THE PKOFESSOK AND HIS CLASS. 235 



" Among my own contemporaries were some representatives of 

 young Edinburgh, of whom a word or two presently, and a Pole? 

 who happened to be the only guest with whom I had any previous 

 acquaintance. His formal designation was Leon Count Lubienski. 

 Seeing a good deal of him afterwards during the five months ses- 

 sion, I formed a great idea of his abilities. He had nothing of the 

 imaginative, or of the aesthetic — a term then coming into use from 

 Germany ; but for an eye to the practical, and a capacity for mas- 

 tering all knowledge leading in that direction, it did not happen to 

 me to find his equal among my contemporaries. With all the diffi- 

 culties of language against him, he carried off from young Edinburgh 

 the first prize in the civil law class. After having astonished us 

 throuoiiout the session, he left us at the end, and I never could 

 discover any thing of a distinct kind about his career, though I 

 have turned up the initials of his name in the many biographical 

 dictionaries of contemporaries which seem to be a specialty of the 

 present day. I heard, many years since, a vague rumor that, he 

 had risen in the Russian service. He was just the man, according 

 to the notions of this country, to be useful to such a government, 

 if he would consent to serve it. I feel certain, however, that he 

 was a man who could not have escaped being heard of by the 

 world, had his career in practical life lain elsewhere than in a close 

 despotism. 



" Such was the outer circle of guests ; within was the Professor's 

 own family. And so hither I found myself transferred, as by a 

 wave of an enchanter's wand, a raw, unknown youth, with claim of 

 no kind in the shape of introduction, with no credentials or testi- 

 mony to my bare respectability; no name, even of a common 

 friend, to bring our conversation to an anchor with. This success 

 seems far more surprising when looked back upon than it was felt 

 at the time. Young people read in novels of such things, and there- 

 fore are not astonished by them ; but in after life they become 

 aware of their extreme uncommonness. Nor was it a mere casual 

 act of formal hospitality ; I received afterwards many a cordial 

 welcome within those hospitable doors. 



"It is possibly its personal bearing that makes' me now remember 

 pretty distinctly a good-humored and kindly pleasantry of the Pro- 

 fessor's at that first dinner. I have mentioned that there were 

 some representatives of young Edinburgh present. I do not know 



