by those who can recall him in the old St. Andrews days; but who can reproduce this charm, or do more than state its existence as a fact? Perhaps this sort only comes to those whose life is mainly intellectual—who have not much, comparatively speaking, to suffer from the rough and tumble to which the 'practical' man is subjected in the course of his career. Sometimes it is said that those who preach high maxims of philosophy and conduct belie their doctrines in their outward lives; but on the whole, when we review their careers, this would wonderfully seldom seem to be the case. From Socrates' time onwards we have had philosophers who have taught virtue and practised it simultaneously, and in no case has this combination been better exemplified in recent days than in that of James Frederick Ferrier, and one who unsuccessfully contested his chair upon his death, Thomas Hill Green, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. It seems as though it may after all be good to speculate on the deep things of the earth as well as to do the deeds of righteousness.
If the saying is true, that the happiest man is he who is without a history, then Ferrier has every claim to be enrolled in the ranks of those who have attained their end. For happiness was an end to Ferrier: he had no idea of practising virtue in the abstract, and finding a sufficiency in this. He believed, however, that the happiness to be sought for was the happiness of realising our highest aims, and the aim he put before him he very largely succeeded in attaining. His life was what most people would consider monotonous enough: few events outside the ordinary occurrences of family and University life broke in upon its tranquil course. Unlike the custom of some of his colleagues, summer and winter
