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In addition to the incidents extending into the first months of this year, already referred to, there remains an important communication from Mill in answer to letters of mine. On the 18th February, he wrote a long letter, partly in reply to my inquiries as to the best available sources of political philosophy. He went over the writings of his father, Bentham, De Tocqueville, and Coleridge, all of whom still left much to be desired. He then descanted upon the management of the Edinburgh Review, to which he hoped that I might sooner or later gain admission. The survey was very curious, and, I suppose,

accurate.

A letter from Robertson in March was full of preparatory instruction as to conduct, etc., on my arrival in London, which was soon to take place.

I may here introduce, once for all, a precise account of my mode of conducting Dr. Glennie's class for the three successive winters, the first of which had now closed.

Being his assistant, or, more properly, substitute, I was expected to go to work strictly upon his own MS. From attending the class as a student two years before, I knew very well what his lectures consisted in. There was, first, an abstract of the whole course, which was dictated and taken down verbatim in the morning hour, and had been hitherto the sole occupation of that hour. The class formerly met fifteen hours a week; six being occupied with dictating, and the other nine with lecturing

and examinations. A change was made this year by the Senatus, in striking off the afternoon hour from all the principal classes, and leaving two hours a day for every day in the week. The loss of three hours was partly made up, in the Moral Philosophy Class, by giving a full hour of sixty minutes, in room of the former usage of beginning each meeting ten minutes past the hour. One consequence was, that not more than three-quarters of an hour could be spared for the time-honoured process of dictation or "diting".

There remained then the lecturing, which consisted of read lectures, repeated from year to year in identical form. While Dr. Glennie himself was able for the work, he had a third MS. compilation; being a set of written questions which were the material of his vivá voce examinations. Like many abler men-for example, Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Thomas Chalmers,-he had no power of ready utterance, and could not make the simplest communication to his class without a MS. I was put in possession of his original copy of the notes, although, of course, I might have had a copy of my own, and also his lectures in successive instalments. The volume of questions I did not receive. It was the understanding that I should abide strictly by his MSS. both in dictating and in lecturing. It was also my own wish to do so. I had not the smallest desire to make the position a medium of imparting views of my own, or even of putting Dr. Glennie's ideas into my own language. I was, however, very well aware of the difficulties of the task. I knew, both from my own experience as a student and from the traditions of the class, that Dr. Glennie was himself, even in his best days, totally incapable of keeping up the interest of the students. In his more vigorous years, he was able to maintain order and discipline in the numerically small classes of the fourth year. Latterly, with failing strength, his discipline broke down; and the

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class, although not obstreperous or riotous, was generally inattentive, with the usual consequences of alternative employments such as students can readily devise. How to conduct a class in such circumstances was, to me, a very serious thought, as will appear when I describe the nature of the lectures themselves. For one thing, the lectures and the notes-as already said-did not run in parallel lines. There was a certain amount of coincidence, rendering the lectures so far the expansion and illustration of the notes, but with considerable deviations and inversions of the order, which made it impracticable to adapt the one to the other. This circumstance alone was fatal to teaching success, and was indeed the greatest stumbling-block in my way. I went on with the dictating readily enough. It was an easy occupation, taking up the great part of the morning hour. Like Glennie himself, I made an attempt to read the lectures verbatim, but foundered upon the same rock as he had done,—namely, inability to hold the attention of the class. Even those that were willing to be taught, failed to unite the two streams into a coherent whole, and I clearly foresaw a repetition of the previous experience of the class. After a few days of this hopeless and unprofitable undertaking, as an alternative I ceased to read the lectures, and gave an extempore expansion and illustration of the notes themselves in their own order. By such means, I was able to keep up attention and maintain discipline in a tolerable fashion. In the course of the three years, I made some gradual innovations in the notes themselves, still of a very limited amount. I have no record of what these were; but, for one thing, I believe I inserted, under the "Intellectual Powers," something of the laws of association as conceived by myself at the time. Aware that I was playing a double part, I observed every precaution to avoid making this apparent to Dr. Glennie. His chief opportunities of checking my fidelity to the

engagement were these two. In the first place, the only essay work he was in the habit of giving himself was the single annual prescription of the subject, "Acquired Perception". I gave the same prescription, at the same place, and no other. He always asked to read the essays. Although I, of course, kept very close to his own views and language, in expounding the topic, the students could not be prevented from wandering into other parts of the course, where my hand may have been more apparent. The other occasion when I might possibly have been censured was the examination at the close of the session. Here, too, he had always kept within a narrow compass of questions, and I gave a selection from those questions. After reading the answers myself and deciding their value, I left them with him for his perusal. I have no doubt that, from the first, he suspected me of departures from his line of teaching; but, so long as the class was conducted in a quiet and orderly fashion, he was prudent enough not to make his suspicions a ground of quarrel. At the close of the first session, he was quite cordial in wishing me to act in the session following; the invitation being repeated for a third time.

Of Dr. Glennie's lectures I am able to speak, from having had them all through my hands, however little able I was to adapt them, in teaching the class. I may mention that he became Beattie's assistant in 1793, and, of course, obtained Beattie's lectures to work upon. How he managed in this capacity, I have no means of knowing. Doubtless, he read the lectures as they were. I presume, however, that he had no such difficulty to encounter as I have described in my case; while Beattie's composition was probably more attractive than what of his own he put into my hands. This much I could gather from my examination of the course as I passed it in review. On his succeeding to the chair in 1796, when he would be free from any obligation to keep to Beattie's lines, he

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seemed to have begun the composition of an independent course of lectures. As he had a clerical duty along with his professorship, and was not a rapid worker, some considerable time may have elapsed before his achieving the end in view. In strict fact, he had not at the last replaced Beattie's entire course. On the subject of language, treated according to the philological method of the last century, there were materials for probably three or four weeks' lectures in Beattie's handwriting. Possibly, he did not think he could improve upon Beattie, and so retained this portion without change. The remainder of the course was in his own handwriting, and was tolerably brown with age; being, no doubt, composed in the early years of his professorship. There was, it appears, an attempt on his part to produce a second version of the course at a comparatively recent date. The first batch of MS. that came into my hands belonged to this revised version. It soon stopped short, however, and certainly would not occupy a fortnight of the session. There was one interesting excursus in the case of the deaf and dumb boy Mitchell, in which Dugald Stewart took especial interest, and induced Glennie to contribute by personal investigation of Mitchell on the spot. His results were imparted in a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which paper he read in extenso to the class, and expected the assistant to do the same.

As to the sources and the quality of Glennie's lectures, a few indications are sufficient. His basis was mainly the Scotch School, as represented by Reid, Beattie, and Campbell; although he did not limit his studies to these. He was content, for the most part, to expound their views generally, but not always in his own language; by which I mean, that he made very large drafts upon his predecessors in the form of verbatim extracts. He was, however, perfectly lucid in his own composition, his style being fashioned by help of our English literary classics.