CHAPTER XXIV. 



JOHN BECOMES AN ESSAYIST. 



ON the 1 8th of July, 1850, a society was formed in the 

 village of Auchleven, called the Mutual Instruction Class. 



The society was part of a vigorous and extensive 

 intellectual movement which originated in the upland 

 village of Rhyme, at the foot of the far-seen hill called the 

 Tap o' Noth, and which spread thence to a large number 

 of rural and village centres in the counties of Aberdeen 

 and Banff. This movement was one of the earliest and 

 most systematic of its kind in the north, and deserves to be 

 better known.* Like many other good things, this Mutual 

 Instruction organization had a very small beginning. The 

 Rev. Robert Harvey Smith, M.A., then a young man of 

 some twenty summers, who had enjoyed the usual educa- 

 tion of the district, supplemented by a few years' business 

 training in Aberdeen, returned to his native village to 

 prepare for the grammar school and university. He 

 collected eleven other young men at Rhynie, and submitted 

 to them a draft of rules for the formation of a Mutual 

 Instruction Class, and on the Qth of November, 1846, those 



* For an account of this movement, I am indebted chiefly to the 

 Rev. R. Harvey Smith, M.A., its founder ; and to Mr. William 

 Anderson, Wellhouse, Alford, an active promoter. 



