the case is different. It is almost a puzzle to say
whether Glasgow excels more as the seat of a famous University or as the
centre of a hundred busy, important, and prosperous industries.
Certainly, the decadence of the one has not followed the development of
the other. Learning and commerce flourish hand in hand, without the
slightest trace of incompatibility. No less an authority than Sir Robert
Peel declared, on the occasion of his installation as Lord Rector of the
University in 1837, "I do not consider it an exaggerated compliment when
I say that I doubt whether, of all cities existing on the face of the
earth, there be any one so remarkable for the combination of commercial
and active industry, with services rendered to science and literature,
as Glasgow." From the watch towers of Gilmorehill a hundred chimneys,
some of them rivalling the Pyramids of Gizeh in height, may be seen; the
din of a hundred hammers, employed in the service of the world's
merchant marine, may be distinctly heard; innumerable masts, denoting
our traffic with all parts of the globe, may be counted. And yet in
these same halls the budding genius of Scotland's sons is being
developed--the qualities that are henceforth to distinguish our
statesmen, and orators, and poets, and merchant princes, are being
matured. The _alumni_ of Glasgow University have not all blushed unseen,
albeit the fame of their _Alma Mater_ has sometimes been over-shadowed
by that of Edinburgh. To go no further back than the living members of
the _Senatus Academicus_, it will be admitted that Caird in Divinity,
Lushington in Greek, Sir William Thomson in Natural Philosophy, Allen
Thomson in Anatomy, Rankine in Mechanics, Grant in Astronomy, and
Gairdner in Medicine, are names to conjure with. For the Principal of a
seat of learning, that combines with an extraordinary amount of present
vitality and prestige the traditions of a glorious past, stretching
backwards until it is almost lost sight of amid the mists of the Middle
Ages, it is surely essential that he should be a man of piety, of
excellent governing and administrative powers, and, above all, of
extensive erudition. All these conditions have distinguished more or
less the predecessors of Dr. Barclay, the present Principal, and in
himself they are very happily combined, although he is "not so young as
he used to be," and his energy and usefulness have necessarily been
somewhat impaired by the lapse of years.

Prin