The University of Aberdeen on Saturday last elected Dr. Alexander
Bain, formerly Professor of Logic in the University, her Lord Rector, by majorities in every " nation" into which the University is divided. The candidate set up in opposition to him was Sir James Paget. We do not know how far the contest was one of political or of any other kind of opinion—Dr. Bain is certainly a political Liberal, and Sir James Paget, we believe, ranks as a Conservative—or was simply a contest between a former professor and a very eminent surgeon. Dr. Bain has, no doubt, devoted a good number of the best years of his life, and the labours of a very acute, though a cold and dry understanding, to very elaborate study given directly for the most part to the service of the University ; while Sir James Paget has, during the same period, been helping the scientific teaching of the metropolis, and serving the cause of enlightened medicine all the world over. If these were the pivots on which the election turned, the local patriotism of the students was per- fectly justified in giving the victory to their own distin- guished teacher. But if the contest turned chiefly on the type of the two men's intellectual conclusions, and the general calibre of their moral influence, we should not regard it as very promising for the future of the University, that one of the loftiest, as well as one of the noblest minds of our day, should stand comparatively in so little favour among her younger thinkers.
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