in the Gentleman’s Magazine, in noticing Smith’s death in 1790, says that these divisions turned on questions of academic policy, and that Smith always took the side which was popular with people of condition in the city.  The writer offers no further particulars, but as far as we can now ascertain anything about the questions which then kept the Glasgow Senate in such perpetual perturbation, they were not questions of general policy or public interest such as his words might suggest, and on the petty issues they raised it makes no odds to know whether Smith sided with the kites or with the crows.  The troubles were generated, without any public differences, out of the constitution of the University itself, which seemed to be framed, as if on purpose, to create the greatest possible amount of friction in its working.  By its constitution; as that is described in the Parliamentary Report of 1830, Glasgow University was at that time under one name really two distinct corporations, with two distinct governing bodies:  (1) the University governed by the Senate, which was composed of the Rector, the Dean of Faculty, the Principal, the thirteen College or Faculty professors, and the five regius professors; and (2) the College governed by the Faculty, as it was called, which consisted of the thirteen College professors alone, who claimed to be the sole owners and administrators of the older endowments of the College, and to have the right of electing the occupants of their own thirteen chairs by co-optation.  Within the Faculty again there was still another division of the professors into gown professors and other professors.  The gown professors, who seem to have been the representatives of the five regents of earlier times, were the professors of those classes the students of which wore academical gowns, while the students of the other classes did not; the gown classes being Humanity, Greek, Logic, Natural Philosophy, and Moral Philosophy.  These several bodies held separate meetings and kept separate minutes, which remain to this day.  The meetings of the Senate were called University meetings or Rector’s meetings, because they were presided over by the Rector; and the meetings of the Faculty were called Faculty meetings or Principal’s meetings, because they were presided over by the Principal.  Even the five gown professors with the Principal held separate meetings which the other professors had no right to attend—­meetings with the students every Saturday in the Common Hall for the administration of ordinary academic discipline for petty offences committed by the students of the five gown classes.  Smith belonged to all three bodies; he was University professor, Faculty or College professor, and gown professor too.  It is obvious how easily this complicated and unnatural system of government might breed incessant and irritating discussions without any grave division of opinion on matters of serious educational policy.  Practical difficulties could