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40 bursaries, mostly from £10 to £35 in value, are given yearly by competition, or by presentation and examination. Two-thirds of the arts students are bursars. Seventeen annual scholarships and prizes of the yearly value of £758 are given at the end of the arts curriculum. The average yearly number of arts students, in the thirteen years since the union of the arts classes of the two colleges in 1860, has been 342, while in the separate colleges together for the nine years before the union, it was 431. In winter session 1872–73 there were 623 matriculated students in all the faculties. In 1872, 32 graduated in arts, 68 in medicine, 5 in divinity, and 1 in law. The library has above 80,000 volumes. The General Council in 1873 had 2075 registered members, who, with those of Glasgow University, return one member to Parliament.

The Free Church Divinity College was built in 1850, at the cost of £2025, in the Tudor-Gothic style. It has a large hall, a library of 12,000 volumes, and 15 bursaries of the yearly value of from £10 to £25.

At the east end of Union Street, and partly in Castle Street, on the north side, are the new County and Municipal buildings, an imposing Franco-Scottish Gothic pile, 225 feet long, 109 feet broad, and 64 feet high, of four stories, built 1867–1873 at the cost of £80,000, including £25,000 for the site. Its chief feature is a tower 200 feet high. It contains a great hall, 74 feet long, 35 feet broad, and 50 feet high, with an open timber ceiling: a Justiciary Court-House, 50 feet long, 37 feet broad, and 31 feet high; a Town Hall, 41 feet long, 25 feet broad, and 15 feet high, and a main entrance corridor 60 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 24 feet high. A little to the west is the Town and County Bank, a highly ornamented building inside and outside, in the Italian style, costing about £24,000.

A very complete closed public market of two floors was built in 1842, at a cost of £28,000, by a company incorporated by Act of Parliament. The upper floor or great hall is 315 feet long, 106 feet broad, and 45 feet high, with galleries all round. The lower floor is not so high. The floors contain numerous small shops for the sale of meat, fowls, fish, &c., besides stalls and seats for the sale of vegetables, butter, eggs, &c. The galleries contain small shops for the sale of drapery, hardware, fancy goods, and books. On the upper floor is a fountain of polished Peterhead granite, costing £200, with a basin $7 1⁄4$ feet diameter, cut out of one block of stone. Connected with this undertaking was the laying out of Market Street from Union Street to the quay. At the foot of this street is being built in the Italian style the new post and telegraph office, at a cost of £16,000, including £4000, the cost of the site. It is to form a block of about 100 feet square and 40 feet high.

Aberdeen has about 60 places of worship, with nearly 48,000 sittings. There are 10 Established churches; 20 Free, 6 Episcopalian, 6 United Presbyterian, 5 Congregational, 2 Baptist, 2 Methodist, 2 Evangelical Union, 1 Unitarian, 1 of Roman Catholic, 1 of Friends, and 1 of Original Seceders. There are also several mission chapels. In 1843 all the Established ministers seceded, with 10,000 lay members. The Established and Free Church denominations have each about 11,000 members in communion. The Established West and East churches, in the centre of the city, within St Nicholas churchyard, form a continuous building 220 feet long, including an intervening aisle, over which is a tower and spire 140 feet high. The West was built in 1775 in the Italian style, and the East in 1834 in the Gothic, each costing about £5000. They occupy the site of the original cruciform church of St Nicholas, erected in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. One of the nine bells in the tower bears the date of 1352. and is 4 feet diameter at the mouth, $3 1⁄2$ feet high, and very thick. The Union Street front of the churchyard is occupied by a very elegant granite façade, built in 1830, at the cost of £1460. It is $147 1⁄2$ feet long, with a central arched gateway and entablature $32 1⁄2$ feet high, with two attached Ionic columns on each side. Each of the two wings has six Ionic columns (of single granite blocks, 15 feet 2 inches long), with basement and entablature, the whole being $23 1⁄2$ feet high. The following are the style, cost, and date of erection of the other principal Aberdeen churches—St Andrew's, Episcopal, Gothic, £6000, 1817; North Church, Established, Greek, £10,000, 1831; three churches in a cruciform group, Free, simple Lancet Gothic, with a fine brick spire 174 feet high, £5000, 1844; Roman Catholic, Gothic, £12,000, 1859; Free West, Gothic, £12,856, 1869, with a spire 175 feet high.

In 1873 there were in Aberdeen about 110 schools, with from 10,000 to 11,000 pupils in attendance. About 2500 students attend the University, Mechanics' Institution, and private schools for special branches.

Five miles south-west of Aberdeen, on the south side of the Dee, in Kincardineshire, is St Mary's Roman Catholic College of Blairs, with a president and three professors.

The Aberdeen Grammar School, dating from about 1263, is a preparatory school for the university. It has a rector and four regular masters, who teach classics, English, arithmetic, and mathematics, for the annual fee of £4, 10s. for each pupil. Writing, drawing, &c., are also taught. Nearly 200 pupils attend, who enter about the age of twelve. Like the Edinburgh High School, it has no elementary department. There are 30 bursaries. A new granite building for the school was erected, 1861–1863, in the Scotch baronial style, at the cost of £16,000, including site. It is 215 feet long and 60 feet high, and has three towers.

The Mechanics' Institution, founded 1824, and reorganised 1834, has a hall, class-rooms, and a library of 14,000 volumes, in a building erected in 1846, at a cost of £3500. During the year 1872–73, there were at the School of Science and Art 385 pupils; and at other evening classes, 538.

Aberdeen has two native banks, besides branch banks, and a National Security Savings Bank; three insurance companies, four shipping companies, three railway companies, and a good many miscellaneous companies. There are ten licensed pawnbroking establishments, with about 440,000 pledges in the year for £96,000, and with a capital of £27,000. There are seven incorporated trades, originating between 1398 and 1527, and having charitable funds for decayed members, widows, and orphans. They have a hall, built in 1847 for £8300, in the Tudor Gothic style. The hall, 60 feet long, 29 wide, and 42 high, contains curious old chairs, and curious inscriptions on the shields of the crafts.

Among the charitable institutions is Gordon's Hospital, founded in 1729 by a miser, Robert Gordon, a Dantzie merchant, of the Straloch family, and farther endowed by Alexander Simpson of Collyhill in 1816. It is managed by the Town Council and four of the Established ministers of Aberdeen, incorporated by royal charters of 1772 and 1792. The central part of the house was built in 1739, and the wings in 1830–1834, the whole costing £17,300, and being within a garden of above four acres. It now (1873) maintains and educates (in English, writing, arithmetic, physics, mathematics, drawing, music, French, &c.) 180 boys of the age 9 to 15, the sons and grandsons of decayed burgesses of guild and trade of the city; and next those of decayed inhabitants (not paupers). Expenditure for year to 31st October 1872, £4353 for 164 boys. It has a head-master, three regular, and several visiting