PROFESSORS TO EXCHANGE.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18924, 12 February 1927, Page 4

PROFESSORS TO EXCHANGE.

LEEDS AND CANTERBURY. PROFESSOR A. J. GRANT FOR N.Z. (fBOM OCR OWK COBBESr-OHDSHT.) LONDON, December 28. Public announcement is now made in Yorkshire that Professor A. J. Grant, for thirty years Professor of History at Leeds University, will exchange with Dr. J. Higlit, of banterbury College. Professor Grant, who went to Leeds University in 1896, when it was still tho Yorkshire College, will leave for New Zealand in February. Tho following January he will return to Leeds, but not to the University. Whether he will remain iu Leeds after his retirement is not yet decided, but, wherever he is, he does not intend to bo idle. "I shall havo plenty of writing," he says; and no doubt he will add to the many historical works ho has already published. Professor Grant (says the "Leeds Mercury") has a good word to say for tho modern studont. The standard of work has improved immensely since hia early days at Leeds, when he was not only Professor of History, but English Literature and Economics as well. "Leeds loses the last but one' of its Victorinn professors with Professor Grant. Tho romaining one is Professor Gillespie. Professor Gillespie camo to tho Yorkshire College eight years before Professor Grant, who went down from King's College, Cambridge, to spend some years as a University Extension lecturer, before coming to Leeds. Professor Grant was born at Farlesthorpe, Lincolnshire, in 18C2, and his early educntion was at Boston Grammar School. He is president of the Leeds City League of Nntionß Union."

Historian with National Reputation. As an acknowledged authority on European history (says the "Yorkshire Post"), ancient and modern, he has a national reputation, and his "History of Europe" is widoly known. A man of independent thought and research, he has not hesitated, where he has deemed it necessary, to challenge previously accepted conclusions on any particular event or personality. As a lecturer he is fluent, lucid, and full of information, with a style that appeals both to the student and to the public. A Lincolnshire man, Professor Grant was born at Farlesthorpe in June, 1862, and proceeded from tho Boston Grammar School to King's College, Cambridge. Reviewing, the changes that havo come about during his association with the University at Leeds, Professor Grant remarked:

"The one great difference I see is the inevitable rosult of tho University's vast increase iu size. With a student body of 1700, or thereabouts, thero must be a loss of the old unity that tho Yorkshire College posssescd when I came to it. Then I knew every member of the staff with some intimacy, and a large proportion of the students. Ido not think anyone could say the same now. Sectional interests have grown up, people are more attached to their own departments, and it is possible that the University, as a whole, makes less appeal to affection and imagination. "But if there is loss in this there is also gain, and I nm convinced that there should be no attempt to check those developments, and that the grouping of students in social and in educational matters is altogether wise."