be restricted to literature. He was born to be a statesman and ruler of men. A Scottish University, indeed Scotland itself, was too small and narrow a field for him. Burton truly says he was cast in the same mould as Thomas à Becket, or Pope Hildebrand; and Europe, not Scotland, would have been the fitting arena for his marvellous energy.

It would occupy not one paper, but a dozen, were I to go on and describe the other great men who in the seventeenth century followed Melville in the University of St. Andrews. Time would fail me to tell of Archbishop Spottiswoode; of Alexander Henderson, the hero of the Covenant; of Samuel Rutherford; of My Lord Archbishop, His Grace, James Sharp;' each of whom in their own time and way did their best to shape the University to their peculiar Church views and ends. If commissions, visitations, and rules strictly laid down could have made the University prosper, these men would have done it. But the political turmoil throughout the whole seventeenth century made all efforts of this kind abortive. As one example out of many, take this: Barron, the principal of St. Salvator's, and a regent named Gleg, had approved of the engagement which would have confined the Covenant to Scotland, and did not wish to force it upon England. For this they both were tried and suspended from their offices by a covenanting commission in 1649; no doubt with Rutherford's approval, if it was not at his instance.

But if the strife of tongues and the clash of arms that sounded through Scotland in the whole of the seventeenth century left no room for deep study and ripe scholarship, they reared in St. Andrews alone a race of valiant heroes and scholars, who could wield the sword and the pen with equal ease.

Before the Reformation St. Andrews had produced the poets Gawain Douglas, William Dunbar, and Sir David Lindsay; at the time of the Reformation the Admirable Crichton. Early in the seventeenth century James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, studied at St. Salvator's, while a few years before, his rival and adversary Archibald Campbell-known as Gillespie Gruamach-the Marquis of Argyll, had been a student in St. Leonard's. When these two had taken their sides and played their parts in their country's history, Argyll caused the head of Montrose to be fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, from which it was taken down only to be replaced by his own. Of the relics still preserved in St. Salvator's College there is none, not even excepting Bishop Kennedy's mace, on which one looks with so much pride as on the silver Archery medal, bearing as its inscription the student name, James Graham, Earl of Montrose. Over against it is the medal of his rival, then Lord Lorne. Other names known to Scottish history are among those medals-Robertson of Struan, the Jacobite chief and poet, who while still a student was present at Killiecrankie; in his mature manhood fought at Sheriffmuir; and in his extreme age met Prince Charles Edward, as he crossed Corriearrick, and plighted to him his fealty, though he could no longer march with him to battle. There, too, is the name of that

Marquis of Tullibardane, who as an aged exile unfurled the Prince's standard when the clans in the Forty-five mustered at Glenfinnan. Not among the medals, but one of our students in the middle of the seventeenth century was John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. What thoughts must it have stirred in the hearts of these young cavaliers, to feel themselves students in the university which sheltered Buchanan, Melville, and Rutherford, and from which these men had taught doctrines that led to regicide.

That University must have been full of life, which within one century could show on one side such men as Knox, Buchanan, Melville, Alexander Henderson, and Rutherford; and over against them Spottiswoode, Montrose, Struan, Claverhouse, and Tullibardane. Nor must we forget among our students in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the more peaceful names, Napier of Merchiston, the inventor of logarithms, and Sir George Mackenzie, lawyer and statesman, founder of the Advocates Library.

It may be easily imagined that something of prestige was lost by the University at the Reformation, when the old hierarchy went down, and St. Andrews ceased to be the seat of the primacy. This was partially restored during the two periods of Episcopacy, when the city again became for a time the seat of a milder primacy, and the resident archbishop was the Chancellor of the University. With the suppression of Episcopacy and the Revolution of 1688, St. Andrews and its university lost whatever dignity it had derived from its connection with the primacy. The Government of William and Mary appointed in 1690, a commission which visited St. Andrews with power to purge out and remove all principals, professors, regents, and masters who would not take the oath of allegiance, and submit to the new Church government. I have not been able to find details as to how many of the St. Andrews teachers were then removed, but it is asserted that a tolerably clean sweep was made in all the three colleges. It is recorded that the Earl of Crawford, the head of the commission, treated with great rudeness the aged head of St. Leonard's, James Wemyss, who was forced to resign.

In 1697 an attempt was made to remove the University to Perth, and several of the professors-it is said from motives of self-interest -were urgent for the removal, but the attempt came to nought.

The eighteenth century was a torpid period in most universities, not in Scotland only, but in England also. Oxford and Cambridge continued to drag on a drowsy routine, if we may accept as true the description given of them by Wordsworth and Southey, in the last decade of last century. This drowsiness would seem to have been shared to the full by St. Andrews, which had been exhausted by a century and a half of discord and ever-recurring revolutions. Over all Scotland the loss of her Parliament caused a deep depression, and it was not till the very end of the eighteenth century that the national spirit began to revive. Perhaps no Scottish city suffered more from this depression than St. Andrews did. It had suddenly passed from

being the centre of all the stir of ecclesiastical life, to become a remote fishing village, relieved only by a few ruins and an ancient university. But political zeal was not extinct among the students. In the Fifteen,' or Mar's Rebellion, we find certain students of St. Leonard's accused of forcing the keys of the church and steeple of their college from the porter's wife, and ringing the bells on the day when King James was proclaimed. The next commission, which sat in 1718, inquired into this, and ordered that all regents or students. who were found guilty of disaffection to King George should be dismissed from the University.

6

In the Forty-five,' some who had formerly been students at St. Andrews, such as the aged Struan and Tullibardane, were active on the Prince's side. There seems to have been at first no stir within the University, but when Cumberland was returning home from the atrocities of Culloden, the University, I blush to say, sent a deputation to congratulate him on his victory, and inviting him to become their Chancellor. This he did, and we can number the cruel duke among our Chancellors.

In the year that followed Culloden (1747) a grave event in the history of the University took place. This was the union, by Act of Parliament, of the two Colleges of St. Salvator and St. Leonard's. The reason for this is said to have been that the revenue of the former college and the buildings of the latter had become dilapidated. By this union the one got better incomes for the professors, the other better buildings for its lecture-rooms and for the residence of the bursars. It may have been necessary, though it is to be regretted that it should have been so. But it was not necessary that they should have merged our two fine old mediæval names in the mean modern appellation of the United College.

When Dr. Johnson paid his famous visit to this place in 1773 two sights filled him with indignation and sorrow. The first was the ruins of the Cathedral; the second, the desolate remains of St. Leonard's College. His anathemas on the 'ruffians of the Reformation " all will remember. Boswell asked where John Knox was buried. Johnson burst out, I hope in the highway. I have been looking at his reformations.' This is what he says of St. Leonard's :

The dissolution of St. Leonard's was doubtless necessary; but of that necessity there is reason to complain. It is surely not without just reproach that a nation of which the commerce is hourly extending, and the wealth increasing, denies any participation of its prosperity to its literary societies; and while its merchants or its nobles are raising palaces, suffers its universities to moulder into dust.

It is more than a hundred years since these words were written. They continue as true now as then, and as unheeded. The professors of the old College received and entertained the great English literary autocrat respectfully enough. But though he acknowledged that he was entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality,' it could not relieve the load of his depression at the sights he saw.

As we look over the lists of the professors during the latter half of last century and the beginning of this, the frequent recurrence of the same family names suggests that nepotism must have been then dominant, and that the professors had learnt the example of their predecessors the old Culdees, who bequeathed to their children the church revenues they themselves held. Yet even during that time neither the old College nor St. Mary's were unprolific in remarkable men. Of St. Andrews students, laymen who were educated here during last century, I find Robert Ferguson, the Scottish poet, the predecessor, and in many respects the model, of Burns, whose poems are coloured with allusions to student life in St. Andrews; Dr. Adam Ferguson, author of the History of the Roman Republic;' David Gregory, Professor of Mathematics; John Playfair, Professor of Physics in Edinburgh, and one of the first fathers of geological science; Henry Erskine, the famous wit, the ornament of the Scottish Bar; and his brother, the Lord Chancellor Erskine.

It continued to be the custom for the bursars on the foundation to live within the walls of St. Salvator's down till 1820. The change is said to have been made because the old rooms for bursars had

become antiquated and ruinous. Yet Boswell had remarked, fifty years before, We looked at St. Salvator's; the rooms for students seemed very commodious.' But besides the few who were on the foundation the unendowed students who formed the majority had for long lived where they chose. It was customary for the more wealthy students to board in the houses of the professors. Among those who thus boarded were many sons of the old noble families, and of the landed gentry, who continued to frequent St. Andrews from the earliest time down till about the year 1830, when the fashion of sending the young Scottish aristocracy to English schools and universities set in. Before that change this University contained among its students representatives of every social grade, from the highest to the lowliest, all gathered in the same class-rooms, and taught by the same professors. You have only to look over the silver Archery medals still preserved, and to note the names of the winners, in order to see how largely the old historic houses were represented. This continued to be the case till the end of the third decade of this century. That this state of things should pass away we may regret as a social loss, but our regrets cannot stop the action of deeply rooted social causes. The change did not come from any deterioration of the professorial staff. Indeed, this century saw a marked improvement in this respect. Not to mention Professors of Divinity, three names among the Professors of Arts stand out conspicuously. These are first, Dr. John Hunter, who for sixty years taught from the Chair of Humanity. He was known all over Scotland for the accuracy and width of his classical knowledge, and for his power as a teacher. By his instinctive linguistic genius he anticipated many of the results which comparative philology has since made good. There was Dr. Thomas Chalmers, for some time Professor of Moral Philosophy in the United

College, who, by his eloquence rather than by deep philosophy, by the width and warmth of his human sympathies rather than by subtlety or learning, did so much to quicken moral and spiritual life not only in this University but throughout Scotland. His successor, next but one in the same chair, Professor James Ferrier, if he had not the moral and practical force of Chalmers, was strong where Chalmers was weak. No Scotchman in this century has done more for metaphysical philosophy. Revolting from the traditional Scotch Psychology, he grappled with questions which it had never dreamt of, and set the idealistic philosophy on a line along which it still is travelling. And then he clothed his subtle speculations in a style that, for lucidity and incisiveness, recalled the charm of David Hume's. Nor must I omit to mention my two immediate predecessors, Sir David Brewster and Principal James Forbes, each, in his own distinct line, a pioneer and a leader in the advance of scientific research. I confine myself to the work of professors who have passed from us. Of the work done by some still living, though of that a good account could be given, this is not the time to speak.

Of former students of St. Andrews who, in public life, were eminent during the middle of this century, I can myself remember three notable men, all living at the same time-Dr. Chalmers, then leader of the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland; Duncan Macneil, Lord Colonsay, Lord President of the Court of Session of Scotland; John Campbell, Lord Stratheden, Lord Chancellor of England. These three old St. Andrews students were contemporaries, and stood about the same time, each at the head of their respective societies. Nor are our younger men likely to let that succession fail. At this moment one could name several former students of St. Andrews who are among the most eminent ministers, preachers, and leaders in the Church of Scotland; others, but a few years since students or professors in St. Andrews, who are now eminent as professors in the other three Scottish Universities; two, formerly students of St. Andrews, now professors in Cambridge-one of them the originator and organiser of the whole system of university extension, and of affiliated colleges, which now ramifies throughout England; and at Oxford four, whom I can remember students in the United College, as but yesterday, still young men, who, after each obtaining the highest University honours at Oxford, are now fellows or tutors, doing eminent work as teachers, each in a separate college.

These facts are stated, not, I trust, in any spirit of boasting, but as sober truth, which ought to be known and considered when men discuss the public utility of maintaining a small university. If men would measure the worth of a seat of education, not by counting heads, but by estimating the quality of the work done in it, and of the men who are trained by it, then St. Andrews has nothing to fear from the most searching scrutiny.

As to the small number of students in St. Andrews, compared with the crowds who attend Edinburgh and Glasgow University, if No. 631 (No. CLI. N. s.)

E