Yet the scholastic mode of dispute, admitting of no termination and producing no conviction, was sure in the end to cause scepticism, just as the triviality of the questions on which the schoolmen wasted their amazing ingenuity was sure at last to produce disgust. What could be more trifling than a disquisition about the nature of angels, their means of conversing, and the morning and evening states of their understanding, unless perhaps it were a subtle and learned dispute as to whether a chimæra, buzzing in a vacuum, can devour second intentions? John of Salisbury observed of the Parisian dialecticians in his own time, that after several years absence he found them not a step advanced, and still employed in urging and parrying the same arguments. His observation was applicable to the succeeding centuries. After three or four hundred years the scholastics had not untied a single knot or added one equivocal truth to the domain of philosophy. Then men discovered at last that they had given their time for the promise of wisdom, and had been cheated in the bargain. At the revival of letters the pretended science had few advocates left, save among the prejudiced or ignorant adherents of established systems. And yet, in the history of education and of the historical events which education directs, the discussions of the schoolmen hold a place not altogether contemptible. Their disputes did at least teach men to discuss and to define, to reason and to inquire. And thus was promoted the critical spirit which was boldly to challenge the rights of the Pope, and to receive and profit by the great disclosures of knowledge in a future age. Of the early schools and the buildings which sprang into existence to mark the first beginnings of the University, no trace remains. The church of S. Giles in north Oxford, which, as we have seen, is the church claimed by Rous as the S. Mary's of his imaginary University in Beaumont Fields, is the only architectural illustration of this period. It was consecrated by S. Hugh, the great Bishop of Lincoln, and is of interest as affording one of the earliest examples of lancet work in England (1180-1210?). The high placed windows in the north wall of the nave are Norman; the tower is in the Transition style. CHAPTER IV THE COMING OF THE FRIARS Scarcely had the University established itself in Oxford, when an immigration into that city took place, which was destined to have no inconsiderable influence on its history. Bands of men began to arrive and to settle there, members of new orders vowed to poverty and ignorance, whose luxury in after years was to prove a scandal, and whose learning was to control the whole development of thought.