Excerpt from Principal Shairp and His Friends The distinctive feature in a memoir of Principal Shairp must be the study of his character. His outward life was uneventful, and its story is easily told; but to present an adequate picture of the man, in his manysidedness, is not easy; and it cannot be done by any of his friends, from a single point of view. He was something much rarer and finer, than either his writing, or his teaching - admirable as these were. He impressed himself with equal power on men of all classes, tendencies, and sympathies - on persons of the highest culture, and on poor students. There are not many such men at any time in the world. Few of his contemporaries were as rich as he was in the friendship of good men, - in the loyal attachment of a large circle, moving in widely different spheres of thought and of action. Even from his boyhood he seems to have drawn towards him the esteem of the nobleminded; and, as life advanced, he instinctively won the admiration of all who were idealists at heart In consequence of this, he has left his mark upon his time, in the most beneficent, although in the least showy manner. There have been men with greater powers of intellect, of learning, and of administrative power; but there has been none, in the academical history of Scotland, from whose personality a greater "virtue has gone forth," touching other lives to fruitful issues. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.