of medicine, as at Salerno and Montpelier, constituting schools less directly under control of the church.

Consequently there were, in the first instance, two classes of great schools, the theological and the scientific. In course of time, however, the theological universities adopted also the faculties of law and of medicine, and theology was introduced into Bologna.

By such means there were assembled at some seats of learning, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such numbers of students as find no parallel in any universities of the present day. For youth were there in all grades of preparation for all the professions then in existence..

With increase of numbers, regularity of classification and description became more imperative. Students were arranged, or arranged themselves, according to the houses in which they lodged, every such house having its own internal government, and all the houses, departments of study, and stages of progress were grouped together under one head of general legislation by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities; and the term universitas was applied to the corporation embracing the whole.

A few such seats of learning made more illustrious name than the rest, and reached maturity sooner. Paris and Oxford stood highest, or were the most numerously attended; but all were on the same general plan. In tl thirteenth century they had reached the completeness of their type, and the full tide of prosperity.

The plan of the medieval university was determined by the incidental or casual way in which it had grown up. It was simply the aggregate of all the departments taught and of all the different stages of progress in education as conducted in one city, from the primary school up to the Doctor's degree. Being the result of successive additions to the common school, without the guidance of any preconcerted design, it was still only an aggregate upon the same original basis. Oxford was at once the chief grammar school of England, the great free school for the poor, the seat of liberal culture, and of professional education, for students of theology, and, in its best days, also of law and of medicine.

The routine of school study had consisted of two series: one literary, containing grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the other scientific, divided into four branches, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Upon this Trivium and Quadrivium the whole structure of liberal culture rose, by gradual insertion of successive improvements, and development of their internal substance. In the first instance the literary course outran the scientific, and out of the zealous prosecution, especially of its logic, grew that systematic and dialectic theology which has been called the scholastic; and formed itself into the special work of the theological faculty.

Both courses, as latterly matured, constituted the department of Arts, the work of another faculty. Upon the introduction of law and medicine two new faculties were formed, one of which had its affinities most intimately with the scientific course, thereby leading to the improvement and enhancing the estimate of the Quadrivium, as a branch of the arts. Thus arose, by gradual combination and necessary segregation of elements, the four faculties of arts, of theology, of law, and of medicine. Facultas signifying, in those days, the ability to teach in any one branch, was applied also to "the authorized teachers of it collectively."

The

In respect to their internal government, those institutions exhibited a strange anomaly in their times, being more or less republican. The University of Bologna was a corporation of students assembled for the purpose of attending upon the instructions of certain eminent teachers of law resident in that city; and its earliest statutes were compacts entered into by the students for mutual support and assistance. They elected their own officers, and maintained their own order. University of Paris, on the other hand, was an association of teachers connected with the schools in that city. Such was also the foundation at Oxford. But much of the democratic spirit of the Italian universities prevailed in both, which regarded the body of teachers and students as a Demos. That spirit extended to others which followed the example of their constitution.

Mediæval universities, as a whole, formed a community among themselves, speaking a common tongue, the Latin,

having a common occupation, recognizing the authority of one church, and united with the stronger attachment to each other, that they were separated from the people of the dif ferent countries in which they were planted. The universities of Paris and of Oxford, were not properly French and English respectively; they belonged to the church. Paris was as free to English scholars as Oxford was to Frenchmen, or to scholars from any nation professing the Western Catholic creed; and students migrated sometimes from one to the other by thousands.

A great change came upon the medieval universities in course of the revival of learning and the Reformation. Toward the middle of the fourteenth century, the scholastic philosophy began to decline, and the revival of classical learning to enlist that zeal of youth which had so long been absorbed by the war of dialectics. But the universities were slow to admit the classics to a place in their course of study; and youth in large numbers sought and found the instruction which they demanded elsewhere, and by other means. Thus while knowledge became more extensive and more common, the attendance upon the universities fell off. The classics ultimately vindicated their place in the department of Arts, and greatly enlarged the resources of the Trivium, and in course of time effected a change which overthrew the dynasty of scholasticism.

As the sixteenth century dawned, most of the universities. could present eminent professors teaching the liberal views and improved scholarship of the time, and even broaching the question of reforming the church. That again prepared another ordeal through which the universities had to pass. It was within their halls that the great Reformation began, that its first controversies were waged, and its first heroes did battle. By them had so large a part of the Christian world been prepared to accept that revolution, and out of their lecture-rooms stepped the men who conducted the popular movement and sustained it. From the University of Paris came the demand for Papal reform, as early as the Council of Constance; in the University of Oxford, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, did John Wyckliffe commence the war

upon long persistent abuses; the University of Basel led the way to reformation in Switzerland; in the University of Wittenberg, Luther and Melancthon were professors; from that of Paris went forth Farel and Viret and Calvin; in the universities of England were prepared the theologians of the reign of Edward VI., and there did Bucer and Peter Martyr find refuge; and in the University of St. Andrews did the Scotch reformation open its career and offer up its first martyr, and there were equipped for their work and their suffering Hamilton, Buchanan, and Knox. The Reformation was, under Providence, emphatically the offspring of the universities; and most of them suffered severely from the conflict which it involyed. It was inevitable that the seat of war should be most deeply agitated by the strife. And when the combatants emerged into peace at its close, it was to find themselves broken and divided, some having triumphed and held their ground on the side of reformation, and others driven back toward the position of the Middle Ages. Yet the work effected proved for the benefit of all. Enlarged and more generally enlightened intellect was applied to their improvement, in more distinct separation and classification of the work of the old universities; and in the establishment of new, upon improved principles.

In the long course of that controversy and its sequel, the preparatory schools were separated from the universities, and set up by themselves at various places over the country, a step which was also rendered necessary by the breaking down of the convents and monasteries. School education was no longer to be confined to literary centres, but to be put within easy reach of every family throughout the Protestant world.

The university course, as thus distinguished from the school, consisted of two separate departments, the liberal and professional. The former had originally consisted of two parts, the Trivium and Quadrivium, and although the distinction between these two was no longer scrupulously observed, studies belonging to the one being in some cases pursued within the bounds formerly reserved for the other, still the course of Arts remained twofold. To the first part, which corresponded to the old Trivium, as to the place which it occupied, were

given, if we take Oxford as an example, four years, or thereby, immediately after the school course. Upon finishing that successfully, the student received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Three more years, corresponding to the place of the Quadrivium, enabled the candidate, who sustained a satisfactory examination, to take the degree of Master of Arts, as having completed the liberal course, or as it was called the course in the Arts.

If a man proceeded further with the view of qualifying himself for a profession, he had to begin from the year of his Master's degree, except in the case of law, which might be commenced a year sooner, and could be finished in six additional years. The medical course required seven, and the theological eleven, years from the Master's degree. At the close of this course of professional preparation the successful student was honored with the degree of doctor, in law, in medicine, or in theology according to the profession studied. These degrees were not then mere honors; they signified real degrees of attainment, and were certificates and licenses to teach or to practise the professions to which they were attached.

The latter part of the sixteenth century saw the rise of the Dutch universities, those benign fruits of the Reformation, in which classical scholarship and a new and greater philosophy were combined with the development of reformed theology.

In the course of the eighteenth century, and especially in the latter part of it, the German universities began to assume the place of precedence which they now hold. Their position was taken upon the principle of more perfect separation of departments. Taking, for example, the University of Berlin-not only was the grammar school left off, but also all that part of the course of Arts required for the Bachelor's degree, which was committed to the college, or institutions of that grade. The Master's course was made co-ordinate with. the professional, and assigned to the Faculty of Arts, or of Philosophy in the university, with its analogous degree of Doctor in Philosophy.

Consequently there was a triad of educational institutions established and carried out with more or less precision in the