If a man has learnt to know a
thing in itself, and in its relation to surrounding phenomena, he
has got from a University what it is its proper duty to teach.
Accordingly, we find him bestowing a good word on poor old Arthur
Collins, who showed that he possessed these valuable qualities in the
humble work of compiling a Peerage.
"The new Lord Rector is, however, as conservative in his choice of the
implements of study as he is in the determination of its objects. The
languages and the history of the great nations of antiquity he puts
foremost, like any other pedagogue. The Greeks and the Romans are,
he tells the Edinburgh students, 'a pair of nations shining in the
records left by themselves as a kind of pillar to light up life in the
darkness of the past ages;' and he adds that it would be well worth
their while to get an understanding of what these people were, and
what they did. It is here, however, that an old error of Mr.
Carlyle's crops up among his well-remembered truths. He quotes from
Machiavelli--evidently agreeing himself with the sentiment, though he
refrained from asking the assent of his audience to it--the statement
that the history of Rome showed that a democracy could not permanently
exist without the occasional intervention of a Dictator.
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