Page:The Student, Edinburgh University Magazine, New Series, Volume V., Summer Session 1891.pdf/15

 once more making our bow before the critical readers of Edinburgh University we believe we are entitled to make some sort of a prologue. Even our distinguished local contemporaries now and then grace their columns with a leading article on "Ourselves," and take the opportunity to inform “their friends and the public” concerning the illustrious prints with which they are connected. We cannot, then, be wrong in following so brilliant an example. When the curtain rises it is best for us to assume the position taught by the veteran actors on the journalistic stage, such as - "You know who, and likewise, never mind.” We trust that The Student may be as successful during the session which has just begun as it was during the winter session. We had no reason to complain of lack of support then, and we look forward to that hearty support being continued. The circulation of The Student should, however, be easily increased. On our part, we have done what we considered best towards that end. The magazine bids fair to become an illustrated University magazine; and we have been fortunate enough to have received contributions from several well-known artists. We have, in particular, devoted some attention to the encouragement of sculpture in the Scottish capital, and we shall endeavour to give practical illustration of the Fine Arts which are taught in theory in the little temple beneath the dome. It is to the adornment of the McEwan Hall that we have been looking, and we hope shortly to place before the readers of The Student some suggestions which, if acted upon, cannot but add to the beauty and interest of that noble edifice.

Union is an institution worthy of all support, and we trust that the membership will be largely increased this summer. Students who come up now for the first time, and who have to look forward to many years’ sojourn in the University, will find it to their distinct advantage in every way to become members of the Union. They will find as they go on that the social life of the University centres there, and that if they are beyond the pale of membership they are also out of the more agreeable part of student existence. Those of us who remember the pre-Union days know best the great good the Union has accomplished. Who that looks back on the dreary wilderness of Brahministic exclusion which then prevailed, will not be thankful that that is now a thing of the past? Under the old system the average student might possibly exchange words with the man next him, who periodically knocked over his note-book for him; he might know by sight or reputation the glee singer of the back benches, or the inevitable class wit who interrupts the even course of the professorial lecture; or