On Wednesday, Lord Granville, in his usual speech after the
presentation of degrees, referred with fine taste and character- istic delicacy to the great loss of the University in the death of one of its Foraminers in Political Economy, Mr. Walter Bagehot, and the still greater loss to the English Press, of which he was a chief ornament, and to the English public, to whom he spoke with so much authority in the Economist, and then Lord Granville turned to the question as to the proposed detachment of a constituent portion of the University to make a new University at Manchester, stating the chief points at issue in his usual calm and impartial manner,—not as a question of rival interests, but as a question of public advantage. Mr. Lowe was not at his best. He was evidently ill at ease with the thought that he had voted, and must vote, in a manner far from pleasing to his chief sup- porters, the medical graduates, on the great issue of the moment, and was so anxious to palliate his offence, that even the chief opponents of women-doctors must have felt some compunc- tions in listening to his profuse but rather clumsy apologies. The cynic in Mr. Lowe paralyses the confidence he might justly place in the magnanimity of his opponents.
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