By the death of the veteran Sir David Brewster, in February, 1868, the office of Principal of Edinburgh University fell vacant. This post is a survival from the earliest days. The College out of which the University grew was established in 1583 by the Town Council under a charter granted by James VI. Only one regent or tutor was necessary at first to teach the "bairns," as the students were termed in the contract entered into between Rollock, the first regent, and the city fathers. Rollock was promised that as the college increased "in policy and learning" he should be advanced to the highest post created. By his own efforts the number of students increased so greatly that within the first few years several other regents were appointed, and the Council, remembering their promise, dignified him with the title of Principal or First Master in 1586. This office was held during the succeeding two centuries by a series of more or less worthy men, prominent among whom were Leighton, afterwards Archbishop of Glasgow, and William Carstares, better known as a statesman and for his connection with the Rye House Plot in 1684. During Carstares's tenure the tutors were turned into professors, and the college became more strictly speaking a university, although from the first it had assumed without any right by charter the function of degree-granting. Although the utility of the post quite vanished when the college became a university, and the principal had no place in the constitution of a university, nevertheless the principalship was not abolished. The Universities Act of 1858 recognised the office, but only as that of an ornamental head, acting as president of the assembly of professors constituting the Senatus Academicus. The salary is a thousand pounds a year with an official residence, not within the precincts or the University. The former head master of the college, known by and knowing every student, became a sinecurist of whose existence it is no exaggeration to say many of the students are, through no fault of their own, unaware. Brewster had been a distinguished occupant of the post--distinguished not as a principal, for he received the appointment only at the age of seventy-eight, but as a scientist. To the public he was best known as the author of the "Life of Sir Isaac Newton," and as the inventor of the kaleidoscope. It is said that Brewster never spoke as much as five lines at the meetings of the Senatus Academicus without having previously written them down; and it is probable that this lack of spontaneous utterance from the Chairman gave the tone to the assembly. The rival professors doubtless nursed their animosities for some less dignified meeting-place, differing there only on the most correct academic lines.