made by truth as it evaporates. But is such a student not interested and a subject so stripped bare, must it needs not be interesting? Nay, we all surely know by this time that no interest is so absorbing and so enduring as that excited by the real truth of things, by the eternal laws of the universe, when they dawn upon the investigator through the clouds formed by confused accumulations of fact. It is so in all subjects alike; but when the subject is closely connected with the largest of all practical interests, with the public welfare and with politics -when the subject is history-then it is so in the highest degree.

I say, then, do not think of yourselves as mere collectors of facts, and do not be content even to authenticate facts with rigid criticism, much less to narrate them with vivacity. Think of yourselves as explorers of a great science; select and marshal your facts so that laws may emerge out of them; bring to bear your highest faculties, even if you leave some of your showy ones in abeyance. When I urge you to renounce the literary method I do not bid you descend to the level of the mere dull, diligent chronicler. I want you not to descend, but to climb a loftier eminence. Be discoverers rather than artists; use your imagination, not to heighten reality, but as the man of science uses it, to frame those conceptions by which facts are held together and vivified. This kind of work is at least as intellectual, at least as interesting as the other, and surely it is far more fruitful. For what comes in the end of all that word-painting? It may give pleasure; but who supposes that the sort of familiarity with historical names and characters which so many have gained, for example, from the Waverley Novels, is really valuable, or leads to juster, truer views of the past? On the other hand, the introduction of some degree of scientific certainty into the matter of politics, if it be possible, as I believe it is-can any one question that it would be important? More important, more necessary, it seems to me, than any other work which this generation could undertake.

AN ENGLISH COLLEGE IN THE

OLDEN TIME.

BY BASS MULLINGER, ESQ., M.A.

October 10th, 1882.

To those whose attention has been given to the history of academic life in past times, there are few passages more familiar than that in which a master of St. John's College, Cambridge, preaching at Paul's Cross, in the reign of Edward VI., describes the state of that ancient society as it existed when the principles of the Reformation had, for the first time, been triumphantly proclaimed in England, and when the confiscating and destroying spirit, which assumed the guise of religious freedom, pursued its career of devastation unchecked throughout the land. We see pictured before us a group of needy, poorly-fed students, seated at their early ten o'clock dinner. Their meal consists of a penny piece of beef divided among four; to this is added a little porridge, which, as the orator informs us, had been made from the same piece of beef, a little oatmeal and salt being superadded, and, to quote Dr. Lever's own expression, "nothing else." This Spartan meal over, we see the students betaking themselves to their scholastic work, either as teachers or learners, until five in the evening, when a meal very similar to that in the morning is set before them. Then we see them devoting themselves to "problems," or some other exercitations of the mental powers, until the hour of nine or ten has arrived. However cold the weather, there are probably no fires, unless indeed it be the season of Yule-tide : and so, before they retire to their confined chambers to seek repose,

age 14 in the latter part of the sixwall mir, I think, very fairly be Dykel apa as the transition per din cur sidemic history, and

ren ler more intelligible the

great change in the tim as of ollere life which subsequently bok place. We must not. I apprehend, look upon Dr. Lever's picture of St. John's as presenting us with very exceptional experiences as regards the yet earlier age. On the contrary, through

out the greater part of the reign of Elizabeth we have evidence that nearly all the colleges,-Trinity and King's perhaps excepted at Cambridge, and Christchurch, Magdalen, and St. John's at Oxford-were in a very necessitous state. It would be easy to bring forward evidence, from college archives and other like sources, shewing how one society, in order to pay its way, was obliged to pawn the college plate; another, to forego the election of the statutable number of Fellows; a third, to refuse admission to new students, because unable to build the rooms required for their reception; while a fourth would be found groaning under an incubus of debt, contracted through inevitable borrowing to meet its current expenditure. In fact, with the exception of King's College, which was guarded from spoliation by a special charter and by special immunities, I do not suppose there was any society at Cambridge at this time-I am speaking of about the year 1576 -which was able to do more than just pay its way.

Now if any one who had not happened to have given something more than ordinary attention to the history of our universities, were to be asked how it is that we find our colleges passing somewhat suddenly from this state of penury to one of comparative opulence like that which they begin to present at the commencement of the seventeenth century, he would probably endeavour to find an explanation of the phenomenon in the growing wealth of the nation, which rendered the lands and tenements belonging to each college more productive in the form of rental, and he would perhaps be disposed to conjecture that additional bequests from individuals, desirous of aiding the cause of religion and learning, did the rest. But these considerations give us only an imperfect solution of the difficulty. In order adequately to account for the change we have to take reckoning of a special and somewhat remarkable circumstance.

I shall have occasion, hereafter, to refer again to one of whom the Cambridge of the sixteenth century might be justly proud, and who was one of the most able, most virtuous, and most eminent men of the age-I mean Sir Thomas Smith. He was a member of

crowded four or five together in the same little room, they are fain to run up and down the college court and cloisters, in order to gain a somewhat more active circulation of the blood than that generated by their meagre fare and sedentary life.

Such were the conditions under which the poor student was too often compelled to gather the fruit of knowledge (or what passed for knowledge) in those times. Parallel passages and like scenes might easily be multiplied. Whether as the result of the difficulties presented by the absence of adequate endowments for the encouragement of humble merit,-or of those created (as in the foregoing instance) by the cruelty of the despoiler, who had taken away from the college much of what the good Lady Margaret and the excellent Bishop Fisher had given,-or simply as inseparable from the mediaval theory of education, the ascetic theory, according to which it was necessary to break the spirit in order to render the intellect docile,-it is undeniable that the path of the learner during a succession of centuries was beset with thorns and watered with many a tear. Rabanus Maurus at Fulda, Lupus Servatus at Ferrières, Erasmus at the College de Clermont at Paris, Roger Ascham at St. John's, Lady Jane Grey at Bradgate, are all examples which illustrate to a greater or less extent the traditions handed down from yet more tragical times, -the times when ecclesiastics were largely recruited from the slave class, and when it was found necessary to pass formal enactments in order to prevent Christian abbats from putting out the eyes of offending monks.

What I propose, however, to attempt in my present paper, is to supply a picture of a somewhat later period, derived from the characteristic features of college life in the latter part of the sixteenth century,-a period which may, I think, very fairly be looked upon as the transition period in our academic history, and the features of which may serve to render more intelligible the great change in the conditions of college life which subsequently took place. We must not, I apprehend, look upon Dr. Lever's picture of St. John's as presenting us with very exceptional experiences as regards the yet earlier age. On the contrary, through