Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-07-09
SCOTCH PROFESSORS.
Close Relations With Students.
Worship of Eloquence in the North.

From T rs Weekly.
Heavy shadows falling from the great
war did not conceal from the public
eve the announcement that the crown.
acting through the secretary for Scot
land and his advisers. had appointed
four new professors in the Scotch uni
yersities. A fifth was promoted from
the chair of literature at Aberdeen to
the similar chair in Edinburgh Inc
fame of DIR. John Mason, the biogra-
pher of Milton. who occupied the Edin-
burgh chair of literature before Prot
George Saintsbury, recently retired,
arrived to add further distinction to 1T.
had long since made that chair. now to
be filed by Prof. Grierson. from Aber.
deem, an avenue of literary culture or
cosmopolitan Importance.
The Scotch professor of the past mas
been sui generis. He has been a dis
tinct variety inside the species OF
learned men the world over. In
small country possessing four uni
versities. and holding the kirk to be
the supreme institution, the seat OF
social and political power. an instance
on a limited scale of Imperium in inn
perio. it could hardly be otherwise than
that the professors. in all the faculties
of learning, should be pillars of the
kirk. Huxley. in his obscure youth,
was candidate for Edinburgh
chair. The patronage was in the hands
of the town council. and Huxley was
After spending some time with one of
them in the back parlor of his shop
in the High street he was about to
leave. when the councillor recalled him
member of any Christian communion
Subscription to the Westminster con-
fession of faith was binding upon all
the professors until the nineteenth
century was well advanced. Civil en-
gineering and chemistry. not less than
dogmatic theology and church history,
required professors sound in the tradi-
tional fundamentals of the kirk.
To lecture is not necessarily to teach.
From of old the typical Scotch pro-
fessor has both lectured and taught.
His students needed no coach" and
few of them in the times before Mr..
Carnegie arrived could afford ex-
traneous help to save them from the
Dantean Inferno of being "plucked"-
the Scottish term for "plowed" in
England-in the examination for de-
grees. Oral and written examinations.
regular essays and exercises, Were
reckoned of equal Importance with the
lectures. The student attended the
classes. and not merely the lectures
of the professors Discipline within
each class was an essential element in
the students curriculum. The pro-
fessor, even after the classes grew
numerically into three heavy fisures.
cultivated a personal relation to- the
student. and was constantly on the out
look for the lad O. PARTS"
In a country in which 1.-THE speakfn1
man in the pulpit was supreme where
the great sermon was the ultimate test
and evidence of learning and intel
lectual power, the professor in earlier
times. without surprising literary
style, was uncomfortable. Elouuence
was the flower and fruit of brains. and
the accepted sign and symbol of in
spiration, In the eighteenth century.
after the Scottish vernacular tongue
was superseded, in prose at least nv
the English of Addison and johnson. a
great striving after eloquence. in a
manner an epidemic of style. appeared
in the universities