After his Rectorial address, Mr. Balfour was entertained at a
banquet presided over by the Very Rev. Principal Caird, in which it was not permissible to talk politics. In reply to the toast of Mr. Balfour's health, in proposing which Principal Caird had complained of the difficulty he should feel in pro- posing Lord Tennyaon's health without any allusion to poetry, or Mr. Ruskin's without any allusion to art, or Sir William Thomson's without any allusion to science, Mr. Balfour re-
-proached him with taking rather a selfish view of the matter, since he had not entered at all into the much greater difficulty which Lord Tennyson and Mr. Ruskin might feel in returning thanks for the toast without any such allusions, though in the case of Sir William Thomson, he did not suppose that the diffi- culty would exist. He had asked for information as to how Lord Beaconsfield (then Mr. Disraeli) got over the difficulty eighteen years ago in a similar dilemma, and was told that in that case long extracts had been read from "Vivian Grey" and "Henrietta Temple" by the proposer of the toast, and that Mr. Disraeli availed himself of these digressions into the literary world to touch lightly on literature, from which he had gracefully glided into the question of the depreciation of silver. So that did not help him much, and he was compelled to pass at once to the subject of Universities, and the delightful epoch at which young men are bringing their eager thought to bear for the first time on the problems of life. Mr. Balfour righty esti- mated the various educational influences which are not tutorial at a very high value ; and yet, as it seems to us, he went out of his way to sneer at Universities which do not teach, in spite of the fact that very many of the greatest Universities teach exceedingly little, though, like an Examining University, they choose their examiners almost exclusively from amongst men who do teach. Where is the great sin of a division of labour which does not alter the reality at all ?
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