themselves. His Lordship, with looks and gestures, as indicative of humble entreaty as those practised by John Kemble during the O. P. rows at Covent Garden, now came fur ward, and, laying his hand upon his heart, in dum show supplicated a hearing. For some time it was doubtful whether he would succeed any better than the Warden; but at length, having obtained a moment's pause, his Lordship put it to the students, as men of honour and feeling, to suffer the lecturer to proceed; assuring them that any representation they might send to the Council would be immediately attended to. Here his assertion was met by a declaration from one of the pupils, who instantly rose and stated, that the class had already sent in a remonstrance, which had not met with attention. Lord King asseverated that this should not occur again; but the thread of his discourse, once broken, was not so easily resumed. Clamour again prevailed, and his Lordship, with the whole of his party, were ultimately obliged to retire, leaving the pupils triumphant, and affording an excellent illustration of collegiate discipline. To make the matter complete, the lectures were suspended; and we understand that a ver batim copy of the former paper was sent in to the Council by the pupils, who have thus taken Lord King at his word.

"On Monday last the theatre was opened again, when it was stated, by one of the pupils, that the Committee' had agreed that there should be no farther expression of disapprobation manifested towards Mr. Pattison at present, an announcement obviously comprehending an acknowledgment that the previous disturbance and interrup tion of the lectures had been the result of an organized plan. The Professor soon after entered, and in a subdued tone, and with the appearance of a man oppressed by deep emotion, said, that after the interruptions which the course had met with, it became impossible for him to resume the thread of his discourse at the point at which it had been broken he should, therefore, direct their attention to a new subject. He then proceeded to demonstrate the surgical anatomy of the arteries of the lower extremity; and we must say, went through his task without betraying any of that confusion, carelessness, or inaccuracy, of which he has been accused.

No man of common sagacity and unprejudiced mind can fail to perceive in these riots and mutinous organizations the necessary consequences of the miscon duct of the Council. Every thing had been done to degrade the Professor and to demonstrate that he was unsupported; and each unpunished disobedience and outrage of the refractory students had been a step of encouragement, leading up to the last climax of riot.

The mutineers now very naturally considered themselves an authorised body, and formed a standing committee, as we learn from Mr. Pattison, for the sufferance or interruption of the lectures, according to the pleasure of the body. Mr. Pattison adds, that the Council were not only cognizant of the existence of this governing cabal, but actually in official communication with it!

As evidence of his qualification, or disqualification, the Professor applied for a reporter to take down his lectures. This was refused by the Council, on the ground that they had no doubt of his abilities and fitness to discharge his duties.

"After this decision," observes Mr. Pattison, "will it be believed, that a Com→ mittee, composed of Lord King, Mr. William Marshall, and Mr. Merrivale, were in session for several weeks in the very same room where the Council had, a few days best fore, decided not to appoint a Reporter, because my talents and capacity for the discharge of the duties of my office were not to be questioned, examining into the question, of my competency on the charges of my pupils?

"The injustice of the acts of this Committee is only exceeded by their absurdity. Without taking the pains to ascertain whether I had really committed the errors with which I was charged, they proceeded to investigate whether the charges made did or did not contain anatomical blunders.

"Lord King, Mr. William Marshall, and Mr. Merrivale, not one of whom knew as nerve from an artery, constituted themselves the judges of my anatomical pretensions ! The proceedings of this Committee became too ridiculous for even the students to standa it. The anatomical engravings belonging to the medical library were carried into the Council Room; and with these before them, and with the assistance of anatomical dic tionaries to explain technical terms, these gentlemen gravely deliberated on the amount † and correctness of the anatomical knowledge possessed by the Professor of Anatomy! t “I have never been able to learn precisely what was the result of the deliberations of this Committee. I believe they could not make out a single charge, and getting tired, in about three weeks of the study of anatomy, they terminated their labours."

Can any thing exceed the absurdity of this, and the pertinacity in injustice and impolicy which it denotes? Cruikshanks should make a picture of Lord King, Messrs. Marshall and Merrivale, studying anatomy for the nonce, for the decoration of the University, in whose hall it should hang for warning, till a perseverance in the same course of folly brings the Institution to the ground.

The next step of the Council was a recommendation to Mr. Pattison to retire from his professorship. He was invited to give way to a cabal-to discredit and ruin himself. A pittance of 200l. a-year, for five years, was promised, on condition of his compliance; but no security for the payment was tendered, and after the experience Mr. Pattison had had of the fairness and justice of the Council, he would have been the weakest of men had he placed any reliance on any engagement with them, the performance of which was not secured by the strictest terms of law.

It was afterwards resolved in committee that the continuance of Mr. Pattison was incompatible with the welfare of the University. If such had been the case, the fact would have been referable to the conduct of the Council, who had given the Professor up to mutiny, and in various ways disgraced him in the eyes of the students. In communicating the resolution of the Committee to Mr. Pattison, Mr. Greenough coolly invited him to propose any suggestion he had to offer which might promote the interests of the University, and the Committee would be happy to hear it, though they would not listen to any thing he had to say in his own defence! Was this a cruel insult to the unfortunate gentleman ?-unfortu nate, indeed, in being subjected to the authority of such persons-in having his reputation, his feelings, and his bread placed at the mercy of men who seem to have been throughout alike insensible to the claims of justice and the gentlemanly proprieties. Was it, we repeat, an insult, or was it another of the stupidities, so many of which appear in this strange case in the conduct of persons of reputed worth and understanding?

Professor Pattison's answer to Mr. Greenough's well-timed solicitation should have been-"For the promotion of the interests of the University, nay, for its honour and safety, I have to suggest the instant resignation of the Council, and to recommend that the members play the fool with closed doors in their own houses."

The finishing stroke was consistently given by Mr. Bingham Baring, of Deacle celebrity, who moved the dismissal of the Professor, perhaps because he had omitted to call constables, to handle his refractory students after the Bingham Baring fashion of action and advice.

The notification of the dismissal was accompanied by a resolution, that in taking this step, the Council felt it due to Professor Pattison to declare that nothing which had come to their knowledge with respect to his conduct, had in any way tended to impeach either his general character or his professional skill and knowledge. They, in truth, dismissed him because they had damaged his authority in the University, and had not the honesty and the manhood to endeavour to repair the mischief, or to render into other hands the controlling power for the just exercise of which they had proved themselves incapable.

Mr. Pattison was unblamed and ruined by the Council, whose injustice was a matter of resolution; but had he been in fact imperfectly qualified for his office, from the moment that insolent and mutinous spirit of the students was displayed, it was the duty of the governing body to uphold him, and to bear down, with all their weight of influence and authority, a presumptuous, dictatorial disposition, incompatible with the discipline of any academic institution. The pupils should have been taught, if not modesty, submission. Had there been serious doubts of Mr. Pattison's abilities, the abandonment of him to a contest with a⠀ faction of youths would have been shameful and unwise; for the policy of maintaining his authority would have consisted with the possession on his part of the slenderest share of qualification. But the case was widely different; his testimonials were of far greater force than the crude criticisms of students, whose conduct betrayed the quality of their judgment to be below that which might have been expected of their years; yet he was given up to be worried by the

cabals, and to wait the fortune of baiting. We say of baiting, because we obs serve throughout this affair an exact similarity to that savage sport, in measures, spirit, and consequences. When an animal is turned in among the dogs, they are as aware, as though they were mutinous boys, that he is given up to their teeth, and that there is neither the intention to defend him on the part of the men, nor any wish that he should be spared. Animated by the sympathies of the spectators, they then set on him without fear and without mercy. After he has been worried till the riot has become shameful, the arbiters resolve that he shall be dismissed from his torments or dispatched; and he is accordingly knocked on the head as useless, in consequence of his injuries and lacerations. In the case of a brute, this is termed the coup de grace, or putting him out of his pain; in that of a professor, it is termed dismissal, or putting him out of his place. The first is mercifully made to die-the second turned adrift to starve. ban There are three members of the Council who are not only clear of the disgrace which attaches to that body, but entitled to praise and honour for their parts in this affair-they are, Mr. Mill, Captain Gowan, and Dr. Birkbeck, the proprietor whose dismissal Mr. Eisdell and his fellow-memorialists so peremptorily demanded. Those three gentlemen saw the justice and policy of supporting the Professor.

The London University has, in our opinion, received a blow from which it will not easily recover. All the other professors of any note have sympathised with Mr. Pattison, and feel their own respectability to be compromised in his wrongs. Their zeal cannot but be cooled; they cannot but mistrust the Institu tion with which they are connected, and see how precarious is the tenure of their offices, though the duties be unimpeachably performed. Proprietors, also, can hope for no good result from an Institution so offensively and impoliticly ma naged. The theatre of a glaring injustice is not the school of instruction which parents would desire for their sons. An University in which the sport of making fun of a professor" was permitted, is not one whose academic exercises and disciplines will be approved by those who know the importance of cultivating the modesties, and preserving the mind of youth from irreverend and petulant indulgences.

It is clear that during the whole of this struggle the University was in the hands of the boys, and this fact confirms an observation we have long made, that in all institutions nominally governed by idle gentlemen, the power is sure to fall into the hands of the servants or lowest members. Hospitals are, in fact, ruled by the pupils, who are in constant possession of the ground. Clubs are carried on by the authority of the secretary, for the benefit of the steward and servants. The members, who idly imagine that the establishment is for their convenience because they pay for it, wonder that they want comforts and advantages easily to be had, if they were not crossed by jobs in which their attendants are interested; and fail to perceive that they are contributors to an income laid out to the best advantage of secretary, deputy-secretary, steward, housekeeper, butler, &c. in due order of place and profit, down to the lowest scullion in the kitchen. As with greater institutions, as with governments, all ends in the benefit of the ministers. Members of clubs have only to look about them, and to see the evidence of this all but universal truth. Next to the positive pleasure of job bing is the negative one of avoiding trouble, and in a London University there was obviously less trouble in abandoning one professor than in coercing a score or two of mutinous youths; therefore the students had matters their own way. The price of Mr. Pattison's ruin was the present ease of the Council.y

MINISTERIAL PATRONAGE. The country rings with complaints of the extraordinary conduct of Government in neglecting its friends and conferring favours on its enemies. Throughout the country, Tories have been preferred to places of honour, trust, and power. How is this fact to be explained? Do Ministers apprehend that they are too strongly fixed in their seats; or do they wish to commit political suicide? The Whigs have ever been charged with building up walls to knock their heads against, and in this masonry they have, in truth, been most busy from the moment that the materials were placed at their disposal.

The Ministry cannot claim generosity for such conduct, nor can it even plead timidity for the Premier has shown himself to be the most greedy Minister of our time, and he has bestowed offices and appointments on every member of his family with prodigious boldness and defiance of public disgust. There are few men capable of such audacious depotism; and a tithe of the courage he evinced in providing for his own, would have sufficed for the just and fearless distribution of patronage throughout the United Kingdoms.

It may be pretended, that Ministers are superior to personal partialities (Lord Grey and family excepted); but are they also superior to principles? and principles are largely concerned in the question. If the Whigs really suppose that their principles are better than the principles of the Tories, why do they not connect them with power wherever the opportunity offers; and why, on the contrary, do they give power to persons who hold the pernicious principles which will render it an instrument of evil to society? If Ministers will say that they have played with principles as counters, and are now careless what they do with them, as they have secured the stakes, their conduct is, in some degree, explained; but even in that case, we have to learn why they have shown an actual partiality for the adverse cause. They have not bestowed their patronage indifferently or impartially: they have favoured the foes of the people by whom they are supported, as if they really designed a mischief to the cause they are, perhaps, weary of advocating, and secretly adverse to advancing. Like the giant in the fairy tale, the Government would seem to be tying its legs, lest it should get on too fast towards a goal which it has no great desire to attain.

1. In London, little is thought of undue preferment and the promotion of the hostile and the undeserving; but in the country, the effect is most galling, and immediately felt in the depression of the friends of the good cause, and the paralyzation of their exertions. Where there are Whigs and Tories of, we will say, equal personal merits, does not the Government which passes by its friends and confers its favours on its foes, degrade the former in the opinion of those about them, and give a triumph to their adversaries? Is not the reasoning, "Oh! these men must be comparatively very unworthy persons; for see, the Ministers whom they support, and whose politics they profess, pass them by, and are obliged to give the preference to the others, who can have no claim upon them but that of conspicuously superior fitness." This is a natural interpretation, which slighted persons do not love; and they are not reconciled to it by considering that the Minister who extends neither favour nor justice to them, is he who showed such indecent gluttony in grasping the good things for his own family and connexions. But the evil is not merely one of personal injustice and vexation to individuals: it is a great public mischief to deposit the powers of the country in hands which will wield them to thwart or defeat the good objects to which the Government is pledged. Does the Ministry find itself troubled with plethora? Is it so strong as to lack excuses for leaving undone what it ought to do? Does it wish to create incapacities for useful action, to raise up barriers to obstruct the accomplishment of beneficial measures? Does it desire to take the merit of popular professions, and to keep the benefit of Tory abuses? Certainly, it seems to be preparing tools for the spoiling of its own work.

The public will watch and suspect this conduct, and know what to think of the pleas of difficulties in the way of good objects, which difficulties have been planted and cultivated by those whose course is stopped by them. We question, however, whether we shall come to this denouement; for whether the motives have been pusillanimity, truckling, or tracasserie, the effect will probably be the wreck of the Ministry within twelve months. Nothing has saved it but the Reform, and the Reform safe, there is an end of their safety. The Reform Bill, the single solitary wise thing they have intended, and which they have deformed with every possible blemish that could be crammed within its good outline-the Reform Bill, so foully blotted, and so blunderingly carried on, has been the stalking-horse behind which Ministers have crawled and sneaked, and committed meanness and folly,

ABSURD CURIOSITY.-No people in the world ever arrived at such perfection in the art of making much ado about nothing as the English. A circumstance out of the regular course is remarked; all the prints are instantly at work with all conceivable conjectures and statements. After about ten days of speculation, during which the public mind is heated by the disputations one hundred degrees above the temperature of sane interest on such a matter, it turns out that there was nothing out of the common tenor in the appearance which had been debated into such irrational importance. The mountain in labour is with us an occurrence of every day. The Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria did not attend the Coronation. As Mathews says, "Here was a circumstance!" "The Times" thundered most awfully; hinted at things too terrible to be spoken; talked of the prudence of taking the guardianship of the Princess from a mother who had been guilty of the unmentionable conduct, proving her unfitness for her charge. Of course all sorts of extravagant conjectures were formed on this mysterious attack. It was naturally supposed that the part of the Duchess must bear some proportion in violence and atrocity to the indignation of the Editor of "The Times." Was she caballing against our popular Monarch?—was she about to set the Princess at the head of the Anti-Reformers in rebellion for the present seizure of the throne?-what conduct, in short, could be worthy of such serious censures and fierce menaces? The defenders of the Duchess had to take up their ground of vindication, but hardly knew where, for the attack was thunder in nubibus. One paper, which should be superior to such pretences, averred that the Duchess and her daughter were particularly engaged in reading the Bible on the day of the coronation: another partly explained that she was scrupulous with regard to the associations of the Princess, and avoided the Court company another intimated that the place appointed had not pleased: another, that something in the manner of offering it had offended. The versions were as various as the prints. At last, when curiosity was wearied of the theme, and it was only agreed that the King and the Duchess were on the very worst terms, and that the flag of rebellion was all but flying from Kensington Palace, out comes the truth-that there had been a complete understanding as to the nonattendance of the Duchess and her daughter, and that convenience and health had been the ruling considerations. Thus, according to "The Times," the mother was unworthy of the guardianship of her daughter because she thought the air and quiet of the country were better for a delicate child than a journey and a tedious ceremony of state.

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The moral of this seems to us to be, that the public, or its best possible instructors, should not be so inordinately anxious to have the why and wherefore for every appearance or arrangement in certain circles. Though the objects are elevated in station, the curiosity is very low, and the habit of indulging it and investing it with importance extremely debasing. A just sense of it will be conveyed, by imagining how these personages must laugh at the little world that draws fearful shapes out of their indifferent actions. Royalty, which finds its own importance so inordinately exaggerated, is taught to despise the public who commit the folly.