It is this same Scotch perseverance which makes Watts, Livingstones, and Gordons. Never were there brighter illustrations of what can be done by power of mind united to power of endurance.
I have seen them at work, those resolute, indomitable Scots. I have known some whose performances were nothing short of feats of valour.
Here is one that I have fresh in my memory.
A young Scotchman, on leaving Oxford, had been appointed master in one of the great public schools of England. He began with the elementary classes. At that time he intended to devote himself to the study of science.
He told the head master of his intention, and asked his advice.
"If I were you," said the head master, "I would do nothing of the kind. I feel sure you have very special aptitude for Greek, and that if you will but direct your attention to that, you have a brilliant future before you. Let me trace you out a programme?"
This programme was enough to frighten the most enterprising of men. A Scotchman alone could undertake to carry it out.
He took an apartment in the Temple, turned his back on his friends, and became an inaccessible hermit.
For three years he lived only for his books, consecrating to them that which, at his age, is generally consecrated to pleasure and comfort.
Nothing could turn him from the end he had in view.
One after another he read all the Greek authors. Nothing that had been written by poet, philosopher, historian, or grammarian, escaped him.
At the end of three years, he reappeared, wasted by the vigils and privations of this life of study; but the last touches had been put to the manuscript of a book, which, when it appeared three months later, was pronounced a masterpiece of scholarship, and made quite a revolution in the Greek world.
To-day this young Scotchman is one of the brightest lights in the higher walks of literature in Great Britain.
The students of the great Universities of Scotland offer, perhaps, the most striking proofs of perseverance to be found.
At Oxford and Cambridge, you find all sorts of students, especially students who do not study.
To be able to have the luxury of studying, or rather "residing" (such is the less pretentious name in use), at Oxford or Cambridge, you must be well-to-do.