of former students for many years back.

The remaining nine hours, during which the professor officiated, were for the larger part occupied with lecturing from a manuscript, which, in fact, constituted his course of lectures, properly so called. Of these nine hours, however, two were usually devoted to rivâ voce examination; consisting of questions read out of a MS. book, to which he literally adhered, being incapable of shaping questions in any other way. Another hour, once

a week, was occupied with Latin readings in the Epistles of Horace, and in Cicero's De Officiis. This, too, was a survival of the system of distributing classical tuition over the higher years. It happened to be congenial to Dr. Glennie, who was a good Latin scholar.

Such was the ordinary routine under which the session commenced. It so happened, however, that, at an afternoon meeting, half-way on in the session, Glennie was suddenly stopped in his lecture by a fainting fit. The class was dismissed, and he was not allowed to resume any part of the teaching work, the assistant having to do the whole. He (the assistant) continued as nearly as possible on the same lines, having, of course, the MS. lectures to read from, and making some attempt also at class examinations, while dropping the Latin reading.

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Of the composition of the course, I will speak afterwards, in connexion with my own employment as Dr. Glennie's assistant, two years later. I will only say at present that, while there was much of the best material to be found in the Scotch School, of which Reid was the acknowledged chief, it was a kind of material not suited to inspire students of the usual age of the fourth year's class. What made matters still worse was the want of concurrence in the arrangement of the dictated notes with the read lectures. There was a certain remote parallelism in the run of the two lines; but it was not close enough to be followed by the class. Accordingly, the habit of the students was to take down the notes, and pay little or no attention to the lectures; the time being occupied in any sort of trifling that could be hit upon. What aggravated the situation was that the examination questions kept neither to the one line nor to the other.

I have so far anticipated my attendance on the Moral Philosophy course, and must go back for a little to the important incidents at or near its commencement. The Mathematical Bursary of £30 a year for two years was competed for in the first week of the session, occupying two days; the time in each day being absurdly long

for the work given out. On the first day, the competitors were allowed to remain in the College Hall from ten o'clock in the morning till midnight, and had three problems prescribed, the most difficult that could be selected within the limits of common Algebra and Geometry, but going no higher. The second day, three other questions were prescribed; the answers being handed in at ten o'clock at night (Saturday). There was one other competitor besides myself. Of the three questions on the first day, one was the most puzzling of all the modes of constructing a triangle from given data. I ought to have been prepared with this from Simpson's Geometry, which I had partly studied in preparing for the competition. In point of fact, however, I failed to solve it, but was quite successful with the two other problems given out. The rival candidate succeeded with all the three, and, at the end of the day, I naturally felt very despondent. On the second day, the questions were equally difficult, and my rival failed considerably; but I was successful in them all. The bursary, accordingly, fell to me, and helped to give me a maintenance for the next two years, independent of private teaching or other drudgery.

Another preliminary to the work of the session was the composition of an introductory lecture

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to the Mechanics' Institution course of Natural Philosophy, which had to be delivered the evening before the bursary competition. I may further add that, as Secretary to the Mechanics' Institution, I had to prepare, at the same time, the Report to the annual public meeting of the members of the Institution. This, too, was a work involving labour.

To resume the proceedings of the session. The amount of attention I gave to the Moral Philosophy lectures was simply to watch for anything that struck me, on the chance of remembering the good things, but without taking notes. I regarded these lectures as containing much sobriety and good sense on the various questions, but very little that could add to my stock of knowledge at the time. As I could easily make use of a fellow-student's copy of the morning dictation notes, I saved myself the trouble of taking them down, and occupied the hour in another way. I had begun the practice of analyzing in writing the succession of my own thoughts, with the view to generalize the laws of Association. I extended the practice to book compositions; and, having long been a student of Robert Hall's works, I took some composition of his to the class, and wrote down an analysis

of the connexion between each distinguishable thought or expression and the succeeding. This went on for a good many mornings, but I find that I got into a state of over-excitement, and had not only to give it up, but to run away to the country for three days, in order to quiet the nervous ebullition.1 I still persisted in the same kind of analytic writing, and turned it

A letter received from George Walker on one of the days when I was in the country, furnished a realistic picture of the ongoings of the class, which was as follows:

"We have not had the pleasure of beholding the Venerable Goose's face since we saw yours. He has, of course, been acting by deputy in the several departments of lecturer, examinator, and dictator. Upon the whole, the class has been behaving pretty well-myself not excepted. The cards and drafts, like infant schools, preserve us at least from mischief; though Dewar [Duirs] has given some hints as to behaviour. We had marched in to-day, each with a stick in his hand; and happening to go in first, to an unforbidden seat too (we have been restricted to two), his eyes were directed to mine, in remarking our preparations, as he termed it, for noise. The effect was, that each put his stick on a back bench; and, on the whole, they made a comical appearance. Dewar could not keep from laughing. He makes a much better examinator than the old gentleman-apparently preparing for the job; he proceeded at first with great timidity, and seemed sensible, as he sat cross-legged in the easy chair, of the seriocomicality of the affair. He was forced to smile several times. He has ventured to collect the fines, which he does in a manner much to the satisfaction of Sham [Alexander Cruickshank] and the other fun-loving gentlemen of the class. We second his demands for payment in grand style. In all probability, he will enjoy his dignity until your return. It would be a special act of Providence, if Goose never came back. We were ordered the other morning to bring other papers,' pen and ink to the class-for the purpose of getting notes on Logic'. We have had two lectures on it. The first one, from first to last, was Principal Campbell's verbatim et literatim-about the end of logic, the minor importance of rhetoric,' the difference between the principles of eloquence, applicable to all languages, and those of grammar, applicable to each individual language only. The second lecture described the nature of Aristotle's works on this subject, and also those of Longinus, Cicero, Quintilian, etc.”