xi ?.] LIFE IN ST. ANDREWS. 401 



These urged, it may well be believed, with no measured 

 vehemence on the Commissioners, the former abuses and 

 the present anomaly : and the Commissioners were known 

 to sympathize with the views of the Edinburgh men. 

 Principal Forbes, too, while he saw and felt the great 

 benefit that accrued to the University revenues from 

 medical graduation, shared, though from no interested 

 motives, the dislike of his former colleagues to the St. 

 Andrews system, so that he would not defend the reten- 

 tion of the old privilege unimpaired. The whole subject 

 cost him much anxious thought. The result in the end 

 was that the Commissioners sanctioned a compromise 

 limiting greatly the exercise of the right in future, but 

 allowing it to continue under certain very definite restric- 

 tions, which, while they meet an acknowledged need in the 

 medical profession, are still a source of some revenue to 

 the University. 



A third project which early engaged the attention of 

 Principal Forbes, was the founding of a College Hall. 

 In St. Andrews, as in the other Scottish Universities, it 

 had long been customary for students to live where 

 they chose in lodgings in the town. All that the Uni- 

 versity requires of students is regular attendance at the 

 Professors' lectures, good conduct within the College 

 walls, and without them to keep the peace. In old 

 times, St. Andrews had been resorted to as a place of 

 education by the sons of many persons in the higher 

 ranks. Indeed the shields attached to the silver arrows 

 in the old College, attest how largely it was frequented 

 by the sons of the oldest and most honourable families 

 in Scotland. This had, however, almost entirely ce; 

 more than thirty years before Principal Forbes' advent 

 to St. Andrews. The Professors who had once been 

 in habit of taking boarders had ceased to do so, and the 

 general set of the educational tide southward had 

 borne from Si. Andrews to England alnmM all who could 

 afford to go thither. It seemed to Principal Forbes 

 and others, that the idea of a University, as originally 

 held in Sentland, was n<.t fulfilled, unless it contained 



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