into crimson by the mid-day sun.. Railway work, quarrying, and other operative undertakings, add their attractions, while to those who cultivate science, the rocks, flowers, shells, trees, birds, and fishes, are all so many different shelves in the great museum of nature, which invite the wanderer to study and improvement. Golf, cricket, and archery, have healthy charms for the young and robust; and, indeed, except bird-nesting and bird-shooting, we know none of the usual occupations of the morning which are objectionable. All these, however, are for recreation; and those who have business should mind it in the morning-although we cannot help saying that there must be something wrong where a man works more than twelve hours a day, as, with proper regard to method and to the discharge of relative duty, he should be perfectly able, on an average, to get through all necessary business within that period.

But, leaving pleasure and duty, let us come to the point, and inquire how is early rising to be accomplished? Not without courage and self-denial; and, therefore, if you have not those qualities, do not attempt it. It will not do to rise for one morning, and, on finding passages filled with inverted chairs, and rooms hazy with dust, give up early rising as a disagreeable thing.

1. Fix an early hour for breakfast, say eight to a minute, and abide by that hour scrupulously. Betty will have your coffee prepared if you so desire it; but if you are ready one morning at eight, another a quarter past it, a third half past it, and then on to your old hurry at nine, she will soon perceive that your resolutions are a delusion, and she will fall off when she sees that there is no need for extra celerity.

2. Fix on a given hour for rising, and have yourself awakened at it; and, immediately on being roused, start without delay, hesitation, or parley. Once begin to ruminate, and think of five or even one minute more, and you are done. A good old English bishop used to rise whenever he wakened, whether at midnight or otherwise, and this habit soon begot a regularity of repose that enabled him to rise at the exact time he wanted.

3. Go to bed as nearly as possible at the same hour, with a light supper and a good conscience, and nature, which keeps time better than any clock, electric, hydraulic, or pendulous, will waken you at the desired time. Should you be overtaken with late hours occasionally, rise at your usual time notwithstanding, and make up for lost sleep by going to bed earlier on the succeeding evening. This is better than getting feverish repose in the morning.

4. Rise with some object in view. This is most important, because if you rise for mere rising's sake, the risk is that you will fail from your good resolutions. Work in a garden, walk with friends, study some out-door science, see certain labourers begin work, or a steamer or ferry-boat sail, visit a mineral well; do anything, in short, that is definite. If the weather be bad, contrive in-door occupation, such as reading or writing; and do not omit rising because you cannot go out.

5. If you find resolution beginning to fail, institute an Aurora Club, each member depositing a large sum on entry, a portion of which to be divided daily among such of the members as attend a given place at a given hour in the morning.

If none of these things will do, we regard your case as hopeless; and you must therefore quietly slumber away some years of your time, continue irregular, and sever yourself from much that is useful, happy, and pleasing in this lower world.

LIFE OF ROBERT HERON.

ROBERT HERON was born at New Galloway, a royal borough in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, on the 6th day of November 1764.

He began his letters under his mother, and did not attend the parish school till he had attained his ninth year. He was soon distinguished as a boy of great attention and insatiable curiosity, and his parents, perceiving the great fondness which he showed for letters, resolved to give him the advantage of a liberal education. But Mr Heron did not continue long a burden on his parents. At an early age he endeavoured, by his own exertions as a teacher, to support and educate himself. Partly on the savings of his own scanty income, and partly by the assistance of his parents, he removed to the University of Edinburgh in the end of the year 1780, and his views being directed to the church, he followed the course of study which that profession requires. During his attendance at college he supported himself mostly by occasional contributions to newspapers and periodical by private teaching, but having gained some distinction works, he became known to booksellers, and was afterwards more or less employed by them in translating, chiefly from the French, or in original composition. His varied literary labours at this period, and during his residence in Edinburgh, will be found detailed by himself in a subsequent part of this narrative.

No degree of learning, however great, will atone for Mr Heron for his literary labours he squandered away the want of virtue and prudence. The sums received by thoughtlessly, affecting to live in a rank which it would have required a large and permanent income to support. Owing to his extravagance his pecuniary affairs fell into a state of embarrassment, and his creditors getting im patient, he was, by them, thrown into prison.

How long he might have continued in confinement, had not his friends interfered, it would be impossible to conjecture. On their suggestion he undertook to write a History of Scotland, for which the Morrisons of Perth were to allow him at the rate of three guineas a-sheet: that he should pay them at the rate of fifteen shillings His creditors now agreed to liberate him, on condition a-pound, and appropriate, for that purpose, two-thirds of the copy-right of his intended publication. It is a melancholy fact, that nearly the first volume of the History of Scotland was composed in jail. In 1793 appeared the first volume of this work, consisting of six, of which a volume was published every year successively, till the whole was concluded.

But unsuccessful as most of his productions were, he was yet pleased to think himself capable of efforts of a higher kind, and accordingly made an attempt at dramatic composition. Never did man make a more erroneous estimate of his powers. His play (entitled St Kilda in Edinburgh, or news from Camperdown), which he confesses indeed was written hastily, is devoid of every thing like merit or interest, and, besides, it violates that scrupulous regard to decency of sentiment and of incident, for the breach of which no splendour of genius will atone. He had influence, however, to get it introduced on the Edinburgh stage as an afterpiece, but it was irretrievably condemned ere it reached the second act. The author himself was present, and so thoroughly overhe retired to his lodgings, and kept his bed for several whelmed was he with chagrin and disappointment, that successive days. Bad, however, as his play undoubtedly was, he regarded the decision of the theatre as not only undeserved, but as effected by the malicious combination of his enemies. He therefore resolved, like Smollet on a similar occasion, to appeal from this verdict to the public, by printing his play, "to shame the rogues." It was, however, neither sold nor talked of, and is now forgotten. Prefixed to it was a long, vapouring preface, the tone and spirit of which may, to a certain degree, which he introduces it. The first is from the pages of be appreciated by the nature of the quotations with Tristram Shandy:

it is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself,' and I verily think it is so. And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out, I think it is fully as abominable that a man should lose the honour of it. This is exactly my situation!" The other is from Dean Swift:

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign--that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

But amid all his folly and distress he was not insensible to the calls of filial and fraternal affection. Though his parents remonstrated freely with him respecting his thoughtlessness and extravagance, the tenor of his correspondence with them is of the most respectful and candid description. The following extracts from his letters, written at different periods, confirm this:

"I hope, by living more piously and carefully, by managing my income frugally, and appropriating a part of it to the service of you and my sisters, and by living with you in future at least a third part of the year, to reconcile your affections more entirely to me, and to give you more comfort than I have yet done."

"O forget and forgive my follies; look on me as a son who will anxiously strive to comfort and please yon, and, after all your misfortunes, to render the evening of your days as happy as possible."

That he afforded his parents much pecuniary assistance is not very probable, but he seems to have exerted himself in promoting for them the education of their family. "We will endeavour," says he, alluding to this subject in one of his letters, "to settle our dear Grace comfortably in life, and to educate our dear little Betty and Mary aright." His eldest brother John he brought to Edinburgh, to prosecute his studies at the University, as, I believe, he intended him for the church. He seems to have been a young man of promising talents, but he died in 1790, before he had attained the age of manhood.

His sister Mary also, whose name and worth he has commemorated in the preface to his History of Scotland, he afterwards removed to Edinburgh, to complete her education. The happiness she experienced under her brother's roof was not of the most enviable kind, but her early death, which took place in his lodg. ings in 1798, overwhelmed him with poignant sorrow. Every instance of his unkindness to her now rushed on his mind, and he was scarce able to bear the load of existence. To add to his distress, his literary labours not having been of late so lucrative as formerly, he was reduced to the very verge of want and starvation, and his mind was daily haunted with the horrors of a jail. Avoiding as much as possible every communication with his former associates, he might now be seen skulking about the suburbs of the town, pale and emaciated, and exhibiting all the external symptoms of wretchedness and despair.

But at length he returned with renewed vigour to the active duties of life, and not finding his views succeed in Scotland he was encouraged to go to London, whither he went in the beginning of 1799. There he was at first well employed. It appears from his letters to his father, that for a few years after he removed to London his application to study was great; that his mind was in a state of comparative tranquillity; and that his prospects were cheering:

66

My whole income, earned by full sixteen hours aday of the closest application to reading, writing, observation, and study, is but very little more than three hundred pounds a-year, but this is sufficient for my wants, and is earned in a manner which I know to be the most useful and honourable, that is, by teaching beneficial truths, and discountenancing vice and folly more effectually and more extensively than I could in any other way. This I am here always sure to earn, while I can give the necessary application, and if I were able to execute more literary labour I might readily obtain more money."

But though for some time after his arrival in London he was well employed, and realized a competent income, yet the influence of his former habits at length prevailed:

he wrote only when driven to it by pecuniary exigencies, and soon found, that by his folly his friends had forsaken him, and that he was reduced to the lowest extremity of indigence and disgrace. The last years of his life were miserable beyond description. His unhappy situation required uncommon exertions to procure even the scantiest subsistence, or to answer, in the smallest degree, the urgent demands of his creditors. But no exertions could now ward off the calamities which threatened him. He was thrown into Newgate for debt, where he was confined for some months, and it was at this period that he addressed the following interesting letter to the "Literary Fund:"—

66

Ever since I was eleven years of age I have mingled with my studies the labour of teaching, or of writing, to support and educate myself.

"During about twenty years, while I was in constant or occasional attendance at the University of Edinburgh, I taught and assisted young persons, at all periods, in the course of education, from the alphabet to the highest branches of science and literature.

"I read Lectures on the Law of Nature, the Law of Nations, the Jewish, the Grecian, the Roman, and the Canon Law, and then on the Feudal Law, and on the several forms of Municipal Jurisprudence established in modern Europe. I printed a syllabus of these lectures, which was approved. They were intended as introductory to the professional study of law, and to assist gentlemen who did not study it professionally, in the understanding of history.

"I translated Fourcroy's Chemistry twice, from both the second and third editions of the original; Fourcroy's Philosophy of Chemistry; Savary's Travel's in Greece; Dumourier's Letters; Gesner's Idylls in part; an abstract of Zimmerman on Solitude; and a great diversity of smaller pieces.

"I wrote a journey through the Western Parts of Scotland, which has past through two editions; a History of Scotland, in six volumes, 8vo.; a Topographical Account of Scotland, which has been several times reprinted; a number of communications in the Edinburgh Magazine; many Prefaces and Critiques; a Memoir of the Life of Burns the poet, which suggested and promoted the subscription for his family-has been many times reprinted, and formed the basis of Dr Currie's life of him, as I learned by a letter from the Doctor to one of his friends; a variety of jeux d'esprit, in verse and prose; and many abridgments of large works.

"In the beginning of 1799 I was encouraged to come to London. Here I have written a great multiplicity of articles in almost every branch of science and literature, my education in Edinburgh having comprehended them all. The London Review, the Agricultural Magazine, the Anti-Jacobin Review, the Monthly Magazine, the Universal Magazine, the Public Characters, the Annual Necrology, with several other periodical works, contain many of my communications. In such of those publica. tions as have been reviewed I can show that my anonymous pieces have been distinguished with very high praise. I have written also a short system of Chemistry, in one volume 8vo.; and I published, a few weeks since, a small work called 'Comforts of Life,' of which the first edition was sold in one week, and the second edition is now in rapid sale.

"In the newspapers-the Oracle, the Porcupine when it existed, the General Evening Post, the Morning Post, the British Press, the Courier, &c., I have published many reports of debates in Parliament, and, I believe, a greater variety of light fugitive pieces, than I know to have been written by any other person.

"I have written also a variety of compositions in the Latin and French languages, in favour of which I have been honoured with the testimonies of liberal approbation.

"I have invariably written to serve the cause of religion, morality, pious christian education, and good order, in the most direct manner. I have considered what I have written as mere trifles, and have incessantly studied to qualify myself for something better. I can prove that I have, for many years, read and written, one

day with the other, from twelve to sixteen hours a-day. As a human being, I have not been free from follies and errors. But the tenor of my life has been temperate, laborious, humble, quiet, and, to the utmost of my power, beneficent. I can prove the general tenor of my writings to have been candid, and ever adapted to exhibit the most favourable views of the abilities, dispositions, and

exertions of others.

"For these last ten months I have been brought to the very extremity of bodily and pecuniary distress. "I shudder at the thoughts of perishing in a jail. "92, CHANCERY LANE,

Feb. 2, 1807. "(In confinement.)" This letter procured him no relief. Having been seized with serious indisposition, he was removed to an hospital, where, in the course of a week, without a friend to attend or console him, he breathed his last, on 13th April 1807. His application to study was peculiar and irregular. While at ease in his pecuniary circumstances he laid aside his pen and books, and devoted his time to amusement and recreation. He delighted in being regarded as an independent and opulent gentleman. In the heyday of prosperity he kept a pair of horses, with a lacquey dressed in livery. But his golden dreams of wealth and rank, though often renewed, were never of long continuance. His funds soon became exhausted, and he would,

under these circumstances, resume his studies with unremitting ardour, confining himself for weeks to his room, habited only in his shirt and morning gown, with a green veil over his eyes, which were weakened and inflamed by these fits of intense application. In the evening he generally dressed, and relieved his mind by visiting his friends. He composed with the greatest rapidity, and seldom wrote above one copy of any of his works; all his corrections were afterwards made on the proof-sheets.

His various publications afford not a fair specimen of his abilities, either natural or acquired; they were almost all written for bread, and the subjects of them chosen by

booksellers.

But whatever praise be due to his writings, not much is due to his moral character. He did not make use of his knowledge in the direction of his own conduct. He possessed little command over his time or his actions, for he was the easy victim of almost every passion and every temptation, and on account of his unsteadiness and indecision his employers could never depend on his promise or his application. His temper was in a great degree unequal and uncertain; his friendship was easily gained and easily lost. The vanity and envy which he displayed on every occasion, and in every company, disgusted his companions, and not unfrequently alienated the affections of his best friends and patrons.

But let us not employ harsh or unkind terms. Human nature, even when exhibited in its happiest aspect, cannot bear a very strict examination. With all his follies, Heron was not unadorned with many virtues, and had ever impressed on his mind a strong sense of the dignity and necessity of religion. In a diary of his life, kept at various periods, and which seems to contain a full and candid account of his feelings and actions, it is recorded, that in whatever manner he had spent the day, he never retired to rest at night without bowing his knee in prayer before the throne of the Eternal; and this brief account

of his character may be summed up in the words applied by Dr Johnson to his friend Savage:-"The reigning error of his life was, that he mistook the love for the practice of virtue, and was not so much the good man as the friend of goodness."

THE LAST LINES OF POETS.
RALEIGH-COWPER-BYRON-L. E. L.-AND
MICHAEL BRUCE.

"SIR WALTER hath been as a star at which the world have gazed," were the words of Yelverton, the attorney-general, on the solemn mockery of a trial, at which the gallant Raleigh was condemned to be executed; but had they known the fresh

lustre which his noble bearing in his last moments was to throw over his varied career, even his bitterest enemies would have paused in their vindictive persecution. Calm and serene, he rose superior to all their malice; while his fearlessness of death was such, that the Dean of Westminster, mistaking its cause, reprehended his levity; but Raleigh" gave God thanks that he had never feared death, for it was but an opinion and an imagination; and as for the manner of death, he had rather die so than of a burning fever; and that some might have made shows outwardly, but he felt the joy within. Not," he added, "but that I am a great sinner, for I have been a soldier, a seaman, and a courtier.". Nor is his fortitude so surprising when we consider his eventful life. He had been familiar with death-he had faced it on the briny wave amid the ragings of the mighty deep, and in the tented field amid the flashings of the red artillery, and it had been his companion in the dark and gloomy dungeon; but it had ever found him firm and unshaken, and with a hope it could not destroy,-a hope that shone but the brighter, the darker the night by which he was surrounded, a hope that whispered of and pointed to a future.

"Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staff of truth to walk upon,
My scrip of joy-immortal diet;
My bottle of salvation;

My gown of glory, Hope's true gage,
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage-
Whilst my soul, like a quiet Palmer,

Travelleth towards the land of heaven."

The night before execution, after having taken a most tender and affectionate farewell of his wife, Raleigh next bade adieu to poetry, "wherein he had been a scribbler even from his youth." The verses, which breathe a spirit of the most unshaken fortitude, end thus,—

"Even such is Time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!”

But these were not to be his last lines, although probably intended as such. We may suppose that, during their composition, his mind, busied with its subject, took no note of lesser matter; but, on their completion, the neglected candle, " dimly burning," caught his eye, when, with all his usual decision and spirit, he penned the following appropriate couplet :

"Cowards fear to die; but courage stout, Rather than live in snuff, will be put out." And Raleigh was "put out," but only to live again. The snuff cleared away, the candle burns ever the brighter; and Raleigh's death purged from his fame the dross which ever clings to mortal man, while his death-scene threw around it an additional -an immortal lustre.

How different, in every respect, from the bold adventurous hero, gay poet, and gallant courtier, was the gentle, sensitive, and melancholy bard of Olney! And what a contrast is afforded by their closing scenes! Raleigh-firm, collected, and courteous as ever, the centre of a dense crowd of Lords and Commons, smilingly observing, as he passed his finger along the edge of the fatal axe, "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases"-met

death like a soldier and a Christian. Cowper-in peace and retirement, his pillow smoothed by a few tried and tender friends-shrunk from the last dread change with a morbid religious terror that seemed to shut out every hope of salvation. Yet, how pure had been his life how moderate his desires-how innocent his recreations-and still how trying his doubts and fears! In some "Lines on receiving his Mother's Picture"-after recalling his boyish days, and hesitating whether, so dear their recollection, he would not, if he could, restore them-he says, picturing her bliss and his trials,

"Thou, with sails so swift! hast reached the shore Where tempests never beat, nor billows roar;' And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide Of life, long since, has anchored at thy side. But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, Always from port withheld, always distressedMe howling winds drive devious, tempest tossed, Sails ript, seams opening wide, and compass lost; And day by day some current's thwarting force Sets me more distant from a prosperous course." On leaving his beloved retreat at Weston-which he seems to have done with a presentiment that he would never see it again, as he, immediately before his departure, wrote with pencil the following dis

tich on the window shutter of his bed-room :

"Farewell, dear scenes, for ever closed to me;

Oh! for what sorrows must I now exchange ye!"— Cowper repaired, for the benefit of the sea-air, to the coast, where he wrote his last poem, "The Castaway," in which the same feelings of despondency are but too visible. After picturing the fate of one

"Wash'd headlong from on board,"

with his strugglings for a long hour-to him a lifetime and his cries for help, where no help could come, till

"At length, his transient respite past,
His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in every blast,
Could catch the sound no more;

For then, by toil subdued, he drank
The stifling wave, and then he sank;"

he thus finishes, applying the case of the
away to his own morbid state,-

"No voice divine the storm allay'd,

No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
We perish'd, each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,

And whelm'd in deeper gulphs than he." Thoughts too sacred to be lightly treated, too important to be summarily dismissed, must occur to us all as we read the last lines, so dark and hopeless, of a poet so gentle and pure,

"Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close,
And let us all to meditation,"

and then he delighted and revelled in biting scorn, and wild profanity, and sensuality the grossest. But if his untamed and withering pride did pour forth all its gall and wormwood, think how bitter were the springs from which they flowed! Neglected in youth, with fiery passions and keen susceptibility, he ran his race of folly and of sin through all the length and the breadth of both London and Continental dissipation, and found with the Preacher, that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." Yet his indomitable mind was "scotched, not killed," and a brighter era seemed opening. Greece and its wrongs supplied a healthy stimulus to his jaded and sickened spirit; he started at the call of sacred liberty as the war-horse at the sound of the trumpet; and a glorious field wherein to bury past error lay before him. In January 1824 he arrived at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, to aid with person and purse the struggle for independence; but discord, rapine, and cruelty met him at every hand. Still he was not to be discouraged; and he fought and laboured on with a perseverance and determination too great for his weakened constitution. The noxious fens of Missolonghi, too, impregnated every breeze with death, and acted with double force on the frame of one so long accustomed to the clear skies and balmy zephyrs of Italy. The last lines he ever wrote would make it appear as if the old connexion between prophet and poet were not yet quite dissevered :

"Seek out, less often sought than found,
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest."

Surrounded by turbulent chiefs and an unbridled soldiery-who looked up to him as a masterspirit, and whose only bond of union he was far from the halls of his fathers, and the scenes of his boyhood-self-exiled from his native land-died on the 19th day of April 1824, Charles Gordon Byron, in the thirty-seventh year of his age.

"Who lives that's not

SOME twenty years after the author of "The diverting History of John Gilpin" had

66 Slept the sleep that knows no waking," another, but very different, poet, then in the zenith of his fame," the observed of all observers," gave to the world, in verse as bounding, fiery, and impetuous as the subject it treated of, the story of another horse and rider-Mazeppa and his "Tartar of the Ukraine breed." Had Byron never written any thing else, we would have thought less of him as a poet, but possibly more of him as a man; the "dark spirit" was never, however, long absent from him,

The

"Yet strong the omen in my heart
That says-we meet again."

An omen, alas! how bitterly falsified. Night after night, on her voyage to Africa, had she watched the North Star gradually sinking beneath the horizon, till at last it entirely disappeared.

"Thou lovely polar star, mine eyes

Still turned the first on thee,

Till I have felt a sad surprise,
That none looked up with me.

But thou hast sunk upon the wave,
Thy radiant place unknown;
I seem to stand beside a grave,
And stand by it alone."

"Farewell, ye blooming fields! ye cheerful plains!
Enough for me the churchyard's lonely mound,
Where melancholy with still silence reigns,
And the rank grass waves o'er the cheerless ground.

There let me wander at the shut of eve,

When sleep sits dewy on the labourer's eyes: The world and all its busy follies leave,

And talk with Wisdom where my Daphnis lies.

There let me sleep, forgotten in the clay,

When death shall shut these weary aching eyes;

Rest in the hopes of an eternal day,

Till the long night is gone, and the last morn arise."

EDUCATIONAL REFORM.

UNIVERSITIES.

"Farewell! ah, would to me were given

A power upon thy light!

What words upon our English heaven
Thy loving rays should write!
Kind messages of love and hope
Upon thy rays should be;

Thy shining orbit should have scope
Scarcely enough for me.

Oh, fancy vain, as it is fond,

And little needed too;
My friends! I need not look beyond
My heart to look for you."

Ar the early age of twenty-one, died Michael Bruce, a poet of high promise, of whom Scotland may well be proud. Short, however, as his life was, it was but little else save one long struggle with pinching poverty, which his delicate constitution was but ill able to endure. If at scarce a moment's notice, on L. E. L. the icy hand of death was laid, its approaches to Michael Bruce were gradual and slow, but not, on that account, the less sure. His principal poem, "Lochleven," ends with a brief reference to himself, from which it is evident that he was, even then, aware that his days were numbered.

"Thus sung the youth, amid unfertile wilds
And nameless deserts, unpoetic ground!
Far from his friends he strayed, recording thus
The dear remembrance of his native fields,
To cheer the tedious night; while slow disease
Preyed on his pining vitals, and the blasts
Of dark December shook his humble cot."

His last poem, an (C Elegy-written in Spring," is
well known ;-as it was his last, so is it his best.
After picturing "grim Winter" retreating to "Zembla's
frozen shore," and the earth again donning her" robe
of green," and putting forth her flowers, while
"All around

Smiling, the cheerful face of Spring is seen;"

he contrasts his own condition with the state of Nature, in the lines, with which we are all familiar:

"Now, spring returns: but not to me returns

The vernal joy my better years have known!
Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns,

And all the joys of life with health are flown;" and then he takes farewell of the "blooming fields," and "cheerful plains," and of the "world and all

be provided for in schools and gymnasia, so should our universities be adapted to furnish that higher instruction which is required for persons destined to follow the learned professions. This seems to have been the original purpose of most universities; or even the more limited office of training up men for the church, almost the only learned profession at the time when they were instituted. On these literary and theological schools, other classes of law and medicine were gradually engrafted, as has been the case in all our Scottish universities. In Edinburgh, the first medical chair appears about a hundred years after its foundation, and the first law classes only in the beginning of the last century. It was about the same time that a class for law, and others for physic and anatomy, were instituted in Glasgow, and for an hundred years no addition to this department of study took place. In these two universities, subsequent appointments have greatly supplied their original deficiencies; but much still remains to be done; and in St Andrews and Aberdeen, no changes of any consequence have taken place since their first foundation.

However well the universities may have been adapted for their purpose at the time they were founded, it can scarcely be supposed that they should remain so after the lapse of two or three hundred years. Every thing else has been moving, and how can education stand still? Various modifications have, indeed, taken place in the course of study; but these have been dictated only by necessity, and greatly limited by old customs and laws. Down to the present century, little practical inconvenience resulted from this stagnation. Men's thoughts still ran in the same channel; their studies were still directed to the same objects as in the ages that were past. Classical literature was still the great object of attainment to which all other acquirements were regarded as subordinate. The philosophy of the mind was readily engrafted on the logic of the schools; whilst mathematics had always maintained their place under the sanction of the Greek geometers. But the great progress of moral and physical science in recent times, and the almost new birth of natural history, have occasioned such revolutions in the whole field of human knowledge, as imperiously to demand that the higher systems of education should be adapted to them. There are now many departments of science of which the elements are known to many school-boys, and taught in every mechanics' institution, of which the greatest scholars