I have now and then indulged the fancy, whether,—if some Supreme Power were to grant us for once the privilege of taking our holiday ramble, not to the place but to the time of our choice,—of spending a few weeks in this or that century according to our choice,—we should elect to go forwards or backwards. If we may indulge in such a freak of fancy, the preference would perhaps largely turn upon the question of temperament, and therefore to some extent upon that of age. Many a buoyant and youthful spirit would gladly rush to the front, with the conviction that it not merely contains the key to all truth, but that it represents the outcome of all past experience. Perhaps if one were addressing such an assembly as commonly fills this chapel, sympathy would prompt one to side with such a sentiment. But to most of us elder men, I apprehend, the centre of interest has shifted, or is shifting, from the van to the rear.

This is an idle fancy, but it may serve as an introduction to the only treatment of academic endowments appropriate here and now. Shall we then, for the few minutes available, endeavour not to lay down what such endowments should be, or perhaps eventually will be, but simply to ascertain something as to the motives, intentions and lives of those who actually established them?