In writing of the final epoch in McGill's first century, and the larger McGill of our day, we must of necessity be brief. We are too close to that epoch justly to judge its significance, or to give to the events and the incidents of which it is made up the fair and adequate reference which they doubtless deserve. Only the passing of the years can place them in their true perspective. Any estimate of them in our day would perhaps be proved false by time. Matthew Arnold said: "No man can trust himself to speak of his own time and his own contemporaries with the same sureness of judgment and the same proportion as of times and men gone by." The growth and development of McGill, then, during the last quarter of a century will be here given in bare outline only. The details of that growth are vivid in the memory of living men. In May, 1895, Dr. William Peterson, Principal of University College, Dundee, Scotland, was appointed to succeed Sir William Dawson as Principal of McGill University, and at the opening of the session in the following September he arrived in Montreal to begin his work. The new Principal was born in Edinburgh in May, 1856. He received his education at the Edinburgh High School and at Edinburgh University, where he graduated in 1875 with Honours in Classics. On his graduation he was awarded the Greek Travelling Fellowship, and after a period of study on the continent he entered Oxford University for further post-graduate courses in Classics. On leaving Oxford he was appointed Assistant to the Professor of the Humanities in Edinburgh University. Two years later, in 1882, he was appointed to the Principalship of University College, Dundee, which included among its other duties the Professorship of Classics and Ancient History. Thirteen years later he became Principal of McGill.