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Rh terms, and the duties of which he gladly undertook. It was a wholly new task, and therefore he was anxious to gather from his more experienced literary friends such advice upon the subject as might direct him in his course. Some of these admonitions could not have been very gratifying to a mind so sensitive and enthusiastic as his. In a letter written to him by the Rev. Sydney Smith upon the subject, that witty divine thus lectures him: "Remember that a mag. is not supported by papers evincing wit and genius, but by the height of the tide at London Bridge, by the price of oats, and by any sudden elevation or depression in the price of boiling pease. If your mag. succeeds, it will do so as much by the diligence and discretion you will impress upon your nature, as by the talents with which you are born." The "Magazine," however, acquired a new impulse from his superintendence; and among his own contributions, the poem entitled "The Last Man," one of the happiest of his productions, was universally applauded. While thus employed, "Theodric" appeared at the end of 1824. The following year Campbell started the plan of the London University, which he calls "the only important event in his life's little history," and pursued the object with a life-and-death earnestness; and, aided by the practical minds of Brougham and Hume, the project, after much conflict, was brought to a successful termination. So earnest, indeed, did he labour in the whole affair, that, not contented with the experience he had already acquired of German colleges as the model for that of London, he also travelled to Berlin, to study whatever was excellent in the university of the Prussian capital, and transplant it into London. And well did he evince his enthusiasm for the improvement of our national education by undertaking such a journey, for, although not more than forty-eight years of age, he was already a weakly old man. His indeed had been a premature decay; all the more, perhaps, because he had enjoyed a precocious intellectual manhood. But education rewarded him in return with one of the highest distinctions, and the most grateful to the mind of Campbell, which she had to bestow. In his own alma mater; the university of Glasgow, a canvass had for some time been going on to elect him to the honoured office of Lord Rector; and in the winter of 1826, the students, by whom the election is made, had been so unanimous in their choice, that he was appointed to the office by unanimous vote of the "four nations." Nor did the honour conferred upon him stop here; for, in the following year, and also the one after, his appointment was renewed by the suffrages of the students. He was thus three times successively Lord Rector of the university of Glasgow, a repetition unusual among the holders of that high academic office. But, amidst all this distinction, the mind of the poet had much to grieve and try him. Of his two sons, the younger had died in childhood, while the elder, his first-born, who had opened such a fountain of tenderness within his heart, had for years been in a state of lunacy, and was obliged to be kept in confinement. He was thus even worse than childless. In 1826, also, his affectionate wife, Matilda, in whom he had found so congenial a partner, died, and he found himself alone in the world. The "New Monthly Magazine," too, that had prospered so greatly under his care, and been a comfortable source of emolument, passed from under his management by one of those unlucky accidents to which periodical literature is especially exposed. A paper was inserted by mistake in its pages, without having been subjected to his editorial examination, and as the article in question was offensive in the highest degree, Campbell in 1830 abandoned the Magazine, and a salary of ₤600 per annum which he derived from it. Soon