In 1845 the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrews, then occupied by Dr. Cook, and once held by Dr. Chalmers, became vacant by the former's death, and Ferrier entered as a candidate. Highly recommended as he was by Hamilton and others, Ferrier was the successful applicant, and St. Andrews became his home for nineteen years thereafter, or until his death in 1864. Such is a bald statement of the facts of what would seem a singularly uneventful life. Life divided between the study, library, and classroom, there was little room for incident outside the ordinary incidents of domestic and academic routine. Yet Ferrier never sank into the conventionality which life in a small University town might induce. His interests were always fresh; he was constantly engaged in writing and rewriting his lectures, which, unlike some of his calling, he was not content to read and re-read from year to year unaltered. His thoughts were constantly on his subject and on his students, planning how best to communicate to them the knowledge that he was endeavouring to convey--a life which came as near the ideal of philosophic devotion as is perhaps possible in this nineteenth century of turmoil and unrest. Still, gentleman and man of culture as he was, Ferrier had a fighting side as well, and that side was once or twice aroused in all the vehemence of its native strength. Twice Ferrier made application for a philosophical chair in the town of his birth and boyhood. In 1852, when his father-in-law, John Wilson, retired, he became a candidate for the professorship of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh; and then again, in 1856, he offered himself as a successor to Sir William Hamilton as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics. On neither occasion was he successful, and on both occasions he suffered much from calumnious statements respecting his 'German' and unorthodox views--a kind of calumny which is more than likely to arise and carry weight when the judges are men of honourable character but of little education, men to whom a shibboleth is everything and real progress in learning nothing. On the first occasion there were several candidates who submitted their applications, but on Professor M'Cosh's retiring from the combat, the two who were 'in the running' were Professor Ferrier of St. Andrews and Professor Macdougall of the Free Church College in Edinburgh. It is curious, as instancing the strange change which had come over the politics of Scotland since the Reform Act had passed, that the very influences that told in favour of John Wilson in applying for a professorship in 1821 should thirty years later tell as strongly against his son-in-law. In 1852, nine years after the Disruption, so greatly had matters altered, that the Free Church liberal party carried all before it in the Corporation. And although the liberal journals of the earlier date were never tired of maintaining liberty of thought and action, yet when circumstances