The Principalship of King's College, London, has been conferred on
Dr. Barry, the late Principal of an important provincial College, but the appointment does not seem to have been the best that might have been made. We have received one or two weighty and, to our minds, unanswer- able letters, from men of learning and ability, setting forth the superior claims of Professor Plumptre, who has long been Theological Professor in King's College, and who is widely known for a theological learning, a rare delicacy of moral criticism, a literary scholarship, and a poetical imagination which are not often united in one man. Of more than one of his works our own readers have, within the last few years, had opportunities of judg- ing. Dr. Barry's claim,—no doubt, a perfectly legitimate one of its kind,—rests, we believe, on the power of organization he has shown in his former principalship, and possibly, on some reluctance of the Council to set up a precedent of promoting a Professor to the office of Principal. Still, the appointment seems to us, though very likely made from the best of motives, a mistake. Professor Plumptre's intellectual and moral influence with young men is of no ordinary kind, and no merely administrative success should have been held a sufficient set-off against it.
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