Hucbald was famous as a poet, musician, and philosopher; but his colleague, Remigius, was great in grammar, and wrote comments on Priscian, Donatus, and Marcian Capella. He taught humane letters and theology, and was extraordinarily learned in Scripture and the Fathers. After the death of Fulk he proceeded to Paris, and opened the first public school which we know with any certainty to have been established in that city. This, according to the Paris historians, was the real germ of the university; at any rate it was the first of those celebrated schools out of which the university subsequently developed. Nevertheless, half a century earlier, in the midst of the great siege of Paris, there had been both schools and scholars, for Abbo of St. Germain apologises for the incomplete state of his poem before mentioned, “on account of the multitude of his pupils.” Whence we gather that even famine and massacre had never entirely extinguished the Parisian thirst for letters. Remigius continued to teach at Paris for several years, pupils coming to him from all parts of France. Among them was one whose story deserves to be told a little more at length, inasmuch as it exhibits, in a striking manner, the utter ruin which had fallen on the monastic institute in the French provinces, and at the same time shows us that in the tenth century laymen were to be found who were possessed of a respectable education, and were capable of collecting libraries. There lived at that time, in the province of Maine, a certain noble named Abbo, who had been fortunate enough in his youth to find some school where he not only learnt how to sign his name, but acquired a great taste for reading. His reading, too, was of a solid kind, for his favourite studies were the histories of the ancients, and the “Novellæ” of Justinian, the latter of which he knew by heart, using his legal erudition when called on to dispense justice to his feudal subjects, and to act as umpire in the disputes which arose among his neighbours. The Gospels were always read aloud at his table, and on the Vigils of solemn feasts he and his family spent the night in prayer and watching. Nor are we to draw the hasty conclusion that Abbo’s household, and his way of life, was at all an extraordinary exception from the common rule. He had friends as learned and as holy as himself, such as Duke William of Aquitaine, whose religious habits earned him the surname of “the Pious,” while his love of letters gained him that of “the Grammarian.” This good prince had a number of books in his castle, and during the long winter evenings he amused himself by reading them, never leaving his studies till fairly overcome by sleep. Abbo had one son named Odo, born in 879, and whilst yet an infant, his father going to see him in his cradle, by a devout impulse took him in his arms and offered him to St. Martin. As he grew up he was given in charge to a priest to be taught his letters, but it does not appear that there was any