ABSTRACT
We are told by the etymologists that the word “university” has nothing to do with the universal extent of the studies pursued, but was the medieval word for a society of any kind. Yet the universities, if not places of general learning, were places of learning in general and tended in early days to be more removed from centres of active life and wider interests. It was all the more important that they should have links with the outer world and channels of connection with what was there going on. In the Scottish Universities this purpose was served by the Lord Rector, an institution which every three years secured to the students the opportunity of inviting, and by and by, hearing addresses from leaders in politics, literature, discovery, science or religion. The Oxford Colleges had their Visitors who less publicly played somewhat the same part. While still in Glasgow I had heard Bright and Gladstone, both when as Rector they addressed the students and afterwards when they spoke to the citizens in the evening in the City Hall—Bright at his eloquentest in his descriptive vision of the long line of single-room dwellers that the slums concealed as passing before him and his appeal on their behalf for the City's merciful care. In Balliol I met at the Master's house Lord Peel, who had been for so long Speaker in the House of Commons. When we gathered round him after breakfast, someone asked him about his experience of orators in the House of Commons: who, he thought, had been the greatest. He told us that beyond all comparison John Bright was the greatest he had ever heard. He added the interesting incident that Bright himself had once asked him the somewhat embarrassing question what he thought was the source of his own power as a speaker, and after he had given one or two complimentary reasons for it Bright had replied: “No, no. It is because I speak so slowly.” This certainly was a remarkable feature of his delivery. But the proper reply would have been, ‘”No, no, it is because John Bright speaks so slowly, and because of the Biblical simplicity of the words that he uses.”
