Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

temporal or spiritual, as Deacons. Now, we freely admit that there is nothing in the office to prevent men from being tyrants. The features, colour, and character of the heart are the same in all; and were Elders exposed to the same temptations that Deacons are, in many Churches, by being clothed with the like undefined and perilous power, we should anticipate precisely the same results. But, happily, their province is clearly defined. It is the oversight and superintendence of the flock in matters spiritual, such as the dispensation of the Word, the visitation of the sick, and other offices of piety, in public and in private; and with a body of Deacons freely chosen by the Church, they are necessitated, nor are they likely to exceed their trust. Churches of moderate size and means cannot give many such salaries as men thoroughly educated and wholly consecrated to the functions of the ministry require: but surely we have a sufficient number of self-denying men

in all our Churches, to carry on the sacred as well as the secular affairs of Christ's house, without grudge or complaint. Without abandoning their temporal calling, whence they must derive their livelihood, men may hold authority of Christ, and in the due discharge of their appropriate duties, they, as officers of His, ought to be acknowledged, honoured, and obeyed. It is a lawof His house. Behold, this is the law of the house: that ye obey, in the Lord, them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves-that ye esteem them very highly for their work's sake; whose faith follow, considering the end of their vocation-the perfection of the saints, the work of the ministry, the edifying of the body of Christ-till we all come, in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.-Holy Catholic Church.

Essays.

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY.

Opening Address by Sir David Brewster.

THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION, AND ITS RESULTS.

THERE is no brighter page in the history of our race than that which records the deeds of the hero who dies for his country, of the statesman who rightly conducts its affairs, and of the man of large heart and open hand who gives his time and his wealth to succour the indigent, and to prepare the young for the great duties of time and the higher duties of eternity. In the annals of our own fatherland we' have the brightest examples of such deeds of glory; and its institutions, the true bulwarks of civilisation, display every variety of patriotism, philanthropy, and talent, which render a people wise and a nation great. Though situated at the very limits of the civilised world, and almost beyond the influences which develop the physical and intellectual ener

gies of man, we have escaped from the vices of more genial climes, and from those deadly heresies which wealth and ignorance never fail to establish. Nursed in mountain glens or on barren plains which industry has enriched,-blessed with an education which has opened to them the Book of Life, and guided by a simple faith,-our youth have spread themselves over the globe, the intrepid missionaries of Divine and secular truth. It is to our schools and universities that we owe these national blessings, the precious fruits of a liberal education, now happily emancipated from sectarian influences and political control. In appreciating the benefits of our academical institutions, it is interesting to observe, and it will be useful to remember, that we owe them less to wise sovereigns and sagacious statesmen than to pious and generous indivi

duals, who, after experiencing the value of knowledge, have founded prizes, scholarships, and even professorships, in the universities where they studied. Those noble deeds were more numerous and conspicuous in the universities of the south than in our own; yet not more so in reference to the secular and ecclesiastical wealth of the two kingdoms. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were richly endowed and numerously attended nearly two centuries before any of our Scotch universities were in existence; and it is a remarkable fact, that St. Andrews, Aberdeen, and Glasgow possessed well-endowed colleges before there was academical institution in Edinburgh, Dublin, or London.

an

INSTITUTION OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY

-THE PAPAL OPPOSITION.

Previous to the Reformation in Scotland, an attempt was made to found a university in Edinburgh. In 1558, Mr. Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney, a prelate of high accomplishments, who had filled for ten years the office of President of the Court of Session, bequeathed 8,000 merks for this important purpose. This sum, however, though it might then have been sufficient to provide an ordinary building, was withheld by his executor, the Abbot of Kinloss; and it was not till 1825 that half the legacy, without interest, was realized by the citizens of Edinburgh. The opposition thus made by the Roman Catholic powers to the erection of a college in the metropolis was fortunately baffled by the zeal of the Reformers. In 1850, it was declared in the Book of Discipline, sanctioned by the Great Council of Scotland, "that every church should have a schoolmaster, able at least to teach grammar and the Latin tongue," and that "in every notable town there should be erected a college, in which the arts, together with the tongues, should be read by sufficient masters." And in order to secure for the people a sound education, and for the State a moral and religious community, the great Reformer announced the grand principle which our statesmen have failed to appreciate, "that the great schools called universities shall be replenished with those apt for learning, and that it must be carefully provided that no father, of whatever estate or condition, shall use his children at his own fancy, especially in their youth

hood, but that all must be compelled to bring up their children in learning and virtue." Impressed with these views the Magistrates and Council purchased, in 1563, as the site for a college, the right to a great part of the ground and buildings which belonged to the Provost and prebendaries of the Collegiate Kirk of Field-a locality which a few years afterwards became remarkable from the fate of Lord Darnley, the Queen's husband, whose apartments were blown up by gunpowder on the 10th February, 1567. Close to this site stood an ancient pile of buildings, which had been the town residence of the Dukes of Chatelherault. It was fitted up for temporary class-rooms, and other apartments were added from time to time, till the completion of the old College, which has since been replaced by the magnificent building which we now occupy. The Papal influence being now extinct in Scotland, the Magistrates and Town Council proceeded without opposition to complete the arrangements which they had begun. In 1581, they obtained a charter from James VI., authorising them to found a university, and placing it entirely under their management and control. An Act of Parliament, passed in 1621, ratified this charter, and while the other universities of Scotland were governed by a Chancellor, a Rector, a Principal and Professors, the University of Edinburgh was but a metropolitan academy, without any well defined constitution, and in which neither the teachers nor the taught had any voice whatever. Under this municipal control, which, we are bound to say, was, generally speaking, exercised tenderly and wisely, the University continued for nearly 300 years, till a recent act of Parliament established its independence, added to its endowments, and placed in new hands the patronage of many of its chairs.

SIR JOSEPH STRATON'S BEQUEST-HIS HISTORY.

The next important bequest to the University was made by Sir Joseph Straton, who left the sum of £14,000 "for the promotion and advancement of science, literature and art, and for general purposes of education in the University, in such a manner as the Principal and Senatus Academicus shall see fit." This noble bequest is remarkable as the only one ever made to this College in which the promotion and advancement of art

is distinctly mentioned. It is remark able, also, from the modest conviction of the donor, that the Principal and Senatus were better qualified than himself for making the proper arrangements for carrying out the objects of the trust. Sir Joseph Straton, to whom we are thus deeply indebted, was born in 1777, and died in 1840, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was the youngest son of William Muter, Esq. of Annfield in Fife; and in 1816 he took his mother's name of Stratou upon succeeding to her estate of Kirkside in Kincardineshire. After receiving a classical education at the High School of Edinburgh under the same master with our distinguished Chancellor, Lord Brougham, who was his companion and friend, and after attending along with him the classes in the University during the sessions commencing in 1791 and 1792, he entered the army in 1794 as a cornet in the 2nd Dragoon Guards. In 1797 he purchased a troop in the 13th Light Dragoons, and obtained a majority in that regiment in 1801. In 1804 he entered the Royal Military College at High Wycombe, where, after obtaining a diploma of the highest qualification, he was appointed to the staff of the Duke of Gloucester. In 1810 he accompanied his regiment to Spain, where he served during the whole of the Peninsular war, for a while second in command, and for some time in full command of his regiment, during all the great engagements in which it participated. On the return of peace in 1813, his distinguished services were rewarded by the lieutenant-colonelcy of 6th or Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, of which he was afterwards appointed colonel. In 1815, he commanded his regiment at the battle of Waterloo, and when the gallant General Ponsonby fell at the head of his brigade of guards, the command of it devolved upon Colonel Straton, who led it with such bravery and success, that the Duke of Wellington named it with peculiar approbation. Towards the close of the battle his horse was twice wounded, and he himself once, but not dangerously. For these distinguished services Colonel Straton received from the Emperor of Russia the Order of St. Vladimir, and from his own Sovereign the Order of the Bath, and the Hanoverian and British Orders of Knighthood. Amid his military duties, Sir Joseph Straton found leisure to continue the studies of his youth. He had

66

acquired much general knowledge, both in literature and science, and when peace was proclaimed, he travelled to the East in search of more. In Egypt he studied its gigantic monuments of ancient art, and brought home with him some interesting objects of antiquity— one of which, a very perfect mummy from Thebes, he presented to the Museum of the University. Having been long and intimately acquainted with Sir Joseph, I induced him to publish two interesting papers-one On the Subterranean Temple of Ipsambul," and another "On the Sepulchral Caverns of Egypt." During his residence in Edinburgh, he attended several of the classes in the University. was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1821, and in 18311834 he was one of the members of its Council. His high appreciation of the value of knowledge induced him to desire its promotion, and he was enabled, by a prudent economy, and from a very limited fortune, to provide the large fund which he so liberally placed at our disposal.

NATURAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

He

The great importance of natural and physical science, in every course of academical study, induces me to notice three bequests made to the University by Sir William Pulteney, Dr. Thomson, and Dr. Hope. In 1790, Sir William Pulteney bequeathed £1,250 for the purpose of founding a Chair of Agriculture. In 1774, Dr. William Thomson presented to the University the valuable collection of minerals which he had made during his residence at Naples, and also £1,500 to improve the salary of the Professor of Natural History. Dr. Thomson was educated at this College, and, after filling the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Oxford, he retired to the south of Italy, to study the mineralogy and geology of that interesting region. Dr. Thomas Charles Hope, who filled so long and so ably our Chair of Chemistry, bequeathed to the University £1,000 of 3 per cent. Consols, the interest of which was to be expended annually, or biennially, in a prize, or prizes, to promote the study of chemistry in the University.

THE JARDINE BURSARY.-CAREER OF THE

[blocks in formation]

In

the many benefactors who have founded bursaries in this University; but there is one so peculiar in some of its aspects, that I feel it a special duty to bring it under your notice. The Jardine Bursary bears the name, not of its founder, but of the patron and friend of its founder, and is the only bursary, I believe, in any of our colleges endowed by a student with the first-fruits of his professional labour, and consecrated to the individual through whose liberality he obtained a university education. 1820, George Parker Bidder, celebrated as the "Calculating Boy," was brought by his father to Edinburgh, to exhibit his wonderful powers of mental calculation. Sir Henry Jardine, then King's Remembrancer of Exchequer, took an interest in the boy, and, believing that he possessed talents beyond his arithmetical capacity, obtained the permission of his father to give him a college education. By means of a liberal allowance from himself, and a little assistance from his friends,-of whom I had the privilege of being one,-Sir Henry obtained for George Bidder an education in this University, which fitted him for the noble profession of a civil engineer. By his talents and industry, Mr Bidder soon rose to professional eminence, and in 1846 he presented £1,000 to the University to found a bursary for the benefit of natives of Scotland, and he gave it the name of Jardine in commemoration of the munificence of his benefactor. Mr. Bidder, who thus highly appreciated the gift of a university education, and thus feelingly evinced the gratitude with which he received it, entered the junior classes in 1820, and completed the course in 1824, without, as he himself tells us, exhibiting any superiority over his fellowstudents. It is a remarkable circumstance, that the late celebrated engineer, Mr. Robert Stephenson, studied here at the same time, and afterwards became Bidder's warmest patron and steadiest friend. Equal in eminence, as in age, these two alumni of our College have designed and executed the most gigantic and imperishable works in every part of the world; and I venture to say that no university in the empire has sent from its halls two engineers of higher accomplishments and greater name. From the University, Mr. Bidder was ushered into the battle-field of life, and manfully struggled with its difficulties. Fortune, however, as it always does, favoured the

brave, and he passed through the ordeal of early life to a manhood of usefulness and of honour. In 1825, the year after he quitted the University, he was elected a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and he became its president in 1860. During that long period, he superintended, or designed and executed, many of the greatest engineering works of the age. From a humble place in the trigonometrical survey, he became the assistant of Mr. Palmer, with whom he was employed on the London Docks and other works of importUnder our late eminent countryman, Mr. James Walker, he superintended the erection of the Brunswick Pier at Blackwall; and he was employed by his friend, Mr. Robert Stephenson, on the London and Birmingham Railway. He then became engineer-in-chief on several English lines, and was charged with the formation of the Norwegian Trunk and Royal Danish Railways. One of his

ance.

greatest works is the Victoria Docks on the Thames, and he is at present engineer-in chief to that gigantic system of railway communication in the East, 1,232 miles in length, which is destined to confer on our Indian empire the blessings of Christianity and civilisation.

MR. PATRICK'S BEQUEST.

The earliest of the bequests to which I refer is that of the late Mr. William Patrick, who gave, in his lifetime, £3,000 to found two bursaries, one of £100 and another of £50, to assist students who have gone through a course of classical education at one of the public schools or academies in the county of Ayr. Mr. Patrick gave the same sum for a similar purpose to the University of Glasgow, and he gave other sums, amounting in all to £10,000, for promoting education in the ragged schools in Edinburgh, and in the several parishes in Ayrshire where his estates lay. This generous patron of education was the youngest son of Mr. Patrick of Trearne, in the parish of Beith, in AyrAfter shire, and was born in 1770. completing his college studies at Glasgow, where he was the fellow-student of Lord Corehouse, Mr. Thomas Thomson, and Principal Macfarlane, James Grahame, the author of the popular poem entitled "The Sabbath," in whose house I frequently met him sixty-five years ago, he came to Edinburgh to study law, and was admitted a writer to

the signet in 1793. He was a member of this body for sixty years; and at the time of his death, on the 20th February, 1861, he was the oldest on its list, having reached his ninety-second year. Mr. Patrick was a man of high character and liberal views, of extensive reading, and of large and varied acquirements. Having experienced the value of a college education, he was desirous to assist others in obtaining it; and in the noble gifts which he was thus led to bestow on our schools and universities, he left behind him an example of judicious liberality, which, I trust, many will imitate, and all admire. I should have omitted the most striking event in the life of our benefactor, and a lesson, too, of deep instruction to the young, had I sup pressed the fact, that the last years of his life were embittered by a charge of fraud and conspiracy in the management of affairs in which he had a personal concern. Decision after decision acquitted him of the crime, and judges of the highest station-the Lord Chancellor of England himself-stamped innocence upon his name. His virtues, indeed, bore him in triumph through this ordeal of fire. The irreproachable character, the unimpeachable integrity of a long life, stood out in bold relief to defy the malignity of his accusers.

THE PITT SCHOLARSHIPS.

We are all doubtless proud, to whatever political party we belong, to have associated with the history of our University the name of one of the greatest statesmen of his age-William Pitt"the pilot that weathered the storm," amid the threats of invasion, and the distractions of civil war. A committee of the Pitt Club-a body of distinguished Scotchmen, organized to do honour to their chief, have devoted the sum of £2,500 to found two competition scholarships, to be called "The Pitt Scholarships"-one of them of the value of £60, for students who have completed their course of study in the Faculty of Arts, and taken their degree within four years of the time of competition; and the other of the value of £40, for students who have attended three sessions at the Divinity Hall, and taken the degree of M.A at any of the Universities of Scotland. These scholarships have been conferred for the first time on two distinguished graduates, Mr. Thomas Gray of Leith, and Mr. Thomas Johnston, from the county of Kirkcudbright.

THE MACKENZIE SCHOLARSHIP.

Contemporaneous with these eudowments was the foundation of a scholarship by Mr. James Mackenzie, W.S., a son of the late Henry Mackenzie, the author of "The Man of Feeling," and other popular works. In the course of last year, Mr. Mackenzie presented to the University the sum of £3,000 to endow a scholarship to bear his name, and for the promotion of classical and English literature. It is open for competition to graduates of arts of three years' standing, and is tenable for four years.

THE BAXTER SCHOLARSHIPS.

The next bequest which I have to announce to you is that of Sir David Baxter, Bart., of Kilmaron, who has given £3,000 to endow two scholarships of the value of £60 each-one to be awarded for proficiency in mental philosophy, and the other for proficiency in mathematics and natural philosophy. These scholarships are open to competition to all graduates of Arts in the University, of not more than four years' standing, who have taken their degree with honours. In calling your attention to this endowment, I cannot omit the opportunity of associating it with that more munificent gift of a public park which Sir David Baxter has given, in perpetuity, to the citizens of his native town-a gift of knowledge, of recreation, and of health, to thousands who are deprived of these invaluable blessings. To acquire

wealth, and to enjoy the honours which it wins, the possessions which it earns, and the power which it wields, are legitimate objects of professional labourobjects, indeed, which the youngest of you are about to pursue. But when that labour has been blessed, and that wealth acquired, it is a nobler gift than wealth-a higher honour than wealth can win a richer possession than wealth can earn a mightier power than wealth can wield-when its owner offers the great tithes to Him who gave it, and throws it into the channels of social life, to impart wisdom, and health, and contentment, to the children of ignorance and toil.

THE COLLEGE HALL FOR BOARDERS.

Next in importance to the endowment of new chairs and scholarships, is the establishment of a college hall,

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »