UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS.

The subject of this article may be conveniently divided into two parts; the first embracing Universities, and the second Schools. In treating of the former, it has been deemed the most satisfactory method to present a view of some of the oldest and most celebrated of the continental universities, and to subjoin a short account of the origin, progress, and present condition of those of Great Britain and Ireland. An opportunity will thus be afforded of viewing the higher education in its infancy, of observing the improvements which have at various times been introduced, and of forming an estimate of it after it has been in operation for nearly seven centuries. The space to which we are necessarily restricted prevents us from doing more than stating the principal facts: the subject, if treated in detail, would extend much beyond the limits within which it must be comprised in a work like this.

PART I.—UNIVERSITIES.

University (Universitas) has been defined "a universal school, in which are taught all branches of learning, or the four faculties of Theology, Law, Medicine, and the Arts, and in which degrees are conferred in these faculties." This we believe to be the meaning most commonly attached to the word university; and as it is palpably incorrect, it will be necessary for us to endeavour to point out its true signification. Like many other terms of extensive application, it has undergone various modifications of meaning, till its origin and primary use seem to have been utterly forgotten. By the nations of modern Europe, it has been applied to the highest seminaries of learning in their respective countries, whether these embraced "the whole circle of the sciences," or were limited to one or two faculties; and we accordingly find that the idea attached to the word varies in extent and comprehensiveness with the institution to which it is applied. Those who have formed their notion of the word merely from the English universities, commonly suppose that a university "necessarily means a collection and union of colleges; that it is a great corporation, embodying in one the smaller and subordinate collegiate bodies." The author of "A Reply to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review," asserts that "the university of Oxford is not a national foundation. It is a congeries of foundations, originating, some in royal munificence, but more in private piety and bounty. They are moulded, indeed, into one corporation; but each one of our twenty colleges is a corporation by itself." The inaccuracy of this opinion will appear from our account of that distinguished seminary. It is indeed sufficiently refuted by the fact, that many universities exist in which there are no colleges. This is the case with most of the German universities; and in the Scottish universities there are no foundations which bear any resemblance to the English colleges. Edinburgh, though called a college, is merely a university, and has nothing in common with the English meaning of the term college; and the colleges at St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, are corporations chiefly endowed for the principals and professors, and not for the students. Trinity College, Dublin, is a college with the privileges of a university, possessing however a magnificent endowment for the provost, fellows, and scholars. It is important, besides, to bear in mind, that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge existed before a single college was endowed; and that the universities would continue to exist, with all their rights and privileges unimpaired, even if the property of all the colleges were confiscated, and their buildings levelled with the ground. Another error, that universities were so called because they professed to teach universal learning, though maintained by men of such erudition as Mosheim, Tiraboschi, and Dr Washington, and assented to by Mr Hallam, is a mere quibble upon the word. The university of Paris, as well as Oxford and Cambridge, existed at first only in the faculty of arts; Salerno and Montpellier contained the single faculty of medicine; and even Bologna was celebrated for 200 years as a school of law, before it contained any provision for lectures in theology. The teaching of the civil law was prohibited in Paris from 1220 till 1679; and other remarkable instances might easily be adduced, in which the study of particular faculties was forbidden in particular universities. It is true that most of the modern universities embrace the "whole circle of learning," as contained in the four faculties of the arts, theology, law, and physic; but this was not the case in the twelfth century, when the term universitatis was first applied to academical institutions.

University, in its proper and original meaning, denotes the whole members of an incorporated body of persons, teaching and learning one or more departments of knowledge. The word universitas, in the technical language of the civil law, was used to signify a plurality of persons associated for a continued purpose, and may be inadequately rendered by society, company, corporation. In the language of the middle ages, it was applied either loosely to any understood class of persons, or strictly to the members of a municipal incorporation, or the members of a general study. In this application, it was used to denote either the whole body of teachers and learners, or the whole body of learners, or the whole body of teachers and learners divided either by faculty, or by country, or both together; its meaning being determined by the words with which it was connected. In the fourteenth century, the terms universitas et scholarium, and the like, which had hitherto been joined with universitas, were discontinued, and the word came to be used simply by itself, or in combination with studium, or studium generale as universitas studii Oxoniensis, Parisiensis, &c. In ecclesiastical language, the term was frequently applied to a number of churches united under the superintendence of one archdeacon, and to the college of canons in a cathedral. It is thus used of the body of ca-

---

1 Commonly ascribed to Dr Copleston, late provost of Oriel College, Oxford, and now bishop of Llandaff. Oxford, 1810, 8vo. 2 Edinburgh Review, No. 106, p. 403. 3 Melden on the Origin of Universities, pp. 11 and 12. 4 Cent. XIII. p. ii. chap. i. 5 History of the Church, p. 469. 6 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, i. 20, note. 7 Edin. Rev. No. 121, p. 218. Melden, p. 5. Bulfin's Historia Universitatis Parisiensis, i. 275. 8 The oldest word for an unexclusive institution of higher education, was studium and studium generale; terms employed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and retained in those which followed. The latter term, like universitas, did not mean originally that all was taught, but that what was taught, was taught to all; "generalitas ad universitatem non pertinet scientiarum, sed ad publicam causam docendi." Petri Gregorii Tholosani De Republica lib. xviii. c. i. sect. 87, as quoted in Edin. Rev. No. 121, p. 217. 9 The substance of this account of the word university is taken from an elaborate article in the Edinburgh Review, No. 121, pp. 215, 216, and 217. To this article, and to two others apparently from the same pen, we have been largely indebted in compiling the following article. The oldest universities of Europe," says Mr Melden, "were founded in the twelfth century, and were formed by the enterprise of learned men, who undertook to give public instruction to all who were desirous of hearing them. The first teachers soon found assistants and rivals; students resorted in great numbers to the sources of knowledge thus opened to them; and from this voluntary concourse of teachers and learners, the schools arose, which we afterwards recognised as public bodies, and entitled universities, and which served as models for those which, in later times, were founded and established by public authority. Some of the oldest universities had traditions of their foundation at a more remote period by royal or imperial authority, and these traditions might be nominally true; but as far as their real life, and power, and distinctive character are concerned, their origin was in fact spontaneous, and is to be ascribed to the general excitement which pervaded Europe in the twelfth century."

The oldest of the European universities were those of Paris and Bologna; the former for several centuries so celebrated as a school of theology as to be designated the "first school of the church," and the latter equally famous for the study of Roman jurisprudence. Of these two seminaries, as forming the models on which the other universities which subsequently sprung up in various parts of Europe were established, it will be necessary for us to give a somewhat detailed account. Omitting altogether the question of priority, we shall begin with the university of Paris, because we believe its claim to precedence on the ground of antiquity to be equally well founded with that of its rival, and because its form and constitution were in a great measure adopted by the founders of the two great English universities.