The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-17 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 17, 1857.

INSTALLATION OF SIR E. B LYTTON AS
LORD RECTOR UP GLASGOW UNIVERSITY

On Thursday afternoon Sir E. Bulwer Lytton was in-
stalled as Lord Rector of Glasgow University, to which
office ho was appoin'ed in November last by a majority in
all the nations over his opponent, Lord Stanley.
A little after 2 o'clock Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, in the
robes of the Lord Rector, entered the hall, preceded by the
macebearer, and with very great difficulty found, or rather
forced, his way through the closely-wedged throng to the
chair. He was most heartily cheered. The Lord Rector
was accompanied by the Ven. Principal Macfarlan and the
Professors of the University, Lord Elgin, the Lord Provost
of the City, Sir Archibald Alison, Mr. Hastio, M.P., &c.
In other parts of the Hall were Sheriff Bell, Sheriff Smith,
Mr. Walter Crum, Mr. Wm. Ewing, Mr. John Blackwood,
publisher, Edinburgh, several of the city clergy, &c. The
proceedings were opened by a Latin prayer, delivered by
the Rev. Principal. Professor Weir read the rc2orcl of his
election and administered the oaths.

Sir EDWARD BITLWER LYTTON', on rising, was received
with immense applause. He spoke as follows :—Mr. Prin-
cipal and Gentlemen, —lf there be many more deserving
than myself of the honour which has been conferred upon
me, there is at least no one by whom it could be more
highly valued or more gratefully received. (Cheers.) Per-
haps, indeed, an Englishman has a yet livelier sense than
even a native of Scotland of all that is implied in the dis-
tinction which connects him with this ancient seat of learn-
ing by the free choice of its youthful students. He knows
that he cannot owe so gracious a favour to the accident of
birth or to local prepossession—that it must be the recogni-
tion of some rank or property in repute, which, being
achieved by his own exertions, wins the sympathy of the
rising generation. For youth, and more especially the hardy
youth of Scotland—(cheers)—pressing forward to force way
for itself through this crowded world, has a natural interest
in seeking to ennoble every instance which confirms its own
heroic hopes in the attainment of worldly distinction by
the nerve and sinew of intellectual labour. lam sure
that no student who has honoured me with his vote from
agreement in my political opinions will misunderstand me
when I say I era well pleased to believe that it is less as the
politician than as the man of letters that you this day re-
ward my labours and dignify my name. Not because I
am not cordially gratified if my views of the policy which
should govern these realms find favour with a large pro-
portion of the intellect among you—not because I do not
feel a warm and loyal attachment to the party with whom
I act in Parliament, or am indifferent to that sanction of
their cause which such a compliment to one of their num-
ber may convey ; no, but because, now that a contest which
I did not seek, and of which I was only aware two days
before the issue was made known to me, is peacefully con-
cluded, I would fain link myself in lasting fellowship with
every student among you—and politics can but join us
for the day ; literature unites us throughout the ages.
(Cheers.) I think that I am the more justified in
assigning your kindness to this bond of association, be-
cause the candidate who was not unreasonably preferred by
some of you—a young nobleman whose vigorous intellect
and brilliant promise would have done credit to your choice
—happens (no matter what differences of opinion on iso-
lated questions may or may not exist between him and me)
to belong with myself to that great party of which his own
father is the acknowledged chief. (Cheers, dissent, and
renewed cheers.) Nor can I believe that there can be any
great disunion between those who profess the same broad
outlines of policy as my Lord Derby, because this much at
least all who differ from that noble personage will allow—
that the principles he does profess proclaim to his parti-
sans, and utter to the world, are conveyed in a diction
unequalled for lucidity and force, and prompted by a mo-
tive conspicuous for sincerity and honour. (Cheers.)
Seeing, then, that the candidate who divided your votes
was not taken from the ranks of a hostile party, and that
politics, therefore, could not have entered very warmly
into the contest, I venture to assume that you designed
through me to pay a generous compliment to those
English authors and men of letters whose names,
nobler than mine, are inscribed in that libro d'ore, or gol-
den book of self-made aristocracy, a place in which none of
us can inherit, all of us may aspire to obtain. Accordingly,
it is on their behalf as well as my own that I receive the
compliment and return the thanks. Gentlemen, when I
look round this crowded hall I am seized with the same
idea which presented itself to my great predecessor, Mr.
Macaulay. Like him I at once comprehend how, on a simi-
lar occasion, before a similar audience, Edmund Burke,
the most elaborate and the most impassioned orator in the
grand ago of orators, suddenly became confused, and fal-
tered forth the excuse that "he had never before addressed
so learned an assembly." And yet it is not the learning of
this distinguished audience which most impresses me with
a sentiment of diffidence and awe; for, if we were assem-
bled to witness some exercise of intellectual skill, in which
learning alone was to be the judge, I should not be
the speaker, but the listener. It is not to men who
have matured their full renown—it is not to your ac-
knowledged chiefs of erudition and science that I could
presume to offer suggestive remarks or persuasive counsel.
These it is my duty to address to that other part of this
audience which, comprising their pupils, represents, as it
wore, the generation of their own children. And maxima
debetur pvcro reverentia, I am intimidated by a sense of
the reverence which is due to the young. Can I glance to-
wards these ingenious and ardent listeners, whom I am
called upon by office to exhort or advise upon the future,
and not feel with sincere emotion that the future is their
lives, and that in their lives Providence may select the
agents to influence a future for unborn generations ? How
cautious should lee be who would animate the exertions of
youth not to discourage the audacities of genius, nor, on the
other hand, to shrink from enforcing the sober doctrine,
that to all genius labour is essential ; that the genius that
would realise the palace of Aladdin must still be the genius
of the lamp. How anxious he must feel to avoid the cold
pedantry of conventional admonition, and yet to give a can-
did utterance to the affection which prompts advice. Above
all, students of Glasgow, he who addresses you should have a
spirit so warmed by sympathy with the generous aspira-
tions of youth, so embued with the remembrance of what
your fathers have been before you, that his mind may
escape from every sentiment unworthy the ears of that
young chivalry which Scotland rears and sends forth to
the battle of human life, with her lion at their hearts and
her white cross of St. Andrew on their shields. (Great
applause) An orator of no mean repute in the old French
Republic has in one of his speeches a striking address to
the 19th century, which was then just dawning over the
lurid ashes of the Reign of Terror. In the jargon of that
rhetorical philanthropy which then prevailed he foresaw
the march of light, and the full development of human
faculties and social progress, dating from the downfall
of that disciplined order which the philosophers of his
day called " privileged usurpation," and the removal
of those sacred cheeks which they denounced as "priest-
craft." Well, the 19th century rose, advanced, it is
now more than half completed, and if that orator
were (still living he might indeed be startled to see
what light has been diffused, what the development of
human faculties, what the advancement of social progress !
Dosing the earlier half of this century what great authors
have delighted us or refined ! what magical inventions
science has conceived and put to use—what continuous
efforts have been made, and are making still, to mitigate
the severity of laws, and bind us more together, not in-
deed, in Cain-like fraternity, but in Christian brotherhood!
(Cheers.) But how and where have these benignant agen-

cies of the 19th century been the most manifestly at work?
How ! Not by the disrupture of the old social ties, but by
their renewed cement ! Where ! Not in those lands in

which to borrow Danton's despairing cry, " Revolution,
like Saturn, devoured its own children." No. But in

these steadfast kingdoms, where liberty has not violated I
order, nor philosophy presumed to depose religion.
(Cheers.) Look back at the commencement of this con-
tury—contemplate the work of that generation which you
are now rising to succeed. See what your Scottish fathers
have done to snatch the firebrand from the hands of those
drunkards of knowledge who, reeling here and there amid
palaces and temples, fancied that they illumined society by
the conflagration of its fabrics. That brand your fathers
snatched, not to extinguish its living flame—no, but to
place it, aloft and calm, upon stately watch-towers, a guid-
ing light, and not a consuming fire. (Cheers.) Already,
indeed, during the latter half of the last century, Scotland
had produced a school of philosophers who prepared the
reason of her sons to resist the plausible, but perilous ma-
terialism by which Diderot and the writers of the French
Encyclopedim sought to quibble away the soul from man,
and the Maker from the universe. Already, for more than
30 years, a professor in this university, Thos. Reid, had
expanded into an original system the suggestive lessons of
Hutcheson, the founder of Scotch metaphysics. Reid died
in 1796, but ho left behind him a brilliant pupil, Dugald
Stewart, peculiarly adapted by the graces of acquirement
and a persuasive eloquence of style, to render popular
the doctrines of his teacher, and to influence a wide
colitureyd.
eu(iCohgejuerin s.
range of minds that, whether in literature, or action,
have powerfully affected the character of their age and
)upolnatat mhnsochtohol of
hero to
pronouncemetap
metaphysics
i uc
sn
quuan
indeed, of late years, I have had so little leisure to re-exa-
mine those analytical inquiries into the origin and forma-
tion of idea which delighted me in early youth that I could
not venture to be a criticon metaphysicsbeforean audience
of Scotch collegians. But he would wholly fail to appre-
ciate the immense benefits which Hutcheson, Reid, and
Stewart rendered to sound philosophy, and through philo-
sophy to the direction of popular thought and action, who
should overlook the influence which those Scottish specu-
lative reasoners have exercised over the great schools of
Germany—over all succeeding schools, moral or metaphy-
sical, that have served t paralyse and disperse the ribald

builders of the atheistical Babel who Startled the last cen-

tury, and left behind them the fragments of their impious
labours, a futile monument of the confusion of their own
tongues, and the forlorn memento of a vanished deluge
(Cheers.) But Scotland was not confining her intellect-
only to those subtle speculations which act latently on the
springs of practical life. Already in this university had
been educated, and in this university taught and lectured,
the great author of the " Wealth of Nations." Here was
a book destined to guide the dawning century, that took
the machinery of States out of the hands of dreamers like
Condorcet and Sieyes ; laid down those laws for the regula-
tion of commonwealths which Platohad obscured, and oven
Aristotle had left undefined ; showed to monarchs how trea-
suries might be filled, and to labouring populations how
industry might be best applied and rewarded ; here, above
all, at a time when liberty was wronged, and multitudes
bewildered by schemes for destroying the barriers round
life and property—here was a book, written by no servile
upholder of antique prejudice, but by the most innovating
philosopher since the age of Bacon, which proved that secu-
rity to life is the first necessary to freedom, and safety to
property the paramount interest of the masses. Here was a
book that before the dawn of this century had already en-
tered into the practical government of these kingdoms; for
here was the book which, more than all others of that day,
skilled and disciplined the mind of William Pitt. (Loud
cheers.) Not, however, with this achievement did Scotland
halt in her " march of light"—not to that memory do you
stint your obligation in your illustrious Academy of Glas-
gow. In yonder streets, while Joseph Black was deducing
his voluminous problems from chemical science—while
Adam Smith was tracing the sources of all national wealth
—a young man, the listener and friend to both, was pen-
dating upon the application of chemical science to the
wealth of nations, the very vapour in the lamp of philoso-
phy became the most material agent in the subjugation of
time and space to the power of men, and the prophecy of
Roger Bacon was realised in the inventive genius of James
Watt. (Immense cheering.) But it is not science alone
that instructs the world and regulates the actions of man-
kind. Literature, too, has a noble mission beyond that of
mere solace and delight. See at the close of the last cen-
tury how tame and tawdry a thing was the literature of the
Revolution ! Except only the orations of Mirabeau, and a
few verses by Andre Chenier, who perished on the guillo-
tine, sighing forth, as he touched his forehead, "And yet
there was something here !" Except these, and what feeble-
ness and what fustian ! What varnished ignorance both of
books and of human nature ! The French authors who wrote
under the Empire are certainly better; but they want origi-
nality and depth. In Italy ono or two fair but sickly
plants struggled forth, but the root was not such as to
allow much spread to the boughs. In Germany, indeed, a
mighty era in literature had commenced, but its influence
had not yet extended over the rest of Europe; or where it
had become visible it was through wretched translations of
that effeminatekotzebue or ballads that enlivened the nursery
with skeletons and hob-goblins; and even the gigantic
Goethe was chiefly known to Europe as a crackbraincd
sentimentalist, who had invited unsympathising
readers rather to laugh than to weep over the " Sorrows
cf Werter." The first great literature produced by this
country which spread over the civilised nations, thrusting
back into dusty shelves the verse without soul and the prose
without muscle, which had formed the circulating library
of Europe—the first great literature that strode forth to
civilise and to conquer, restoring the ancestral past to its
duo place in human reverence, recalling from exile truth
and nature, binding man to man in the genial chain of
character and humour, refreshing the work-day world with
a joyous holyday of romance, —the first great literature
which poured its own young blood into the century, and,
rushing over Europe, found a home on every hearth, rose
in these islands, and, paramount in that literature for an
influence not less beneficent than supreme, towers your
immortal countryman Walter Scott. (Great applause.)
Measure not Scott's greatness by his effects only on the
imagination. (Hear.) By the law of all mental vibration
opinion is moved by the sounds that first agitate feeling.
What way Scott prepared throughout Europe for the in-
troduction of our language, and with our language our
reasoners as well as our poets ! Before his day how much
the language of France had overweighted the balance of
intellectual power in Europe ! Scott threw into the op-
posing scale the language of the Anglo-Saxon, and the in•
to!lect of these kingdoms became henceforth, not the casual
guest, but ono of the ruling monarchs of the continent.
Thus Scotland gathered together the broken and stormy
rays of intelligence that had before rather terrified than
cheered the dawn of the nineteenth century, and forming
them first through science into pure and tranquil light,
then dispersed them through literature to beautify
the world with all the pomp and variety of colour.
(Great applause.) Meanwhile, religion rather encouraged
than opposed the culture of the philosophy which did not
invade its province. I might say, in passing, that the ge-
neral character of ecclesiastical eloquence in Scotland, in
that peculiarity of subtle disquisition, which has been
alleged against it as a fault, has hadem effect akin to phi-
losophy in the demand it makes on the reasoning and re-
flective power of the listener. But I hurry on to one illus-
trious instance of the sympathy established here between
the philosopher and the preacher. I remind you of your
own great Chalmers. (Cheers.) In this town he delivered'
his famous astronomical discourses, and from the printing
press of Glasgow issued those essays in which he has brought
to bear upon subjects purely social or
philosophical an un-
derstanding so masculine, couched in a style so gravely
sweet. Formed by such teachers, guided by such auspices,
your fathers went forth upon the world. indeed,
Not, all
to be the votaries of literature and science; not all to win
distinction for their individual selves ; the large majority
were contented with the siusple paths of practical life. But
that large majority, still adding to the aggregate character
of your country, by the attributes of strong sense, patient
courage, tranquil honesty, that moral dignity which com-
mands respect, and thus, spreading ou every soil where
they found home the healthful influence of the native soil.
(Cheers.) Students, these aro the men you are to succeed,
and from the homes and hearths of these men you come
here to discipline your energies and advance the name that
you inherit. And will not that thought animate yon
more than any dry exhortation to industry or labour?
Why, who among you would grudge any toil that might
make him still more the joy and pride of a Scottish
home, or give to Scotland another of those names
which preserve her nationality more distinct and so-
vereign than if the Stuart still reigned in Holyrood,
and the thistle were not blended with the rose ?
(Loud cheers.) We]!, then, I take your industry
for granted ; let us see how and where it should be applied.
And, first, there immediately comes before us the learning
of Greece and Rome—those still dead languages of that
still dead world, which seems to the ignorant so indefi-
nitely remote, and which to scholars and statesmen is
always so intimately near. It has indeed been asked in
our day, " But what avail to spend so much time in the
acquisition of languages which are only of use to profes-
sional scholars ? It might be very well in the dark ages,
when no other literature existed. But now in modern
tongues there is a living literature. Why not confine our-
selves to the language we may have to talk, and to the
books by which modern ideas are conveyed ?" This sounds
plausible enough ; but before you allow the argument to
weigh with you one jot ask any man not a professional
scholar, but who has in youth acquired a fair acquaintance
with the classic languages, and who has since attained to
eminence in active life, at the bar, in the pulpit, in the
senate, in the public offices, iu medicine,—in short, any
calling which requires a high degree of education—ask him
if he has
_found the classics of any use—ask him if he would
have changed the ideas he gathered from Greek and Latin
for the ideas which any living literature except his own
could have bestowed; and I will venture to predict that
suchlman, if he pause to analyse his own mind, will
answer that to Greek and Latin his obligations are so great
that he cannot even tell what ho might have been, or how
far he might have succeeded, if you struck from his mind
the early habits of accuracy which the study of these dead
languages imperatively necessitates ; or if he were compelled
to exchange for French, Italian, or even German literature
those large and luminous ideas which flash across him at the
loosest reference to the City of the Violet Crown—or to the
Conscript Fathers and the Roman Capitol. Ask, next, some
man, also eminent in life, lent who has been deprived
of a classical education, if he has ever felt a disadvantage
in that loss ; and I am no less confident that he will tell
you the loss has been a subject of regret in every stage of
his career—that on many occasions it has intimidated his
judgment, oppressed him with a sense of infirmity, ob.
perhaps contented with some
whenb for that loss he would have
justly
ob-
structed the recognition by others of his talents and ac-
sqeueiornedmaeray
arrogated the
tsg'raadnde,inade himut
foremost. (Loud cheers.) Till you
have asked these questions and found that I deceive you
as to the answers you obtain, take for granted that the
uses not only to scholars, but to
men °o f the
f the deadworld,g
languages, not
testible. And why ? Why ?
Ono obvious reason is in their very difficulty, and the con-
tinuous and symmetrical exercise of the faculties which
the contest with that difficulty requires. They discipline
the powers which, whatever be our calling, we most need
in after life—first, by that minute accuracy which is neces-
sary to master the roots of the language and the order of
Leek construction; and the habit of accuracy thus me-
chanically contracted gives to after pursuits a truthful
closeness in detail and a facility of generalisation. Se-
condly, in the development of a sound sense and health-
ful judgment, through the formation of a correct and chast-
ened taste, accustomed early to distinguish between sim-
plicity and vulgarity, elevation and bombast—a taste
formed, not according to the mannerism of a modern tongue
which shifts with each generation, but according to models
fixed and perpetual, and received as such in every civilised
community, There is, too, this notable advantage in the

P
ancient tongues over an exclusive or preponderant atten
tion to the modern. Study as we will the Greek and Latin,
we do not make ourselves less purely national in our own
ideas or our own mo les of expressing them. But if, in
youth, which is the season of imitation, we were to culti-
vate exclusively, say the French or the German, ton to
one but we should half denationalise ourselves -- we should
Frenchify or Germanise our minds and our style ; and
I think you must have observed occasionally in Great
Britain, but perhaps more frequently in America, that
writers who, not having accomplished themselves in classic
literature, apply with passionate devotion to a foreign
modern language—say the German—do really so corrupt
and adulterate sober English that it seems as if they sought
to torture their own language into the agonised confession
that it was a thievish impostor that had run away from
another. (Laughter, and cheers.) And, whether we would
or not, I will now show you why those ancient languages
must, in preference to all modern tongues, remain the
groundwork of a liberal and comprehensive education. I
have said that youth is the season of imitation. We place
before youth not only books to read, but authors who are
to serve as models of ideal excellence, and whom we com-
mend to its special love and approbation. Where could we
agree as to such models in any modern language? Take, for
instance, the French. It is clear that models of a language
must be sought in the greatest masters of its style and dic-
tion. Who are the two greatest such masters in French ?
Unquestionably still, in their several ways, Rousseau and
Voltaire. But what prudent teacher would commend Rous-
seau and Voltaire as models to be studied night and day by
inquisitive and imitative youth? Pass to holy. However
we admire the sublimity of Dante, his austere and Gothic
beauties cannot furnish the models for general study ; while
the other Italian masters, such as Aristo and Boccaccio,
who might furnish hints for more flowing and easy graces
of style, aro scarcely those whom the people of these king-
doms would like to see the elementary moralists in a manly
and healthful education. Turn to Germany ; and Goethe
meets us colossal at the threshold. But would Goethe's
warmest admirer commend to his own young sons that
calm artist who so profoundly depicts our infirmities and
frailties, but who rejects from his canvass the rude outlines
of fortitude and heroism—would he commend to his sons
as their early study and model the greatest of the Germans
whose mind has been compared to a cupola lighted from
below,with the same confidence with which ho would dismiss
them to their Homer, to learn there " in the large language
of the early gods"— learn to love in Hec tor the defender of his
country and admire in Achilles the foot that cannot yield,
and the lips that hate a lie as the gates of hell ? Again,
in the ancient language both the popular mythology and
the philosophical freethinking are so wholly remote from us
that we have no fear of their injuring the Christian tenets
we profess. I apprehend that no student would be tempted
to raise an altar to Jupiter, nor be seduced by Lucretius
into a belief in the doctrine of atoms. But in the great
body of modern continental languages, when we escape
from the writers who openly or covertly sap Christianity
to the writers who most warmly oppose infidelity, the in-
separable distinctions between the Roman Catholic religion
and all denominations of our Protestant faith obstruct us
the moment we come to decide upon models for minute
study and passionate attachment. If, for instance, I wore
compelled to turn to France for models of eloquence in
that language—those who afforded the most classic study
for the arrangement and method of discaurse—were the
two Roman Catholic preachers, Bourdaloue and Bossuet ;
yet would these two ornaments of the Papacy be models as
harmless to the creed of Protestant pupils as our old
heathen friends, Demosthenes and Cicero ? (Cheers.) For
these reasons and for many more, though modern languages
must always be a most valuable accessory to a polite educa-
tion, they can never become exclusively its groundwork ;
and, unless we did for hardy youths at college what is
done, I suppose, for young ladies at boarding-schools—(a
laugh)—mince up the literature of whole nations into sap-
less extracts ; or sinless we confined ourselves rigidly to
the literature of our own (and even there we could scarcely
agree upon the authors to be received universally as models),
wo must, perforce, come back to the languages of Greece
and Rome. Anti is that a subject of regret? What lite-
rature is so peculiarly adapted as that which thoselanguages
contain for citizens and freemen,? In an age when so much
more was learnt from conversation than from books the
life of study and the life of action were so close to each
other that the roar of the Agora shook the Platain trees in
the gardens of the Academe. Hence it is the characteristic
of ancient literature that it is pre-eminently practical ; it
abounds with lessons useful to civilised men in all lands and
all times—it never grows old. A newspaper of last year is
a stalsr thing, more apart from the talk of the very hour in
which I am now addressirg you than a quotation from a
speech of the Corinthian ambassadors at Thucydides, or a
reference from Horace to the graves principula anticitius.
And with this practical character there is nothing mean or
cynical. Cast from your memory a few licentious passages
episodical to the true spirit of the chaste Caineenve, from
which I am sure that you turn with the quick instinct of
masculine purity you take from your Scottish homes, and
what a mass of healthful literature remains I Love of coun-
try, recognition of social duties, the spirit that can defy
the haughty, the humanity that spares the subjected, re-
verence to virtue as that celestial something which neither
takes nor resigns its dignities'' arbitriopopularissuite"—
is it nothing that all these should come before our eyes in
youth, radiant with the loveliness of Athens, or stately
with the majesty of Rome? Thus far, then, we are agreed,
and you will lose no opportunity now presented to you to
increase your intimacy with the languages and the authors
whose uses in after-life you so evidently appreciate. Bat
unquestionably your culture of the ancient learning is not
to supersede your natural destination as the examiners and
enforcers of the new ideas which link you with the age in
which you are to be actors. (Cheers.) You have your
choice in the many subdivisions of intellectual labour—tho
church, the bar, the various branches of the medical pro-
fession, commerce and manufactures—in short, the busy
callings of life. I pretend not here to add to the lessons of
the eminent persons who administer the instruction of
the university. I can but suggest a few general hints,
which may equally apply to each vocation that you may
severally adopt. And, first, let me impress upon you the
value o: definite purpose. Having once chosen that calling
which then becomes your main object in life, cling to it
firmly—bring to bear on it all your energies, all the infor-
mation you are elsewhere variously collecting. All men
aro not born with genius, but every man can acquire pur-
pose, and purpose is the backbone and marrow of genius
—nay, I can scarcely distinguish one from the other. For
what is genius ? Is it not an impassioned predilection for
some definite art or study, to which the mind converges
all its energies, each thought or image that is suggested by
nature or learning, solitude or converse, being habitually
and involuntarily added to those ideas which are ever re-
turning to the same central point, so that the mind is not
less busily applying when it seems to he the most released
from application, That is genius, and that is purpose—
the ono makes the great artist or poet, the other the great
man of action. And with purpose comes the grand secret
of all worthy success, which some men call will, but which
I would rather call earnestness. If I were asked, from
my experience of life, to say what attribute most impressed
the minds of others or most commanded fortune, I should
say " earnestness." Take, for instance, the House of
Commons as the highest type of a popular assembly.
What is the great secret of success there ? You all re-
member that Demosthenes placed the threefold art of the
orator in delivery. I think the word he used was acting
or stage play. But though delivery, no doubt, is the ap-
propriate excellence of the mere orator, the threefold gift
of the Parliamentary speaker is earnestness. Have but
fair sense and a complete knowledge of your subject, and
then be thoroughly in earnest to impress your own
honest conviction upon others, and, no matter what
your delivery, though your gestures shocked every rule
in Quintilian, you would command the ear and in-
fluence the debates of the most accomplished, the most
fastidious, and, take it altogether, the noblest assembly,
of freemen in the world ; while some man, in whose deli-
very no fault could be detected, except the one defect of
that earnest conviction which Itoscius himself could not
teach if the man has not got it, would be indeed admired
as a firework, but would never guide like a star. As it is
in the House of Commons, which is but the representative
of the national mind, so it is with all life throughout these
nations. The earnest man wins way for himself, and ear-
nestness and truth go together. Never affect to ba other
than you are—either richer or wiser. Never be ashamed
to say, " I do not know." Men will then believe you when
you say " I do know." Never be ashamed to say, whether
as applied to time or money, " I cannot afford it"—" I
cannot afford to waste an hour in the idleness to which you
invite me—l cannot afford the guinea you ask me to throw
away." Once establish yourself and your mode of life as
what they really are, and your foot is on solid ground,
whether for the gradual step onward, or for the sudden
spring over a precipice. (Cheers.) From those maxims
let me deduce another—learn to say " No" with decision ;
" Yes" with caution—" No" with decision whenever it
resists a temptation ; " Yes" with caution whenever it im-
plies a promise. A promise once given is a bond inviolable.
(Cheers.) A man is already of consequence in the world
when it is known that we can implicitly rely upon hun.
I have frequently seen in my life a person preferred to a '
long list of applicants, for some important charge which
lifts him at once into station and fortune, merely because
he has this reputation, that when he says he knows a
thing he knows it, and when he says he will do a thing he
will do it. Muse, gentlemen, over these maxims; you will
find it easy enough to practise them, for when you have
added them altogether the sum total looks very much like
Scotchman. (Applause.) Let me now touch, though
bat humbly, as becomes a layman, upon those sacred truths
which are interwoven with your faith and enforced by
to
iyourpr
esapai
oritualut eaa hers.cre
fo r e clot
9is f
allen oyuoguhr foraut
Imo
rie e s
taor ntehs
at lty
Di-
vine standard of good which wo can never attain, but
should ever seek to approach, so that, to use a homely
image, the conscience may be the bookkeeper of life.
Every man who would perform great actions must perpe-
tually refer to some judgment or criterion elsewhere, which
serves both for his stimulus and his guide. In that terrible
and the elephants of
is said to have exclaimed,
night when Alexander the Great was forcing his way
across the swollen waves of tho Hydaspes, thunder and
Athenians,hurricaneopows hteatb.dangersa
naroundk,he
e
I bravo to be recorded with
praise by you!" But in conquests more arduous and last-
ing than those of Alexander—conquests which every one
has to achieve over his own heart and its tempters, how
grand and how accurate becomes the motive that stimu-
lates and. guides to the man who habitually inquires,
" How will this bear a record iu the eyes of Him who
Pores
lightning
on tahneand
alone unerringly reads each desire, and alone impartially
weighs every deed ?" (Cheers.) Gentlemen, following
the example set by more than one of my predecessors, it is
my intention to offer some prizes to your generous compe-
tition. I shall place, for that purpose, the modest sum of
50 guineas in the hands of your professors, leaving it to
their discretion to select such subjects as their experience
may suggest, most useful or pleasing to the general body pf
the students. But, in addition to those prizes, I myself "11l
now propose to the highest class of your scholars a prize et
30 guineas to the candidate who shall most worthily render
into lyrics, Greek or Latin at the choice of the competitors,
one of the immortal songs of Robert Burns. (Yehetap-
plause.) At that name I find myself, in conclusion, natu-
rally carried back to the ideas with which I commenced my
direct appeal to you as your Rector. I commenced that
appeal by invoking your national pride, so that you might
be worthy the heritage and transmission
of your national
renown. Nor do I believe that there is one thoughtful
Englishman who will blame me for that invocation ; for
what patriot can desire, what reasoner expect, what states-
man be enabled, to erase from a laud the traditions that

hallow it, or rob from the heart of a free people the history
which is its life-blood, beats in every pulse, and tingles in
every vein? This is no requisite in the obligations of that
union which links the interests and blends the loyalty of
kindred races speaking one language and subject to a single
sceptre. But let us rejoice that we are now advancing on the
future, hand in band, every English victory a Scottish tri-
umph, and every Scottish glory au English boast. (Cheers.)
To you, to the men of your generation, is consigned the
latter half of that century which your fathers enriched
with such stores and adorned with such trophies. Before
your energy spreads a dominion never compassed by the
eagle of the Caesars, extending from the first well-spring of
civilisation, under Indian palm-trees, to the last vent of its
redundant flow, amid Australasian pastures. To your aid
science contributes inventions which would have seemed to
your progenitors fables as wild as the wings of Daedalus or
the talisman of Abaris. To you the earth is daily revealing
new mines of gold, and the heavens are vouchsafing new
stars of intellectual light. Legislation for you has solved
many of the problems that perplexed your fathers, and
questions which at the dawn of this century threatened to
rend society are now peacefully settled. Compared with
those who have gone before you you have little to reform—
you have infinitely more to gu ,rd. Such is the account which
the trustees for half the century have rendered to those who
are Lora to enjoy the inheritance of the half that follows.
Filled with a sense of that magnificent bequest, and of the
sublime responsibility it involves, go forth, students of
Glasgow, to be in your turn the administrators of time, for
the approval of Providence, and for the benefit of man.
(The Lord Rector concluded amid a tremendous shout of
applause, which continued for several minutes.)