The Students Wear Scarlet
Gowns And The Professors Black, Which Is, I Believe, The Academical
Dress In All The Scottish
Universities, except that of Edinburgh,
where the scholars are not distinguished by any particular habit.
In the King's College there
Is kept a public table, but the
scholars of the Marischal College are boarded in the town. The
expence of living is here, according to the information that I
could obtain, somewhat more than at St. Andrews.
The course of education is extended to four years, at the end of
which those who take a degree, who are not many, become masters of
arts, and whoever is a master may, if he pleases, immediately
commence doctor. The title of doctor, however, was for a
considerable time bestowed only on physicians. The advocates are
examined and approved by their own body; the ministers were not
ambitious of titles, or were afraid of being censured for ambition;
and the doctorate in every faculty was commonly given or sold into
other countries. The ministers are now reconciled to distinction,
and as it must always happen that some will excel others, have
thought graduation a proper testimony of uncommon abilities or
acquisitions.
The indiscriminate collation of degrees has justly taken away that
respect which they originally claimed as stamps, by which the
literary value of men so distinguished was authoritatively denoted.
That academical honours, or any others should be conferred with
exact proportion to merit, is more than human judgment or human
integrity have given reason to expect.
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