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of Edinburgh, Session 1868 - 09 . 
possible to summarise. But I have alluded to it on account of a 
very surprising statement in the biography of Sir George Clerk 
Maxwell of Penicuick, father of our lately deceased Fellow, Sir 
George Clerk, which was read in 1784 by John Clerk, junior, of 
Eldin, afterwards Lord Eldin of the Scottish bench. The author 
says, Sir George “ had an excellent taste for the fine arts, and was 
solicitous to encourage them. As one instance of this, he had the 
principal concern in establishing and procuring an endowment for 
the drawing-school in the University of Edinburgh, where twenty 
pupils are instructed gratis in the art of designing. These are 
selected from among such young people of either sex as give signs 
of genius, who are destined to apply to those professions in which 
a skill in that art is requisite. This institution has contributed 
more than any other circumstance to the great improvement of 
ornamental manufactory which this country has made during the 
last twenty years. And who ever recollects the old patterns of 
carpet, damask, gauze, and other manufactures of that sort, and 
compares them with those of the present day, must allow the 
superior elegance of design now exhibited in these productions, 
and which may be reasonably ascribed in a great measure to the 
happy effects produced by the institution we have mentioned.” — 
Trans, i. 51. 
It is impossible that Mr Clerk, himself an ardent admirer of 
art, and addressing a Society composed largely of Professors of the 
University, could be mistaken in making this precise statement. 
Nevertheless, I never heard of such a school in the University. 
There was most assuredly no such school in existence when I first 
joined it as a student in 1811. It cannot have merged in the pre- 
sent excellent School of Design, because that school, as now con- 
stituted, was founded only in recent times ; and to several of its 
governors this passage from Sir George Clerk Maxwell’s biography 
has seemed quite as novel and surprising as to myself. What, 
then, has become of the University School? When did it expire ? 
How did it vanish? Above all, what has become of the endow- 
ment? All I can say upon the last head is that positively it has 
not been swallowed up by the Senatus Academicus since I became 
a member of that body in 1822.* 
* The statement of Mr Clerk seems to be explained by an observation, to 
