The University of Edinburgh dates its existence from the year 1582, when James VI. was sixteen years of age and had been for fifteen years King of Scotland. Till that time there had been but three universities in Scotland,—that of St. Andrews (1413), that of Glasgow (1454), and that of King’s College, Aberdeen (1494). The want of a university in the metropolis had been long felt. Especially after the Reformation, people residing in or near Edinburgh had begun to think it a hardship that they had to send their sons over to St. Andrews, or away to Glasgow, or as far off as Aberdeen, to complete their education. Why should not Edinburgh have a university for itself? The Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh were particularly zealous in the project; and, as far back as the reign of Mary, they had, with the Queen’s sanction, taken some steps towards carrying the project into effect. They had fixed on the site of the intended new College. It was the site on which the University now stands, but was then a kind of suburb of gardens and straggling buildings, partly old church edifices, known by the name of St. Mary in the Fields, or, more shortly, Kirk o’ Field. They had purchased a certain right of property here; and here, accordingly, amid the old tenements that have been long swept away, as well as in the gardens and bits of green field which covered what is now the thoroughfare of South Bridge Street, we are to fancy the Edinburgh magistrates and ministers of Queen Mary’s reign, and perhaps John Knox himself, pottering about sometimes in their afternoon walks, looking at this and that, and anticipating the College that was to be established. But years passed on, and there were difficulties in the way. Funds were wanting, and there was strenuous opposition from the already existing universities; and, before any college-building could arise on the site of Kirk o’ Field, that site had been made unexpectedly memorable by one of the ghastliest of deeds. It was close to what is now the south side of the University quadrangle that there stood the fatal tenement in which Darnley was lodged on his return from Glasgow when he was recovering from the small-pox, and the explosion of which by gunpowder, on the night between the 9th and 10th of February 1567, hurled his corpse and that of his servant over the adjacent town-wall, and left Mary a widow. With other thoughts, therefore, than of the intended seat of learning, for the uses of which the ground had been partly purchased when this tragedy blackened it, must the citizens of Edinburgh for many a year afterwards have sauntered hereabouts in the evenings. But shocks of the kind are transient; and, when, in the quieter though still agitated days of King James, certain liberal citizens began to move anew for the foundation of the much-needed university,—chief among whom were Mr. James Lawson, Knox’s successor as minister of Edinburgh, Mr. William Little, afterwards Lord Provost, and his brother, Mr.