Every Scotchman, it was said long ago, thought it his duty once in his life to visit “the city of the scarlet gown” and to see the ruins of the great cathedral.[487] No longer, happily, is the mind of the pilgrim “filled with mournful images and ineffectual wishes;” no longer does he see “a University pining in decay and struggling for life;” no longer does he wander through grass-grown streets, listening to the sound of his own solitary steps. The town is thriving and animated; the University sees the number of its students steadily increasing. It had long been depressed by poverty; but a noble endowment happily has this very year[488] fallen to its lot. If it can never hope to attain to those stately avenues and lawns and gardens and buildings, as beautiful as they are venerable, which are the boast of Oxford, nevertheless in the bracing pureness of its air, in its fine situation on the shores of the northern sea, in its seclusion from that bustle which distracts the student’s life, and from that luxury which too often makes poverty, however honest, hang its head, it has advantages which are not enjoyed by any other of our Universities.
Johnson, closing his description of St. Andrews with his lament over its declining University, goes on to say like a wise man:—“As we knew sorrow and wishes to be vain, it was now our business to mind our way.” Perhaps, as he wrote these words he had in his memory two lines of Matthew Green, though they were originally used of quitting, not what was painful, but what was pleasant—
“Though pleased to see the dolphins play, I mind my compass and my way.”[489]
He and Boswell started about noon for Montrose on the other side of the Firth of Tay, a distance of a little over forty miles, but with good reason made a halt at Leuchars, on observing the fine old Norman church.[490] They were fortunate enough to see it before it was “restored” for nothing ancient remains but the apse and chancel. The new portion in the interior is ugly in the most approved Scottish fashion; in the outside it would be insignificant were it not added as a vast excrescence to the ancient building. It stands on a little hill at the end of the village, with the churchyard round it falling away on the southern side in steep slopes to the road. Hard by are some well-grown trees round the Manse where Boswell waited on the aged minister, a very civil old man, to learn what he could. He was told that the church was supposed to have stood eight hundred years. St. Andrews certainly can show nothing so ancient. The village is built solidly enough of stone, but seems careless of pleasing the eye. There are no little gardens before the houses, no roses trained up the walls, scarcely any flowers in the windows. “Take care of the beautiful, the useful will take care of itself” has not been a gospel sounded in Scottish ears.