to their prayers, "From the devil and all landladies good Lord deliver us." After having visited about a dozen of these lodginghouses, with no other effect than to enlarge my conception of how degraded female humanity could be when it tried hard. enough, I was considering what to do, when a smart young workman passed me, looked at me hard, and asked me if there was any place for which I was searching. I must have appeared very bewildered. At once I recollected all the counsels that had been given to me by cautious and attached friends against trusting in any civily-spoken townsman. Thanks to our comic novelists, not a country bumpkin ever now comes into the city without believing that every citizen who speaks to him a kind word means to steal his purse and to cut his throat. But I was in that state of demoralisation which only those who spend a few hours in lodging-hunting can ever in the least conceive. So when this young man-whom I afterwards discovered to be a street-preacher, and as honest a fellow as ever broke bread-spoke to me I at once told him frankly that I was looking for a lodging. Upon this, after considering for a while, he replied that he thought he knew of one to suit me not very far off. I at once went with him, and, turning into a very new street, he stopped at a house which looked over much open ground of grass park with trees, and having led me up a stair, knocked at a door. As soon as the door was open, I knew from the happy, cheerful face of the landlady that if the lodging suited me at all, there I would stay. It did suit me. The rooms were large and airy, the outlook excellent, the cookery perfection, my landlady as cheerful as a bird, my landlord a handsome, manly, civil, sensible fellow, who had a way of thinking for himself, and what suited me most of all was the rent, which was only ten shillings a week.

Very much can be said against the system that every year turns loose upon Glasgow hundreds of young lads, untaught in the world's ways, knowing vice only by name, inclined by all early teaching to innocence, and yet full of wild and craving desires they hardly know for what, leading them they deem not where. They go to lodge in the houses of people who may be the very worst of their kind. Absolute and uncontrolled liberty to a young lad of sixteen or seventeen years, having for the first

time in his life the free control of money is, in cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh, absolutely prenicious. True, by far the greater part come out of the trial strengthened and abler for the world's war and work, but still a minority are lost. And even those who escape do not escape untainted. There are many clergymen, even learned and pious men, who look back upon their student days with horror and disgust, and who never think of them without a bitter pang in the heart and a burning blush in the cheek. The practical philanthropist who erects large and commodious boarding houses for our Scottish colleges will perform a noble work. But this must be built not to please himself but to suit his clients. We all regard the Scottish student as poor and proud; how poor and how proud he often is few really is aware. I have known three young men, living huddled together in one small and miserable apartment, tasting butcher meat not oftener than once a week, sharing one lexicon with other two students as poor as themselves, who lived next door to them, and yet these would in the most off hand manner put down their shillings for any little subscription as if shillings had been as plentiful with them as ideas. Now, no boarding house that could be erected would be cheap enough for these, and they would disdain to enter it on any terms that looked like charity. Nor are these likely to need the moral protection that such a place would give. The towering ambition or the sacred purpose that leads them to undergo such trials will keep them pure from vulgar vices. The boarding houses should be built to accommodate the middle class of students. In each of them there might be room made for fifty or sixty, every student having a small apartment of his own, at a rent not less than five or more than ten shillings a-week. There should be, too, a common table of which the characteristics ought obviously to be cheapness, plenty, and wholesome quality, and a study well furnished with works of reference. For a shilling a day or less an excellent dinner could be provided, far above the ordinary lodging house fare. Over each of these establishments should be placed a tutor. I would not give him any very great authority, and what authority he had should be controlled by a committee elected from the students themselves. For it is a fact, the common ignorance of which is amply astonishing, that when

a considerable number of Scottish youths are left to themselves, without impertinent interference, moral influence at once makes itself felt and a lofty moral tone prevails. In a college boarding house, so ordered, a lad would be guarded from vicious courses by that which is the only guard of virtue, outside of one's own heart and conscience, a powerful public sentiment. Scottish college life would no longer mean solitude plus temptation. The student would he set down amid merry, honest, hardworking companions; the mental and moral atmosphere about him would be keen and clear and sweet, the intercourse of hall and dining-room would make his learning living and graceful instead of the dull matter of facts and figures that it often is.

Such an addition to Scottish University life would be more valuable than half-a-dozen extra classes. It would teach sympathy, and sympathy is the key to all the higher culture. At present it must be confessed that our students often look upon their college course, not as a means of changing, strengthening, and developing their own natural faculties, but as a thing to get over and done, by whatever means they easiest may. It is their labour of Hercules, disagreeable, but necessary. And yet, from the very moment of their entering Glasgow University, how different is the appeal made to their heart and mind. For my own part, while I retain mind and memory, my first impression of the teaching of Glasgow University will be engraven deep and bright. Nearly all the students had gathered in a large hall that served us as a chapel. There we sat a noisy, yelping crew, cheering, bawling, singing, stamping, and enjoying ourselves to perfection. I believe that we were judiciously allowed to come into the hall half-an-hour before proceedings commenced, in order that we might exhaust our lungs and our legs, and thus be less inclined to offer any interruption. Suddenly there was some degree of quiet, followed by the most vehement cheering, and, with slow and dignified march, by two and two, the professors entered the hall. They were preceded by a fat, good-natured man, whose eye seemed to have a constant inclination to sly winking, and whose face was evidently kept up to a proper pitch of solemnity by constant and vigorous efforts. He carried a mace, an instrument which looks like a bed-post broken off in the middle, and the use of which is

not obvious. I at first supposed that it might be employed to break the heads of refractory students, but I at least never saw it in use. Behind the mace came a little man, whom I looked upon with profound reverence. Principal Caird is such a man that, wherever and whenever you saw him, you would want to stand and look after him. He is one who has fought all his life with great ideas, and whose countenance bears in all its yellow wrinkles the scars of his conflict. He seems to move in a very atmosphere of thought and emotion, and yet with a proud look, as if round about him were viewless and mighty things all mastered to his will and wish. Indeed, so intellectually high and mighty does he appear, that one is almost forced to ask of himself the question— "Is Caird as great a man as he looks?" Few of those who have lived under his influence are likely to be fair judges in the matter. From the moment an intellectual and enthusiastic youth hears first the sonorous and thrilling accents of Caird's voice, Caird masters and possesses his spirit. Complaint is made that so many of the younger clergy seem to imitate the Principal of Glasgow University. The imitation is often unconscious and involuntary. There is about the man a spell so patent that impressable minds are almost compelled to repeat his thoughts; to shape their language to the music of his sentences, and even to adopt the tone and style of his speech, over which he has an artist's mastery. Caird's sway is mesmeric. You almost seem to see the minds of his hearers following him in a waking dream along the radiant path of his thoughts. The effect is the more wonderful because Caird never descends to his audience, but forces his audience up to him. His opening sentences seem to spurn the material world from beneath him, and then he unfolds in musically-calling and soul-taunting phrases the intellectual life, with its hopes and its fears, its dangers, its temptations, and its triumphs. When he has done, in the moment's deep silence that follows his echoing peroration, a curtain seems perceptibly to descend, cutting off a fair region of marvellous lights and colours, and, with a deep sigh, we came back to common day and common earth. It is not too much to say that Caird pervades the intellectual life of the University. As to his power and place in the kingdom of thought, I believe that he is a much greater man than appears in his public

writings. Indeed, as one who appeals neither to sense nor to passion, who fortifies himself with no low interest either in religion or in politics, perhaps there has never been any orator of his kind so great. So, at least, I thought, hearing him first that day. In his glowing syllables the spirit of the age seemed to speak. And thus seen, it is no longer the mean and grovelling thing to which it seems the business of so much modern rhetoric to degrade it, but a gracious and noble being clothed "in white samite, mystic, wonderful."

Coming forth from the spell of Caird's eloquence you are apt to be possessed with the sense of the unreality of things. One cure for that is to push a pin into your arm. It recalls you instantly to materiality. Another way, and yet as effective, is to proceed to pay your college fees. For, as the sage says, or would say if he had thought of it, "there is something in the paying of money that will recall a man from the seventh heavens." I might write much of this plan of curing myself of unreality. For one thing, it is very curious and amusing to note the manner in which different professors collect their fees. The professor of Latin, who cherishes the harmless delusion that he is a man of business, assumes the air of the president of the Bank of England; the professor of Greek regards the giver and the gift with the severity of a marble god; the professor of Mathematics smiles, almost seems to wink, as if it were all a nice little joke, and he had much the best of it; while the professor of Logic glares at you with an expression stern yet kind, as if to say, "I pardon you this time, but don't do it again." I do not believe that there exists in Her Majesty's dominion a better, abler, or kinder body of gentlemen than the professors of Glasgow University, and in future articles I shall strive to paint their portraits with touches as truthful as one may who owes to each and all of them a debt of gratitude for flowing, gracious courtesy and kindly teaching.

M. A.