^2'0 LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 



ment, not as a right, but a trust, to be used conscientiously for the 

 good of tbe ' wliole kingdom,' and his son's being a friend to what is 

 called Catholic Emancipation is in my eyes an insurmountable objec- 

 tion to his appointment. Viewing this matter as I do, I could not 

 vote for Mr. Robert Grant, if he were my own son. I think I shall 

 not Tote at all." Then on N" ;v. 26, he makes an entry which 

 curiously refers to the very withdrawal of which Professor Farish's 

 note speaks. " Mr. Grant having withdrawn," he says, " I feel at 

 liberty to vote for Mr. Bankes, who is a friend both to the existing 

 Government and the Protestant Ascendancy." A memorandum is 

 added, that the numbers for Mr. Bankes were 419; those for the 

 unsuccessful candidates were : Lord Hervey, 280 ; Mr. Scarlett, 219. 

 It thus appears that our friend. Professor Parish, had been going ■ 

 about among the resident M.A's at Cambridge, on an active canvass 

 in favour of Mr. Robert Grant, in company with " old Mr. Grant," 

 Robert's father ; and that Robert's prospect of success did not finally 

 prove such as to indtice him to persevere in the contest. This Robert 

 Grant was afterwards the Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant, Governor 

 of Bombay. He was also a younger brother of Lord Glenelg, remem- 

 bered in Canada as Secretary of State for the Colonies at the begin- 

 ning of the present reign. 



I now produce a trifling, but highly prized note in the handwriting 

 of Professor Smyth, who from 1807 to 1849 occupied the chair of 

 Modern History in Cambridge. His lectures on Modern History 

 and on the French Revolution have taken a high place in English 

 literature, and continue to be reprmted. He shows himself in them 

 to have been a man much in advance of many of his contemporaries 

 in respect of the philosophy of history. " When we read these lec- 

 tures," a great Whig authority has said, " we are at no loss to under- 

 stand why Cambridge has produced of late years so many illustrious 

 thinkers. For two entire generations the political intellect of that 

 University was under the training of a man who, perhaps was better 

 fitted for an instructor on the great social questions of the modern 

 world than any one who has filled the chair of professor in this 

 country." (This, it is expedient to observe, was written in 1856.) 

 When the Prince Consort came up to Cambridge in 1847, to be 

 installed as Chancellor, he paid a visit expressly to Professor Smyth, 

 in the rooms, the Professor being at the time in failing health and 

 unable to go out. All residents in Cambridge became perfectly 



