When it is known that the provost, bailies, counsellors, and deacons of the Athens,--seldom men of any education, and never men of any genius,--_cum avisamento eorum ministrorum_, (which, being interpreted, signifies “without benefit of clergy,”) have the sole power of electing the greater number of professors in the Athenian university,--when it is considered that the remaining ones are nominated by the crown, in other words, by the leading faction in Scotland for the time,--and when it is borne in mind that the said provosts, bailies, counsellors, and deacons, are little else than a pair of bagpipes, upon which the said faction discourses whatsoever music it chooses,--it will become but too apparent, that the chances of having the professors’ chairs filled by the very fittest men possible are about as small as can well be estimated. That ignorant men should have the power of appointing professors of learning is in itself a very great absurdity; and that the ignorant men to whom such a power is delegated, should themselves be tacked to the tail of a political faction for the purpose of retaining places, contrary both to reason and their own abilities, makes the matter, theoretically considered, a great deal worse. I have no wish to accuse the civic archons of the Athens of wilful abuse in the exercise of this patronage; but I have seen them, I have heard them speak, and I have noticed the estimation in which they are held; and, by a very charitable induction from all these circumstances, I cannot help coming to the conclusion, that they are totally incapable, of their own knowledge, of determining who is, or who is not, a fit person for being porter to the Athenian college, far less professor of the humblest art or science held forth upon within its walls, not even excepting the professor of agriculture, or, as he is aptly termed, “the doctor of dunghills.”