These are some of the points of resemblance between the propagation of Christian truth and 20 the revival of letters; and, to return to the two points, to which I have particularly drawn attention, the University Professor's confidence in his own powers, and his taking the initiative in the exercise of them, I find both these distinctly 25 recognized by Mr. Hallam in his history of Literature. As to the latter point, he says, "The schools of Charlemagne were designed to lay the basis of a learned education, _for which there was at that time no sufficient desire_"--that is, the supply was 30 prior to the demand. As to the former: "In the twelfth century," he says, "the _impetuosity_ with which men _rushed_ to that source of what they deemed wisdom, the great University of Paris, _did not depend upon academical privileges or eleemosynary stipends_, though these were 5 undoubtedly very effectual in keeping it up. The University _created patrons, and was not created by them_"--that is, demand and supply were all in all.... Bec, a poor monastery of Normandy, set up in 10 the eleventh century by an illiterate soldier, who sought the cloister, soon attracted scholars to its dreary clime from Italy, and transmitted them to England. Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of these, and he found the 15 simple monks so necessitous, that he opened a school of logic to all comers, in order, says William of Malmesbury, "that he might support his needy monastery by the pay of the students." The same author adds, that "his reputation went into 20 the most remote parts of the Latin world, and Bec became a great and famous Academy of letters." Here is an instance of a commencement without support, without scholars, in order to attract scholars, and in them to find support. 25 William of Jumièges, too, bears witness to the effect, powerful, sudden, wide spreading, and various, of Lanfranc's advertisement of himself. The fame of Bec and Lanfranc, he says, quickly penetrated through the whole world; and "clerks, 30 the sons of dukes, the most esteemed masters of the Latin schools, powerful laymen, high nobles, flocked to him." What words can more strikingly attest the enthusiastic character of the movement which he began, than to say that it carried away with it all classes; rich as well as poor, laymen as 5 well as ecclesiastics, those who were in that day in the habit of despising letters, as well as those who might wish to live by them?... THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF UNIVERSITIES ABELARD