resolutions of the Faculty of Advocates. Now, I am not aware that any question of vested interests was entertained when the existing regulations were made in the Medical Faculty, or in the Theological Faculty, or in degrees for Science. Yet precisely the same plea might have been urged against these improvements then, as is suggested to block improvement in the Faculty of Arts now; and the precedent is of great importance as showing that (while every care should be taken to prevent special hardship in making any transition) no absolute bar can ever be pleaded on the ground of such private interests to the natural development and expansion of our University system. But

2. No such difficulty need at all events exist in the case of any future appointment to any Chair in any University of Scotland. This is the very least that Parliament, and those two Parliamentary constituencies which are most concerned in this matter, should make sure of. Whatever may be said as to existing professors in Edinburgh having slipped into higher rights than their medical predecessors, there can be no reason whatever why all new professors everywhere should not, after the passing of this University Bill, take their chairs on the same footing on which professors of Medicine, Theology, and Science, now hold theirs in Edinburgh. That footing would be a possible competition with some distinguished University teacher; though, if the scheme sketched above were followed, the competition would be more guarded and restricted than in some of our Universities is already found to exist, and to exist most successfully.

3. These two considerations seem to reduce the alleged injustice to a minimum, and that which I am now to mention will, I think, wipe it out altogether. We are waiting, as I write, for a third edition of a Universities Bill, whose leading purpose may perhaps be held to be, to procure a certain endowment from national funds for University chairs. In the case of any future appointments to those chairs there seems no reason in the world why that should not at once be made on the footing of open teaching, under the regulation of the University Court. But in the case of existing professors, in those Faculties where open teaching does not at

present exist, I should be prepared to propose that the University Court should receive no power to institute open teaching, or license an extra-mural teacher, until the incumbent of the intra-mural chair in question has shared in the endowment we look forward to. That endowment, of course, will be by no means his full emolument; it will be rather in the nature of a minimum or base of operations, to be advanced from by means of the fees of the class. Still, Still, the endowment will itself be an advance upon the small amounts which in many cases are at present given as salary; and, whether it be great or small, it will in any case be something fixed and secure, and a new gift to the professor by the nation. There seems no reason why the existing professor, at the time he receives such an advantage, should not receive it under the same conditions for the future as his successor will have to submit to, and under which, in Edinburgh, professors of three Faculties already find themselves.

While therefore the advantages of the system broaden and brighten the more they are looked at, the difficulties formerly felt as to its extension are, at the present moment, very near the vanishing point. It follows that the time has come for those interested in the Universities to exert a steady pressure on this subject for their good. That pressure will have to be maintained during the whole period of the working of any Executive Commission. Upon its working, and in particular upon the question, whether it finally hands over the teaching of each University to its governing Court in an elastic or in a hide-bound form, will depend whether the Universities of Scotland are to have a development and a future.

Nor can there be any doubt who have the right and duty, as they have obviously the interest, to exert this pressure and promote this development. It belongs to the collective membership of the University Councils, and a body numbering so many thousands of educated men, resident in all parts of Scotland and outside it, could not have a more worthy call. It is their own right that is in question-their ancient academic right, which in modern Scotland is, in some faculties

Council in this right is in no sense a private interest. A universitas of Scottish graduates can indeed have no other interest than the prosperity of their University. Only we believe that every University has two sides, and that the graduates who teach outside the walls are no less part of the system than the professors who teach within. But each is the complement of the other; and that means that it is the interest of each that the other should flourish in all possible vigour. I lay stress upon this, because it has been suggested that open teaching necessarily involves a certain discord and severance of interests. Of course this principle, like all principles, may occasion a friction in some quarters so long as it is not heartily accepted; and perhaps that is the case at the present moment. And even when it has been accepted, it of course involves a principle of permanent emulation, and therefore a possible separation at some particular time of the interest of an individual teacher outside from that of another within. But there is no hostility whatever between the two sides of the system; on the contrary, each is dependent upon the other. It is for the advantage of the intra-mural teaching, that the extra-mural, which is to feed and nourish as well as to stimulate and supplement it, shall be at all times encouraged and supported and kept up to its full vigour. And it is for the advantage of the extra-mural teaching, that the intra-mural, around which it gathers and up to which it grows, shall be maintained at its highest efficiency and attractiveness-maintained, that is, at a point so much higher that there shall be a continual inducement for the extra-mural teacher to pass over into it, and partake of its honours and emoluments. Each half of the system has a direct interest in the prosperity of the other. It would indeed be too much to expect that the extramural teacher should make the welfare of the professoriate his special care. And it would be too much to call upon the professor to devote himself specially to the strengthening and extending of the extra-mural School. But it is not too much to expect from us-the mass of University graduates outside both-that we shall discern the relation and interdependence of what are really two sides of one system, and

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hall henceforth devote ourselves to the Scottish University ■s the resulting whole.

It is possible to do so, and to do it with justice to both ides. How carefully Germany has during the past fifty ears maintained the relative proportions of each, may be een in the recently translated book on that subject by Dr. onrad. We in this country stand now upon the threshold E all that, as of so much besides that is new and great. It ay be of vast importance to Scotland that her coming years ould beat with a strong and full pulse of intellectual life. ut how is that life to be secured? Organisation no ubt is not life. But it is its basis. And organisation on the system of Open Teaching is demonstrably the st security we in Scotland can have for an unfailing ademic life in the fifty years to come.