The Central Glamorgan Gazette, and General, Commercial, and Agricultural Advertiser. — 1879-02-07 (Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, Wales)

LORD HARTINGTGN  AT EDINBURGH.  [FROM THE " TIIIES."1  If there be a point in Lord Hartington's address to which exception might most usefully be taken, it is, we think, that he omits a caution with which his recognitlon of the influence of academical teaching greatly needs to be balanced. ' When he urges young man to form fixed political principles at the universities, and to grasp them firmly in after life, he is in danger of encouraging a tendency which, in exaggeration, is one of their greatest dangers. ~.'orne men, like Lord Ha.rtington himself, have their party allegiance and their general political views decided for them; and perhaps it is not so undesirable • fate as it might theoretically seem. But the great majority of young men at the universities have no such solid anchors on which to rest; and when at the university they are in a condition of mental chaos, out of which order is being slowly developed. For men in such a stage of growth few temptations are more perilous than that of seizing on some attractive principle, enforced by the personal inluence of a powerful teacher, and staking their whole mental, moral. and political life upon it. Many a man has thus nailed his colours to a doomed cause, and has wrecked what might otherwise have been a useful and successful career. Out of these hasty and immature acts of self-devotion to fixed principles spring in after-life the prejudice and -blindness tvhich foster party spirit and produce irreconcileable antagonisms. A university is properly theplaoe for learning to do justice to all opinions, and for I understanding principles and habits of thought I which are alien from our own temperaments. , The statesmen who were Dugald Stewart's pupils I would not have turned his instructions to such I good effect if they had not been capable of balancing them by the lessons of observation: and it would in all probability be found in the case of every great teacher that his most useful work lay, not in the dogmatic principles he inculcated, but in cultivating in his pupils the habit and the capacity of thought. But, however this may be, Lord Hartington's address is a valuable exposition of the aeryices which may be rendered to the I political life, not merely of England and Scotland, I but of the world, by the work of universities.  It is proposed as an experiment to illuminate the reading room of the British Museum by means of the electric light. The result of the Hoard of Trade inquiry into the stranding of the steamer State of Louisiana on Hunter's 1100 k, near Larne Island, is that no one was in fault, and that the certificates of the officers be returned them. The York Herald is informed that Mr. Holmes, of Monkwearinouth, has won the second prize in the Paris Lottery, value £lthJO. The Paris correspondent of the Times states that this prize has been won by M. Girard, of Nice. In a Convocation holden at Oxfort University on the 31st January, the Bev. Dr. Evans, Vice. Chancellor presiding, the University seal was affixed to an address of condolence to the Queen on the lamented death of the Princess Alice.  Her Majesty has respited Thomas Richardson, Who was sentenced to death at Newcastle Assizes, for the murder of Jwhn Hart, a fellow miner. The Sheriff communicated the news to• the prisoner, who received it with evident delight.  Tex REPRESENTATION 07 -Ai