UNIVERSITY INTERESTS.

"Long life to The McGill University Magazine!" We all feel greatly indebted to those who have been mainly concerned in bringing it into the world, and to Professor Moyse, who has so unselfishly stepped into the breach as editor. And we must all do our best to support it. The credit of the University is at stake in this new venture, which many think has been even too long delayed. There is at present no sufficient expression of the corporate life of McGill, especially in its higher aspects. I am a firm believer in everything that will help to draw the different parts of the University together; and while it is not to be supposed that "The McGill University Magazine is to be wholly given over to professional interests, there can be no better forum for the discussion of new measures and academic affairs generally than a publication which is designed to circulate among all the members of the University.

The day may come, perhaps, when in addition to a thoroughly successful magazine we may have a Printing Press of our own. When we consider the activity, in the sphere of publication, of the members of our Faculty of Medicine, and the still unrealised aspirations of the Faculty of Applied Science (not to speak of Arts, Law, or Comparative Medicine) for a separate journal of its own-along with the innumerable announcements, leaflets, examination papers, and finally, that magnum opus, the Calendar itself-we shall begin to see that there is even now material on which to base this somewhat large expectation! But, failing such a development, one would like to see, in time, the results of the best thought of McGill, and the richest fruits of its

scientific and other activity, finding expression through some medium essentially representative of, and distinctly connected with, the University itself. Mr. Carnegie's munificence has made this a great year for Scotland; and I do not know that his trustees could do anything better calculated to advance the prestige of the Scottish Universities—after, of course, providing them with the additional equipment which they so sorely need-than if they were to devise a method by which some of the fruits of the work which we may now expect to see even better done, under the improved conditions, might be given to the world in the form of a publication emanating from and controlled by the Scottish Universities themselves. Certainly nothing would tend more effectually to enhance the reputation of those ancient seats of learning, in which there has long been a danger that the needs of the studentconstituency and the insufficiency of the teaching-staff would result in the excessive absorption of academic energies in the somewhat narrow circle of the "beggarly elements," to the comparative neglect of the higher reaches of original investigation and research.

Nothing makes graduates of a University more proud of their Alma Mater than the confidence that her chairs are filled by men who are not satisfied with teaching, as it were, knowledge ready-made, but who wish themselves to take a part in the making of knowledge and in extending the boundaries of the arts and sciences. Much is always forgiven to the professor who can teach his subject well; still more to him who is recognized not only as a good teacher, but also as an original worker. The enthusiasm of younger men for those who bear names that are distinguished in literature, science and art, and also in the public service, was strikingly exemplified at the celebration of the Jubilee Festival of Glasgow University, where, by the way, the best oratory was called forth, not by the stated ordinances of the Bute Hall, but by the less formal associations of a students' smoking-concert. The appreciation of their youthful admirers seemed to wake a responsive chord in the hearts of those whom they delighted to honour.

I was glad to see our own undergraduate body represented at the Glasgow celebration; and as that festival was-along with other more serious business-the primary cause of my visit to the old country this summer, I shall say something about it here. Glasgow was the original home of James McGill,-a piece of information which

the students highly appreciated when our Chancellor imparted it to them at the concert above referred to, along with the assurance that we are all Scotch in Montreal, and that it gave him (Lord Strathcona) great personal pleasure to find himself, as representing McGill, "once more among the boys." There are many points of resemblance between Glasgow and Montreal. People sometimes speak as though the circumstances which lead to the foundation of universities differ essentially at the present time from what they were four and a half centuries ago, when Glasgow received its academic charter in the shape of a Bull granted by Pope Nicholas V. But that is really not the case. Even the great extension which modern universities, especially on this continent, have received from the inclusion within their scope of professional and technical training, in all its various branches and ramifications, must be referred to the same causes and conditions as were operative long ago. You may call it the utilitarian spirit if you like, so long as you do not use the term by way of disparagement. The earliest universities rejoiced in the opportunity of making themselves useful in their day and generation by giving themselves to the training of teachers, and lawyers, and doctors. In that sense, they were the earliest technical schools, and our modern universities do well to continue this work, and to adapt it to new departments of human activity, taking within their ever-widening range every liberal art the successful practice of which requires close and continuous study, based on the substructure of a sufficient previous education. Not that our predecessors were, any more than we ourselves should like to be, exclusively practical. There has always been another element in the organization of university studies, the speculative interest in the search after truth for its own sake, and all the natural and ineradicable impulses which move the spirit of man to find expression in literature, poetry, philosophy, and art. The sound of the hammer and the roar of the furnace on the busy banks of the Clyde have not stifled and suppressed, any more than in Montreal, the softer voices that keep ever repeating the message that "man shall not live by bread alone." And I doubt if any two centres of population could be found which more effectually disprove the allegation that business men, as a body, have little sympathy with or appreciation of the higher education. Every stage in the celebration at Glasgow revealed the fact of the existence of a thorough-going alliance between the

university on the one hand, and the city on the other in which its work is done. The merchant princes of Glasgow are proud of its University, and the University gladly and gratefully acknowledges its obligations to them. No more earnest voice was heard throughout the festival than that of Lord Provost Chisholm, whose position as the civic head of the whole community well entitled him to speak in the name of all the merchants and manufacturers who take a pride in the renown of an ancient seat of learning,-a renown which, as Principal Story said, gave the city long ago "a lustre in the world of letters that outshone its fame in the world of trade.” The mutually helpful relations between industry and commerce, on the one hand, and science and learning on the other, were beautifully illustrated and exemplified at the Glasgow Jubilee; and when the time comes for a similar celebration in Montreal, I hope it may be possible for those who will then be at the head of the administration to speak with something of the grave confidence which animated Dr. Story when he referred to the debt which the "life of mercantile Glasgow owed to the moral and intellectual influences that it had been the University's aim to exert, the testimony it had borne to the Empire of Idea-to the spiritual as nobler than the material; to the meanness of mammon worship, and the real excellence of the life of patient study of earnest thought-of unselfish endeavour-of loyalty to truth."

A great stimulus to increased effort is derivable from such celebrations as that which was held at Glasgow in June; and many a solitary worker must have gone away refreshed by the opportunity of contact, not only with those whose names are great in his own department of study, but also with distinguished representatives of other branches. The youngest of British Universities-that of Birmingham-paid homage along with the rest; and the continuity of university organization was well brought out by the remark, repeated more than once, that as Glasgow in the day of its nativity had looked to Bologna, so Birmingham now looked to Glasgow. We cannot doubt that Glasgow associations were uppermost in the mind of James McGill when he resolved, early in what we now call last century, to establish a College in Montreal. And so when Birmingham celebrated its first Convocation-Day, not long after the Glasgow Festival, I read an account of the proceedings with interest, and with the view of trying to determine how far McGill had been successful in realizing

the aims which Birmingham-already in some departments more or less fully equipped-has set before itself at the outset of its new career as a foundation of university rank. The speaker of the day was the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Chamberlain. Few people would take Mr. Chamberlain for an idealist. But in the address which he delivered, as Chancellor of Birmingham University, on the occasion above referred to, he succeeded in answering the question, “What should constitute an ideal University ?" with a completeness of statement and a felicity of phrase which have never, in my judgment, been surpassed. As Mr. Chamberlain's address was really one of the most notable utterances of the long vacation, I shall take the liberty of reproducing a part of it here :

"What should constitute an ideal university? It may be presumptuous in me to attempt a definition and yet when we are at the outset of our career, it is necessary, it is desirable, that we should have some clear conception of the standard at which we are going to aim. And I would venture to lay down four qualifications as necessary to a perfect university. In the first place it should be an institution where all existing knowledge is taught. Such a universality may perhaps never yet have been attained. Want of means may always prevent it, but at least that is the object at which we should aim, and we should never rest satisfied until we can say that no student desirous of instruction in any branch of learning shall be turned hungry away from the doors of this university. No doubt the enormous development of knowledge, and especially of its scientific side, during the present century, requires a certain specialisation in the teaching of that knowledge, and I think it may be desirable, I think it may be necessary, that universities also should be specialised, and that one university should pay more attention than another to particular studies; but I believe at the same time that it would be fatal if, in our desire as a modern university to give a special development to the practical and thorough teaching of our scientific work; it would be a great mistake, I say, if we were to exclude or to neglect the older branches of learning. Well, then, in the second place, a university is a place where the knowledge that has been acquired has to be tested, and as to that I will only say that in the multiplication of examining bodies I hope that nothing will be done either by us or by our successors to lower the standards of proficiency, whether in the ordinary pass or in the highest honours. I conceive that common prudence should teach us to keep up the value of the degrees which we have begun to confer to-day, and nothing would be more unwise, more fatal to our reputation and to our ultimate success than that we should endeavour to multiply the number of our students at the expense of their quality. Then the third feature to which I should call attention, and which I am inclined to say is of all the most important, is that a university should be a place where knowledge is increased, and where the limits of