be in very nearly the same case with those who addressed me, for

while I am willing enough to write something, I know not what to
write. Only one point I see, that if I am to write at all, it

should be of the University itself and my own days under its
shadow; of the things that are still the same and of those that are

already changed: such talk, in short, as would pass naturally
between a student of to-day and one of yesterday, supposing them to

meet and grow confidential.
The generations pass away swiftly enough on the high seas of life;

more swiftly still in the little bubbling back-water of the
quadrangle; so that we see there, on a scale startlingly

diminished, the flight of time and the succession of men. I looked
for my name the other day in last year's case-book of the

Speculative. Naturally enough I looked for it near the end; it was
not there, nor yet in the next column, so that I began to think it

had been dropped at press; and when at last I found it, mounted on
the shoulders of so many successors, and looking in that posture

like the name of a man of ninety, I was conscious of some of the
dignity of years. This kind of dignity of temporal precession is

likely, with prolonged life, to become more familiar, possibly less
welcome; but I felt it strongly then, it is strongly on me now, and

I am the more emboldened to speak with my successors in the tone of
a parent and a praiser of things past.

For, indeed, that which they attend is but a fallen University; it
has doubtless some remains of good, for human institutions decline

by gradual stages; but decline, in spite of all seeming
embellishments, it does; and what is perhaps more singular, began

to do so when I ceased to be a student. Thus, by an odd chance, I
had the very last of the very best of ALMA MATER; the same thing, I

hear (which makes it the more strange), had previously happened to
my father; and if they are good and do not die, something not at

all unsimilar will be found in time to have befallen my successors
of to-day. Of the specific points of change, of advantage in the

past, of shortcoming in the present, I must own that, on a near
examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far the most

lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, ugly, idle,
unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and heart of

the whole matter; whose changing humours, fine occasional purposes
of good, flinching acceptance of evil, shiverings on wet, east-

windy, morning journeys up to class, infinite yawnings during
lecture and unquenchable gusto in the delights of truantry, made up

the sunshine and shadow of my college life. You cannot fancy what
you missed in missing him; his virtues, I make sure, are

inconceivable to his successors, just as they were apparently
concealed from his contemporaries, for I was practically alone in

the pleasure I had in his society. Poor soul, I remember how much
he was cast down at times, and how life (which had not yet begun)

seemed to be already at an end, and hope quite dead, and misfortune
and dishonour, like physical presences, dogging him as he went.

And it may be worth while to add that these clouds rolled away in
their season, and that all clouds roll away at last, and the

troubles of youth in particular are things but of a moment. So
this student, whom I have in my eye, took his full share of these

concerns, and that very largely by his own fault; but he still
clung to his fortune, and in the midst of much misconduct, kept on

in his own way learning how to work; and at last, to his wonder,
escaped out of the stage of studentship not openly shamed; leaving

behind him the University of Edinburgh shorn of a good deal of its
interest for myself.

But while he is (in more senses than one) the first person, he is
by no means the only one whom I regret, or whom the students of to-

day, if they knew what they had lost, would regret also. They have
still Tait, to be sure - long may they have him! - and they have

still Tait's class-room, cupola and all; but think of what a
different place it was when this youth of mine (at least on roll

days) would be present on the benches, and, at the near end of the
platform, Lindsay senior (3) was airing his robust old age. It is

possible my successors may have never even heard of Old Lindsay;
but when he went, a link snapped with the last century. He had

something of a rustic air, sturdy and fresh and plain; he spoke
with a ripe east-country accent, which I used to admire; his

reminiscences were all of journeys on foot or highways busy with
post-chaises - a Scotland before steam; he had seen the coal fire

on the Isle of May, and he regaled me with tales of my own
grandfather. Thus he was for me a mirror of things perished; it

was only in his memory that I could see the huge shock of flames of
the May beaconstream to leeward, and the watchers, as they fed the

fire, lay hold unscorched of the windward bars of the furnace; it
was only thus that I could see my grandfather driving swiftly in a

gig along the seaboard road from Pittenweem to Crail, and for all
his business hurry, drawing up to speak good-humouredly with those

he met. And now, in his turn, Lindsay is gone also; inhabits only
the memories of other men, till these shall follow him; and figures

in my reminiscences as my grandfather figured in his.
To-day, again, they have Professor Butcher, and I hear he has a

prodigious deal of Greek; and they have Professor Chrystal, who is
a man filled with the mathematics. And doubtless these are set-

offs. But they cannot change the fact that Professor Blackie has
retired, and that Professor Kelland is dead. No man's education is

complete or truly liberal who knew not Kelland. There were
unutterable lessons in the mere sight of that frail old clerical

gentleman, lively as a boy, kind like a fairy godfather, and
keeping perfect order in his class by the spell of that very

kindness. I have heard him drift into reminiscences in class time,
though not for long, and give us glimpses of old-world life in out-

of-the-way English parishes when he was young; thus playing the
same part as Lindsay - the part of the surviving memory, signalling

out of the dark backward and abysm of time the images of perished
things. But it was a part that scarce became him; he somehow

lacked the means: for all his silver hair and worn face, he was not
truly old; and he had too much of the unrest and petulant fire of

youth, and too much invincible innocence of mind, to play the
veteran well. The time to measure him best, to taste (in the old

phrase) his gracious nature, was when he received his class at
home. What a pretty simplicity would he then show, trying to amuse

us like children with toys; and what an engaging nervousness of
manner, as fearing that his efforts might not succeed! Truly he

made us all feel like children, and like children embarrassed, but
at the same time filled with sympathy for the conscientious,

troubled elder-boy who was working so hard to entertain us. A
theorist has held the view that there is no feature in man so tell-

tale as his spectacles; that the mouth may be compressed and the
brow smoothed artificially, but the sheen of the barnacles is

diagnostic. And truly it must have been thus with Kelland; for as
I still fancy I behold him frisking actively about the platform,

pointer in hand, that which I seem to see most clearly is the way
his glasses glittered with affection. I never knew but one other

man who had (if you will permit the phrase) so kind a spectacle;
and that was Dr. Appleton. But the light in his case was tempered

and passive; in Kelland's it danced, and changed, and flashed
vivaciously among the students, like a perpetualchallenge to

goodwill.
I cannot say so much about Professor Blackie, for a good reason.

Kelland's class I attended, once even gained there a certificate of
merit, the only distinction of my University career. But although

I am the holder of a certificate of attendance in the professor's
own hand, I cannot remember to have been present in the Greek class

above a dozen times. Professor Blackie was even kind enough to
remark (more than once) while in the very act of writing the

document above referred to, that he did not know my face. Indeed,
I denied myself many opportunities; acting upon an extensive and

highly rationalsystem of truantry, which cost me a great deal of
trouble to put in exercise - perhaps as much as would have taught

me Greek - and sent me forth into the world and the profession of
letters with the merest shadow of an education. But they say it is

always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its
own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon

this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with