In Paris, the lecture halls are open to all, and it is
possible for either native or foreigner to listen for hours daily, if he
be so minded, to some of the finest and most erudite orators and
scholars of Europe. There are, it is true, special students' courses,
from which the general public is excluded, but the most important
lectures are open to all. Hence the Sorbonne is a national institution
in every sense of the word. I do not say that Glasgow does not benefit a
little from the corps of professors at Gilmorehill. But the benefit is
spasmodic, discontinuous, and extremely limited. Some of the professors
do at times come down into the open and speak words of wisdom. But more
is wanted than that if the universities are to be saved from
denationalisation. We hear of Dugald Stewart's class-room being, in the
old days, crowded with the keenest intellects of the Capital. But a
university was not then a kind of higher-grade secondary school.

[24] It is a notorious fact that very few graduates, when they
leave college, are able to read Latin from an author they have
not specially studied, with ease or pleasure. For this melancholy
fact there are several reasons. The range of reading is miserably
meagre. Only a few authors are read, and almost every sentence of
these is cumbered with such an amount of annotation as to render
progress and literary appreciation alike painful. Composition in
Latin absorbs far too much time: the first duty of the teacher
ought to be to turn out pupils who can read Latin with fluency.
No amount of grammatical detail or laborious composition, as at
present practised, will ever make up for the lack of wide
reading. Professor Phillimore's recent suggestion that the
less-known authors should be read more than they are, is wise and
opportune. The authors he mentions would furnish a welcome relief
from the unspeakable dreariness of over-annotated texts.

HOWLERS.

Almost every schoolmaster I have met, either in the Highlands or
Lowlands, has his budget of anecdotes, usually dealing with children's
answers or the droll eccentricities of the local School Board. The
answers of children are invariably entertaining; and I wish the
Educational Institute of Scotland would appoint a committee to codify
the howlers that come under the notice of its members. A collection of
genuine howlers would be no unimportant service to the science of
juveni