Grampian Club > Leaves from my autography

34 LEAVES FROM UY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
scliool, a kind of seminary wliicli has no counterpart
in England. At the Reformation, the Estates of
Parliament, on the recommendation of John Knox,
established a school in every parish. The parish
school was maintained by the landowners, the teacher's
scanty salary being subsidised by school fees. These
fees were sufficiently moderate. In my native parish,
the schoolmaster did not receive more than 3s. 6d.
per quarter, or 14s. per annum, for communicating
instruction in all the ordinary branches, including the
elements of mathematics. Even with the moderate
remuneration of £60 per annum, and a free house
and garden, which till lately constituted the average
emoluments of parochial teachers, many accomplished
persons were found willing to undertake the duties.
Probably one-third of the Scottish clergy were origi-
nally parish schoolmasters.
At the parish school I might have done well enough
had the teacher been competent. An amiable, kindly
man, he conciliated the affections of his pupils, and,
keeping them always employed, seemed likely to
make them scholars ; somehow he did not. His own
handwriting was neat and symmetrical, but all his
pupils, myself included, wrote the veriest scrawls. He
read with a fine musical voice, and with due modula-
tion, but those he taught could not express a single
sentence with distinctness. He knew arithmetic, and
comprehended geometry, but few of his pupils could
claim a mastery of numbers beyond the multiplica-