II
The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, and has
counted among its members Scott, Brougham, Jeffrey, Horner,
Benjamin Constant, Robert Emmet, and many a legal and local
celebrity besides. By an accident, variously explained, it has its
rooms in the very buildings of the University of Edinburgh: a hall,
Turkey-carpeted, hung with pictures, looking, when lighted up at
night with fire and candle, like some goodly dining-room; a
passage-like library, walled with books in their wire cages; and a
corridor with a fireplace, benches, a table, many prints of famous
members, and a mural tablet to the virtues of a former secretary.
Here a member can warm himself and loaf and read; here, in defiance
of Senatus-consults, he can smoke. The Senatus looks askance at
these privileges; looks even with a somewhat vinegar aspect on the
whole society; which argues a lack of proportion in the learned
mind, for the world, we may be sure, will prize far higher this
haunt of dead lions than all the living dogs of the professorate.
I sat one December morning in the library of the Speculative; a
very humble-minded youth, though it was a virtue I never had much
credit for; yet proud of my privileges as a member of the Spec.;
proud of the pipe I was smoking in the teeth of the Senatus; and in
particular, proud of being in the next room to three very
distinguished students, who were then conversing beside the
corridor fire.
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