the townsmen, and took refuge at Reading, Maidstone, Canterbury, Cambridge; 'by this chance,' says Sir C. Mallet, the sons of Oxford may claim a share in the foundation of another university as lovely and as illustrious as their own.' There were secessions to Salisbury and Northampton. But more memorable than these, and a more serious danger to Oxford, was the attempt to establish the seat of academic teaching at Stamford in 1333. It does not appear that the settlement lasted long; but the formal record of it survived into the 19th century. It was only in 1827 that candidates for a degree ceased to take the oath that they would neither give nor attend lectures at Stamford.

In spite of these interruptions, we have the picture, in these early days, of a university moulding itself gradually to the form which has since remained. It grew in the characteristically English fashion; less in accordance with any fixed and preconceived plan than casually, accidentally, in obedience to the dictates of immediate necessity. Its legislation was opportunist. This is especially apparent in respect of rules which regulate the relation between the University and the outer world. 'Of the privileges for which it fought,' says the historian, 'many were founded in the special necessities of the case.' Thus the important Legatine Ordinance of 1214, the earliest of University documents and charters-showing the origin of the formidable jurisdiction which exempted academic delinquents from all authority save the Chancellor's-was the direct outcome of a murderous quarrel between Town and Gown. Within the University, form and ceremony would originate as it were accidentally, based on custom derived from the most miscellaneous sources, and remaining simply customary till eventually, after a long time, stereotyped by statute. Nothing proceeded according to plan.' But none the less did legislation founded in opportunism retain its sanction. What originates in the circumstances of the moment does not, in England, fall into abeyance when circumstances change; least of all does it disappear in universities. There especially the medieval law and the medieval form remains though the reason and origin of it be long ago forgotten. Let a law be passed forbidding students to indulge in

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scandalous excesses, such as wearing boots, or playing marbles on the steps of the Senate House at Cambridge. These practices may cease in time to be serious menaces to study and discipline; the voice of later reform may urge, not without plausibility, that the habit of wearing boots has become practically universal, or that games with marbles have in the progress of the ages ceased to divert young men from their studies; and that such and such a statute might now just as well be repealed. No, says Conservatism; all innovation is dangerous; touch one ancient enactment and you touch all. Nor is this line of argument wholly unreasonable; universities, after all, have for their very foundation a reverence for antiquity, and it is part of their business to maintain that reverence as little impaired as may be. It is only when respect for antiquity conflicts with what is really essential to the progress of study that universities and public opinion begin to be at variance; and even then it is argued that nothing can really be more essential than the sacrosanctity of custom. It is in the academic atmosphere. Men who are quite ready to

reform the outside world become sound Conservatives when it is proposed to reform universities. So it is not surprising that the oath binding masters not to secede to Stamford should have remained on the statutebook till 1827; in fact, one rather wonders why it was repealed then.

Meantime, the machine of academic discipline was being perfected, and studies and regulations for them were shaping themselves. The main lines of what was to remain as the constitution of the University were well and truly laid: the duties of 'Congregation' defined; the Faculties' of Arts, Theology, Law, and Medicine. established, with clear duties and privileges for each. Boys learnt Grammar,' that is, Latin; this was the first stage in the Seven Liberal Arts, the Trivium and Quadrivium; these were supplemented by the three philosophies,' natural, moral, and metaphysical. After four years of work the student became a Bachelor by 'Determination,' and in three more years a Master by 'Inception.' Further courses of training were necessary before the degree of Doctor could be attained. The whole academic course was a strenuous one.

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not have been prescribed except in an age when there as was much enthusiasm for learning, and many great teachers to kindle and to feed the flame; and there is t no lack of memorable names in the chronicle of mediæval Oxford. Edmund Rich in the twelfth century was, apparently, the first recorded Oxford Master of Arts, and the first Doctor. Then the Friars came to Oxford; and students might hear the teaching of Marsh and Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, 'the most original genius of the Middle Ages.' It is true that as time went on, and not all Friars had the breadth of view of their greatest men, there were serious quarrels between the University and the Dominicans, who too uncompromisingly asserted the supremacy of sacred over profane learning. But no one would maintain that the Friars did not quicken the intellectual life of Oxford. Duns Scotus, logician, metaphysician, theologian, who 'found time to fill twelve folio volumes with dialectics which fascinated if they bewildered his age,' was a Franciscan, and lectured at Oxford for a time. As Realism is associated with the name of Duns Scotus, so is Nominalism a with that of William of Ockham, that later light of the 14th century; and in the latter part of the same century Wycliffe's 'incomparable' teaching was heard in Oxford. That great reformer and earliest in England of persecuted 'heretics' moved the people 'through the voice of Oxford'; and the University had the courage to support him loyally even against the Pope. The list of 13th and 14th century names is a sufficiently imposing one. Matthew Arnold, in a well-known passage, describes the Oxford of his day as 'untouched by the fierce intellectual life of the century.' Perhaps he was right, at that time; there have been years when Oxford was comfortably moored in a backwater, outside the full current of contemporary thought. Certainly it could not be said now, when academic circles are only too acutely conscious of that fierce intellectual life in its inconveniently varying manifestations; nor were the 13th and 14th centuries open to that accusation. The mediæval University was at that time fully abreast of mediæval thought and speculation. Whatever may be thought now of its very comprehensive scheme of education (and it may be criticised, in the words of

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Dr Rashdall, as 'substituting books for things') that scheme did at least satisfy the ideas of its age. More than that; Oxford was not only with the advance, but fma supplied the leaders and protagonists. No seat of learning boasted more men of light and leading, or as many; and whether it be cause or effect, probably there has o0 never been in any University a more lively enthusiasm.

"The life of medieval Oxford,' says Sir C. Mallet, at its best was a life which scholars could delight in. The atmoW sphere was one of intellectual effort, widely diffused if not d always clearly understood. The comradeship of master and we pupil, the contact of mind with mind, bore fruit. And the leaders of thought, however few their disciples, never forgot the grandeur of their task, to make all knowledge the traininge ground of reason, and reason the interpreter of faith.'

High praise, indeed; but it may be taken as justified; for the writer is not prone to palliate deficiencies.

There is another test which Oxford has often, especially in these latter days, been required to satisfy. It is demanded of her that she should be 'national,' in the sense of being ready to admit all who come to learn. Nineteenth-century reform has rightly done its best to open the doors as wide as possible; and there can be no doubt that the University wishes to be a 'national' one; yet so great and growing is the population of England, and such are the complexities of modern civilisation, and so various are the ideals of education, that it is difficult to see how an English seat of learning can really invite all would-be students-or how, were the invitation given, it could possibly be accepted by representatives of every class and condition. With the best will in the world, there is a continual problem for reformers; and so far, perhaps, Oxford has found that it is less easy to be national than to be cosmopolitan. The medieval University was less conscious of that difficulty. The common need of Latin satisfied the requirements alike of a 'liberal' and of a 'sound commercial' education; Latin being, as Mr Boase points out in his history of the city of Oxford, necessary, at a time when the accounts of a manor were kept in that tongue (and even till within the last few years some colleges have kept their accounts in Latin). One object of the colleges,' says the same Vol. 244.-No. 484.

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authority, was to help the education of the poor, and Oxford was a stronghold of popular feeling.' Early societies, about 1400, were very democratic, and we hear of 'tilers and paviours' dining with the Fellows of New College. As late as 1460 two poor scholars were officially permitted to ask alms. The standard of living excluded but few; that is generally true; yet it is impossible to ignore the fact that we begin very early in history to hear of the number of rich men's sons at Oxford, and the prohibitive cost of obtaining a degree. The number of students in residence' are very variously stated. Matthew Paris' estimate for 1209 of 3000 is held to be a moderate one; and if that or something like it be accepted, Oxford certainly admitted a much larger proportion of the national youth than it has ever done since.

Great constructive periods are apt to be succeeded by days of little things; and so it was with the University in the realm of thought and learning during the greater part of three centuries at least. Sir H. Maxwell Lyte speaks of the 'intellectual torpor' prevailing at Oxford and Cambridge for a hundred years after Wycliffe's death; the chief demand of the Universities was for 'a larger share of this world's goods.' It is true that new foundations, Lincoln, All Souls', Magdalen, arose in the 15th century to enhance the dignity and beauty of Oxford. It is true also that we owe to that same century the beginnings of one of the chief glories of Oxford and of the world, the Bodleian Library. But the gains were for the moment rather material than spiritual. Studies became mechanical. The vivid life, the passionate enthusiasm of the earlier days gave place, it may be, to teachers less original, to ambitions less exalted, to complaints about the slowness of preferment, to tame compliance with the evils of the time.' All that remained of the former ardent temper was its turbulence. There were disorders in plenty. The University expended what energy it had in constant bickerings with archbishops and even popes. While these things occupied its attention abuses began to creep in; men looked less to study than to the easiest short cut to its rewards; they began to be dispensed from the exercises necessary for degrees. Recently founded colleges did not always preserve intact the ideals of their founders; they were more concerned