Welsh Journals

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WALES. STRAY LEAVES. ANGLESEY. A bare and rugged island, ridged and low, Running in furrows like a great ploughed field, Hedgeless, and treeless, save for trees that yield One-sided to the strong sea-winds that blow, Against which men with sturdy steps and slow Make head, and find no shelter and no shield. Yet those who love thee, Mona ! find revealed Each day new charms to make affection grow. The almond-scented gorse's golden flood, The skies at sunset streaked as though with blood, And Snowdon's calm, impassive mountain-range Athwart blue straits, though not thine own. But strange And well! good gifts are oft as much possesst By others, as by those in whom they rest. SlONET) PEYCE. T CONGRATULATE the University "*■ College of North Wales on securing Professor Gibson as its professor of philosophy. Mr. Gibson has had a brilliant career as a graduate of the Universities of Dublin and Cambridge, and has been a Very successful teacher at the University of St. Andrews. Professor Gibson's appointment marks a slight departure from the custom of the Bangor Council. Hitherto the two pro¬ fessors of philosophy,—Henry Jones and E. Keri Evans,—have been pupils and assistants of Caird, and have, I believe, based their philosophy and their method of teaching upon his. I should be the last man to under-estimate the influence of the Hegelian philosophy as taught in his Glasgow lectures by Mr. Caird, and the last man to undervalue the influence of the great philosopher on all who have the good fortune to sit at his feet. The philosophy course at Glasgow, when I was a student at that University, was to me the ideal university course, and many of us look back to those wonderfully suggestive lectures, delivered at eight o'clock on 4 49 winter mornings, as the foundation of most of our knowledge and thought. And we, old Glasgow, know well that Caird, when he loft to become Master of Balliol, let his mantle fall on a worthy successor. But there is much to be said for the Bangor departure. It is better on the whole, perhaps, to get a man who has specialised on the history of philosophy rather than a man who preaches one philosophic creed, however suggestive that may be. This is especially the case in these days of examinations, when the much- examined man is expected to have an elementary knowledge of everything. I have heard tell of setting a steel hammer in motion in order to kill a fly. Some time ago a professor of abstruse learning was sent to examine an intermediate school. While examining a girls' cookery class he remained under the impression that ho was examining a chemistry class, and he re¬ ported that the apparatus used were of a most primitive type, taken apparently from the kitchens of the children's parents. The tale was told me by a local governor,