Lord Rosebery delivered his inaugural address as President of the
Associated Societies of Edinburgh University on Tues- day evening, the chair being occupied by Mr. Arthur Balfour, the Chancellor of the University. After welcoming the Chancellor, Lord Rosebery indulged in a brief retrospect of the golden days of Edinburgh at the close of the last century. " Railways and the Press have made that intel- lectual supremacy impossible, for, after all, originality can only exist in the backwaters of life; the great ocean of life smoothes and rolls its pebbles to very much the same purpose." Bat such concentration was undesirable as well as impossible at the present. He looked, accordingly, to his fellow-members of the Associated Societies as potential Empire-builders, or at least Empire-maintainers, and asserted that there never was in the history of Great Britain so great a call as now upon the energies and intelligence of men for public service, or so many paths of distinction open within the Empire for those who would share in the task of Empire- building. After paying a handsome tribute to our "un- paralleled Civil Service," Lord Rosebery went on to say that the disinterested anxiety to serve the public on the part of professional men never stood higher than at the present moment. There were countless indirect and humble ways of rendering such service in the domain of social matters, litera- ture, and even athletics. For Lord Rosebery declared him- self a firm believer in cricket matches with Australia and athletic contests with the United States as one of the sub- ordinate methods of welding the Empire, and even of welding English-speaking races together.
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