X 



gave a considerable share of its government to the distinguished men 

 who constituted its teaching body, and largely increased the impor- 

 tance of their corporate deliberation. Almost from the first Jevons 

 proved himself a valuable member of the Senate, and at a somewhat 

 critical period in the history of the College, he was chosen to serve 

 as a representative on the College Council. " There were many 

 qualities in him," writes one of his colleagues, "which more than 

 justified the confidence reposed in him, but there was none for which 

 he was more conspicuous than a comprehensive large mindedness 

 which enabled him to look on questions with a view to something 

 more than the immediate future. . . . Towards one change now 

 actually effected, and in the opinion of many of us, deserving to be 

 called a progress, he at first maintained an attitude of extremely well 

 armed neutrality. I liked to attribute his coldness towards our 

 University project to his loyalty as a member of the University of 

 London ; but I confess to having spent a very bad half hour when I 

 made a final private attempt to argue him into a change of front. At 

 the same time it is an instance of the sagacity which has marked his 

 treatment of so many public questions, that he from the first (or 

 nearly so) declared that the adoption of a constitution, such as that 

 now actually possessed by the Victoria University, would be the right 

 way towards the desired end. 



In 1868 Jevons was appointed an Examiner in Political Economy in 

 the University of London; in 1870 he was President of the Economic 

 Section at the Meeting of the British Association in Liverpool; in 

 1872 he was elected a Fellow of this Society ; and in 1874 and 1875 

 he was an Examiner for the Moral Science Tripos in the University of 

 Cambridge. In the latter year the Senatus Academicus of the 

 University of Edinburgh conferred upon him the honorary degree of 

 LL.D., and in the following year he was appointed Examiner of Logic 

 and Moral Philosophy in the University of London. 



In 1876 he resigned his connexion with Owens College, and in the 

 same year, on accepting the Professorship of Political Economy in 

 University College, London, he removed to Hampstead, hoping there 

 to have more leisure and greater facilities for the prosecution of his 

 researches. The duties of his new position were less onerous than 

 those to which he had been accustomed in Manchester ; but academic 

 work had never been very congenial to him, and lecturing, even on 

 his favourite subjects, had become of late years somewhat of an 

 irksome task. In a letter to the writer about this time, he speaks of 

 the duties of the class-room as a " millstone " npon his health and 

 spirits. Sometimes he had enjoyed lecturing, especially on logic, but 

 for years past he had " never entered the lecture-room without a 

 feeling, probably, like that of going to the pillory." " Now that I 

 have been able to get rid of the burden," he adds, " I shall probably 



