thanks to which the name of Salamanca was honourably known throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries from Lisbon to Novgorod, was founded by Alfonso IX., King of Leon, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century--moved thereto, it is said, by the establishment of the university of Palencia by his cousin of Castile. Consequent on the union of the two kingdoms in the person of Fernando III., the latter university declined and faded out of existence, Salamanca thus remaining the oldest seat of learning in Spain. Valladolid, the next in order of antiquity, dates from 1346, Alcalá from 1499, Seville from 1504. The sainted king in 1243 bestowed a charter on the young university, by virtue of which the students were exempted from the municipal law and made subject to their own tribunals. The first court thus constituted was composed of the bishop, the dean and prior of the Friars Preachers, the father guardian of the Discalced Franciscans, and certain persons named as Don Rodrigo, and Pedro Guigelmo, Garcia Gomez, Pedro Vellido, Fernando Sanchez de Porto Carrero, Pedro Muñiz, canon of Leon, and Miguel Perez, canon of Lamego. Under Alfonso the Learned the new foundation naturally flourished. He not only confirmed by a royal ordinance, dated from Badajoz, 1252, all the privileges granted by his predecessors, but exempted the students from tolls and certain other dues, and secured them priority in the matter of accommodation at inns. Furthermore, in 1254, he endowed a chair of law with an annual stipend of five hundred maravedis, an assistant or bachelor also being appointed; a master of decrees, at a salary of three hundred maravedis; two masters of decretals, at five hundred maravedis a year each; two masters in physics, in logic, and in grammar, each at two hundred maravedis; an organist at fifty maravedis; and a librarian, at a hundred maravedis. The same monarch reduced the number of rectors to two--the Dean of Salamanca and one Arnal Sanz. In the celebrated Partidas, in the compilation of which Alfonso was doubtless assisted by members of this university, directions are given that at all such seats of learning there should be good inns, abundance of bread and wine, and pleasant walks where the students might in the evenings take the air.