Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/155

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KING'S COLLEGE.
121
which we can make with little trouble to ourselves. They are shut up within walls at nine at night. This discipline hath indeed taken some pains and resolution, as well as some expense to establish it. The board at the first table is 50 merks[1] per quarter; at the second, 40 shillings. The rent of a room is from seven to twenty shillings in the session. There is no furniture in their rooms but bedstead, tables, chimney grate and fender the rest they must buy or hire. They provide fire, and candle, and washing to themselves. The other dues are two guineas to the Master; to the Professors of Greek and Humanity [Latin] for their public teaching, five shillings each. All other perquisites not named, from twelve shillings to seventeen and sixpence."[2]

KINGS COLLEGE, ABERDEEN.

Whether this reformed system lasted in its full extent to the time of Johnson's visit, I do not know; some part of it at all events remained. "In the King's College," he says, "there is kept a public table, but the scholars of the Marischal College are boarded in the town." In Aberdeen, as well as in the other Scotch Universities, students from England were commonly found. Johnson was surprised at finding in King's College a great-grandson of Waller the

  1. A Scotch merk was about thirteen pence of English money.
  2. Dunbar's Social Life in Former Days, i. 7.