The Press.
London, England, 1856-11-22 00:00:00

Statlanb.

THE RIGHT HON. SIR EDWARD &LIVER LYTTON,
Bart., was on the 15th instant elected Lord Rector
of Glasgow University for the ensuing two years.
Three candidates were nominated :—Sir Edward
Lytton, Lord Stanley, and Sir John Herschel'. The
latter gentleman retired early from the contest,
which was keenly sustained on behalf of Sir
Edwnrd Lytton and Lord Stanley. Sir E. Lytton was
supported by the Conservative students as well as by
an influential section who desired the election to rest
upon purely literary grounds. Lord Stanley,
on the other hand, was supported by the
Liberals. The result was declared in the Com-
mon Hall on the forenoon of the 15th, when it
was found that Sir Edward Lytton had obtained
a considerable majority in all the Nations into which
the students are divided. The following was the
state of the poll:
.

Lytton. Stanley.
Ratio Glottiana
—.- Londoniunn
-- Transforthana B2 .. 21
-- lioatsayttua et .. 22

242 134
Majority for Lytton lO9
The installation will take place on a day to be fixed
by Sir Edward Lytton.
PROFESSOR BLACKIE, in his introductory lecture
to the Greek classes recently, at Edinburgh,
alluding to the great advance made of late years in
the cause of education, asserted that Scotland re-
mained behind the age. Learning was especially
low iu the Scotch universities, and he attributed this
to the miserable encouragement offered in Scotland
to men of ability :
He would refer to Sanscrit, Hebrew, and Oriental learn-
ing generally, to archeology, history, philosophy, and the
tine arts, ethnology, comparative philology, Greek, Latin,
and theology, and he would fearlessly assert that in none
of these departments had Scotland come forward and
asserted its due position in the learned world. He held
that the professors had done a great deal more than could
have been expected, considering the scurvy manner in
which they had been treated by the powers that be. Here
we had a Government—the richest Government in Europe
—doling out 71. 10s. per quarter to the professors of
Greek and Latin in the universities of Scotland. The
teacher of the language of tee Sacred Scriptures was paid
with a smaller salary than many a mere copier of papers
in a Government office. Then as to archeology ; the only
great archeologist Scotland had produced—Dr. Daniel
Wilson—was obliged to expatriate himself to America be-
cause no one wanted or asked for him here. Then take
history, philosophy, or the fine arts, where were they re-
presented in any Scottish university ?
The learned professor then alluded to the undrilled
state in which youths were sent to college in Scot-
land. The Scotch professors, he said, were called on
to do a kind of work which was done in the German
burgh schools four or five years before the pupils
went to the university 7
Here the professors hail to do the schoolmasters' work
besides their own. The whole system tended to the degra-
dation of the professorial staff Ile himself felt that, by
the present system, he was a degraded and injured man.
It was not reasonable that he should come down from the
sphere of Aristotelian science, and from the starry heights
of Platonic philosophy, to flounder in the flats and shallows
with a congregation of smooth•cheeked little boys—with
boys only hall tired of their peg tops, and not yet even
dreaming of the possibility of a beard. He wanted to de-
vote himself to the higher classes, and let the town council
get some tator with 1(1W. a year to teach the first. And he
claimed that relief on the ground of his services in carry-
ing on the third class, which he was not bound to do,
which yielded him less than he might make in two weeks
by writing light conceity articles for some review; but it
was a class that he would stand by, even if but half a dozen
students remained in it. He claimed a higher status, too,
for the professors. He asked why should a professor be
thought inferior to a sheriff substitute ? In fact, he looked
upon himself as great a mall as the Sheriff of Edinburgh.
But how dill the country• mark the two positions? Why,
by giving Professor Mackie w 1. a year from the Queen's
Exchequer, and by giving Sheriff Gordon 100/. or
1,800/. a year.

Dr. Blackie then came to the remedy. The first
thing was to get money, and then—
lint, create tutorships and fellowships—not fix the sake
of tits professors, but of the students. In the second