xviii Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
particular by Mr Patrick Fraser, afterwards a judge, he did much 
to raise the standard of the education of the Bar, and to preserve 
the high reputation of the Advocates’ Library, a professional, which 
had almost become a national, institution without extraneous aid, 
and in spite of the discouragement of more than one ministry. As 
a University Keformer he kept in view all the Faculties, their 
mutual relations, their scientific not less than practical value, and 
controlled the natural tendency of professors to suppose their own 
subjects paramount. His mind sought as if by natural instinct the due 
proportion of things, and an unexaggerated expression of thoughts. 
He laid great stress on the vital importance to the Scottish Univer- 
sity of the choice of the best professors, by placing the patronage in 
honest, firm, and discriminating hands, preferring for this purpose a 
Board of Curators to either Municipal or Government Patronage, 
and to leave to professors so chosen a wide liberty in the conduct of 
their special studies. But he insisted not less on what he called 
the great principle, that the “ professors were made for the students, 
and not the students for the professors.” He recognised the 
utility of extra-professorial, or, as it was commonly called, extra- 
mural teaching, which had contributed much to the credit of the 
Medical School in Edinburgh, but he doubted whether it was 
applicable to the smaller Universities or to the Faculties of Theology 
and Law, or even to Arts, until the professoriate was better endowed. 
In this, as in other points, he preferred slow and sure to rapid or 
experimental changes, and proved that the equal balance of his 
mind was not confined to the administration of justice. He was 
elected to the Eectorship of King’s College, Aberdeen, in 1857, 
of Glasgow University in 1865, and to the Chancellorship of Edin- 
burgh in 1869, an office which he held till his death, and in which 
he represented the University, at the celebration of its Tercentenary, 
to the learned world with the same dignity which marked his 
performance of the annual duty of conferring degrees. 
These appointments proved the recognition of his services by the 
students as well as the graduates of the Scottish Universities. In 
1858 he was created Doctor of Laws of the University of Edinburgh, 
and in the following year D.C.L. of the University of Oxford, and 
a member of the Privy Council. It is believed that he declined a 
Peerage, and it is certain that he might, had he wished, have become 
