Outside the University there is no control over the proceedings of the students, so long as they do not come in collision with the guardians of public order. Beyond these cases the only control to which they are subject is that of their colleagues, which prevents them from doing anything which is repugnant to the feeling of honour of their own body. The Universities of the Middle Ages formed definite close corporations, with their own jurisdiction, which extended to the right over life and death of their own members. As they lived for the most part on foreign soil, it was necessary to have their own jurisdiction, partly to protect the members from the caprices of foreign judges, partly to keep up that degree of respect and order, within the society, which was necessary to secure the continuation of the rights of hospitality on a foreign soil; and partly, again, to settle disputes among the members. In modern times the remains of this academic jurisdiction have by degrees been completely transferred to the ordinary courts, or will be so transferred; but it is still necessary to maintain certain restrictions on a union of strong and spirited young men, which guarantee the peace of their fellow-students and that of the citizens. In cases of collision this is the object of the disciplinary power of the University authorities. This object, however, must be mainly attained by the sense of honour of the students; and it must be considered fortunate that German students have retained a vivid sense of corporate union, and of what is intimately connected therewith, a requirement of honourable behaviour in the individual. I am by no means prepared to defend every individual regulation in the Codex of Students’ Honour; there are many Middle Age remains among them which were better swept away; but that can only be done by the students themselves. For most foreigners the uncontrolled freedom of German students is a subject of astonishment; the more so as it is usually some obvious excrescences of this freedom which first meet their eyes; they are unable to understand how young men can be so left to themselves without the greatest detriment. The German looks back to his student life as to his golden age; our literature and our poetry are full of expressions of this feeling. Nothing of this kind is but even faintly suggested in the literature of other European peoples. The German student alone has this perfect joy in the time, in which, in the first delight in youthful responsibility, and freed more immediately from having to work for extraneous interests, he can devote himself to the task of striving after the best and noblest which the human race has hitherto been able to attain in knowledge and in speculation, closely joined in friendly rivalry with a large body of associates of similar aspirations, and in daily mental intercourse with teachers from whom he learns something of the workings of the thoughts of independent minds.