Crevier and other writers say that Abélard had attracted five thousand students to Paris. Sceptics smile, and talk of Chinese genealogies. Mr. Rashdall, however, has made a careful study of the point, and he concludes that there were certainly five thousand, and possibly seven thousand, students at Paris in the early scholastic age, before the multiplication of important centres. He points out that the fabulous figures which are sometimes given—Wycliffe says that at one time there were sixty thousand students at Oxford, Juvenal de Ursinis gives twenty thousand at Paris in the fifteenth century, Italian historians speak of fifteen thousand at Bologna—always refer to a date beyond the writer’s experience, and frequently betray a touch of the _laudator temporis acti_. It is, at all events, safe to affirm that Abélard’s students were counted by thousands, if they had not ‘come to surpass the number of the laity’ [ordinary citizens], as an old writer declares. Philippe Auguste had to direct a huge expansion of the city before the close of the century. There is nothing in the commercial or political development of Paris to explain the magnitude of this expansion. It was a consequence of a vast influx of students from all quarters of the globe, and the fame of Master Abélard had determined the course of the stream. One condition reacted on another. A notable gathering of students attracted Jews and merchants in greater numbers. They, in turn, created innumerable ‘wants’ amongst the ‘undisciplined horde.’ The luxuries and entertainments of youth began to multiply. The schools of Paris began to look fair in the eyes of a second world—a world of youths and men who had not felt disposed to walk hundreds of miles and endure a rude life out of academic affection. The ‘dancers of Orleans,’ the ‘tennis-players of Poitiers,’ the ‘lovers of Turin,’ came to fraternise with the ‘dirty fellows of Paris.’ Over mountains and over seas the mingled reputation of the city and the school was carried, and a remarkable stream set in from Germany, Switzerland, Italy (even from proud Rome), Spain, and England; even ‘distant Brittany sent you its animals to be instructed,’ wrote Prior Fulques to Abélard (a Breton) a year or two afterwards.