aces of Constantinople, breaking in
pieces Grecian sculptures, and giving to the flames piles of Grecian
eloquence, a few humble German artisans, who little knew that they were
calling into existence a power far mightier than that of the victorious
Sultan, were busied in cutting and setting the first types. The
University came into existence just in time to witness the disappearance
of the last trace of the Roman empire, and to witness the publication of
the earliest printed book.

At this conjuncture, a conjuncture of unrivalled interest in the history
of letters, a man, never to be mentioned without reverence by every
lover of letters, held the highest place in Europe. Our just attachment
to that Protestant faith to which our country owes so much must not
prevent us from paying the tribute which, on this occasion, and in this
place, justice and gratitude demand, to the founder of the University
of Glasgow, the greatest of the restorers of learning, Pope Nicholas the
Fifth. He had sprung from the common people; but his abilities and his
erudition had early attracted the notice of the great. He had studied
much and travelled far. He had visited Britain, which, in wealth and
refinement, was to his native Tuscany what the back settlements of
America now are to Britain. He had lived with the merchant princes of
Florence, those men who first ennobled trade by making trade the ally
of philosophy, of eloquence, and of taste. It was he who, under the
protection of the munificent and discerning Cosmo, arranged the first
public library that Modern Europe possessed. From privacy your founder
rose to a throne; but on the throne he never forgot the studies which
had been his delight in privacy. He was the centre of an illustrious
group, composed partly of the last great scholars of Greece, and partly
of the first great scholars of Italy, Theodore Gaza and George
of Trebizond, Bessarion and Filelfo, Marsilio Ficino and Poggio
Bracciolini. By him was founded the Vatican library, then and long after
the most precious and the most extensive collection of books in the
world. By him were carefully preserved the most valuable intellectual
treasures which had been snatched from the wreck of the Byzantine
empire. His agents were to be found everywhere, in the bazaars of the
farthest East, in the monasteries of the farthest West, purchasing or
copying worm-eaten parchments, on which were traced words worthy of
immortality. Under his patronag