THE UNIVERSITY In Old Geneva education had been neglected. Emperor Charles IV. had offered the citizens a University in the fourteenth century, and the offer had been rejected for fear, it was alleged, lest the students should behave uproariously. The first public school was not opened in the town until 1429. It lasted for about a hundred years, and then fell upon evil times during an epidemic of the plague. The head master ran away from the contagion, and the City Council ordered the building to be closed, on the ground that the children were knocking it to pieces. Then, in 1535, after the Protestants had gained the upper hand, the École de la Rive was established in the convent from which the Cordeliers had been expelled. The first head-master was Antoine Saulnier, a Dauphiné Reformer, and his prospectus ran as follows: ‘In our school the lectures begin at five o’clock in the morning and continue until ten, which is our usual dinner hour. The ordinary curriculum consists of instruction in the three most excellent languages, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, not to mention the French language, which, in the opinion of the learned, is by no means to be despised. We hope that, the Lord helping us, the time will come when we shall also teach rhetoric and dialectic.’ [Illustration: EVIAN LES BAINS, HTE. SAVOIE] Calvin, however, wanted something better than the École de la Rive. He found a means, therefore, of founding a University, and placed Théodore de Bèze (of whom more presently) at the head of it as Rector. It was, at first, as Mark Pattison clearly proved in his ‘Life of Isaac Casaubon,’ little more than a grammar school, culminating in a theological college; but it soon expanded, and is still expanding. Nowadays, indeed, housed in commodious new buildings, it furnishes instruction in almost every imaginable branch of knowledge, and specially favours studies of a utilitarian character; but the original programme was confined to the humane letters, the funds for the maintenance of the institution being raised with difficulty, and by means of ingenious fiscal devices, hardly to be held up to the imitation of modern fiscal reformers.