nd perhaps for the
love of _Alma Mater_ (which may be still extant and flourishing) buys
it, not without haggling, for some pence--this book may alone preserve
a memory of James Walter Ferrier and Robert Glasgow Brown.

Their thoughts ran very differently on that December morning; they
were all on fire with ambition; and when they had called me in to
them, and made me a sharer in their design, I too became drunken with
pride and hope. We were to found a University magazine. A pair of
little, active brothers--Livingstone by name, great skippers on the
foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop over against
the University building--had been debauched to play the part of
publishers. We four were to be conjunct editors, and, what was the
main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every
rule of arithmetic--that flatterer of credulity--the adventure must
succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. I
went home that morning walking upon air. To have been chosen by these
three distinguished students was to me the most unspeakable advance;
it was my first draught of consideration; it reconciled me to myself
and to my fellow-men; and as I steered round the railings at the Tron,
I could not withhold my lips from smiling publicly. Yet, in the bottom
of my heart, I knew that magazine would be a grim fiasco; I knew it
would not be worth reading; I knew, even if it were, that nobody would
read it; and I kept wondering, how I should be able, upon my compact
income of twelve pounds per annum, payable monthly, to meet my share
in the expense. It was a comfortable thought to me that I had a
father.

The magazine appeared, in a yellow cover which was the best part of
it, for at least it was unassuming; it ran four months in undisturbed
obscurity, and died without a gasp. The first number was edited by all
four of us with prodigious bustle; the second fell principally into
the hands of Ferrier and me; the third I edited alone; and it has long
been a solemn question who it was that edited the fourth. It would
perhaps be still more difficult to say who read it. Poor yellow sheet,
that looked so hopefully in the Livingstones' window! Poor, harmless
paper, that might have gone to print a _Shakespeare_ on, and was
instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense! And, shall I say, Poor
Editors? I cannot pity myself, to whom it was all pure gain. It was no
news to me, but only the wholesome confirma