"The Philosophy of Clothes," especially in its application to the mediæval universities, is no doubt an interesting one, and may even--so, at least, it is said by some authorities--throw much light upon the relations of the universities to the Church. The whole subject is discussed in some detail in the chapter on "Student Life in the Middle Ages," in Mr. Rashdall's "History of the Universities of Europe," to which, perhaps, it may be best to refer those of our readers who are desirous of tracing the various steps in the gradual evolution of modern academic dress from the antique forms. There it will be seen how the present doctor's scarlet gown was developed from the magisterial "cappa" or "cope," a sleeveless scarlet cloak, lined with miniver, with tippet and hood attached of the same material--a dress which, in its original shape, is now only to be seen in the Senate House at Cambridge, worn by the Vice-Chancellor on Degree days; how the present gown and hood of the Master of Arts and Bachelor is merely a development of the ordinary clerical dress or "tabard" of the thirteenth century, which, however, was not even exclusively clerical, and certainly not distinguished by that sobriety of hue characteristic of modern clerical tailordom--clerkly prejudice in the matter of the "tabard" running in favour of green, blue, or blood red; and how the modern "mortar-board," or square college cap,--now usurped by undergraduates, and even choristers and schoolboys--was originally the distinctive badge of a Master of Faculty, being either a square cap or "biretta," with a tuft on the top, in lieu of the very modern tassel, or a round cap or "pileum," more or less resembling the velvet caps still worn by the Yeomen of the Guard, or on very state occasions by the Cambridge or Oxford doctors in medicine or law. The picturesque dress of university students of the thirteenth century, still surviving in the long blue coat and yellow stockings, and red leather girdle and white bands of the boys of Christ's Hospital, is sufficient to show how much we have lost of the warmth and colour of mediæval life by the almost universal change to sombre black in clerical or student costume, brought about by the Puritan austerity of the sixteenth century.