vi.J PROFESSORIAL LIFE. 131 



valued, and seldom sought for. But the teaching of 

 able professors, excellent as a mental stimulant, requires, 

 if it is to produce solid fruits, to be supported by three 

 additional conditions. It must be received into minds 

 previously prepared by adequate school training; it must 

 be supplemented and solidified by careful and methodic 

 getting up of books during the college course ; and lastly, 



-ult of professors' lectures and private reading 

 requires to be tested by thorough examination. In 

 Scotland, when Forbes became a professor, these three 

 necessary buttresses to the professors' lectures were wholly 

 \vanting. The professoriate reigned solitary and unsup- 

 ported. Consequently, of the large amount of mental 

 force annually let loose from those Scottish Chairs, who 

 shall say how large a proportion lost itself in air ? 



In Oxford the system of systematic examination for 

 degrees had been revived as early as the first decade of 

 this century, when Sir Eobert Peel was an undergraduate. 

 Slowly the sense of the need of a like revival crept north- 

 wards : and by the fourth decade, when Forbes entered the 

 iral Philosophy Chair, he took it up and pressed it on 

 his colleagues with characteristic energy arid perseverance. 

 For the following sketch of his exertions in this direction I 

 am indcl.ti'd to the kindness of Professor Kelland, who has 

 for more than thirty years filled the Mathematical Chair 

 in Edinburgh University, and done so much to promote 

 thorough jnid accurate teaching, not only in his own class, 

 but throughout Scotland. If the general reader finds in 

 it some details which may nut interest him, I must hope 



r with thriii, in consideration of the value 



h these possess to the many who, from their interest 



in the further improvement of Scottish education, will 



y li'jlit which may !>< thrown on the history 



by which it has iv.idied its present condition. 



rVing that in the early years <!' this century 



668 in Arts ha<: > little in demand, that it. 



almost a t'av.Mir c.nfrnvd <>n the l T niver.-iiy when an 



able student proposed to graduate, Professor Kelland 



goes on to state that as early as 1814 the University 



