Eight years of the university is an exorbitant demand, and it would be impossible to satisfy it, save, in the first place, by cheapening the course of study as much as possible, and secondly, by permitting the students to enter at a comparatively early age. The average age of students in Scotland is not less than in England; but if in the one country the ordinary course of study is extended over four years, while in the other it is limited to three, the freshmen must evidently in the former be a year younger than in the latter, in order to be of the same age at the time of graduating. If after graduating, another four years must be devoted to the Divinity Hall before one can have the chance of a living, it is clear that the student destined for the Church must begin his studies even earlier. He must, therefore, at the most critical period of his life, when most he requires physical strength, enter upon his suicidal course, and keep it up without intermission for eight long years. His only relief occurs in the vacation which fortunately for him lasts seven months. Then he recruits a little, while the student who went up to College better prepared both by previous education, and with the means of living, chafes at the delay, and longs for the introduction of a system, which, by the expedient of a summer session, would reduce the compulsory period of study, as in the English universities, to three years. The effect of these arrangements on the student life may easily be conceived. A society formed on these conditions must evidently be a very mixed society; therefore, a society extremely suspicious of its members; therefore, also a society which has little cohesion and tends to destroy itself. What becomes of student life, where so many men must toil like slaves to keep the wolf from the door—must sit up half the night poring over their books, and plunging their heads every hour into cold water to keep away sleep? These give the tone to the university till it is no longer regarded as the centre of certain social influences, and becomes a mere mill for grinding gerunds and chopping logic. It is because Englishmen have criticized chiefly the art of gerund-grinding and the method of logic-chopping pursued in the Scottish universities, that hitherto their criticisms have fallen flat. It is not so much the educational as the social element of the universities that is at fault. To all the statistics of competitive examinations, and to all the sneers about their having produced no great scholar, the Scotch have a ready answer. It is thought more than scholarship; it is the power of reasoning, more than that of acquiring facts, that the Scottish universities foster; and English candidates, passing before Scotch examiners, would be as certainly floored as Scottish candidates now are before English examiners. This is what the Scotch reply to an attack upon their educational system; but they will confess at once the social deficiencies of their universities.