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III. To cast as well as reflect lights upon my surroundings, and thereby to impart particulars regarding personages that have an interest in the public eye. The worth of that depends upon the extent and variety of the parties encountered, and the fulness and exactness of the delineation.

IV. To present a consecutive view of my published writings and pass a judgment upon each, so that the latest positions may be indicated. This has been accomplished with such a degree of minuteness as to be at once an abstract and a criticism.

V. To embody the details in a careful chronology, so as to give a natural order to the delineation of events. This is intended to facilitate reference and also to express causal sequence where importance attaches to it.

A. BAIN.

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

PROFESSOR BAIN concluded his Autobiography by an account of the events of the year 1890, and it falls to me, as his literary executor, to add a short statement relating to the last thirteen years of his life. The autobiographical portion (pp. 1399) has been in type for several years, and the author left instructions regarding two acknowledgments which he desired to be made in this note. He wished, in the first place, to express his indebtedness to a series of letters addressed by himself, in his earlier years, to the late Mr. George Walker, Advocate in Aberdeen. These letters had been preserved by Mr. Walker, and were placed, unconditionally, by Miss Beatrice Walker, at the disposal of their original writer, who, without their aid, would have found it impossible to write the history of several years of his life. In the second place, he records his obligations to Mr. John Thomson, of the Aberdeen University Press, who was good enough to retain the Autobiography in type for so long a period.

My own task has been a comparatively simple one. Dr. Bain's public appearances, in his later

years, were largely connected with the two great academic problems which pressed for solution in the nineties-the reconstruction of the curricula in Arts, Science and Medicine by the Scottish Universities Commission, and the extension of Marischal College Buildings. In the numerous discussions on these topics, between 1890 and 1896, Professor Bain took a prominent part. Contemporary newspaper reports and the volume of Proceedings of the General Council have supplied the necessary information, together with my personal recollections of his views. My statement of his attitude has been severely condensed, in accordance with an instruction which appears among a few pencil notes for the period, to the effect that the time has not yet come for constructing such materials into history or biography. I have also given some account of the literary labours which he was able to accomplish until the very end of his life, and, for this purpose, I have used the few notes to which I have already referred. I wish personally to offer my thanks to Mrs. Bain for many suggestions, and to Mr. Alexander Mackie, Aberdeen, and Mr. Robert S. Rait, Fellow of New College, Oxford, for personal assistance. To Mr. P. J. Anderson, Librarian to the University, I am indebted for the Bibliography which appears in an Appendix.

WILLIAM L. DAVIDSON.

THE UNIVERSITY,
ABERDEEN, April, 1904.

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