The chapel of King’s College has fared better. Like a modest northern wild-flower, its beauties are hidden from the common gaze of the peering tourist, but to the adepts who examine them they are of no ordinary character. From the difficulty of working the indigenous granite, and the cost of importing freestone, the Gothic builders of this district seem to have been frugal in their stone decorations, so that the glory of King’s College consists in its interior wood-work of carved oak, worked in architectural forms, like fairy masonry. We question if there is anywhere a collection of specimens of Gothic fretwork more varied and delicate. It is difficult to conceive anything more depictive of high and daring educational aspirations than the planting of this beautiful edifice in so distant a spot, as the place of worship of those students who were to flock to it from the wild hills and dreary moors of the north. Its founder was Bishop Elphinston, an ardent scholar, a traveller, and a frequenter of the Continental universities, who might rather have been expected, had he followed the dictates of his refined tastes instead of his conscientious convictions, and his zeal for the spread of learning, to have spent his days among the Continental scholars, than to have carried their learning across the Grampians. The character of the foundation may be derived from the following abstract of the Bull of erection of 1495, prefixed to the Spalding edition of the _Fasti Aberdonienses_. “Bull of Pope Alexander VI., issued on the petition of James IV., King of Scots, which sets forth that the north parts of his kingdom were inhabited by a rude, illiterate, and savage people, and therefore erecting in the City of Old Aberdeen a ‘Studium Generale’ and University, as well for theology, canon and civil law, medicine, and the liberal arts, as for any other lawful faculty, to be there studied and taught by ecclesiastical and lay Masters and Doctors, in the same manner as in the ‘Studia Generalia’ of Paris and Bologna, and for conferring on deserving persons the degrees of Bachelor, Licentiate, Doctor, Master, and all other degrees and honourable distinctions; conferring on William, Bishop of Aberdeen, and his successors, the office of Chancellor, empowering them, or, during the vacancy of the See, the Vicar deputed by the Chapter, to confer these degrees in all the faculties on such well-behaved scholars as shall, after due examination, be deemed fit by the Rector, Regents, Masters, or Doctors of the faculty in which the degree is sought; granting to such graduates full power of teaching in this or any other _studium_, without any other examination; giving power to the Chancellor or his Vicar, the Rector for the time, and the resident Doctors, with the assistance of a competent number of Licentiates in each faculty, and of circumspect scholars of the said _studium_, and of two of the