There were many societies and institutions (not all of them non-political) that invited Lord Rosebery to succeed Mr. Gladstone as their president. Amongst them was the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. Lord Rosebery accepted the invitation, and, on November 25th, 1898, delivered his Inaugural Address on Bookishness and Statesmanship.

BOOKISHNESS AND STATES

MANSHIP

It is difficult for me to avoid a certain feeling of sadness in standing here to-night, for it is twenty-seven years since I last delivered an Inaugural Address to the Philosophical Institution. Twenty-seven years is a long time— much has happened since then-many have gone and all are changed. In the chair was the venerable and sagacious form of Lord Colonsay, who looked as wise as Thurlow, and was probably much wiser. What a formidable listener I felt him, with his prodigious white hair and bushy white eyebrows. Few prisoners in the dock can have gazed on him with more apprehension than I on that night. Then there was Blackie; we shall miss to-night the genial calls for a speech from him, and the

not less genial response; there were Sir George Harvey, the kindly President of our Academy; Mr. Gordon, twice Lord Advocate and then Lord of Appeal; the gentle and venerable Sir William Gibson-Craig; Dr. Matthews Duncan, whose rugged manner veiled so warm a heart; George Harrison, the memory of whose excellence survives, among the best of our Lord Provosts; last and not least, the uncle and second father I so lately lost-so well known and loved in Edinburgh the warm friend of this Institution-Bouverie Primrose. All these familiar faces which encouraged me in 1871 will not be on this platform to-night. We shall miss, too, the face of another friend, also a hearty supporter of this institution-I mean John Ritchie Findlay. Edinburgh can scarcely have had a citizen of more truly public spirit; we shall long miss him-never more than here.

It is, then, with a necessary sadness that I speak to-night after so long an interval. That is not the only reason which makes it difficult for me to thank you, as I could wish, for the honour you have done me in electing me as

your President.

For I stand in the fiftysecond year of your Institution as seventh on an illustrious roll. It begins with Adam Black, a great citizen and servant of Edinburgh; then comes the brilliant and wayward Christopher North. Third there comes Macaulay in the glory of the second instalment of his history. He was succeeded by Brougham, then in the commencement of decline, who was followed by Carlyle, whose connection with Edinburgh was so signal and pathetic. Then, in 1881, you chose my immediate predecessor, Mr. Gladstone, who had just in a scene of matchless enthusiasm renewed, as it were, his foothold in Edinburgh.

It makes me blush to record these names and to stand in the place of these men. But as Time and Death make havoc in the ranks of mankind, we cannot pretend to fill the gaps we can only close them and move on. My impression, however, is that, of your Presidents, the most illustrious have only been names to you. At least during the thirty years that represent my life as your neighbour, I can recall no President of your Institution

who has taken part in its proceedings. I speak under correction, and I do not forget that Macaulay made his famous speech in 1846 on the literature of Great Britain, at a meeting of this Institution. But he was not then President, while the occasion appears to have been a convivial one, and not as now a mere feast of reason.

You have taken a new and dangerous course in electing the man on the spot, for in such a case you may have taken King Stork instead of King Log. I promise you I offer no such danger. But suppose it had been Brougham, one of my predecessors, who had lived at Dalmeny during his Presidency. He was capable each year, not merely of delivering the inaugural address, but the entire course of lectures, and I verily believe that had he been challenged, he would have insisted on doing so.

Mr. Gladstone, too, could have done the same thing. He could have proffered at once, as the great attraction, a course of lectures on Homer; and with scarcely less of zest a course of lectures on Dante. But after these were