should think, nearer eighty than seventy years of age--a mild-looking,
full-eyed old man, with a face somewhat of the type of Lord Derby's.
There was Professor Huxley, young in years, dark, heavy-browed, alert
and resolute, but not moulded after any high ideal; and there was
Professor Tyndall, also young, lithe of limb, and nonchalant in
manner. When his name was called he sat as if he had no concern
in what was going on, and then rose with an easy smile, partly of
modesty, but in great measure of indifference.

"Dr. Rae, the Arctic explorer and first discoverer of the fate of Sir
John Franklin, who is an M.D. of Edinburgh, was now made LL.D. He is
of tall, wiry, energetic figure, slightly baldish, with greyish, curly
hair, keen, handsome face, high crown and sloping forehead, and his
bearing is that of a soldier--of a man who has both given and obeyed
commands, and been drilled to stand steady and upright. Carlyle
himself was offered the degree of LL.D., but he declined the honour,
laughing it off, in fact, in a letter, with such excuses as that he
had a brother a Dr. Carlyle (an M.D., also a man of genius, I insert
parenthetically, and known in literature as a translator of 'Dante'),
and that if two Dr. Carlyles should appear at Paradise, mistakes might
arise.

"After all the LL.D's had heard their merits enumerated, and had had
a black hood or wallet of some kind, with a blue ribbon conspicuous in
it, flung over their heads, Principal Brewster announced that the Lord
Rector would now deliver his address. Thereupon Mr. Carlyle rose at
once, shook himself out of his gold-laced rectorial gown, left it on
his chair, and stepped quietly to the table, and drawing his tall,
bony frame into a position of straight perpendicularity not possible
to one man in five hundred at seventy years of age, he began to speak
quietly and distinctly, but nervously. There was a slight flush on
his face, but he bore himself with composure and dignity, and in the
course of half an hour he was obviously beginning to feel at his ease,
so far at least as to have adequate command over the current of his
thought.

"He spoke on quite freely and easily, hardly ever repeated a word,
never looked at a note, and only once returned to finish up a topic
from which he had deviated. He apologised for not having come with
a written discourse. It was usual, and 'it would have been more
comfortable for me just at present,' but he had tried it, and could
n