EDINBURGH RECTORIAL ADDRESSES.
Rectorial Addresses Delivered at Edinburgh. With an Introduc- tion by Archibald Stodart-Walker, M.B. (Grant Richards. 7s. 6d.)—The Lord Rectorship, as it exists at present, was con- stituted in 1858. It seems a somewhat odd experiment to put the election into the hands of the undergraduates,—no one would dream of asking the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge to make such a choice. Yet it has worked well. The Rector can hardly be said to fulfil his proper function of representing the undergraduates. Yet his very existence does so in a way. Any- how we have, as a tangible result of the institution, these addresses, thirteen in number, representing eleven Lord Rectors. Mr. Gladstone seems to have held office for a double term, for he gave his first address in 1860 and his second—a valedictory—in 1865, while Lord Iddesleigh addressed the students twice during his period of three years. Lord Lothian, on the other hand, gave no formal address. He occupied the place between Lord Iddesleigh and Mr. Goschen. The present Lord Rector is Lord Balfour of Burleigh. All these addresses have been duly reported, com- meuted on at the time of delivery, and have taken their place in academic literature. We would point out for special attention those by Thomas Carlyle, Lord Rosebery, and Lord Robertson. The oration of one of the Rectors has an interest of another kind. The students would not listen to him, not because he differed from what was the popular opinion among them on a burning question of the day, the medical education of women, but because he declined to pledge himself to one course of action or the other. The editor praises highly, we see, the address by Lord Derby (the fifteenth Earl, not the Premier of 1866, but the Foreign Secretary of the same time). And, indeed, it is a fine essay, full of the "dry light" which was so characteristic of the man.
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