134 Character and Merits of 



a most gross mistake to suppose that a capacity to teach these 

 elements is a sufficient qualification for the office of an Edin- 

 burgh professor. If it were so, every second lad who had passed 

 creditably through such a class in one year, might be properly 

 appointed to teach it the year after. Nobody, however, will 

 maintain any thing so absurd as this ; and though we fear 

 that the duties of those who are vested with the right of nomi- 

 nation have not always been correctly understood, no such mon- 

 strous misconception can require to be obviated. We have un- 

 fortunately in this country but too few desirable situations where- 

 with to reward the successful cultivators of the abstract sciences. 

 The prizes in their lottery are lamentably few ; and it would be 

 the height of injustice not to let them have them all. If it be of 

 importance to a country (and it is in every respect of the very 

 first importance) that it should possess men eminent for genius 

 and science, it is of importance that it should encourage them ; 

 and it is obvious that no encouragement can be so effectual, so 

 cheap, and so honourable, as sacredly to reserve, and impartially 

 to assign, to them, in proportion to their eminence, those situa- 

 tions of high honour and moderate emolument to which it is 

 their utmost ambition to aspire, and which gives them not only 

 the rank and dignity they have so worthily earned, but the 

 means of cultivating ^nd diff'using, with great additional eflfect, 

 that very knowledge to which their years have been devoted. 

 On this ground alone the duty of giving to men distinguished for 

 science, and devoted to it, the few scientific professorships 

 that are established among us, appears to be absolutely im- 

 perative, on the score of mere justice, as well as of national ad- 

 vantage ; on that of national honour, it is not of less cogency. 

 We have once more made ourselves a name as a scientific nation 

 in every quarter of the world ; and, by means of Playfair and 

 Leslie, the Scottish philosophy of physics is nearly as well known 

 all over the civilized world as the Scottish philosophy of mind. 

 The Edinburgh school of science now maintains a rivalry with 

 the most celebrated of those in England ; and among foreign 

 philosophers, the name of Playfair is more honoured and better 

 known than that of any of the alumni of Cambridge. But is this 



