U. will observe that his communication is partly superseded by the course of events, and partly by another article in the present Number, which had gone to press before U.'s paper was received. The Editor will feel obliged to U., if he should again take the trouble of writing, to steer as wide as possible of the dirty and disgusting whirlpool of the party politics of the day. The paper remains with the Publishers. Our Poetical Correspondent B. of Edinburgh is requested to bethink himself of Lindley Murray, when he next makes a bounce at some of the lowest hillocks around Parnassus. We can scarcely believe that the birth-place of Burns could have given birth to such trashy verses as have been sent to us from Ayrshire within the last few days. Who ever heard of Aeschiles or Anacrean? The paper, however, in which these strange names occur, seems to contain a few passable enough ideas on modern Greece, and will perhaps be considered in June. Some other communications remain also to be thought of. Printed by J. Ruthven & Son. THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY MISCELLANY. MAY 1825. NOTICE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW-ITS PROFESSORS AND THIS Scottish University is much less known than it ought to be. I shall not pretend here to give a full account of it, but satisfy myself with detailing a few facts and reflections, which occurred to me when I visited this seminary on the last day of the Winter Session of 1824-25. It was the 30th day of April, when the Professors and Students, along with a number of the respectable inhabitants of Glasgow, assemble in the Great Hall of the University, to witness the distribution of the prizes won during the year by the Students in each class. The Professors in this University, of whom there are about twenty, distributed among the different Faculties, as they are called, of Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts, enjoy in comes varying from three or four hundred, to fourteen or fifteen hundred pounds a-year, derived partly from the rents and tithes of lands, which, before the Reformation, were attached to certain Popish ecclesiastical establishments, and partly from the fees of the Students, each of whom pays about three guineas to each Professor whose class he attends. The number of Students is about fifteen hundred, the greater part of whom are the sons of merchants, manufacturers, the upper class of shopkeepers, the clergy, lawyers, and medical practitioners belonging to the city of Glasgow and the neighbourhood. All of these, again, live with their parents or guardians, and, indeed, are not under the discipline VOL. XVI. of the College for more than four or To the classes where languages and sical schools in England, and which is now beginning to be bestowed in the more respectable grammar schools in Scotland, can dispense, and ought to dispense with the first of these years of attendance at College. The whole curriculum of a literary and philosophical education, such as it exists in this and the other Scottish Universities, may thus be completed n four years. I ought to have mentioned, that besides the Students belonging to Glasgow and its neighbourhood, who attend the College, a considerable number belong, as might be expected, to the western counties of Scotland. Some come from Ireland, although the number of these last has considerably diminished since the institution of the new College at Belfast, where nearly the same system of education is followed as at Glasgow; that flourishing Irish seminary having been supplied with almost every one of its Professors by the College of Glasgow. The intolerance of the Church of England, and of the Universities under its controul, drives from that country a number of the sons of dissenters, who wish for an academical education, to Glasgow; and who, but for the necessity of subscribing the notorious thirty-nine articles before admission, would undoubtedly prefer Oxford or Cambridge. No religious test is required at Glasgow, to ascertain whether any human being, not a downright idiot, is fit to receive a literary and philosophical education; nay, so very loose is the Senatus Academicus in this respect, that I verily believe a Mahometan, a Jew, a Pagan, and, what is worse than all, a real bona fide Roman Catholic, might pass through the whole curriculum of this University, without one attempt being made by the learned persons who preside in it, with Mr Brougham at their head, (who, by the bye, is rather a severe disciplinarian,) to disturb him in the belief and practice of the doctrines and precepts of his own holy church. Things are pretty much in the same relaxed and most lamentable condition in all our other Scottish Universities, and I really do not know when our worthy parsons will take it into their heads to purify the land of such a crying abomination. I am much afraid it will not be in my days. Indeed I am not aware whether the clerical corporation of Scotland ever wished to make all the candidates for admission into her four Universities subscribe the Confession of Faith, which here corresponds to the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England; but I am pretty certain, that if such an attempt were made now, our Professors, at least, who fill their pockets with fees derived from the believers in every system of faith under the sun, would mordicus resist such an encroachment on their vested rights. Some people, in this cold, arithmetical degree of northern latitude, are so excessively foolish as to think that their neighbouring Universities of the South might do themselves some good by acting on similar principles; and in particular, that they might thus catch a few of those stray gentlemen who are now coming over in crowds from South America, loaded with silver, and diamonds, and gold, and offering their ponderous wealth in exchange for our airy commodity of knowledge. Most unfortunately, these gentlemen of the republics of Buenos Ayres, of Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, are all rank Roman Catholics; and if one of them should dare to set a foot on the hallowed thresholds of Oxford or Cambridge, the howl of "No Popery, no son of the Babylonian harlot enters here," would instantly be rebellowed like the roaring of the winds in the cavern of olus, from the innermost dormitories, by every tenant of these antient, these sacred, these immutable retreats of most venerated and venerable, but long-forgotten knowledge; that is, the hue and ery would be raised with uplifted hands and As a Scotsman and a true Presbyterian, I cannot look on what happened in Parliament the other night, with regard to these thirty-nine articles, without feelings of some satisfaction. The very mention of them, in fact, (at least according to the report which I saw,) was found sufficient to set the whole House of Commons in a roar. My established, my Presbyterian Church, is bound to hold them to be a mass of unscriptural, unchristian, ensnaring, jesuitical absurdities. upturned eyes, by every monk in his cell, who was not disabled, by age or stupidity, from joining in the sacred chorus. On the last day of the Winter Session, as I have said, the distribution of prizes takes place in the Great Hall of the University of Glasgow*, and I shall now try to give some account of the proceedings of this day, so big with the hopes of many an aspiring youth. Some gold and silver medals were distributed, in the first place, by the Reverend and Learned Principal, for essays on various subjects, which had been composed by Students during the preceding year; and to shew the sort of studies to which this University wishes the attention of its more advanced alumni to be directed, I may just mention, that one medal was given for an essay on the Laws of Friction, a most important element in all rail-road calculations; and that another-a valuable gold medal-was awarded to a young gentleman, for the best essay "On the policy of permitting the Emigration of Artisans, and the Exportation of Machinery," -an exercise worthy of that college where Adam Smith elaborated his immortal work on the Wealth of Nations. It strikes me, although I must speak very hesitatingly, that there are some more practical ends to be served, by pointing the intellectual exertions of young persons to such studies as these, than in making them compose essays on the comparative merits of Julius Cæsar and Alexander the Great, or even Pindaric Odes in Greek, with all the due ingredients of longs and shorts, in which our most reflective brethren of the South exercise incessantly the minds of their ingenuous youth from childhood to manhood. It is very possible, however, that I may labour under some very grievous mistake when I express these opinions, anditis farther quite possible, that some most beneficial discoveries may be made for the advancement of science and art, and for the improvement and happiness of society, by a profound study for ten or a dozen years of the theory of Hexameter and l'entameter verses. Of these results, however, I am covered with blushes when I confess my utter, and, I fear, irremediable ignorance. With all this, I am no enemy to spondees, and dactyles, when they are kept in their proper places, and have no more than their due share of attention. After these general prizes were distributed, the Professors of Theology,. of Ecclesiastical History, and of Oriental languages, each in his turn addressing the Principal, gave a brief report of the conduct and exercises of their respective classes during the past Session. After which, they presented a few rewards to the most deserving of these young men who are destined to become the ministers, and, let me hope, the zealous and efficient ministers, of the religion of their country. About three years ago, Mr Jeffrey, who had been elected Rector of the University, instituted an annual prize for the best specimen of declamation among the Students of the Greek and Latin classes. This year, the premium was awarded to a young Student of the Latin class, who had, if I recollect right, the identical Christian name and surname from which Swift has drawn his most ingenious Scotch etymology for the name of the classical Andromache. The celebrated passage in one of Tully's Verrine orations, in which he makes the victim of the cruelty of Verres exclaim, "Civis Romanus sum," when he was dragged to crucifixion, was that which the young orator declaimed in English, with considerable spirit and tolerable taste, on a rostrum erected in the Hall. It was now the turn of the Professor of Law, who succeeded that accomplished scholar, and excellent man, John Millar, so justly eulogised by Mr Thomas Campbell in his observations on the proposed Metropolitan University, to confer some premiums on the most deserving in his class. This he did. The Professor of Anatomy and • Should not Edinburgh hereafter have an annual exhibition of this kind in the grand library which government is preparing for the University with so much splendid munificence? I think she should. Surgery awarded a prize for an essay on the Doctrine of Phrenology-a subject which (begging the pardon of the learned Professor) I am inclined to think rather a silly one. I have long been fully convinced, that the whole world (excepting, to be sure, women and children, who have no vote in any question which requires to be settled on the principles of common sense, and excepting, moreover, a few persons or things which stalk about in male attire, and with beards, too, which they should not have) treats this same doctrine of Phrenology with the most profound contempt. Dr Thomson, the well-known author of the best System of Chemistry in Britain, is Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow. He was the next to bestow some rewards for essays on Chemical subjects, on the Students of his well-uttended and popular class. Since the time of Simson, comparatively little attention has been paid to the study of Mathematics in this University. When I have found myself occasionally among the cold-blooded, money-making, punch-drinking merchants and manufacturers of Glasgow, and when I have thrown a glance over her now very mediocre priesthood, her lower than mediocre practitioners of medicine, and her host of rapacious attornies, most of them persons whom Hazlitt would denominate 66 men of one idea," I have asked myself, as was done of old, "Can any good thing come out of Glasgow?" In conjunction with my notice of the Natural Philosophy class in the University, I shall mention one or two rather good things which have come out of it, with the aid of a Professor who formerly filled the chair of this class. The Professor I refer to was Mr Anderson, who, in the year 1763, sent the small working model of a steam-engine, on Newcomen's plan, that is, the old common atmospheric engine, which be longed to the College, to be repaired at the shop of an ingenious kind of a man named James Watt, who had come from Greenock to make mathematical instruments in Glasgow. At this time he had his shop in the Saltmarket, next door, for ought I know, to that of the honest Bailie Nicol Jarvie, of that identical Saltmarket. Now, this Mr Watt had what people called a sort of ardent turn of mind. Some, in those days, for it is now even more than sixty years since, would have perhaps called him romantic, if he had told them one tenth of all that he anticipated in his daydreams, as to the results of those improvements he contemplated on the clumsy engine which he had got from the Professor to repair. However, he resolved, if possible, to turn these dreams into realities, and e'en to run the hazard of being laughed at as a visionary. With the assistance of Professor Anderson of Glasgow, who was Watt's warmest friend, and of Dr Black of Edinburgh, who had about this time discovered the theory of latent heat, this mathematical-instrument-maker proceeded towards the completion of those improvements on the steam-engine, which have raised up a host of hard-working, obedient, indefatigable giants, for the defence and glory of England -giants, the produce of whose willing labour has sent forth the navies and the armies of England, conquering and to conquer, and the effects of whose labour are daily producing more beneficial results to the great family of mankind, than all the great inventions of all former ages. This new engine is one of the good things which may well be said to have come out of Glasgow, or rather its University. We have lately seen James Watt descend to his tomb, covered with the deserved eulogies of the ablest statesmen, and wisest philoso phers, that have ever lived in any age. I shall mention another good thing which has come out of Glasgow. On the 7th of May 1795, the same Professor Anderson, the friend of James Watt, bequeathed his Philosophical apparatus, his museum, library, and private fortune, to trustees, for the purpose of instituting a popular course of lectures in Glasgow, for the instruction of both sexes in Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, and Mathematics. Dr Birkbeck, now of London, was appointed to this chair in 1799, and he added to the required course another, which has been a model to all the mechanics' institutes lately established. He was the first man in Britain to conceive the plan of giving lectures on |