ianism has interpreted by Ferrier, the ableist exposition and defense of the opinions of the Bishop of cloyne knowing to G. H. Lewes, J. D. Morel, &c., may be gathered by a thoughtful reader.
In 1844 he reviewed the poems of Miss Barrett (afterwards Mrs. Browning. In that same year he became candidate for the Chair of logic at St. Andrews, but fortunately both for him and the students of St. Andrews, Prof. Wm. Spalding, (see British Controversialist, Dec. 1863) was preferred on that occasion; for although both he and Spalding were unsurpassed as teachers, it was essential to success of both the Professor's Spalding should first have done the work of intellectual grindstone for the students.
He succeeded next year 1845 in gaining the Chair of Moral Philosophy, and thereafter he was busily engaged for a year or two in writing up class lectures. "Of these," he said, " I cancel and re-write about a third of my lectures every year, a circumstance which, if it proves that my lectures were bad to begin with, also proves that they have some chance of growing better." In 1846, Sir William Hamilton's edition of Reid was issued, after long delays, from the press; and in 1847, Ferrier reviewed the work in an article bearing the title "Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense." In it he gives full credit to the editor for "unparalleled erudition," "vigorous logic, and speculative acuteness," while he ingeniously defends himself from the implied necessity of sacrificing the honesty of the critic to the amiability of the friend by saying he has taught those who study him to think, and he must must stand the consequences, whether they think in unison with himself or not." This book never "received the last consummate polish from the hand of its accomplished editor," nor did it ever receive the fuller review which Ferrier promised it. These personal friends and philosophical opponents are both gone—both having sunk overworked into the grave. But Ferrier's paper may fairly vie with any of Hamilton's "Dissertations" in thoroughness, perspicuity, and instructiveness. During 1847-8 he continued in his class lectures these criticisms of Reid, and few explications of the philosophical and poetic imagination can be happier and more exhaustive than the lectures on this subject, which appeared with these dates in the "Philosophical Remains," quoted in the commencement of this notice. In 1848 Prof. Ferrier, issued, anonymously, a pamphlet entitled "Observations on Church and Ctate suggested by the Duke of Argyle's Essay on the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland. The Duke of Argyle was elected Chancellor of St. Andrews in 1851.
In session 1848-9 the Professor of Morals took higher ground than he had hitherto done. He had been contented previously to interpret, now he resolved to think out the metaphysic. He dictated and explained several propositions from time to time to his students, and began to lay his views before the thinkers. With a two intense devotion he fixed before himself the ambition to form a complete and rigorous demonstration theory of the necessary laws of human
