Mr. Disraeli delivered his address as Lord Rector of Glasgow
University on Wednesday, and a very lively, pleasant address, on the whole, it was. He began by commenting on the great want of self-knowledge from which young men suffer who have great aspirations, and are apt to mistake suscepti- bility for genius and ambition for power. Then he advised them to study the spirit of the Present rather more than is usual in youth, whether the use they make of their knowledge be to accept it, as they often must, or to oppose it, as they often ought to do. The spirit of the present age, he said, was, on the whole, the spirit of equality, to some forms of which,—the desire for civil equality, for instance,—be gave in his fullest adherence ; while to others,—the claim for social equality, and material equality especially,—he advised the most strenuous op- position. He referred the recent misfortunes of France,—and he observed incidentally that he had felt almost as bitter a feeling when he heard of the beleaguering of Paris and of the breach made in the wall, as he used to feel as a child in reading " that Lysander had entered the city of the Violet Crown,"—to the clean sweep of social inequalities made after 1789, and he ended his speech with an eloquent panegyric on the religious spirit which must ultimately prevent the spread of the new opinions, conclud- ing with some Greek lines expressive of personal faith in God, and of large toleration for those who do not share it, taken " from the most Attic of Athenian poets,"a passage which he recommended to his audience as well adapted "to guide their consciences and guard their lives." The address was pleasant and by no means pedantic, in spite of its formal Greek quotation at the close ; but we con- fess to some disappointment at not having got out of Mr. Dis- raeli any literary confessions as to his favourite books, especially the favourite books of his youth. The occasion was a suitable one, and no one could gossip better about books than the Lord Rector of Glasgow, if he would tell his real preferences, and not the dramatic preferences of the leader of the Tory party.
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