Oure Tounis Colledge. By John Harrison. (Blackwood.)—This is one of
the best of the by no means few works which have been pro- duced by the recent tercentenary celebrations in honour of the Edin- burgh University. While not coming directly into competition with the two volumes in which Sir Alexander Grant tells the " story" of the institution of which he is the Principal, Mr. Harrison's book treats the origin and early history of the University from the town rather than the gown stand-point. In dealing with the question of the lost charter of the original College of Edinburgh, upon which Sir A. Grant spends a good deal of ingenuity, Mr. Harrison follows the older historians, and accepts their belief that this document was an authority to the Town Council of Edinburgh to apply certain money left by Bishop Reid of Orkney, in 1558, towards building their own college, rather than raising a separate college under separate management, as directed by the Bishop's will. He comes to the conclusion—and there is no question that he is quite correct—that the real authors of the University of Edinburgh were "John Knox, and the stout, upright, hard-working, God-fearing men who then managed the affairs of the town of Edinburgh in its Kirk and Council." Mr. Harrison has not only searched to much purpose the old Scotch burgh records and other sources of information for the history of the founda- tion of the University, but has given a very careful account of its history to the days of Principal Robertson, accompanied by pictures of Edinburgh society about the close of the eighteenth century. His narrative is clear, flowing, and commendably succinct ; nor is he wanting in north-country humour of the quiet sort, as when he speaks of a well-known Scotch physician as "popularly re-
membered by the most accessible of his works, Gregory's Mixture.' But is he serious, or only sarcastic, when he talks of "those delightful, tender-hearted old judges, Brasfield, and Eskgrove, and Monboddo" ? The merciless Brasfield " tender-hearted " ! Then must Jeffreys he accounted gentle, and Impey pure.
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