learning, when the era of its introduction is considered. These professors being "thoroughly furnished," according to the quaint idiom of Fuller, "in philosophy and other primitive sciences," taught publicly in a spacious barn,* until the number of students that came to their lectures rendered separate places of tuition necessary. Their plan of study was drawn from the university of Orleans, comprising grammar and rhetoric on the foundation of Priscian, Aristotle, Tully, and Quintilian, with their commentators: theology also was expounded both to scholars and to the people on Sundays and festivals; so that persons flocked to these fountains of literature, thus thrown open, with zeal and numbers proportionate to that abstinence from instruction to which they had been long subjected.

Such was the primitive state of our academical institutions. Those statutable privileges and liberal endowments which now distinguish us, were then unknown; but the use of an academical habit, as well as the power of conferring degrees in the several faculties, may be traced back. to the earliest periods. Even after the foundation of colleges and halls, the strange intermixture of monastic orders with literary bodies, and the early age at which students were admitted at the university, contributed not only to create strife and confusion, but to retard the advancement of science, and to retain the errors of superstitious bigotry. The time allotted to academical studies, before admission to each degree, seems to have been always the same as it is at the present day; but the duties of university officers

This barn is thought still to exist under the appellation of Pythagoras's school: it belongs to Merton College, Oxford, and has lately been turned into a dwelling-house: the arches of its windows are those of the early Norman style.

appear to have undergone considerable alterations. According to the old statutes, three public lecturers were appointed by the senate to impart that instruction which the youth now receive from their college tutors. These lecturers were selected annually from the Regent Masters of Arts, to read publicly in the schools, to the students of the first and second years, humanity; to those of the second year, dialectics also, or logic; to those of the third, conjointly with the incepting bachelors of arts, philosophy : and for this office each reader received a stipend of £1.6s. 8d. The times and manner of the disputations, &c. were regulated by the proctors.

The university studies, however, did not then, as now, cease with the degree of A.B. No person was admitted to that of A.M. unless he had attended public lectures, for three years after his determination, in Aristotle's philosophy, and had kept his regular acts and opponencies in the schools. Lectures also in theology, together with disputations, and sermons both in English and Latin, were indispensible for the superior degrees of B.D. and D.D. By one of the old statutes, we learn that a bachelor of arts was permitted to incept in grammar, if he had duly attended grammatical lectures in the works of Priscian, had performed certain exercises, and been examined by three masters of arts. After these ceremonies, and an affidavit made that he would attend additional lectures in Priscian for the space of one year, he was presented for admission to the proctors by the Magister Grammaticæ, or, in his absence, by the Magister Glomeriæ, an official personage who is a crux to antiquarians.

Some time before the Reformation, when the ordinary studies of the place began to fall into neglect, a new ordi

nance was introduced into the statute book,* for the appointment of a course of lectures, to which all students were admitted, but which all Bachelors of Arts were obliged to attend: their subjects were, for the first year arithmetic and music; for the second, geometry and perspective; and for the third, astronomy. A grace also was passed in 1528 for substituting grammar in the place of philosophy, at the public disputations held every Friday during term.

At this time also a barbarous Latin jargon was the vehicle of written, and in great measure of oral instruction also, being spoken in public assemblies, in the schools, in the senate-house, and even in private colleges. The highest aim of mathematical knowlege was the investigation of unprofitable secrets, and the cultivation of judicial astrology: even Aristotle himself, that idol of scholastic disputants, was studied only through the mist of his translators. and commentators, the number of whom became multiplied to such a degree, that Patricius reckons up near 12,000 about the end of the 16th century.

Such was the general state of learning in our universities, when the blessed light of the Reformation burst through the gloom which hung over the avenues of real knowlege. That great event was accompanied by the revival of a purer literature, which was quickly established by a phalanx of scholars at Cambridge; and then the absurdities of that scholastic theology, which had so long enslaved the intellect of mankind, were successfully combated; the best authors of Greece and Rome were taught and illustrated by critical and philological erudition; whilst

* See Statuta Antiq. p. 65.

the archives of Christianity were purified under their auspices, and truth was re-instated on the throne of her supremacy. From the dawn of science in the reign of Henry VIII., the day-spring of knowlege brightened throughout that of his son and successor. At the accession of Queen Mary indeed, ignorance and superstition for a time resumed their sway, and many of the great restorers of learning felt the severity of that fate which threw them on times, when literature rose or fell with court factions, or changed according to the disposition of princes and the alteration of religion.

True religion however, and knowlege, its best companion, revived with fresh lustre under the auspices of Elizabeth and the direction of her sage counsellor Burleigh, a statesman who had happily imbibed excellent principles during his residence at St. John's College; a seminary which about this time acquired that distinguished reputation for theological attainments which it has so nobly supported through succeeding generations.*

In that happy era, the statutes which prevail at this day in the university, were, after diligent revisions and amendments, finally established. We may pass over that part of them which relates to its incorporation, as our business is with those alone which relate to the advancement of a learned and religious education. These weighty interests indeed had been very successfully attended to in the statutes of Henry VIII. and of his amiable but short-lived successor; wherein we find that the theological professor

Barrow alludes to this well-deserved fame of his rival college, when speaking of Mr. H. Lucas, who had been a member of St. John's. See Opusc. p. 79.

was ordered to read publicly the scriptures only; the philosophical lecturer was confined to the problemata, moralia, or politica of Aristotle, to Pliny, and to Plato: the arithmetic of Tunstall and Cardan, together with Euclid's geometry, was selected for the professor of mathematics: the elenchi of Aristotle, the topica of Cicero, and the works of Quintilian, for the reader in rhetoric and logic; whilst the Greek professor was obliged to expound the writings of Homer, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Euripides, or any other of the purest classical authors. The order of study prescribed to the students was as follows:

To the first year arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and geography to the second, logic; and to the third and fourth, philosophy. During this course, each candidate for the degree of A.B. was obliged to keep two opponencies and two acts in the public schools, as well as to undergo the customary examination.

An extended progress in the above named sciences, together with public disputations, as well as an assiduous attendance on those held by Masters of Arts during three years, was exacted from all Bachelors of Arts before they proceeded to their next degree; neither was the Master who aspired to a higher degree of academical dignity, permitted to remain idle: he was remanded to the study of theology for the next five years, with a daily attendance on the Hebrew lecture, besides his acts, opponencies, sermon, and clerum, which were all demanded before he could take his degree of B.D. If he aimed at the highest step, that of Doctors in Divinity, (which at this time was held in little less estimation than a patent of nobility,) he was obliged to attend daily the divinity lectures, during four years of probation, besides a variety of other exer