points of change, of advantage in the
past, of shortcoming in the present, I must own that, on a near
examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far the most
lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, ugly, idle,
unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and heart of
the whole matter; whose changing humours, fine occasional purposes
of good, flinching acceptance of evil, shiverings on wet, east-
windy, morning journeys up to class, infinite yawnings during
lecture and unquenchable gusto in the delights of truantry, made up
the sunshine and shadow of my college life. You cannot fancy what
you missed in missing him; his virtues, I make sure, are
inconceivable to his successors, just as they were apparently
concealed from his contemporaries, for I was practically alone in
the pleasure I had in his society. Poor soul, I remember how much
he was cast down at times, and how life (which had not yet begun)
seemed to be already at an end, and hope quite dead, and misfortune
and dishonour, like physical presences, dogging him as he went.
And it may be worth while to add that these clouds rolled away in
their season, and that all clouds roll away at last, and the
troubles of youth in particular are things but of a moment. So
this student, whom I have in my eye, took his full share of these
concerns, and that very largely by his own fault; but he still
clung to his fortune, and in the midst of much misconduct, kept on
in his own way learning how to work; and at last, to his wonder,
escaped out of the stage of studentship not openly shamed; leaving
behind him the University of Edinburgh shorn of a good deal of its
interest for myself.

But while he is (in more senses than one) the first person, he is
by no means the only one whom I regret, or whom the students of to-