Edinburgh Bookshelf

Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V

Search

Faculty of TheoZogy. Theology, 1620. Andrew Ramsay. Hebrew, 1642. Julius Conradus Otto. Divinity, 1702. John Cumming. Biblical Criticism, 1847. Robert Lee. Faculty of Law. Public Law, 1707. Charles Areskine. Civil Law, 1710. James Craig. History, 17x9. Charles Mackie. Scottish Law, 1722. Alexander Bayne. Medical Jurispkdence, 1807. Andrew Duncan (secunh). THE QUADRANGLE, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. colonies and India avail themselves very extensively of the educational resources of the University of Edinburgh. In 1880 there were 3,172 matriculated students, of whom 1,634 were medical alone ; of these 677 were from Scotland, 558 from England, 28 from Ireland, and the rest from abroad ; and these numbers will be greatly increased when the Extension Buildings are in full working order, and further develop the teaching of the Faculty of Medicine. Botany, 1676. James Sutherland. Midicine and Botany, 1738. Practice of Medicine, 1724. Anatomy, 1705. Robert Elliot. Chemistry and Medicine, 1713. James Crawford. Chemistry (alone), 1844. William Gregory. Midwifery, 1726. Joseph Gibson. Natural History, 1767. Robert Ramsay: Materia Medica, 1768. Francis Home. Clinical Surgery, 1803. James Russell. Military Surgery, 1806. John Thomson (abolished). Surgery, 1777, Alexander Monro (secandus). General Pathology, 1831. John Thomson. The average number of students is above 3,000 yearly, and by far the greater proportion of them attend the Faculty of Medicine. The British Charles Alston. William Porterfield. 100 There are two sessions, beginning respectively in October and May, the latter being confined to law and medicine. The university confers all the usual degrees. To qualify in Arts it is necessary to attend the classes for Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Logic, Rhetoric, Moral and Natural Philosophy. There are some 125 bursaries amounting in the annual aggregate value of scholarships and fellowships to about &1,600. The revenues of the university of old were scanty and inadequate to the encouragement of high education and learning in Edinburgh; and the salaries attached to the chairs we have enumerated are not inferior generally to those in the other universities of Scotland.
Volume 5 Page 25
  Enlarge Enlarge     Pictures Pictures
26 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [University. Among the first bequests we may mention that of 8,000 nierks, or the wadsett of the lands ol Strathnaver, granted by Robert Reid, Prior 01 ? Beaulieu and last Catholic Bishop of Orkney, to build a college in Edinburgh, having three schools, one for bairns in grammar, another for those that learn poetry and oratory, with chambers for the regent?s hall, and the third for the civil and canon law, and which is recorded by the Privy Council 01 Scotland (1569-1578) ?as greatly for the common weal and policy of the realm.? Robert Reid was a man far in advance of his time, and it is to him that Edinburgh owes its famous university. The patronage of James VI. and private benefactions enabled it to advance in consequence. Sir William Nisbet, Bart., of Dean, provost of the city in 1669, gave LI,OOO Scots towards the maintenance of a chair of theology; and on the 20th hfarch in the following year, according to Stark, the Common Council nominated professors for that Faculty and for Physic. In 1663 General Andrew, Earl of Teviot, Governorof Dunkirk, and commander of the British troops in Tangiers (where, in the following year he was slain in battle by the Moors), bequeathed a sum to build eight rooms ?? in the college of Edinburgh, where he had been educated.? William 111. bestowed upon it an annuity of A300 sterling, which cost hhn nothing, as it was paid out of the ?bishops? rents in Scotland. Part of this was withdrawn by his successor Queen Anne, and thus a ?professor and fifteen students were lost to the university. Curiously enough this endowment was recovered quite recently. It does not appear that there are now any ? I bishops? rents ? forthconiing, and when the chair of Intefnational Law was re-founded in 1862, a salary of A250 a year was attached to it, out of funds voted by Parliament. But in an action in the Scottish Courts, Lord Rutherfurd-Clark held that the new professorship was identical with the old, and that Professor Lorirner, its present holder, was entitled to receive in the future the additional sum of A150 from the Crown, though not any arrears. One of the handsomest of recent bequests was that of General John Reid, colonel of the 88th Regiment, whose obituzry notice appears thus in the Scots Magazine, under date February 6th, 1807 : ?? He was eighty years of age, and has left above ~50,000. Three gentlemen are named executors to whom he has left LIOO each ; the remainder of his property in trust to be life-rented by an only daughter (who married without his consent), whom failing, to the College of Edinburgh. When it takes that destination he desires his executors to apply it to the college imjrinzis, to institute a professor of music, with a salary of not less than A500 a year ; in other respects to be applied to the purchase of a library, or laid out in such manner as the principal and professors may think proper.? Thus the chair of music was instituted, and with it the yearly musical Reid festival, at which the first air always played by the orchestra is ?The Garb of Old Gaul,? a stirring march of the General?s own composition. By the bequest of Henry George Watson, accountant in Edinburgh, AI 1,000 was bestowed on the University in I 880, to found the ?? Watson- Gordon Professorship of Fine Art,? in honour of his brother, the late well-known Sir John Watson- Gordon, President of the Scottish Academy ; and in the same year, Dr. Vans Dunlop of Rutland Square, Edinburgh, left to the University A50,ooo for educational purposes ; and by the last lines of his will, Thomas Carlyle, in 1880, bequeathed property worth about A300 a year to the University, to found ten bursaries for the benefit of the poorer students j and the document concludes with the expression of his wish that ?the small bequest might run forever, a thread of pure water from the Scottish rocks, trickling into its little basin by the thirsty wayside for those whom it veritably belongs to.?: By an Act I and 2 Vic. cap. 55, (?the various sums of money mortified in the hands of the Town Council, for the support of the University, amounting to A I ~ , I I ~ were discharged, and an annual payment of L2,500 (since reduced to A2,170) secured upon the revenues of Leith Docks,? is assigned to the purposes of the earlier bequests for bursaries, Src. The total income of the university, as given in the calendar, averages above ~24,000 yearly. The library is a noble hall 198 feet long by 50 in width, and originated in 1580 in a bequest by Mr. Clement Little, Commissary of Edinburgh, a learned citizen (and brother of the Provost Little of Over-Liberton), who bequeathed his library to the city ?and the Kirk of God.? This collection amounted to about 300 volumes, chiefly theological, and remained in an edifice near St. Giles?s churchyard till it was removed to the old college about 1582. There were originally two libraries belonging to the university; but one consisted mostly of books of divinity appropriated solely to the use of students of theology. The library was largely augmented by donations From citizens, from the alurnni of the University, znd the yearly contributions of those who graduated in arts. Drummond of Hawthornden, the cele
Volume 5 Page 26
  Enlarge Enlarge