The procurators of the nations were, in the University of Paris, those high authorities to whom, as far separated from all sublunary influences, King Henry of England proposed, in the twelfth century, to refer his disputes with the Papal power. In England they are represented at the present day by the formidable proctor, who is a terror to evil-doers without being any praise or protection to them that do well. But it may safely be said that the chubby youths who in Glasgow and Aberdeen go through the annual ceremony, as procuratores nationum, of representing the votes of the nations in the election of a rector, more legitimately represent those procurators of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, who maintained the rights of their respective nations in the great intellectual republic called a Universitas. The discovery, indeed, of this latent power, long hidden, like some palæontological fossil, under the pedagogical innovations of modern dayswhich tended to make the self-governing institution a school ruled by masters-created astonishment in all quarters, even in those who found themselves in possession of the privilege. In Aberdeen especially, when some mischievous antiquary maintained that by the charter the election of a lord rector lay with the students themselves, the announcement was received with derision by a discerning public, and with a severe frown, as a sort of seditious libel, enticing the youth to rebellion, by the indignant professors. But it turned out to be absolutely true, however astounding it might be to those who are unacquainted with the early history of universities, and think that everything ancient must have been tyrannical and hierarchical. The young ones made a sort of saturnalia of their fugitive power, while the professors looked on as one may see a solemn mastiff contemplate the gambols of a litter of privileged spaniel pups. The privilege was, however, used effectively, we may say nobly. There has been no fogyism, or adherence to any settled routine of humdrum respectability, in the selection of the rectors. From Burke to Bulwer Lytton and Macaulay, they have, with a few exceptions, been men of

the first intellectual rank. What is a still more remarkable result than that they should often have been men of genius, there is scarcely an instance of a lord rector having been a clamorous quack or a canting fanatic.

In Edinburgh there is no such relic of the ancient university commonwealth, and the students have instinctively supplied the want by affiliating their voluntary societies, and choosing a distinguished man to be the president of the aggregate group. The constitution of the College of Edinburgh, indeed, was not matured until after the old constitution of the universities had suffered a reaction, and, far from any new ones being constructed on the old model, the earlier universities with difficulty preserved their constitution. Some person called a College Bailie is the dignitary who presides over the interests of the University of Edinburgh as one of the appendages of the Town Council. By that body the greater part of the patronage of the institution is administered, and now it is decided that they have the sole and absolute right of making bye-laws for the regulation of this, the leading educational institution of Scotland. There is something transcendently ludicrous in a civic corporation - a conclave of demure tradesmen, intensely respectable-extending those functions of administration which are appropriately applicable to marketing and street-cleaning to the direction and adjustment of the highest ranges of human instruction. Yet somehow it has worked well, on account of the very anomaly involved in it. The town-councillors, in selecting a professor, like the students in choosing a rector, are afraid of their own powers, and never venture to use their own discretion. Absolutely ignorant of the branches of knowledge to which the rules they frame apply, they become a medium through which these rules are moulded by others, and a certain commercial sagacity enables them to divine who are the most sagacious advisers. So also in the exercise of their patronage, being utterly unable to test the capacity of a candidate, they dare not give way to any partiality founded at least on this ground, and they are generally acute

enough to find out who is most highly estimated by those who are competent to judge.

That principle of internal self-action and independence of the contemporary constituted powers, of which the rectorship and some other relics remain to us at this day, is one of the most remarkable, and in many respects admirable, features in the history of the middle ages. It is involved in mysteries and contradictions which one would be glad to see unravelled by skilful and full inquirers. Adapted to the service of pure knowledge, and investing her with absolute prerogatives, the system was yet one of the creatures of that Romish hierarchy, which at the same time thought by other efforts to circumscribe human inquiry, and make it the servant of her own ambitious efforts.

It may help us in some measure to the solution of the phenomenon to remember that, however dim the light of the Church may have shone, it was yet the representative of the intellectual system, and was in that capacity carrying on a war with brute force. Catholicism was the great rival and controller of the feudal strength and tyranny of the ageinforme ingens cui lumen ademptum. As intellect and knowledge were the weapons with which they encountered the sightless colossus, it was believed that the intellectual arsenals could not be too extensive or complete-that intellect could not be too richly cultivated. Like many combatants, they perhaps forgot future results in the desire of immediate victory, and were for the moment blind to the effect so nervously apprehended by their successors, that the light thus brought in by them would illuminate the dark corners of their own ecclesiastical system, and lead the way to its fall. Perhaps such hardy intellects as Abelard or Aquinas may have anticipated such a result from the stimulus given by them to intellectual inquiry, and may not have deeply lamented the process.

But however it came about. whether in the blindness of all, or the far-sightedness of some-the Church, from the thirteenth to pretty far on in the fifteenth century, encouraged

learning with a noble reliance and a zealous energy which it would ill become the present age to despise or forget. And even if it should all have proceeded from a blind confidence that the Church placed on a rock was unassailable, and that mere human wisdom, even trained to the utmost of its powers, was, after all, to be nothing but her handmaiden, let us respect this unconscious simplicity which enabled the educational institutions to be placed in so high and trusted a position. The Church supplied something then, indeed, which we search after in vain in the present day, and which we shall only achieve by some great strides in academic organisation, capable of supplying from within what was then supplied from without: and the quality thus supplied was no less than that cosmopolitan nature, which made the university not merely parochial, or merely national, but universal, as its name denoted. The temporal prince might endow the academy with lands and riches, and might confer upon its members honourable and lucrative privileges, but it was to the head of the one indivisible Church that the power belonged of franking it all over Christendom, and establishing throughout the civilised world a freemasonry of intellect, which made all the universities, as it were, one great corporation of the learned men of the world.

It must be admitted that we have here one of those practical difficulties which form the necessary price of the freedom of Protestantism. When a great portion of Europe was no longer attached to Rome, the peculiar centralisation of the educational systems was broken up. The old universities, indeed, retained their ancient privileges in a traditional, if not a practically legal shape, through Lutheranism and Calvinism carrying the characteristics of the abjured Romanism, yet carrying them unscathed, since they were protected from injury and insult by the enlightened object for which they were established and endowed. When, however, in Protestant countries, the old universities became poor, or when a change of condition demanded the foundation of a new university, it was difficult to

restore anything so simple and grand as that old community of privileges which made the member of one university a citizen of all others, according to his rank, whether he were laureated in Paris or distant Upsala -in the gorgeous academies close to the fostering influence of the Pope, or in that humble edifice endowed after the model of the University of Bologna, in an obscure Scottish town named Glasgow.

The English universities, by their great wealth and political influence, were able to stand alone, neither giving nor taking. Their Scottish contemporaries, unable to fight a like battle, have had reason to complain of their ungenerous isolation; and as children of the same parentage, and differing only with their southern neighbours in not having so much worldly prosperity, it is natural that they should look back with a sigh, which even orthodox Presbyterianism cannot suppress, to the time when the universal mental sway of Rome, however offensive it might be in its own insolent supremacy, yet exercised that high privilege of supereminent great ness to level secondary inequalities, and place those whom it favoured beyond the reach of conventional humiliations.

To keep up that characteristic which the Popedom only offered, the monarchs of the larger Protestant states have endeavoured to apply the incorporation principle to universities. In small states and republics the difficulty of obtaining a general sanction to frank their honours to any distance from the place where they are given is still greater; yet it is in such places that, through fortunate coincidents, an academy sometimes acquires a widespread reputation and influence. To what eminence the universities in the United States are destined who shall predict? yet, in the estimate of many, they have no right to be called universities at all; and of the doctors' degrees which they freely distribute in this country, much doubt is entertained of the genuineness. Yet if it would be difficult to lay down how it is that these American institutions have acquired any power to grant degrees-that is to say, the power not only to confer

prizes and rewards among their own alumni, but to invest them with insignia of literary rank current for their value over the world-it would be equally difficult for any of the ancient universities in Protestant states to claim an exclusive right to such a power, since this could only be done through Papal authority. It will be said that there is just the same practical difficulty in this as in all other departments of human institutions, and especially those which, like rank, are transferable from country to country, so as to require and obtain an estimate of their value in each. It will be said that the exclusiveness which denies the Heidelberg Doctor of Philosophy a parallel with the LL.D. of Oxford is just the same as that which will by no means admit the count or baron who is deputy-assistant highways controller, as on a par with an earl or baron in the peerage of England. The Kammer Junker of Denmark is not looked on as a privycouncillor. The Sheriff of Mecca, the Sheriff of London, and the Sheriff of Edinburgh, are three totally different personages, and would feel very much puzzled how to act if they were to change places for a while. Some Eastern dignitaries-Baboo, Fudky, and the like, must occasionally puzzle even the adepts of Leadenhall. Nor are we without our instances near at hand. What is the Knight of Kerry, what the Captain of Clanranald, what The Chisholm-and how do the authorities at the Herald's Office deal with them? Has not an Archbishop of York been suspected of imposture in a Scottish bank when he signed with the surname of Eborac; and have not our Scottish judges, with their strange-sounding peerage-titles, made mighty confusion in respectable English hotels, when my Lord Kames is so intimate with Mrs Home, and my Lord Auchinleck retires with Mrs Boswell? But admitting the confusion to be irremediable in the department of political and decorative rank, the absence of a uniform intellectual hierarchy is not the less to be regretted, while the great effort made to secure it in an early and imperfect condition of society should be contemplated with a respectful awe. There is just one man who professes

to be able effectually to restore it-the sage of positivism, M. Comte; and he is to do it when he has established absolute science in everything, and put down freedom of opinion by the application of sure scientific deduction in every department of the world's intellectual pursuits; when it shall be as impossible to question the most abstruse propositions in chemistry, geology, or social organisation, as to question the multiplication table or the succession of the tides-then, indeed, may absolute laws be laid down to govern the world in its appreciation of intellectual rank. But it is long yet ere that day of certain knowledge-if it is ever destined to dawn on that poor, blundering, unfortunate fellow, man. We have got but a very, very little way yet, and we know not how much farther it is permitted us to penetrate. Terrible are the chaotic heaps that have to be cleared away or set in order by the pioneers of intellect, and it is still a question whether our race can provide those who are strongheaded enough for the task.

There is much truth, however, at the foundation of the French sage's audacious speculations, that intellect must achieve for herself her own conquests and take her own position. In the greatness of the acquirements of which they are the nursery, must we look hereafter to the greatness of our seminaries of learning. If the university is but a grammar-school or a collection of popular lecture-rooms, no royal decrees or republican ordinances will give it rank-if it be a great centre of literary and scientific illumination, the pride or enmity of its rivals will not tarnish its lustre. But apart from the question between catholicity and positivity, it is, we think, very interesting to notice in our universities-humble as we admit them to be the relics of the nomenclature and customs which, in the fifteenth century, marked their rank in the great European cluster of universities. The most eminent of their characteristics is that high officer, the Rector, already spoken of. There is a Censor too-but for all the grandeur of his etymological ancestry in Roman history, he is but a small officer stature sometimes, as well as dignity. He calls over the catalogue or roll of

in

names, marking those absent—a duty quite in keeping with that enumerating function of the Roman officer which has left to us the word census as a numbering of the people.

So lately as the eighteenth century, when the monastic or collegiate system which has now so totally disappeared from the Scottish universities yet lingered about them, the censor was a more important, or at least more laborious officer, and, oddly enough, he corresponded in some measure with the character into which, in England, the Proctor had been so strangely diverted. In a regulation adopted in Glasgow, in 1725, it is provided "that all students be obliged, after the bells ring, immediately to repair to their classes, and to keep within them, and a censor be appointed to every class, to attend from the ringing of the bells till the several masters come to their classes, and observe any, either of his own class or of any other, who shall be found walking in the courts during the above time, or standing on the stairs, or looking out at the windows, or making noise."-Munimenta Univ. Glasguensis, ii. 429. This has something of the mere schoolroom characteristic of our modern university discipline, but this other paragraph, from the same set of regulations, is indicative both of more mature vices among the precocious youth of Glasgow, and a more inquisitorial corrective organisation:

"That for keeping order without the College, a censor be appointed to observe any who shall be in the streets before the bells ring, and to go now and then to the billiard-tables, and to the other gaming-places, to observe if any be playing at the times when they ought to be in their chambers; and that this censor be taken from the poor scholars of the several classes alternately, as they shall be thought most fit for that office, and that some reward be thought of for their pains." (Ibid., 425). In the fierce street-conflicts, to which we may have occasion to refer, the poor censors had a more perilous service.

In the universities of Central Europe, and that of Paris, their parent, the censor was a very important person; yet he was the sub

ordinate of one far greater in power and influence. In the words of the writers of the Trevaux, so full of knowledge about such matters, "Un Régent est dans sa classe comme un Souverain; il crée des charges de Censeurs comme il lui plait, il les donne à qui il veut, et il les abolit quand il le judge à propos." The regents still exist in more than their original potency; for they are that essential invigorating element of the university of the present day, without which it would not exist. Of old, when every magister was entitled to teach in the university, the regents were persons selected from among them, with the powers of government as separate from the capacity and function of instructing; at present, in so far as the university is a school, the regent is a schoolmaster-and therefore, as we have just said, he is an essential element of the establishment. The term regent, like most of the other university distinctions, was originally of Parisian nomenclature, and there might be adduced a good deal of learning bearing on its signification as distinct from that of the word professornow so desecrated in its use that we are most familiar with it in connection with dancing-schools, jugglers' booths, and veterinary surgeries. The regency, as a university distinction conferred as a reward of capacities shown within the arena of the university, and judged of according to its republican principles, seems to have lingered in a rather confused shape in our Scottish universities, and to have gradually ingrafted itself on the patronage of the professorships. So in reference to Glasgow, immediately after the Revolution, when there was a vacancy or two from Episcopalians declining to take the obligation to acknowledge the new Church Establishment, there appears the following notice :

“January 2, 1691. There had never been so solemn and numerous an appearance of disputants for a regent's place as was for fourteen days before this, nine candidates disputing; and in all their disputes and other exercises they all behaved themselves so well, as that the Faculty judged there was not one of them but gave such specimens of their learning as might deserve the place, which

occasioned so great difficulty in the choice that the Faculty, choosing a leet of some of them who seemed most to excel and be fittest, did determine the same by lot, which the Faculty did solemnly go about, and the lot fell upon Mr John Law, who thereupon was this day established regent."-Ibid., vol. iii. p. 596.

Sir William Hamilton explains the position of the regents with a lucid precision which makes his statement correspond precisely with the documentary stores before us. "In the original constitution of Oxford," he says, "as in that of all the older universities of the Parisian model, the business of instruction was not confided to a special body of privileged professors. The University was governed, the University was taught, by the graduates at large. Professor, master, doctor, were originally synonymous. Every graduate had an equal right of teaching publicly in the University the subjects competent to his faculty and to the rank of his degree; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his faculty for such was the condition involved in the grant of the degree itself. The bachelor, or imperfect graduate, partly as an exercise towards the higher honour, and useful to himself, partly as a performance due for the degree obtained, and of advantage to others, was bound to read under a master or doctor in his faculty a course of lectures; and the master, doctor, or perfect graduate, was in like manner, after his promotion, obliged immediately to commence (incipere), and to continue for a certain period publicly to teach (regere), some at least of the subjects appertaining to his faculty. As, however, it was only necessary for the University to enforce this obligation of public teaching, compulsory on all graduates during the term of their necessary regency, if there did not come forward a competent number of voluntary regents to execute this function; and as the schools belonging to the several faculties, and in which alone all public or ordinary instruction could be delivered, were frequently inadequate to accommodate the multitude of the incepters, it came