"Sir William Peterson was greatest as a scholar. It is hardly necessary that I refer to his brilliant career as a classical student at Edinburgh and Oxford, his priceless legacy to scholarship in the works of the Latin authors he edited and translated, his successful administration of University College, Dundee, at an extremely difficult time in its history, and his guidance of the affairs of McGill during its period of phenomenal growth from 1895 to 1919; for many of you who were his colleagues are better qualified than I to estimate the value of these activities. He preserved to the end the instincts and habits of the scholar. When he enjoyed a period of freedom from his administrative duties it was to the libraries of America and Europe that he gravitated in the scholar's quest for old documents that would yield the scholar's joy of new discovery; and on his last holiday visit to Scotland, deprived by the war of access to the libraries of the Continent, he happened upon an unpublished document of the seventeenth century by what he modestly called 'a lucky chance.' We know, however, that these happy finds come only to those who have the genius of the literary discoverer, and characteristic of the textual critic is his parting message to us in his delightful description of his new-found treasure given in a magazine article under the prophetic title--'A Last Will and Testament.' "As an educationalist Sir William Peterson was a mediator between the champions of pure learning and the advocates of the practical sciences. To him the University had a two-fold function; first 'to make good citizens,' and second 'to hand on the torch of knowledge to successive generations of students.' He believed that in order of teaching pure learning should precede applied science, that classical subjects should precede professional; but in spite of his Oxford training he could never be accused of sacrificing the practical in the University to the disciplinary. He recognised that the development of the pure sciences was effected in history by the practical needs of life and that the marvels of modern scientific activity are based on abstract and theoretical learning. He found a place for the classical and the specialised, the humanistic and the utilitarian, and his ideal was that the University should give practical men a sound training in theory and also keep theory in touch with practice. It was a blessing to McGill and to education in Canada that we had as our guide a believer in the humanities at a time when our youthful enthusiasm for the practical was in danger of blinding us to the ideal of our educational ancestors that the function of the school is to develop men and women of character.