University of St Andrews

“ Andrews was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 7 June 1849, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1870. The degree of doctor of laws was conferred upon him by the university of Edinburgh in 1871, by Trinity College, Dublin, in 1873, and by the university of Glasgow in 1877; while the degree of D.Sc. was conferred upon him in 1879 by the Queen’s University of Ireland. He was president of the chemistry section of the British Association at Belfast in 1852, and again at Edinburgh in 1871, and was president of the association at Glasgow in 1876. ”

“ Andrews were well-known in 1120, but the university, the first in Scotland, was not founded till 1411. It is one of the smaller British universities, but is doing much for the higher education of women. The library has over 100,000 volumes, and there is a good museum. Population 7,621. ”

“ Who ever really learnt history and geography except by private reading? and what an utter failure a system of education must be, if it has not given the pupil a sufficient taste for reading to seek for himself those most attractive and easily intelligible of all kinds of knowledge? Besides, such history and geography as can be taught in schools exercise none of the faculties of the intelligence except the memory. An University is indeed the place where the student should be introduced to the Philosophy of History ”

“ This was advice which S. J.-B. had always kept well in mind, though not with regard to Paris and Zürich; and enquiries as to other British Universities had been diligently prosecuted. St. Andrews was the one that most naturally suggested itself, “as a comparatively rural University, without male students of medicine, and yet with the power to grant degrees.” It is true that the Medical Curriculum at St. Andrews was—and is—very incomplete; but the deficiency might be made good by some teaching-school unable—or unwilling—to grant degrees. ”

“ As to the prosperity of the University, is there a corner of Europe where men of science will not laugh when they hear that the prosperity of the University of Saint Andrews is to be promoted by expelling Sir David Brewster on account of a theological squabble? The professors of Edinburgh know better than this Presbytery how the prosperity of a seat of learning is to be promoted. There the Academic Senate is almost unanimous in favour of the bill. ”

“ Bute saw clearly that if, as was his great desire, the science of medicine should be worthily represented in the university, proper provision for the teaching of that science must be made in St. Andrews itself, and students of medicine must be encouraged to come to St. Andrews for the completion of their medical course. At no stage of the long controversy between St. Andrews and Dundee did he ever seek or propose to establish a complete medical school at St. Andrews ”

“ The first university in Scotland was that of St Andrews, founded in 1411 by Henry Wardlaw, bishop of that see, and St Andrews. modelled chiefly on the constitution of the university of Paris. It acquired all its three colleges—St Salvator's, St Leonard's and St Mary's—before the Reformation—the first having been founded in 1456 by Bishop James Kennedy; the second in 1512 by the youthful Archbishop Alexander Stuart (natural son of James IV.) , and John Hepburn, the prior of the monastery of St Andrews ”

“ An university exists for the purpose of laying open to each succeeding generation, as far as the conditions of the case admit, the accumulated treasure of the thoughts of mankind. As an indispensable part of this, it has to make known to them what mankind at large, their own country, and the best and wisest individual men, have thought on the great subjects of morals and religion. There should be, and there is in most universities, professorial instruction in moral philosophy ”

“ We must be taught to generalize our conception of the resources which the human mind possesses for the exploration of nature; to understand how man discovers the real facts of, the world, and by what tests he can judge whether he has really found them. And doubtless this is the crown and consummation of a liberal education: but before we restrict an University to this highest department of instruction before we confine it to teaching, not knowledge, but the philosophy of knowledge we must be assured that the knowledge itself has been acquired elsewhere. ”

“ To Bute, with his almost passionate veneration for the ancient university, which for centuries had been the chief home of religion and learning in Scotland, it was intolerable to think of St. Andrews being deposed from its pride of place and sinking into a decaying village, a mere resort of sea-bathers and golfers. ”

“ In St Andrews the reformer was sure to be free from personal danger, and on the whole to have the sympathy of the citizens; though it was not to be supposed that—in the city and university where the late Archbishop Hamilton had been long supreme, and had recently been claiming to exercise the authority of Chancellor of the University, and new founder of St Mary's College, [226] and where he had left behind several relations and dependents more compliant with the new order of things than himself—there were not to be found in this crisis several in [Pg 189] fluential His preaching in St Andrews. ”

“ The works he has left behind him are the living records of his diligence and skill—they are the numerous men of note in the various walks of professional life, the foundation of whose reputation was laid in the instruction they received from him in their youth.
In reply to the letter in which Dr. Andrews, a few months before his death, announced his desire to resign his station in the university, the trustees expressed their high sense "of the unremitting industry and great ability with which he had successively filled the offices of provost and vice-provost;" ”

“ The proper business of an University is different: not to tell us from authority what we ought to believe, and make us accept the belief as a duty, but to give us information and training, and help us to form our own belief in a manner worthy of intelligent beings, who seek for truth at all hazards, and demand to know all the difficulties, in order that they may be better qualified to find, or recognise, the most satisfactory mode of resolving them. ”

“ Every Scottish University is not an University only, but a High School, to supply the deficiency of other schools. And if the English Universities do not do the same, it is not because the same need does not exist, but because it is disregarded. Youths come to the Scottish Universities ignorant, and are there taught. ”

“ Andrews for a seat of learning had been pointed out by an earlier traveller, who maintained that it had the best situation he had ever seen for an University, "being out of all common roads, and having fine downs or links, as they call them, for exercising the scholars." [20] The golfers who now throng the links and boast that when professors by their learning could not save the ancient city from sinking into decay, they by their idleness have lifted it into prosperity, must have been numerous even in Johnson's time. ”

“ Andrews never can be the same place without Ferrier. God knows what is to become of the University with all these breaks upon its old society; and where can we supply such a place as Ferrier's?' And his biographer adds: 'The removal of that delicate and clear spirit from a little society in which his position was so important, and his innate refinement of mind so powerful and beneficial an influence, was a loss almost indescribable, not only to the friends who loved him, but to the University. ”

“ Education makes a man a more intelligent shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching him how to make shoes; it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and the habits it impresses.
This, then, is what a mathematician would call the higher limit of University education: its province ends where education, ceasing to be general, branches off into departments adapted to the individual s destination in life. The lower limit is more difficult to define. An University is not concerned with elementary instruction: the pupil is supposed to have acquired that before coming here. ”

“ Andrews had its drawbacks, it had still more its compensations. It had its links—the long stretch of sandhills spread far along the coast, and bringing crowds of visitors to the town every summer as it comes round; and for the pursuit of learning the remoteness of position has some advantages. Even at its worst the University showed signs of its recuperative powers. Early in the century Chalmers was assistant to the Professor of Mathematics, and then occupied the Chair of Moral Philosophy (that chair to which Ferrier was afterwards appointed) , and drew crowds of students round him. ”

“ Those who take this view of the function of an University are not wrong in thinking that the schools, as distinguished from the universities, ought to be adequate to teaching every branch of general instruction required by youth, so far as it can be studied apart from the rest. ”

“ Andrews University has the reputation of being given to strife, and never being thoroughly at rest unless it has at least one law-plea in operation before the Court of Session in Edinburgh, or an appeal before the House of Lords in London. ”

“ Education may also introduce us to the principal facts which have a direct bearing on the subject, namely the different modes or stages of civilization that have been found among mankind, and the characteristic properties of each. This is the true purpose of historical studies, as prosecuted in an University. The leading facts of ancient and modern history should be known by the student from his private reading: if that knowledge be wanting, it cannot possibly be supplied here. What a Professor of History has to teach, is the meaning of those facts. ”

“ The above mention of "Blairs" has reference to another scheme which Bute hoped might, if carried out, fulfil the two-fold object of strengthening the position of St. Andrews, and of raising the educational standard—an object he had much at heart—of his co-religionists in Scotland. With this view he had proposed the transference to St. Andrews, and the affiliation to the university, of the College of Blairs, near Aberdeen, the training-school of the Scots Catholic clergy; and had promised substantial help both towards the acquirement of a site, and in the endowment of the new seminary. ”

“ Andrews has so little confidence, inasmuch as it has given us all the sciences and arts, and created civilization, and brought the primitive man through the route of development up to his present status of intelligence and cultivation, ought not, we think, to be too lightly discarded in behalf of a university at Washington, although chartered and even endowed by the American Congress. ”

“ Andrews, in consultation with the Senatus Academicus, has resolved to open all its classes in Arts, Science, Theology and Medicine to women students. Women may henceforward matriculate as Students of the University and be admitted to any class or classes they may select, with a view to graduation in Arts, Science, Theology or Medicine. In the year 1893 a sum of £30,000 will become available for Bursaries or Scholarships at the University, one half of which is reserved for women students exclusively ”

“ Andrews, but for its Town Council and its School Board, is a quiet place; and the University, except during the progress of a Rectorial Election, is peaceable and well-conducted. I hope these verses may so far reflect St. Andrews life as to be found pleasant, if not over exciting. ”

“ In October 1876 Wordsworth left Perth for St. Andrews. He first resided at The Hall (hitherto a hall for episcopalian students attending the university) , which he called Bishop's Hall or Bishopshall; it is now St. Leonard's girls' school. Afterwards (1887) he removed to a smaller house on the Scores, which he called Kilrymont, the old name of St. Andrews. St. Andrews brought him opportunities of again influencing young men, and introduced him into the congenial literary society formed by the professors of the university. ”

“ I do not affirm that an University, if it represses free thought and enquiry, must be altogether a failure, for the freest thinkers have often been trained in the most slavish seminaries of learning. The great Christian reformers were taught in Roman Catholic Universities ”

“ Andrews, where he opened a shop with his old sign of the A. B. C. After remaining two years he travelled further north, and in 1622 settled in Aberdeen. Here he met with considerable encouragement from the authorities of the town and the university, and also from Bishop Forbes, who remained through life his firm friend. The house he occupied was on the north side of Castle Street, with the sign of ‘The Townes Armes.’ From 1622 to 1645 he printed continuously, issuing, besides a number of academic productions, some extremely interesting Scottish books. ”

“ Andrews, where he had for nearly twenty years been Professor of Moral Philosophy, after previously holding for a short time a History Professorship at Edinburgh. Of this latter University Ferrier had been an alumnus, as well as of Oxford. He edited his father-in-law Wilson's works, and was a contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, but his chief book was his Institutes of Metaphysic, published in 1854. ”