It is a bad system, defensible only by disparaging the importance of the student life and overlooking the advantages of society. Bad though the system be, it has its compensations. Among these may be reckoned the fact that a university education is within reach of all classes, and covers a much larger area of the population in Scotland than it does in England. This is the poor man’s view of the case. Those who are in good circumstances think little of such an advantage. They are more impressed with the disadvantages of making a university education too cheap. They are alarmed, in the first place, by the influx of the humbler classes, which of itself must tend to lower the tone of society, and to disintegrate the student life. Then it appears that in order to favour these humbler classes, the time given in each year to the university is shortened as much as possible, and the curriculum of study is unnaturally lengthened. From this it follows, that if a house were started in Edinburgh, attached to the university, on the model of one of the English colleges, for the benefit of those students who can afford it, the scheme would be unprofitable. The house would be vacant seven months of the year, and would have to be maintained for the twelve months on the proceeds of the five during which the yearly session lasts. The thing would be impossible unless such an extravagant rate were charged for these five months as would effectually deter the undergraduates from residence. This is the rich man’s view of the case; and admitting it fully, there is still this to be said, that if the Scottish universities are too cheap, the English universities are too dear. If Scottish students do not get much congenial society, it is possible for almost any man to be a student. Whether a university is intended for the peasantry I do not pretend to say; but, at all events, there is the fact, which may be taken for whatever it is worth, that a Scottish university education is open to the peasant not less than to the peer, and that both peasant and peer take advantage of it. The benefits of a good education thus penetrate to a much lower class in Scotland than in England. There is not a small tradesman, or farmer, or gamekeeper in Scotland who, if his son displays any symptoms of “book-learning,” does not think of the university as the proper field for the lad, and does not look forward to the day when he shall call his son “Doctor,” or see him in a pulpit thumping the gospel out of the Bible.