some curiosities; a Hebrew manuscript of
exquisite penmanship, and a Latin translation of Aristotle's Politicks by
Leonardus Aretinus, written in the Roman character with nicety and
beauty, which, as the art of printing has made them no longer necessary,
are not now to be found. This was one of the latest performances of the
transcribers, for Aretinus died but about twenty years before typography
was invented. This version has been printed, and may be found in
libraries, but is little read; for the same books have been since
translated both by Victorius and Lambinus, who lived in an age more
cultivated, but perhaps owed in part to Aretinus that they were able to
excel him. Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge,
and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.

In both these colleges the methods of instruction are nearly the same;
the lectures differing only by the accidental difference of diligence, or
ability in the professors. The students wear scarlet gowns and the
professors black, which is, I believe, the academical dress in all the
Scottish universities, except that of Edinburgh, where the scholars are
not distinguished by any particular habit. In the King's College there
is kept a public table, but the scholars of the Marischal College are
boarded in the town. The expence of living is here, according to the
information that I could obtain, somewhat more than at St. Andrews.

The course of education is extended to four years, at the end of which
those who take a degree, who are not many, become masters of arts, and
whoever is a master may, if he pleases, immediately commence doctor. The
title of doctor, however, was for a considerable time bestowed only on
physicians. The advocates are examined and approved by their own body;
the ministers were not ambitious of titles, or were afraid of being
censured for ambition; and the doctorate in every faculty was commonly
given or sold into other countries. The ministers are now reconciled to
distinction, and as it must always happen that some will excel others,
have thought graduation a proper testimony of uncommon abilities or
acquisitions.

The indiscriminate collation of degrees has justly taken away that
respect which they originally claimed as stamps, by which the literary
value of men so distinguished was authoritatively denoted. That
academical honours, or any others should be conferred with exact
proportion to merit, is mo