Abstract
The professor, Dr. Glennie, was old and feeble. He had a young clergyman as his assistant, who did the work of six hours weekly; while he himself took the remaining nine. His mode of teaching was a survival from the old University system,-of which he was probably the last example. The morning hours, when the assistant officiated, were devoted to dictation, called by the old Scotch phrase, diting. It consisted in slowly dictating a summary of the course, in consecutive composition. The substance had long been fixed, so that the student had to take down, word for word, the notes already in the possession of former students for many years back. The remaining nine hours, during which the professor officiated, were for the larger part occupied with lecturing from a manuscript, which, in fact, constituted his course of lectures.... [Now] while there was much of the best material [here], it was a kind of material not suited to inspire students of [that] age .... What made matters still worse was the want of concurrence in the arrangement of the dictated notes with the read lectures. There was a certain remote parallelism in the run of the two lines; but it was not close enough to be followed by the class. Accordingly, the habit of the students was to take down the notes and pay little or no attention to the lectures; the time being occupied in any sort of trifling that could be hit upon. What aggravated the situation was that the examination questions kept neither to the one line nor to the other.'