422 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



shall be able, notwithstanding, to furnish you with as 

 much information regarding him as your friend, Mr 

 Cunningham, may choose to avail himself of. Do not, 

 however, I pray you, insert any of it in your paper. 



' It is now somewhat more than seventy years since 

 John Russel, a native, as I have heard, of Moray, and at 

 that time a probationer of divinity, was appointed to the 

 parish school of Crornarty. He was a large, robust, 

 dark-complexioned man, imperturbably grave, and with 

 a sullen expression seated in the deep folds of his fore- 

 head, that boded the urchins of the place little good. 

 And in a few months he had acquired for himself the 

 character of being by far the most rigid disciplinarian 

 in the county. He was, I believe, a good, conscientious 

 man, but unfortunate in a harsh and violent temper, and 

 in sometimes mistaking the dictates of that temper for 

 those of duty. Never, certainly, was schoolmaster more 

 feared and hated by his pupils ; and with fear and hatred 

 did many of them continue to regard him long after 

 they had become men and women. I have heard of a 

 lady who, unexpectedly seeing him, many years after she 

 had quitted his school, in the pulpit of one of the south 

 country churches, was so overcome by sudden terror, that 

 she fainted away ; and of another of his scholars, named 

 M'Glasher, who, on returning home to Cromarty from 

 some of the colonies, a robust fellow of six feet, solaced 

 himself by the way with thoughts of the hearty drubbing 

 with which he was to clear off all his old scores with 

 the dominie. But ere his return the dominie had 

 quitted the parish. There was a poor boy named Skin- 

 ner among Russel's scholars who, as was customary in 

 Scottish schools of the period, blew the horn for gather- 

 ing the pupils, and kept both the catalogue and the 

 key; and who in return was educated by the master 



