When the old Dominicans owned the convent they instituted a free school for children, and as the requirements of the city became more pressing they extended their teaching to other and higher branches of learning, among which the study of law, medicine, and philosophy was included. They also had an annex school for special instruction. At present the lectures are given by graduates of Spanish universities who have taken the degree of Doctor in the course they may have followed. The number of students, in some years, has reached two thousand. None of them sleep in the building. To be a professor it is necessary either to have acquired distinction in the vacant chair of the special profession, or to be the best in a public contest against all the others aspiring to the chair, or to be appointed by the Crown. The students of the Havana University wear no caps and gowns, but the professors on every official occasion appear in their "togas" and caps, which are black, with tassels, lining, and cuffs of the colour of their respective faculties. Medicine is yellow, Law is red, Science is dark blue, Philosophy and Letters, light blue. Pharmacy, purple, and so on. In spite of strict orders from the rectors and professors and covert threats from the Spanish Government officers, no student has attended lectures on the 27th of November since 1871, when seven students were unjustly accused by the Spanish Volunteers of having desecrated the tomb of a patriot. It was in vain that a brave Spanish officer, called Capdevilla, showed that the scratches on the glass of the coffin were covered with moss: all he succeeded in doing was to provoke the Volunteers, who did their best to kill him, and to spoil his career; he lived twenty-seven years more and was never promoted. He died in Santiago. The students were executed two days after their arrest. When the son of the man whose tomb had been the cause of so much villainy went to Cuba for his father's remains, twenty years after that event, a notary public attended the ceremony and the son was a witness to the declaration that all was in exactly the same condition as at the time of the burial. A monument was erected to the memory of the students after the Spanish Cortes had declared that they had been innocent of the charge that had been brought against them. There is a significant statue of a blindfold woman with broken scales in her hand on one side of the monument whilst History on the other side appears recording. After this disgraceful act it is not surprising that the students of Havana University furnished such a ready contingent to the ranks of the rebellion.