It is indeed, as we have hinted, a relic of the old competitive spirit which distinguished the universities as literal republics of letters, where each man fought his own battle, and gained and wore his own laurels. Nor was his arena confined to his own college. The free-masonry we have already alluded to opened every honour and emolument to all, and the Scotsman might suddenly enter the lists at Paris, Bologna, or Upsala, or the Spaniard might compete in Glasgow or Aberdeen. The records before us contain many forms in which the ancient spirit has now ceased to breathe. Already has been mentioned the competition for the regentship. The old form of the Impugnment of Theses, so renowned in literary histories, has died away as a portion of the ordinary laureation. The comprehensive challenges and corresponding victories attributed to the Admirable Crichton give this practice a peculiar interest in the eyes of Scotsmen; and it has a great place in the annals of the Reformation, since one of its main stages was the posting the twenty-five theses on the door of the church of Würtemberg by Luther. But in reading these remarkable events people are apt to forget the commonness of the practice; and Crichton has the aspect of a preposterous intellectual bully going out of his proper way to attract notice, instead of doing what was in its time and circumstances as ordinary and common sense an act as running a tilt, joining a crusade, or burning a witch. Goldsmith, in that account of the intellectual vagabond which so evidently describes himself, has noticed some relics of the practice as he found it on the Continent. “In all the universities and convents there are, upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every adventitious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night. In this manner, then, I fought my way towards England.” A collection of German pamphlets, amounting, it is said, to upwards of a hundred thousand, and called the Dietrich Collection, was some years ago purchased by the Faculty of Advocates, and was found to consist chiefly of the academic theses in which the scholars of Germany—illustrious and obscure—had been disputing for centuries. In the same place, by the way, where this vast collection reposes, may be found the most complete living illustration of the old form of impugnment. The anxious litigant or busy agent entering the main door of the Parliament House at 9 o’clock of a morning, may find, by an _affiche_ to the door-post, that there is to be a _disputatio juridica_ under the auspices of the _inclytus Diaconus facultatis_. Since the year 1693 it has been the practice of each intrant to undergo public impugnment, or, as the act of Faculty says, “the publict tryall of candidates, by printing and publishing theses on the subject assigned with corollaries, as it is observed amongst other nations.” A title of