The Buchanan skull is still held by the college. That eminent scholar died on the 28th September 1582, and was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard. John Adamson, Principal of the University between 1623 and 1651, got the skull by bribing the sexton, and bequeathed it to the college. The story rather revolts the taste of to-day, but grim old Scotland had a strange hankering after those elements of mortality. Its remarkable thinness was noted, in fact the light could be seen through it, and anatomists of later years dwelt on the fine breadth of forehead, and remarkable contours. It was judged, moreover, a skull of a Celtic type—Celtic was possibly enough Buchanan’s race. Long afterwards Sir William Hamilton, at the Royal Society in Edinburgh, compared it with the skull of a Malay robber and cut-throat, and showed that, according to the principles of the phrenologists, the Malay had the finer head. This was meant as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of phrenology, though, after all, the evidence of identification could not be satisfactory. If the sexton consented to be bribed he was not likely, in old Greyfriars, to be at a loss for a skull, but it seems irreverent to pursue the subject further. Robert Leighton, Principal between 1653 and 1662, was afterwards Bishop of Dunblane, and then Archbishop of Glasgow. In 1672 he was still living in his rooms in the college, and was there waited upon one day by Chorley, an English student studying divinity at Glasgow. He brought the compliments of his college and tutor, and invited the prelate to his approaching laureation. He next presented him with the laureation thesis, which was gratefully received, but when the visitor produced a pair of “fine fringed gloves” “he started back and with all demonstrations of humility excused himself as unworthy of such a present.” Chorley, however, whilst humble was persistent, and though the Archbishop refused again and again and retreated backwards, Chorley followed, and at the end fairly pinned Leighton against the wall! His Grace needs must yield, “but it was amazing to see with what humble gratitude, bowing to the very ground, this great man accepted them.” So much for the author of the classic _Commentary on the 1st Epistle of St. Peter_. Is it not a picture of the time when men were extreme in all things, though Leighton alone was extreme in humility? Was there not (you ask) something ironic in the self-depreciation? I do not think so, for you look as “through a lattice on the soul” and recognise a spirit ill at ease in an evil day, one who might have uttered Lord Bacon’s pathetic complaint _multum incola fuit anima mea_ with far more point and fitness than ever Bacon did.