444 
COLLEGE INSTRUCTION. 
right to make them pay for their instruction in chemistry out of 
their own little pittance; and he most certainly has no right to 
find fault with them for ignorance of that which he does not 
teach them ; much less to talk of their “ disgracing him by their 
ignorance/' when he has taken no pains to remove that igno¬ 
rance. We wonder how the Professor or “ his friend Sir Astley” 
would look, if a spirited pupil, who had passed a brilliant exami¬ 
nation on every other point, were purposely to make a worse 
answer to a chemical question than that “ water is the natural 
drink of horses,” and get turned back for it; and then bring the 
whole matter before the public, and ask how he could learn if he 
was not taught; or who had any right to compel him to pay for 
attendance on lectures which the regulations of the college said 
the Professor should deliver, or cause to be delivered, gratis. 
We question not—no, not for a moment—the genuineness of 
the feeling which prompted this address to the pupils on that 
morning: the habit—the habit, unquestioned for many a long 
year—of omitting these lectures, had taken from the mind of the 
Professor all feeling of obligation to deliver them. But these 
are days of reformation; and our school, among other places, 
must be reformed ; and it must be reformed in this particular, 
among many others; and it must be reformed soon, and by those 
who are now at the head of it, and before others take it into 
their heads to effect a more sweeping reform. There stands the 
law, and the thing should be looked to. 
Shall we be told that times are changed since these regulations 
were drawn up, and that twenty guineas would be a very inade¬ 
quate fee for instruction in all these branches of science? We 
readily acknowledge that it is so. The times, indeed, are changed ; 
our art is rapidly advancing; the situation in life whence we 
now spring, our prospects, our associates in future life, are far 
superior to what they once were. 
The fee, compared with the expenses of the student of human 
medicine, is far too small; then add half as much again to it— 
double it—you would consult the respectability of the profes¬ 
sion, and you would have the thanks of the profession gene¬ 
rally. 
The original fee might remain with the Professor ; no one 
wishes to touch a doit of that. The respectability of the pro¬ 
fession demands that the head of it should be handsomely—he 
would not then be extravagantly—remunerated ; and the surplus 
would be a fund sufficient to enable the governors of the college 
to provide competent teachers in all the branches of science in¬ 
cluded in the regulations, or necessary for the preparation of the 
future practitioner, and to begin at last to keep faith with the 
pupils. 
