history of every University town provides instances of street conflicts--the records of Orleans and Toulouse abound in them--but we must be content with a tale from Leipsic. The pages of the "Acta Rectorum" at Leipsic are full of illustrations of the wilder side of student life, from which we extract the story of one unhappy year. The year 1545 opened very badly, says the "Rector's Chronicle," with three homicides. On Holy Innocents' Day, a bachelor was murdered by a skinner in a street riot, and the murderer, though he was seen by some respectable citizens, was allowed to escape. A student who killed a man on the night of the Sunday after the (p. 129) Epiphany was punished by the University in accordance with its statutes (_i.e._ by imprisonment for life in the bishop's prison). The third murder was that of a young bachelor who was walking outside the city, when two sons of rustics in the neighbourhood fell on him and killed him. Their names were known, but the city authorities refused to take action, and the populace, believing that they would not be punished, pursued the members of the University with continued insults and threats. After an unusually serious attack _cum bombardis_, (in which, "by the divine clemency," a young mechanic was wounded), the University, failing to obtain redress, appealed to Prince Maurice of Saxony, who promised to protect the University. A conference between the University and the city authorities took place, and edicts against carrying arms were published, but the skinners immediately indulged in another outrage. One of them, Hans von Buntzell on Whitsunday, attacked, with a drawn sword, the son of a doctor of medicine, "a youth (as all agree) most guiltless," and wounded him in the arm, and if another student had not unexpectedly appeared, "would without doubt have killed this excellent boy." The criminal was pursued to the house of a skinner called Meysen, where he took refuge. The city authorities, inspired by the Prince's intervention, offered to impose three (p. 130) alternative sentences, and the University was asked to say whether Hans von Buntzell should lose one of his hands, or be publicly whipped and banished for ten years, or should have a certain stigma ("quod esset manus amittendae signum") burned in his hand and be banished. The University replied that it was for the city to carry out the commands of the Prince, and declined to select the penalty. On the following Monday a scaffold was erected in the market-place, on which were placed rods and a knife for cutting off the hand, "which apparatus was thought by the skinners to be much too fierce and cruel, and a concourse began from all parts, composed not of skinners alone, but of mechanics of every kind, interceding with the Council for the criminal." The pleadings of the multitude gained the day, and all the preparations were removed from the market-place amid the murmurs of the students.