The English universities, by their great wealth and political influence, were able to stand alone, neither giving nor taking. Their Scottish contemporaries, unable to fight a like battle, have had reason to complain of their ungenerous isolation; and as children of the same parentage, and differing only with their southern neighbours in not having so much worldly prosperity, it is natural that they should look back with a sigh, which even orthodox Presbyterianism cannot suppress, to the time when the universal mental sway of Rome, however offensive it might be in its own insolent supremacy, yet exercised that high privilege of supereminent greatness to level secondary inequalities, and place those whom it favoured beyond the reach of conventional humiliations.
To keep up that characteristic which the Popedom only offered, the monarchs of the larger Protestant states have endeavoured to apply the incorporation principle to universities. In small states and republics the difficulty of obtaining a general sanction to frank their honours to any distance from the place where they are given is still greater; yet it is in such places that, through fortunate coincidents, an academy sometimes acquires a widespread reputation and influence. To what eminence the universities in the United States are destined who shall predict? yet, in the estimate of many, they have no right to be called universities at all; and of the doctors’ degrees which they freely distribute in this country, much doubt is entertained of the genuineness. Yet if it would be difficult to lay down how it is that these American institutions have acquired any power to grant degrees—that is to say, the power not only to confer prizes and rewards among their own alumni, but to invest them with insignia of literary rank current for their value over the world—it would be equally difficult for any of the ancient universities in Protestant states to claim an exclusive right to such a power, since this could only be done through Papal authority. It will be said that there is just the same practical difficulty in this as in all other departments of human institutions, and especially those which, like rank, are transferable from country to country, so as to require and obtain an estimate of their value in each. It will be said that the exclusiveness which denies the Heidelberg Doctor of Philosophy a parallel with the LL.D. of Oxford is just the same as that which will by no means admit the count or baron who is deputy-assistant highways controller, as on a par with an earl or baron in the peerage of England. The Kammer Junker of Denmark is not looked on as a privy-councillor. The Sheriff of Mecca, the Sheriff of London, and the Sheriff of Edinburgh, are three totally different personages, and would feel very much puzzled how to act if they were to change places for a while. Some Eastern dignitaries—Baboo, Fudky, and the like, must occasionally puzzle even the adepts of Leadenhall. Nor are we without our instances near at hand. What is the Knight of Kerry, what the Captain of Clanranald, what The Chisholm—and how do the authorities at the Herald’s Office deal with them? Has not an Archbishop of York been suspected of imposture in a Scottish bank when he signed with the surname of Eborac; and have not our Scottish judges, with their strange-sounding peerage-titles, made mighty confusion in respectable English hotels, when my Lord Kames is so intimate with Mrs Home, and my Lord Auchinleck retires with Mrs Boswell? But admitting the confusion to be irremediable in the department of political and decorative rank, the absence of a uniform intellectual hierarchy is not the less to be regretted, while the great effort made to secure it in an early and imperfect condition of society should be contemplated with a respectful awe. There is just one man who professes to be able effectually to restore it—the sage of positivism, M. Comte; and he is to do it when he has established absolute science in everything, and put down freedom of opinion by the application of sure scientific deduction in every department of the world’s intellectual pursuits; when it shall be as impossible to question the most abstruse propositions in chemistry, geology, or social organisation, as to question the multiplication table or the succession of the tides—then, indeed, may absolute laws be laid down to govern the world in its appreciation of intellectual rank. But it is long yet ere that day of certain knowledge—if it is ever destined to dawn on that poor, blundering, unfortunate fellow, man. We have got but a very, very little way yet, and we know not how much farther it is permitted us to penetrate. Terrible are the chaotic heaps that have to be cleared away or set in order by the pioneers of intellect, and it is still a question whether our race can provide those who are strong-headed enough for the task.
There is much truth, however, at the foundation of the French sage’s audacious speculations, that intellect must achieve for herself her own conquests and take her own position. In the greatness of the acquirements of which they are the nursery, must we look hereafter to the greatness of our seminaries of learning. If the university is but a grammar school or a collection of popular lecture-rooms, no royal decrees or republican ordinances will give it rank—if it be a great centre of literary and scientific illumination, the pride or enmity of its rivals will not tarnish its lustre. But apart from, the question between catholicity and positivity, it is, we think, very interesting to notice in our universities—humble as we admit them to be—the relics of the nomenclature and customs which, in the fifteenth century, marked their rank in the great European cluster of universities. The most eminent of their characteristics is that high officer, the Rector, already spoken of. There is a Censor too—but for all the grandeur of his etymological ancestry in Roman history, he is but a small officer—in stature sometimes, as well as dignity. He calls over the catalogue or roll of names, marking those absent—a duty quite in keeping with that enumerating function of the Roman officer which has left to us the word census as a numbering of the people.
So lately as the eighteenth century, when the monastic or collegiate system which has now so totally disappeared from the Scottish universities yet lingered about them, the censor was a more important, or at least more laborious officer, and, oddly enough, he corresponded in some measure with the character into which, in England, the Proctor had been so strangely diverted. In a regulation adopted in Glasgow, in 1725, it is provided “that all students be obliged, after the bells ring, immediately to repair to their classes, and to keep within them, and a censor be appointed to every class, to attend from the ringing of the bells till the several masters come to their classes, and observe any, either of his own class or of any other, who shall be found walking in the courts during the above time, or standing on the stairs, or looking out at the windows, or making noise.”—Munimenta Univ. Glasguensis, ii. 429. This has something of the mere schoolroom characteristic of our modern university discipline, but this other paragraph, from the same set of regulations, is indicative both of more mature vices among the precocious youth of Glasgow, and a more inquisitorial corrective organisation:—
“That for keeping order without the College, a censor be appointed to observe any who shall be in the streets before the bells ring, and to go now and then to the billiard-tables, and to the other gaming-places, to observe if any be playing at the times when they ought to be in their chambers; and that this censor be taken from the poor scholars of the several classes alternately, as they shall be thought most fit for that office, and that some reward be thought of for their pains.” (Ibid., 425). In the fierce street-conflicts, to which we may have occasion to refer, the poor censors had a more perilous service.
In the universities of Central Europe, and that of Paris, their parent, the censor was a very important person; yet he was the subordinate of one far greater in power and influence. In the words of the writers of the Trevaux, so full of knowledge about such matters, “Un Régent est dans sa classe comme un Souverain; il crée des charges de Censeurs comme il lui plait, il les donne à qui il veut, et il les abolit quand il le judge à propos.” The regents still exist in more than their original potency; for they are that essential invigorating element of the university of the present day, without which it would not exist. Of old, when every magister was entitled to teach in the university, the regents were persons selected from among them, with the powers of government as separate from the capacity and function of instructing; at present, in so far as the university is a school, the regent is a schoolmaster—and therefore, as we have just said, he is an essential element of the establishment. The term regent, like most of the other university distinctions, was originally of Parisian nomenclature, and there might be adduced a good deal of learning bearing on its signification as distinct from that of the word professor—now so desecrated in its use that we are most familiar with it in connection with dancing-schools, jugglers’ booths, and veterinary surgeries. The regency, as a university distinction conferred as a reward of capacities shown within the arena of the university, and judged of according to its republican principles, seems to have lingered in a rather confused shape in our Scottish universities, and to have gradually ingrafted itself on the patronage of the professorships. So in reference to Glasgow, immediately after the Revolution, when there was a vacancy or two from Episcopalians declining to take the obligation to acknowledge the new Church Establishment, there appears the following notice:—
“January 2, 1691.—There had never been so solemn and numerous an appearance of disputants for a regent’s place as was for fourteen days before this, nine candidates disputing; and in all their disputes and other exercises they all behaved themselves so well, as that the Faculty judged there was not one of them but gave such specimens of their learning as might deserve the place, which occasioned so great difficulty in the choice that the Faculty, choosing a leet of some of them who seemed most to excel and be fittest, did determine the same by lot, which the Faculty did solemnly go about, and the lot fell upon Mr John Law, who thereupon was this day established regent.”—Ibid., vol. iii. p. 596.
Sir William Hamilton explains the position of the regents with a lucid precision which makes his statement correspond precisely with the documentary stores before us. “In the original constitution of Oxford,” he says, “as in that of all the older universities of the Parisian model, the business of instruction was not confided to a special body of privileged professors. The University was governed, the University was taught, by the graduates at large. Professor, master, doctor, were originally synonymous. Every graduate had an equal right of teaching publicly in the University the subjects competent to his faculty and to the rank of his degree; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his faculty—for such was the condition involved in the grant of the degree itself. The bachelor, or imperfect graduate, partly as an exercise towards the higher honour, and useful to himself, partly as a performance due for the degree obtained, and of advantage to others, was bound to read under a master or doctor in his faculty a course of lectures; and the master, doctor, or perfect graduate, was in like manner, after his promotion, obliged immediately to commence (incipere), and to continue for a certain period publicly to teach (regere), some at least of the subjects appertaining to his faculty. As, however, it was only necessary for the University to enforce this obligation of public teaching, compulsory on all graduates during the term of their necessary regency, if there did not come forward a competent number of voluntary regents to execute this function; and as the schools belonging to the several faculties, and in which alone all public or ordinary instruction could be delivered, were frequently inadequate to accommodate the multitude of the inceptors, it came to pass that in these universities the original period of necessary regency was once and again abbreviated, and even a dispensation from actual teaching during its continuance commonly allowed. At the same time, as the University only accomplished the end of its existence through its regents, they alone were allowed to enjoy full privileges in its legislature and government; they alone partook of its beneficia and sportulæ. In Paris the non-regent graduates were only assembled on rare and extraordinary occasions: in Oxford the regents constituted the house of congregation, which, among other exclusive prerogatives, was anciently the initiatory assembly through which it behoved that every measure should pass before it could be admitted to the house of convocation, composed indifferently of all regents and non-regents resident in the University.”—Dissertations, p. 391–2.
But the term Regent became afterwards obsolete in the southern universities, while it continued by usage to be applied to a certain class of professors in our own. Along with other purely academic titles and functions, it fell in England before the rising ascendancy of the heads and other functionaries of the collegiate institutions—colleges, halls, inns, and entries. So, in the same way, evaporated the faculties and their deans, still conspicuous in Scottish academic nomenclature. In both quarters they were derived from the all-fruitful nursery of the Parisian University. But Scotland kept and cherished what she obtained from a friend and ally; England despised and forgot the example of an alien and hostile people. The Decanus seems to have been a captain or leader of ten—a sort of tything-man; and Ducange speaks of him as a superintendent of ten monks. He afterwards came into general employment as a sort of chairman and leader. The Doyens of all sorts, lay and ecclesiastical, were a marked feature of ancient France, as they still are of Scotland, where there is a large body of lay deans, from the eminent lawyer who presides over the Faculty of Advocates down to “my feyther the deacon,” who gathers behind a half-door the gear that is to make his son a capitalist and a magistrate. Among the Scottish universities the deans of faculty are still nearly as familiar a title as they were at Paris or Bologna.
The employment in the universities of a dead language as the means of communication was not only a natural arrangement for teaching the familiar use of that language, but it was also evidently courted as one of the tokens of learned isolation from the common illiterate world. In Scotland, as perhaps in some other small countries, such as Holland, the Latin remained as the language of literature after the great nations England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, were making a vernacular literature for themselves. In the seventeenth century the Scot had not been reconciled to the acceptance of the English tongue as his own; nor, indeed, could he employ it either gracefully or accurately. On the other hand, he felt the provincialism of the Lowland Scottish tongue, the ridicule attached to its use in books which happened to cross the Border, and the narrowness of the field it afforded to literary ambition.