Page:Whalley 1822 A vindication of the University of Edinburgh .djvu/13

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purposes, an University, and even more deserving the name, than either Oxford or Cambridge; our great lexicographer, and illustrious and immortal countryman, gives this definition of it. "A School where all the arts and faculties are studied." Now, if he will look at the Oxford and Cambridge Calendars, and at the article "University of Edinburgh," in the Court Calendar for 1815, he will find, that there are a greater number of Professors, actually lecturing at Edinburgh, than at either of our English Seminaries, for the whole of those at Edinburgh regularly lecture, whilst several of those at Oxford and Cambridge do not.[1] Still, if he considers the being founded or patronized by a Sovereign, as an essential in the constitution of an University, I might inform him, that the University of Edinburgh was founded by Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney, in the year 1581, and James the Sixth of the name, of Scotland, and the First of


  1. Perhaps it may be here objected, that at Oxford and Cambridge the business of instruction is not so much confided to the Professors, as to the Tutors of the respective Colleges, and that the former are rather expected to advance the progress of their particular branches of science or literature, than to instruct the Students; but as the Tutors are entirely ignorant of Medicine, and consequently do not attempt to teach it, the Medical Students, at the English Seminaries, cannot possibly deriye the smallest advantage from them.