ve. Only the passing of the years can place
them in their true perspective. Any estimate of them in our day would
perhaps be proved false by time. Matthew Arnold said: "No man can trust
himself to speak of his own time and his own contemporaries with the
same sureness of judgment and the same proportion as of times and men
gone by." The growth and development of McGill, then, during the last
quarter of a century will be here given in bare outline only. The
details of that growth are vivid in the memory of living men.

In May, 1895, Dr. William Peterson, Principal of University College,
Dundee, Scotland, was appointed to succeed Sir William Dawson as
Principal of McGill University, and at the opening of the session in the
following September he arrived in Montreal to begin his work. The new
Principal was born in Edinburgh in May, 1856. He received his education
at the Edinburgh High School and at Edinburgh University, where he
graduated in 1875 with Honours in Classics. On his graduation he was
awarded the Greek Travelling Fellowship, and after a period of study on
the continent he entered Oxford University for further post-graduate
courses in Classics. On leaving Oxford he was appointed Assistant to the
Professor of the Humanities in Edinburgh University. Two years later, in
1882, he was appointed to the Principalship of University College,
Dundee, which included among its other duties the Professorship of
Classics and Ancient History. Thirteen years later he became Principal
of McGill.

The twenty-four years during which Principal Peterson guided the
destinies of McGill were years of steady growth and development. They
were years, too, of notable and generous gifts from men of wealth and
vision who believed in the value of education and of the beneficent
influence of McGill in Canada and the world. Soon after Principal
Peterson's appointment two projects for which his predecessor, Sir
William Dawson, had planned were carried to completion. Both of these
were made possible by the loyal aid of two benefactors who had already
contributed greatly to the expansion of the University. William C.
Macdonald had already given the Macdonald Engineering Building and the
Macdonald Physics Building for the advancement of Applied Science. He
now added to these the Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building with full
equipment for the carrying on of courses which, we have seen, Dr.
Harrington had originated years before in the cramped a