INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE COLLEGE OF GLASGOW, NOVEMBER 19, 1873. MR. PRINCIPAL, PROFESSORS, AND STUDENTS My first duty, and my deepest gratification, is to thank you for the honour which you conferred on me two years ago. It is a high one. No one can be insensible to sympathy from the unknown, but the pleasure is necessarily heightened when it is offered by the educated and refined; when that body is representative, and, above all, when it represents the youth of a famous country. My next duty, and one of which the fulfilment is scarcely less gratifying, is to avail myself of the privilege attendant on the office to which you have raised me, and to offer you some observations either on the course of your studies or the conduct of your lives, which, if made by me, will be made without pretence or presumption, quite satisfied if, when we are separated, any chance remark of mine may recur to your B memory, and lead you to not altogether unprofitable meditation. Were I to follow my own bent, I would dwell on those delightful studies which occupy a considerable portion of your time within your academic halls, studies which, while they form your taste and strengthen your intelligence, will prove to you in future years both a guide and a consolation; but when I recollect the illustrious roll of those who have preceded me in this office, and remember how fully and how recently many of them have devoted their genius and their learning to such an enterprise, I am inclined to think that the field, though in my opinion inexhaustible, has been for the present sufficiently cultivated, and that as you are about to enter life at a period which promises, or rather which threatens, to be momentous, it would not be inappropriate were I to make some observations which may tend to assist you in your awaiting trials. He who would succeed in life, and obtain that position to which his character and capacity entitle him, has need of two kinds of knowledge. It would seem at the first blush that self-knowledge were not very difficult of attainment. If there be any subject on which a person can arrive at accurate conclusions, it should be his own disposition and his own talents. But it is not so. The period of youth in this respect is one of great doubt and difficulty. It is a period alike of false confidence and unreasonable distrust, of perplexity, of despondency, and sometimes of despair. It has been said by an eminent physician that there are very few persons of either sex who have attained their eighteenth year who have not contemplated withdrawing from the world-withdrawing from that world which, in fact, they have never entered. Doubtless, this morbid feeling is occasioned in a great degree by a dread of the unknown, but it is also much to be attributed to, and it certainly is heightened by, an ignorance of themselves. How, then, is this self-knowledge to be acquired, and where are we to obtain assistance in this quest? From the family circle? Its incompetency in this respect is a proverb. Perception of character is always a rare gift, but around the domestic hearth it is almost unknown. Every one is acquainted with the erroneous estimates of their offspring which have been made even by illustrious parents. The silent, but perhaps pensive, boy is looked upon as a dullard, while the flippancy of youth in a commonplace character is interpreted into a dangerous vivacity which may in time astonish, perhaps even alarm, the world. A better criterion should be found in the judgment of contemporaries who are our equals. But the generous ardour of youth is not favourable to critical discrimination. Its sympathy is quick, it admires and applauds; but it lavishes its applause and admiration on qualities which are often not intrinsically important, and it always exaggerates. And thus it is that the hero of school and of college often disappoints expectation in after life. The truth is, he has shown no deficiency in the qualities which obtained him his early repute, but he has been wanting in the capacity adapted to subsequent opportunities. surest judge of And there is a Some are of opinion that the youthful character must be the tutor. passage in Isocrates on this head not without interest. He was an accomplished instructor, and he tells us he always studied to discover the bent of those who attended his lectures. So, after due observation, he would say to one, 'You are intended for action, and the camp is the life which will become you;' to another You should cultivate poetry;' a third was adapted to the passionate exercitations of the Pnyx; while a fourth was clearly destined for the groves and porticoes of philosophy. The early Jesuits, who were masters of education, were accustomed to keep secret registers of their observations on their pupils, and generations afterwards, when these records were examined, it is said the happy prescience of their remarks was strikingly proved by the subsequent success of many who had attained fame in arts and arms. But the Jesuits, gentlemen, whatever they may be now, were then very clever men; and I must confess that I am |