The installation of the Duke of Northumberland as Chan- cellor
of Durham University on Saturday opened a new chapter in the history of the foundation, this being the first time that the Chancellorship has been separated from the Deanery under the new Act. Honorary degrees were con- ferred on the Prime Minister, Lord Curzon, Lord Haldane, Lord Rayleigh, Professor Vinogradoff, Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir William Crookes, and others, and the Dean of Durham preached an extremely interesting sermon at the thanks- giving service in the Cathedral. Durham, be observed, shared with Oxford and Cambridge an ecclesiastical origin and a local situation of great and arresting interest. Like them, too, but somewhat later, it was in transition from the relative simplicity of the earlier educational system to the manifold- ness and manysidedness of the modern University. But it had one advantage which they did not possess: it combined in its two centres (Durham and Newcastle) the quiet and learned leisure of a cathedral city and the vigorous exacting life of a great mercantile centre.
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