is it beyond the power of human intelligence and energy, developed by civil and spiritual freedom, to turn sterile rocks and pestilential marshes into cities and gardens. Enlightened as your founder was, he little knew that he was himself a chief agent in a great revolution-physical and moral, political and religious-in a revolution destined to make the last first, and the first last-in a revolution destined to invirt the relative positions of Glasgow and Bologna. We cannot, I think, better employ a few minutes than in re viewing the stages of this great change in human affairs. The review shall be short. Indeed, I cannot do better than pass rapidly from century to century. Look at the world, then a hundred years after the seal of Nicholas had been affixed to the instrument which called your college into existence. We find Europe-we find Scotland especially, in the agonies of that great revolution which we emphatically call the Reformation.

The liberal patronage which Nicholas, and men like Nicholas, had given to learning, and of which the establishment of this seat of learning is not the least remarkable instance, had produced an effect which they had never contemplated. Ignorance was the talisman on which their power depended, and that talisman they had themselves broken. They had called in knowledge as a handmaid to decorate_superstition, and their error produced its natural effect. I need not tell you what a part the votaries of classical learning, and especially of Greek learning, the Humanists, as they were then called, bore in the great movement against spiritual tyranny. In the Scotch University, I need hardly mention the names of Knox, of Buchanan, of Melville, of Maitland, of Lethington. They formed, in fact, the vanguard of that movement. Every one of the chief reformers-I do not at this moment remember a single exception-was a Humanist. Every eminent Humanist in the north of Europe was, according to the measure of his uprightness and courage, a reformer. In truth, minds daily nourished with the best literature of Greece and Rome, necessarily grew too strong to be trammelled by the cobwebs of the scholastic divinity; and the influence of such minds was now rapidly felt by the whole community; for the invention of printing had brought books within the reach even of yeomen and of artisans.

From the Mediterranean to the Frozen Sea, therefore, the public mind was everywhere in a ferment, and nowhere

was the ferment greater than in Scotland. It was in the midst of martyrdoms and proscriptions, in the midst of a war between power and truth, that the first century of the existence of your University closed. Pass another hundred years, and we are in the midst of another revolution. The war between Popery and Protestantism had, in this island, been terminated by the victory of Protestantism. But from that war another war had sprung-the war between Prelacy and Puritanism. The hostile religious sects were allied, intermingled, confounded with hostile political parties. The monarchical element of the constitution was an object of almost exclusive devotion to the prelatist. The popular element of the constitution was especially dear to the Puritan. At length an appeal was made to the sword. Puritanism triumphed; but Puritanism was already divided against itself. Independency and republicanism were on one side, presbyterianism and limited monarchy on the other. It was in the very darkest part of that dark timeit was in the midst of battles, sieges, and executions-it was when the whole world was still aghast at the awful spectacle of a British king standing before a judgment seat, and laying his neck on a block-it was when the mangled remains of the Duke of Hamilton had just been laid in the tomb of his house-it was when the head of the Marquis of Montrose had just been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, that your University completed her second century!

A hundred years more, and we have at length reached the beginning of a happier period. Our civil and religious liberties had, indeed, been bought with a fearful price. But they had been bought. The price had been paid. The last battle had been fought on British ground. The last black scaffold had been set up on Tower Hill. The evil days were over. A bright and tranquil century-a century of religious toleration, of domestic peace, of temperate freedom, of equal justice was beginning. That century is now closing. When we compare it with an equally long period in the history of any other great society, we shall find abundant cause for thankfulness to the Giver of all Good; nor is there any place in the whole kingdom better fitted to excite this feeling than the place where we are now assembled. For in the whole kingdom we shall find no district in which the progress of trade, of manufactures, of wealth, and of the arts of life, has been more rapid than in Clydesdale. Your University has partaken largely of the prosperity of the city and of the surrounding region.

The security, the tranquillity, the liberty, which have been propitious to the industry of the merchant and of the manufacturer, have been also propitious to the industry of the scholar. To the last century belong most of the names of which you justly boast. The time would fail me if I attempted to do justice to the memory of all the illustrious. men, who, during that period, taught or learned wisdom, within these ancient walls-geometricians, anatomists, jurists, philologists, metaphysicians, poets-Simpson and Hunter, Miller and Young, Reid and Stewart; Campbell-whose coffin was lately borne to a grave in that renowned transept which contains the dust of Chaucer, of Spenser, and of Dryden; Black, whose discoveries form an era in the history of chemical science; Adam Smith, the greatest of all the masters of political science; James Watt, who perhaps did more than any single man has done since the new Atlantis of Bacon was written, to accomplish the glorious prophecy.

We now speak the language of humility when we say that the University of Glasgow need not fear a comparison with the University of Bologna. Another secular period is now about to commence. There is no lack of alarmists, who will tell you that it is about to commence under evil auspices. But from me you must expect no such gloomy prognostications. I am too much used to them to be scared by them. Ever since I began to make observations on the state of my country I have been seeing nothing but growth, and I have been hearing nothing but decay. The more I contemplate our noble institutions, the more convinced I am that they are sound at heart, that they have nothing of age but its dignity, and that their strength is still the strength of youth. The hurricane which has recently overthrown so much that was great and that seemed durable, has only proved their solidity. They still stand, august and immovable, while dynasties and churches are lying in heaps of ruin all around us. I see no reason to doubt that, by the blessing of God on a wise and temperate policy, on a policy in which the principle is to preserve what is good by reforming in time what is evil, our civil institutions may be preserved unimpaired to a late posterity, and that, under the shade of civil institutions, our academical institutions may long continue to flourish.

I trust, therefore, that when a hundred years more have run out, this ancient college will still continue to deserve

well of our country and of mankind. I trust that the installation of 1949 will be attended by a still greater assembly of students than I have the happiness now to see before me. The assemblage indeed may not meet in the place where we have met. These venerable halls may have disappeared. My successor may speak to your successors in a more stately cdifice, in an edifice which, even among the magnificent buildings of the future Glasgow, will still be admired as a fine specimen of architecture which flourished in the days of the good Queen Victoria. But though the site and the walls may be new, the spirit of the institution will, I hope, be still the same. My successor will, I hope, be able to boast that the fifth century of the University has been even more glorious than the fourth. He will be able to vindicate that boast, by citing a long list of eminent men, great masters of experimental science, of ancient learning, of our native eloquence, ornaments of the senate, the pulpit, and the bar.

He will, I hope, mention with high honor some of my young friends who now hear me; and he will, I also hope, be able to add that their talents and learning were not wasted on selfish or ignoble objects, but were employed to promote the physical and moral good of their species, to extend the empire of man over the material world, to defend the cause of civil and religious liberty against tyrants and bigots, and to defend the cause of virtue and order against the enemies of all divine and human laws. I have now given utterance to a part, and a part only, of the recollections and anticipations of which on this solemn occasion my mind is full. I again thank you for the honor which you have bestowed on me; and I assure you that while I live I shall never cease to take a deep interest in the welfare and fame of the body with which, by your kindness, I have this day become connected.

SPEECH

ON RETIRING FROM POLITICAL LIFE.

(March 22, 1849.)

I THANK YOU, my Lord Provost-gentlemen, I thank you from my heart for this great honor. * I may, I hope, extend my thanks further-extend them to that constituent body, of which I believe you are, upon this occasion, the expositors and which has received me here in a manner which has made an impression never to be effaced from my mind. [Alluding to the box containing the document, verifying his admission as a freeman, he continued :] That box, my lord, I shall prize as long as I live, and when I am gone, it will be appreciated by those who are dearest to me, as a proof that in the course of an active and chequered life, both political and literary, I succeeded in gaining the esteem and good will of the people of one of the greatest and most enlightened cities in the British empire. My political life, my lord, has closed. The feelings which contention and rivalry naturally called forth, and from which I do not pretend to have been exempted, have had time to cool down. I can look now upon the events in which I bore a part, as calmly, I think, as on the events of the past century. I can do that justice now to honorable opponents which perhaps in moments of conflict I might have refused to them.

I believe I can judge as impartially of my own career, as I can judge of the career of another man. I acknowledge great errors and deficiencies, but I have nothing to acknowledge inconsistent with rectitude of intention and independ ence of spirit. My conscience bears me this testimony, that I have honestly desired the happiness, the prosperity, and the greatness of my country; that my course, right or wrong, was never determined by any selfish or sordid motive, and that, in troubled times and through many vicissitudes of fortune, in power and out of power, through popularity and unpopularity, I have been faithful to one set of opinions, and to one set of friends. I see no reason to doubt that

The tender of the freedom of the city of Glasgow.