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they have the necessary aptitude, the inborn instinct for the stage, all their mental training will be of great value to them. It is true that there must always be grades in the theatre; that an educated man who is an indifferent actor can never expect to reach the front rank. If he do no more than figure in the army at Bosworth Field, or look imposing in a doorway; if he never play any but the smallest parts; if in these respects he be no better than men who could not pass an examination in any branch of knowledge-he has no more reason to complain than the highly educated man who longs to write poetry, and possesses every qualification save the poetic faculty. There are people who seem to think that only irresistible genius justifies any one in adopting the stage as a vocation. They make it an argument against the profession that many enter it from a low sphere of life, without any particular fitness for acting, but simply to earn a livelihood by doing the subordinate and mechanical work which is necessary in every theatre. And so men and women of refinement-especially women-are warned that they must do themselves injury by passing through the rank and file during their term of probation in the actor's craft. Now, I need not remind you that on the stage everybody cannot be great, any more than students of music can all become great musicians; but very many will do sound artistic work which is of enormous value. As for any question of conduct, Heaven forbid that I'should be dogmatic; but it does not seem to me logical that while genius is its own law in the pursuit of a noble art, all inferior merit or ambition is to be deterred from the same path by appalling pictures of its temptations.

If our art is worth anything at all, it is worth the honest, conscientious self-devotion of men and women who, while they may not achieve fame, may have the satisfaction of being workers in a calling which does credit to many degrees of talent. We do not claim to be any better than our fellows in other walks of life. We do not ask the jester in journalism whether his quips and epigrams are always dictated by the loftiest morality; nor do we insist on knowing that the odour of sanctity surrounds the private lives of lawyers and military men before we send our sons into law and the army. It is impossible to point out any vocation which is not attended by temptations that prove fatal to many; but you have simply to consider whether a profession has in itself any title to honour, and then-if you are confident of your capacity—to enter it with a resolve to do all that energy and perseverance can accomplish. The immortal part of the stage is its nobler part. Ignoble accidents and interludes come and go, but this lasts on for ever. It lives, like the human soul, in the body of humanity-associated with much that is inferior and hampered by many hindrances-but it never sinks into nothingness, and never fails to find new and noble work in creations of permanent and memorable excellence. And I would say, as a last word, to the young men in this assembly who may at any time resolve to enter the dramatic profession, that they ought always to fix their minds upon the highest examples;

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that in studying acting they should beware of prejudiced comparisons between this method and that, but learn as much as pos-sible from all; that they should remember that art is as varied as nature, and as little suited to the shackles of a school; and, above all, that they should never forget that excellence in any art is attained only by arduous labour, unswerving purpose, and unfailing discipline. This discipline is, perhaps, the most difficult of all tests, for it involves the subordination of the actor's personality in every work which is designed to be a complete and harmonious picture. Dramatic art nowadays is more coherent, systematic, and comprehensive than it has sometimes been. And to the student who proposes to fill the place in this system to which his individuality and experience entitles him, and to do his duty faithfully and well, ever striving after greater excellence, and never yielding to the indolence that is often born of popularity-to him I say, with every confidence, that he will choose a career in which, if it does not lead him to fame, he will be sustained by the honourable exercise of some of the best faculties of the human mind.

(Inserted by the courtesy of Mr. Irving.) .

LORD MACAULAY'S SPEECH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.

[From his Inaugural Address, on his election as Lord Rector, March 21, 1849. Born 1800. Died 1859.]

Look at the world a hundred years after the seal of Pope Nicholas the Fifth had been affixed to the instrument which called your College into existence. We find Europe, we find Scotland especially, in the agonies of that 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 the votaries of Greek learning, the Humanists, as they were then called, bore in the great movement against spiritual tyranny. They formed in fact the vanguard of that movement. Almost every eminent Humanist in the north of Europe was, according to the measure of his uprightness and courage, a Reformer, In a Scottish University I need hardly men tion the names of Knox, of Buchanan, of Melville, of Secretary Maitland. 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 of yeomen and of artisans. From the Mediterranean to the Frozen Sea, there fore, 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 time; it 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 com pare it with any 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 this 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, Millar 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 that glorious prophecy.

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 have heard them too long and too constantly to be scared by them. Ever since I began to make observations on the state of my country, I have seen nothing but growth, and heard of 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 of 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 our civil institutions our academical institutions may long continue to flourish.

LORD PALMERSTON ON COMPETITIVE

EXAMINATIONS.

THERE is nothing, pernaps, more remarkable in the progress of the country than the advance which of late years has been made in the diffusion and in the quality of education. The advance which England has made in population, in wealth, in everything that constitutes in common opinion the greatness of a country, is well known and most extraordinary. But we should, indeed, have been wanting in our duties as a nation if we had not accompanied that progress in wealth and population by a corresponding progress in the development of the intellectual faculties of the people. There was a time, now long gone by, when envious critics, who wanted to run down the Universities of the land, said they might be likened to hulks moored in a rapid current, where they served only to mark the rapidity of the stream. That has long since ceased to be a true representation of our Universities. They have improved the course, the object, and the direction of their studies, and they may now fearlessly vie with the academical institutions of any country in

Lord Palmerston on Competitive Examinations. 261

the world. Certain objections have been made to the system of competitive examinations. Some people say it leads to cramming. It often happens that when mankind seize upon a word they imagine that word to be an argument, and go about repeating it, thinking they have arrived at some great and irresistible conclusion. So, when they pronounce the word "cramming," they think they have utterly discredited the system to which that word is by them applied. Some people seem to imagine that the human mind is like a bottle, and that when you have filled it with anything_you pour it out again and it becomes as empty as it was before. That is not the nature of the human mind. The boy who has been crammed, to use the popular word, has, in point of fact, learned a great deal, and that learning has accomplished two objects. In the first place the boy has exercised the faculties of his mind in being crammed, and in the next place there remains in his mind a great portion of the knowledge so acquired, and which probably forms the basis of future attainment in different branches of education. Depend upon it that the boy who is crammed, if he is crammed successfully, not only may succeed in the examination for which he is preparing, but is from that time forward more intellectual, better informed, and more disposed to push forward the knowledge which by that cramming he has acquired. It is also said that you are teaching young men a great variety of things which will be of no use to them in the career which they are destined to pursue, and that you are pandering to their vanity by making them believe they are wiser than they really are. These objections, also, are in my opinion utterly futile. As to vanity and conceit, those are most vain and conceited who know the least. The more a man knows, the more he acquires a conviction of the extent of that which he does not know. A man ought to know a great deal to acquire a knowledge of the immensity of his ignorance. If competitive examination is not liable to objection upon the score that it tends to raise undue notions of superiority on the part of those who go through it, so also it is a great mistake to imagine that a range of knowledge disqualifies a man for the particular career and profession to which he is destined. Nothing can be more proper than that a young man, having selected a particular profession, should devote the utmost vigour of his mind to qualify himself for it by acquiring the knowledge which is necessary for distinction in that line of life; but it would be a great mistake for him to confine himself to that study alone, and you may be sure that the more a young man knows of a great variety of subjects, and the more he exercises his faculties in acquiring a great range of knowledge, the better he will perform the duties of his particular profession. That sort of general knowledge may be likened to the gymnastic exercises to which soldiers are accustomed. It is not that it can be expected that these particular movements would be of any use to them on the day of battle; but these gymnastic exercises render their muscles flexible, strengthen their limbs, invigorate their health, and make them better able to undergo fatigue, and to adapt themselves to all cir

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