But in lieu of Stalls, Mitres, and fat Benefices, there is something still to animate a Scotsman's exertions in the field of Learning. They must spring from brighter views and nobler aspirations. We may at least hold up to his ambition those high hopes and purified desires that have filled and fired exalted souls in every age. Present eminence and future fame,-be they shapes or phantoms, illusions or realities,-have this solid and permanent advantage:-they will ever be for generous spirits the cheap substitute of baser impulses; and, as an easy purchase of national distinction, may be promised without fear, as they may be paid without extravagance.

Once allow Classical Learning in Scotland to be rated at its true price, and honoured with a just degree of consideration, and we ask no more by way of incentive. The Scotch character is peculiarly well fitted to perceive the right objects, and to make the proper use, of Ancient Literature. With too much severity of judgment to estimate it at an exaggerated value, and too great a horror of rash conclusions, to be misled by flimsy or unsound analogies, it has all that shrewdness of remark which seizes instantaneously upon the useful part of whatever is submitted to its scrutiny, and all that taste and genuine enthusiasm which leads the elegant scholar, in studying the glorious models of antiquity, rather to imitate than worship, and rather to emulate than imitate. If Greek Learning were as highly cultivated in Scotland as we wish to see it, we should have more Jones and Tweddells than Monks or Blomfields, and more Grenvilles and Wellesleys than either.

But there is another formidable obstacle to such progress, and unluckily it stands upon the threshold. In many branches of knowledge, Prelection is the best, and in some the only feasible method of instruction. But all theory, and, what is much stronger, all experience, declare against its use as a chief or solitary mode of Classical tuition. In the Latin language, however, the Scotch Students at our Universities have, for the most part, been so admirably grounded at the Grammar-School, that they are in general quite fit to follow the rapid course of a Profes sor, and receive benefit from his loftiest lucubrations. From the High School of this city, in particular, where, under the system established by the late eminent Rector, elegance has been ingrated upon strength, the youths come forth full-fledged, and ready to accompany the boldest flights of the Professor of Humanity. But it is only too notorious, that boys at our schools are not equally well grounded in the Greek Language-and, even if they were so in proportion to the time bestowed upon this important branch, every one who has studied the Greek Classics

with attention, knows very well how much more difficult it is to attain perfection in the grammar,-familiarity with the idioms, -in short, an adequate acquaintance with the frame and structure of that copious, refined, and complicated tongue. The consequence is, that young men come to College by no means qualified to profit by a system which is restricted to public lecturing and occasional examination: And though we heartily concur with Mr Dalzel in his contempt for that bastard sort of classical learning, confined to philology and verbal criticism,——that overlooks all fine taste, and all beauty of composition, '—we are convinced, that so distinguished a scholar as that celebrated man must have wished, as much as ourselves, to see a little more close and familiar instruction united with the system of Prelection, which, by itself, does, and can do, so little good. We have no desire to see Prelection superseded altogether; and we shall shortly explain in what manner we think it may dered highly useful, and even necessary,-but we confess a very strong desire to see it seconded by some method, by which more accurate knowledge may be communicated, and a more certain progress ensured.

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There is no reason upon earth why, out of two or three hundred pupils who usually attend the class of one of our Greek Professors, and remain two or three winters in attendance, there should not be produced as large a proportion of sound and elegant scholars as out of a similar number of students at an English University. It is only necessary that a little more trouble should be taken, and a little more activity displayed, than is required at present in the occupants of our Greek chairs. Let them blend something of the character of an English tutor with the dignity of a Scotch Professor, and the business will be done. There is nothing to alarm the most apprehensive nerves in the idea thus thrown out. Of the students in our Greek Classes, there are so many who come from mere compulsion,--so many who come to hear little else than the literary disquisitions, or critical remarks of the Professor,-and so many whom stupidity or idleness will prevent from seizing the opportunities offered them, or to whom other branches of knowledge are so much more essential, that they have little time to spare for the cultivation of Greek letters,that the number to be instructed in the additional hours of more intimate tuition will seldom be considerable. It is to such as really aim at a high proficiency in classical learning,-who properly appreciate its value, and can afford time for its pursuit,-that we would have the Professor devote a portion of that plentiful leisure which remains to him after the discharge of the ordinary duties of the Chair.

The attendance at these hours must, of course, be wholly voluntary, and might even be proposed as the reward of good conduct and diligence in the usual routine of the Class. In a connexion of this nature between the Teacher and his Pupils, the latter gain sufficient confidence to show what may be working in their minds-to start their own ideas-and to have a thousand trains of thought awakened, and a thousand erroneous notions checked, which would remain unobserved and unrectified in the business of a public lecture. Whatever be the book read, or the subject under discussion, it is in such intercourse, and in such intercourse alone, that the Instructor can gain a thorough knowledge of the Pupil's capability, or the Pupil derive a lasting benefit from the Instructor's skill. We do not pretend to deny that the adoption of this plan would very much increase the labours of the office in question; but when we see the tutors of the English Universities, with not a fourth of the emolument, dedicating seven or eight hours every day, for more than half the year, to the business of tuition, we must think it rather hard that a Scotch Professor, with an ample income, honourable rank, and six months vacation, cannot do as much to promote the great cause of Greek Learning in his native country. The beginning of this article has pretty decidedly expressed our contempt for mere verbal scholarship, and the mechanical pedantry of learned ignorance; but we are very conscious, at the same time, how painful a progress, and how insufficient a knowledge, are the uniform consequences of a loose and random method of instruction. He that stops with grammar, has never tried his strength,-he that would dash on without it, will soon discover his weakness. We have here simply sketched out the general outline of what we conceive would form a great and useful addition to the plan of education now pursued in our Greek Classes :-the details would, of course, be filled up and modified according to the practical experience of the Professor. A good deal of vigour, attention, and enthusiasm, would be required to give full effect to such a system; but we think the object quite important enough to warrant the desire that such qualities may be forthcoming; and we venture to predict that the success would correspond with our most sanguine expectations. *

The person who shall succeed the late Mr Young, in the Greek Chair at Glasgow, will find it a most arduous task to support the fame which that Chair has acquired from the long labours of so distinguished a Professor. Few, indeed, can hope to rival the splendid abilities, and profound erudition," of a man who reflected so much

We repeat, that, in conjunction with this system, the ordinary method of Prelection would be not only useful, but indispensable. Constituted as the Northern Universities are, it would be foolish and extravagant to wish for such a revolution as would produce any thing analogous to the Oxford Examination for Degrees. But all the benefits, and even more than the benefits, which result from these examinations, may be attained by a right use of the powers which a Public Lecture places in the hands of the Professor. The same emulation may be excited by examining the pupils in public, and thus allowing them an opportunity of displaying their attainments,-and perhaps a scale of honours, resembling the College distinctions at Cambridge, might be introduced at the close of each session, for which the elder pupils might openly compete. In the course of public lecturing, likewise, the Professor finds an opportunity of conveying a vast deal of information (though we think the range taken under the present system a little too wide) upon points which his hearers have not sufficient reading, or sufficient ripeness of judgment, to make out for themselves. It is thus, too, that he can give them occasional glimpses of those classical delights, to which an accurate knowledge of the Greek language forms the only avenue, and which act upon the youth that is toiling at the rudiments of Atticism, in the same manner as a transient peep at the interesting truths of Natural Philosophy may be supposed to operate upon a learner in the fifth book of his Euclid. Such stimulants have great effect in a noviciate, especially when they are administered with all the emphasis of real enthusiasm. The only restraint we wish to see imposed upon such flights, is, that they should not extend too far, and that they should grow properly and naturally out of the subject in hand. We think it a great waste of time to take up hour

lustre upon his own situation, and the University in general. Whoever may be elected to succeed him, we have no doubt that the choice will do honour to the judgment of the Electors; but it seems to us, that his only chance of maintaining the reputation of the Class, will be, by adopting some method similar to what we have pointed out. We believe that too great refinement for the mass of his hearers was Mr Young's only fault :-Such refinement would answer very well in a private lecture, with a smaller number of pupils, where every notion would be analyzed, explained, and enforced, as soon as questioned, in the free intercourse and close discussions we would recommend. We shall look upon the proceedings of the new Professor with great interest and attention; and we sincerely hope to be able to hail his labours as the commencement of a fresh era in the Classical Education of the Scotch Universities.

after hour on the comparative anatomy of Homer and Tasso, or Virgil and Theocritus-in quotations from Akenside and lectures on Monimia. The Professor of Greek has no business to trespass upon the province of the Professor of Rhetoric: and if he do his duty properly, will find perfect occupation for his whole time, without consuming it in feeble comment or fruitless dissertation.

If the munificence of future times should ever add to the means which our Colleges already offer for the successful culture of classical learning, the encouragement of such endowments as are so liberally provided in the English Universities, we have no doubt that the intentions of the founders would be very rarely frustrated, and that the results of their bounty would prove extremely beneficial. At least, if this patronage and preferment were to be conferred in the same manner as all the patronage the Scotch Colleges at present possess is uniformly bestowed, we might confidently anticipate the unvaried exercise of impartial justice, and the regular promotion of merit. It is a proud thing for a Scotsman to look to the Professorships of our Universities, and to observe the general equity with which they are awarded to industry and genius, in whatever hands the right of election may happen to be vested. Let any man cast his eye over the list of illustrious names which grace our academic annals, and when he finds in every quarter such men as Reid, Stewart, Young, Dalzel, Gregory, Leslie, Playfair, Miller, Blair, Brown, and a crowd of others of equal, or nearly equal, reputation with these, he may spare us the trouble of predicting, that Scholarships and Fellowships, Bursaries and Exhibitions, if once founded in the Northern Universities, would be bestowed with similar good taste, and might produce an abundant harvest of emulative excellence.

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In this respect, at any rate, we should not seek to model our practice upon the example of the English Universities. that University, especially, to which some of our preceding observations have applied, the disposal of Fellowships, and other preferment, is conducted on a plan rather different from what we should think it right to recommend. In many of the Colleges, by the ludicrous enactments of the founders, fitness for election is restricted to some particular school, diocese, county, or kindred, to which their wisdom has deemed it proper to confine it. Yet, strange to say, it is among the Fellows so chosen alone, that we are to look for men who really deserve to have been eligible, and who almost countenance the folly of this mode of obtaining independence, by the good and active use they make of it. It seems as if, in those academic regions, certainty