The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-18 00:00:00

INSTALLATION OF MR. GLADSTONE

AT EDINBURGH.

The installation of Mr. Gladstone as rector of the
Edinburgh University took place on Monday in the
Music Hall of that city, with considerable cere-
mony, and in presence of a large body of students,
together with such of the general public as were
fortunate enough to secure tickets of admission.
Vice-Chancellor and Principal Sir David Brewster,
by virtu• of his office, presided on the occasion, and
the Divinity Professor opened the proceedings by
prayer.
In accordance with a resolution agreed to by the
Senatus, the honorary degree of LL.D. was then
conferred on the following gentlemen distinguished
in science and literature I—The Right Hon• W. E•
Gladstone, the Right Hon. the Lord Justice-Gene-
ral, the Hon. Lord Neaves, the Solicitor-General,
the Very Rev. Dean Ramsay, Principal Forbes, and
the Rev. H. L, Mansel, Professor of Moral and
Metaphysical Philosophy, Oxford.
Mr. David Hall, who represented the students,
then formally presented the newly installed rector
to the Vice-Chancellor.

- Mr. GLADSTONE then came forward to deliver
his inaugural address. The ladies in the gal-
leries waved their handkerchiefs, while the
whole audience rose and cheered with the utmost
enthusiasm. On the subsiding of these demonstra-
tions, Mr. Gladstone proceeded as follows :—Prin-
cipal, Professors, and Students of the University of
Edinburgh—l cannot estimate lightly the occasion
on which I meet you, especially as it regards the
younger and the larger part of my academical au-
dience. The franchise which you have exercised
in my favour is itself of a nature to draw attention:
for the legislature of our own day has by a new
deliberative act, invested you, the youngest mem-
bers of the university, with a definite and not in-
considerable influence in the formation of that
court which is to exercise, upon appeal, the highest
control over its proceedings. This is a measure
which would hardly have been adopted in any land
other than our own. Yet it is also one in the best
sense agreeable to the spirit of our own country
and of its institutions ; for I think it is eminently
British to admit the voice of the governed in the
choice of governors—to seek, through diversity of
elements, for unity and harmony of result, and to
train men for the discharge of manly duties by let-
ting them begin their exercise betimes. You have
chosen, gentlemen, as your representative in the
University Court, one widely enough separated
from you in the scale of years ; one to whom
much of that is past which to you is as yet future.
It is fitting then that he should speak to you on
such an occasion of that which unites us together,
namely, the work of the university, as a great
organ of preparation for after life, and that in treat-
ing of what constitutes the great bond between us,
he should desire and endeavour to assist in arming
you, as far as he may, for the efforts and trials of
your career. Subject to certain cycles of partial
revolution, it is true that, as in the material so in
the moral world, every generation of man is a la-
bourer for that which succeeds it, and makes an
addition to that great sum total of achieved results,
which may, in commercial phrase, be called the ca-
pital of the race. Of all the conditions of :exist-
ence in which man differs from the brutes there
is not one of greater moment than this, that each
one of them commences life as if he were the first
of a species, whereas man inherits largely from
those who have gone before. How largely none of
us can say ; but my belief is that, as years gather
more and more upon you, you will estimate more
and more highly your debt to preceding ages. If,
on the one hand, that debt is capable of being ex-
aggerated or misapprehended, if arguments are
sometimes strangely used which would imply that
because they had done much we ought to do no-
thing more, yet,on the other hand, it is no less true
that the obligation is one so vast and manifold that
it can never as a whole be adequately measured.
It is not only in possessions, available for use, en.
joyment, and security ; it is not only in language.
laws, institutions, arts, religion ; it is not only in
what we have, but in what we are. For, as cha-
racter is forme 1 by the action and reaction of the
human being and the circumstances in which he
lives, it follows that, as those circumstances vary,
he alters too, and he transmits a modified—it ought
to be also an enlarged and expanding—nature on-
wards in his turn to his posterity, under that mys-
terious law which establishes between every gene-
ration and its predecessors a moral as well as phy-
sical association. In ye hat degree this process is
marred, on the one hand, by the perversity and by
the infirmity of man, or restored and extended, on
the other, by the remedial provisions of the Divine
mercy, this is not th 3 place to inquire. The pro-
gress of mankind is upon the whole a chequered
and an intercepted progress, and even where it is
full-formed, still, just as in the individual youth has
charms that maturity under an inexorable law must
lose, so the earlier ages of the world will ever con-
tinue to delight and instruct us by beauties that
are exclusively or peculiarly their own. Again, it
would seem as though this progress—and here is a
darkening and a humbling thought—were a pro.
gress of mankind and not of the individual man ;
for it seems to be quite clear that whatever be the
comparative greatness of the race now and in its infant
or early stages, what may be called the normal speci-
mens,so far as they have been made known to us either
through external form or through the works of the
intellect, have tended rather to dwindle, or at least
to diminish, than to grow in the highest elements of
greatness. But the exceptions at which these re-
marks have glanced neither destroy or materially
weaken the profound moment of the broad and uni-
versal canon, that every generation of men, as they
traverse the vale of life are bound to accumulate,
and in divers manners do accumulate new treasures
for the race, and leave the world richer on their de-
parture, for the advantage of their descendants, than
on their entrance they themselves had found it. Of
the mental portion of this treasure no small part is
stored, and of the continuous work I have described
no small part is performed by universities, which
have been, I venture to say, entitled to rank among
the greater lights and glories of Christendom.
(Applause.) It is, I believe, a fact, and if so it is a
fact highly instructive and suggestive, that the
-university as such is a Christian institution. The
Greeks, indeed, had the very largest ideas upon the
training of man, and produced specimens of our
kind with gifts that have never been surpassed.
But the nature of man, such as they knew it, was
scarcely at all developed, nay it was maimed, in its
supreme capacity—in its relations towards God.
Hence, as in the visions of the Prophet, so upon the
roll of history, the imposing fabrics of ancient civi-
lisation never have endured. (Applause.) Greece
has bequeathed to us her ever-living tongue and the
immortal productions of her intellect; Rome made
ready for Christendom the elements of polity and
law ; but the brilliant assemblage of endowments
which constitutes civilisation, having no root in
itself, could not brook the shocks of time and vicis-
situde ; it came and it went; it was seen and it was
gone—

" riunc tantum terris ostendent f'ata; neque ultra
Esse sinmt."
I Ve
now
watch, gentlemen, with a trembling hope,
the
which course of that later and Christian civilisation
i arose out of the ashes of the old heathen
world, and ask ourselves whether, like the Gos-
pd. itself, that which the Gospel has wrought
beyovd itself in the manners arts, laws, and in-
stitutians of men is in such
` that the gates of hell
such manner and degree
salted with perpetual
shall not pi.evail against it '7
Will civilisation,
which was springing upwards
from the days of
Charlemagne, and which now, over the face of
Europe and America, seems to present to us
be-
wildering conflict the mingled signs of decrevlitun
dv
and of vigour, perish like its older types, and, like I
them, be known thereafter only in its fragments;
or does it bear a charmed life, and will it give shacip
from the heat and shelter from the storm to an
generations of man ? In any answer to such
question it would perhaps be easier to say what
!maid not than what would be involved. But some
things we may observe, which may be among the
materials o`',- a reply. The arts of war are now so
allied with those of peace that barbarism, once so
terrible, is reduced to physical impotence; and
what civili sed man has had the wit to create, he