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And if you are anxious to point a moral, contemplate the career of Daniel O'Connell to its close. Probably Dan was a more popular character, and retained his popularity longer, than any recorded in history, ancient or modern. But the day of gloom and misfortune came at last. The Nemesis he had long driven off seized him at length with a firm gripe. After spending a long life in exciting and guiding the passions of a nation that idolized him, he was outstripped by younger and more ardent spirits, and he sank into the grave a heart-broken and neglected old man. And now how little is remembered of that full, deep-toned, diapason voice, which awoke tears or laughter at the speaker's will! Is not his monument yet unfinished, on the very scene where his triumphal car once rolled royally along? Poor Dan! his career illustrates the fickleness of popular favour more strikingly than all the biographies put together of our early friend, Cornelius Nepos. Brummell, the most popular of exquisites, died in an almshouse. Barnum, the most popular of showmen, has collapsed. The Rev. George Gilfillan, the celebrated writer, has been pierced with the arrows of detraction. How long will it be before the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon is superseded as premier preacher of England? Well, it is of no avail to moralize: men pick pockets in sight of the gallows, and men will hazard their lives for celebrity, while the smashed, battered, shipwrecked hulls of many a tall vessel that once was borne onward by the popular breeze, are rolling water-logged before them down the stream of life.

Neither must we quite ignore the reflection, that the man driven onward by the popular hurricane, sometimes impinges on the breakwater of our laws. An occasional Cuffey is landed on Norfolk Island at her Majesty's expense, hurried forward by the gales of a people's applause; a patriot who loves his country, not wisely, but too well, is here and there found domesticating with kangaroos in Australia; a spirited gentleman who has led on a vociferous crowd with musket and banner, is now and then put to

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work in those unpleasant restrictions on free labour called fetters, and seen perambulating in close vincular association with cracksman Bob; a casual youth, too aspiring to live, has to pay his respects to that mysterious personage who haunts assize towns with a suspicious-looking cord in his pocket. By all means shun that species of popularity which is likely to bring you into conflict with the growling monster called Law; rather join Don Quixote in a tilt at the windmill. In the height of your aspirations after renown, never forget that there is an everlasting ladder called a treadwheel; remember Botany Bay and the crank.

We have our fears, too, that popularity is sometimes misused by its possessor. Patriots are but men, and young men must live.' Even orators who applaud the selfsacrifice of Quintus Curtius, love money and power. And this trade in popularity may bring for a time a fair return of creature comforts. Modern history would supply us with a few examples of men who have grown fat and jolly on their windy, jaw-rattling profession. Did not Wilkes-who, by the way, was never in his palmiest days soft enough to be a Wilkite-wisely retire from business as agitator, and step into a corporation office ? A friend of ours once stopped in a crowded London thoroughfare, and began to look earnestly up to the third story window of a house close by: a crowd gathered round him, every one looking up with the same intentness as himself; when he slipped away, and left about a hundred people staring at nothing. So dexterously does your artful popularity-hunter now and then carry out his schemes.

Unfortunately, however, as a rule, a love of popularity is insatiable. It grows by what it feeds on. The thirst of notoriety is more difficult to allay than the thirst of avarice. It cries out unceasingly, with the horse-leech, Give! give!' Then, if mankind begins to refuse to give, what follows? Pangs worse than the gnawings of starvation. It would have been far better if the poor fellow had never nibbled at the popular loaf at all. He is

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No

one who has the cause of education at heart can fail to watch, with deep interest, the proceedings of the Oxford University Commission. Its birth was not easy. A previous Commission, and the almost exclusive toil of a parlia mentary session, were required for its constitution. The result of so much travail may surely be expected to do something great. Before it lies the whole question of University Reform; and its labours, be they futile or sufficient, will mark the limits of beneficial change for years to come. Should the present endeavour after improve ment fail, our generation cannot hope to see it renewed. To speak of all which it is the duty of the Commissioners to accomplish, is no part of our present purpose. That were matter not for a single article, but for several. We can only now refer to one among the many important topics which must engage their attention.

It is generally understood that, in obedience to the recommendations of their predecessors, they will take measures for the endowment of various new Professorships. The necessity of this step cannot be doubted. Much might be written upon the present state of Professors' chairs at Oxford - their limited number, and their paltry emoluments. Happily for the English church, and happily too, we suppose, for the English nation, a noble exception exists in the theological faculty. There the instructors are multiplied to an extent which a profane judgment might think disproportioned to the numbers of the instructed; and there, too, canonries and rich livings form ample provision for the hire of labourers always to be presumed worthy. The public, we fancy, will for the most part be disposed to consider that reformation with regard to the clerical teaching of Oxford should hardly take the form

of extension. But one Professor of Moral Philosophy is insufficient for the work to be done; the great field of Modern History can receive at least two labourers; if professoriate instruction is ever to become a reality, the languages of Greece and Rome must no longer be intrusted to two men, however able ;† and in the Natural Sciences there is absolute necessity for assistance. Of the three colleges whose statutes have been approved by the Commission, Exeter and Lincoln plead poverty as a reason why they should be excused from contributing to an increase of the professorial staff. But the third, Corpus, awoke two years ago to its long neglect of its founder's commands, and, in a fit of tardy repentance, allotted a double Fellowship to the support of the Latin chair; Balliol, it is understood, will, out of very small means, contribute the endowment of one Professor; Merton has expressed its readiness to do the same; and much more may be hoped for when rich foundations like Magdalen, and a useless club like All Souls, come under the hands of the Commission. New Professors, then, are to be appointed, and the question which we would now discuss is, who is to appoint them?

At present Professors are elected in three ways; by the Crown; by Convocation; or by some select body of academic dignitaries, generally the Vice-Chancellor, the proctors, and the heads of one or two favoured colleges. A wish has been expressed in some quarters that a fourth method should be introduced. The funds for the new chairs are to be obtained by appropriating Fellowships; and it has been proposed that the colleges in which this takes place should be allowed a voice in the appointment of the Professors whose incomes they are to provide. Nothing could in appearance be fairer than this scheme; nothing, we are convinced, could be more perni

cious than it would prove in practice. The colleges have long possessed the privilege of electing their own Fellows.

The manner in which they have discharged that duty has not been such as to entitle them to demand that higher duties should be intrusted to them. We would judge of their future by their past. The scandalous abuses which have long prevailed in elections to Fellowships, have been the main cause of the present agitation for University Reform. We see no reason to hope that the colleges will display more conscience in the exercise of a patronage in which their interests are less directly concerned. The Warden of All Souls, in his letter to the late Commissioners, mentions, as an objection to their scheme, the denial to his college of any choice with regard to the Professors whom it is to pay. The history of All Souls Fellowship elections does not encourage us to hope that All Souls Professorial elections would be productive of much good to the University. Moreover, a Professor is essentially a University officer; and it seems absurd that he should be appointed by any small corporation within the University. The college to which he belongs can derive no benefit from his able discharge of his duties, and can sustain no hurt by his neglect of them. That college cannot, therefore, be trusted to appoint him. For nothing is more certain than the unpalatable truth, that if any men have work to perform with regard to which their interests are in no way affected, they will perform that work merely according to their inclination. Furthermore, it is hoped that by the revival of the Professoriate, the University may be in some degree restored to that position of influence which the colleges have usurped. Such hopes would be at once defeated by leaving the appointment of the Professors in the hands of the colleges. Our decision must not be influenced by the fact that the incomes of the Professors are to be derived from Fellowships. If this scheme can be shown to be inconsistent with equity; if any good reason can be given why some colleges should be allowed to neglect the letter, why all should be allowed to

neglect the spirit of their statutes, in order that they may bestow upon two or three clergymen the privilege of doing nothing, then by all means let it be relinquished. But unless this can be done, let the reform be complete. Better have no new Professors at all, than Professors appointed as Fellows have hitherto been. An ordinary clerical Fellow eating and drinking in repose and silence, is at least harmless. The same man invested with the privilege of lecturing might lose that negative excellence. We trust that no such suicidal measure is contemplated by the Commission. In fact, on this question of Professorships-as, indeed, on every other-a prudent reserve would better become most colleges than indignant remonstrances. They are fond of appealing to their statutes and declaring that they are being compelled to violate them. Most of them have already violated their statutes far more effectually than they will ever be compelled to do by the Commission. If the history of every college in Oxford was rigorously investigated, and its conduct compared with the injunctions of its founders, some curious things would be brought to light. Where, until within the last few years, when rumoured Commissions began to arouse activity, can we find any traces of the three Professorships of Corpus, of the three Readerships at Magdalen? It is a truth which cannot be too much impressed upon the public, that the letter of these beloved statutes, so often appealed to, would, if strictly enforced, be productive of far more inconvenience to the colleges than is likely to arise from the equity of the Commissioners. This fourth plan may, we think, be dismissed from consideration. The Commissioners would never sanction an arrangement so destructive to the objects which they have in view.

Of the three methods at present in vogue, it is earnestly to be hoped that appointment by the Crown may be that adopted for the future. It is, of course, liable to objections; but to objections far less weighty than those which may be levelled against the other two. From Oxford itself the Commis

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sioners may learn something; but they may learn still more from our Northern Universities. Upon that 'vile body' some experiments, fertile in instruction, have lately been made. We hardly expect that the Commissioners will add to their arduous duties by reading the pamphlet which we have put at the head of this article; but were they to do so, they would see what consequences result from popular elections of Professors. In Scotland, this patronage is exercised sometimes by the Crown, sometimes by the Professors themselves, and in the peculiar case of the University of Edinburgh, by the Town Council. Some years ago there appeared in the pages of this magazine* an account of the process which candidates for a chair in the metropolitan University of Scotland are compelled to go through. We

cannot hope that the said account has escaped that early forgetfulness which awaits periodical literature. We must therefore request our readers to imagine the whole scene of the canvass, with all its vexatious accompaniments-the unbecoming solicitation required, the unworthy influences brought to bear. We are fortunately enabled to assist them in this task by showing them the feelings which such a contest engenders and leaves behind.

The chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, vacated by the lamented death of Sir W. Hamilton, has been recently filled up. Professor Ferrier of St. Andrew's was a candidate, was unsuccessful, and has since published a pamphlet setting forth his merits as a metaphysical writer, and vindicating his claims to the Professorship. The prudence of this step was more than questionable. A beaten man has no friends; his most sensible course is to digest defeat as best he may, and wait for another opportunity. Mr. Ferrier has thought differently. He has rushed into print with all the bitterness of disappointment hot upon him. He has consequently been led into a vehemence of expression both in praise of himself, and in disparagement of others, of which we shall quote a few specimens, calcu

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lated, we hope, to point a moral, but scarcely to adorn our pages.

Any attempt to estimate Mr. Ferrier's metaphysical writings were foreign to our present design; we refer to his pamphlet merely as illustrating the unhappy tendencies of a system of election which requires the degradation of a canvass, which lies open to the charge of being affected by petty or sectarian influences, and which, to the vexation of defeat, adds the sting of remembered humiliation. Goaded into self-assertion, Mr. Ferrier speaks of his contributions to a science which I take a pride, and which has no reason to be ashamed of me,' with a dogmatism which is perfectly amazing. His self-confidence is stupendous. The Institutes of Metaphysic, by Mr. Ferrier, are a revelation of new philosophy-the author a greater Bacon:

in

The Institutes of Metaphysic seem very plain-sailing, and so does railway travelling; but if some of my critics had 'seen these roads before they were made,' they would have had a better idea of the difficulties of intellectual

tunnelling, and of bridging chasms in the land of thought, over which they may now be wafted in their sleep.

my

He tells us that he has been enabled to approach the pinnacles of truth,'-and that if an opponent 'were to venture into close quarters with the system, it would grind him up in a twinkling.' He talks, seemingly without the slightest idea of the grotesque effect, about argument in favour of the Deity;' and assures us that the Institutes 'define knowledge in a manner eminently Platonic. The electors are told that they 'should have attended principally to evidence in favour of performance, and not in favour of promise; and above all, that they should have given weight to attestations in support of originality, and invention, and decision, and independence in speculative thinking.' Mr. Ferrier seems a reader, though from many passages in the Institutes we should think not an understanding reader, of Plato. We recommend to his study and imitation the Socratie ειρωνεία. It is curious to contrast the style of the