396 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



they were devoted exclusively to instructing students 

 in classical literature, science, anci* philosophy. Instruc- 

 tion in theology was handed over by the Ee.formers ex- 

 clusively to the younger College of St. Mary's, which, 

 having been founded and endowed chiefly for this pur- 

 pose by the last three Roman Catholic archbishops, James 

 Beatoun, David Beatoun, and John Hamilton, was soon 

 after the Reformation presided over by those two stout 

 anti-Prelatists Andrew Melville and Samuel Rutherford. 

 The two older Colleges, restricted to the more peaceful 



Pursuits of classics, mathematics, and philosophy, were 

 jss heard of in the turbulent conflicts of the seventeenth 

 century than their younger theological sister. 



About the middle of the eighteenth century, the 

 finances of St. Salvator and the tenements of St. 

 Leonard's having fallen equally into disrepair, the more 

 flourishing finances of the one were transferred to the 

 better buildings of the other, and the two Colleges were 

 by Act of Parliament conjoined, under the prosaic name 

 of the United College. From that time, 1747, there 

 have continued to be two instead of three Colleges in 

 the University ; and at this day St. Andrews remains 

 the only place in Scotland where native Scots have an 

 opportunity of learning the distinction between a College 

 and a University. 



In the later years of the last, and the three first decades 

 of the present century, the names of certain families recur 

 so frequently in the roll of Professors, that one is almost 

 tempted to imagine that the spirit of the St. Andrews 

 Culdees of the eleventh century still survived in the Uni- 

 versity of the eighteenth so faithfully had the Professors 

 copied from these old secularized churchmen their practice 

 of handing on their benefices from father to son. Yet 

 among these frequently recurring names, some there 

 were who served their University so well, as to suggest a 

 doubt whether their disappearance in modern times has 

 been pure gain. 



At the time of the Reformation, in his ' First Booke 

 of Discipline/ John Knox, when laying the foundation of 



