Here it may be noticed that the College gates were closed in the winter months at eight, and in the summer months at nine, the keys being taken to the President to prevent further ingress or egress. Such were the studies, and such was the discipline, of an Oxford College at the beginning of the sixteenth century; nor is there any reason to suppose that, till the troubled times of the Reformation, these stringent rules were not rigorously enforced. They admirably served the purpose to which they were adapted, the education of a learned clergy, trained to habits of study, regularity, and piety, apt at dialectical fence, and competent to press all the secular learning of the time into the service of the Church. Never since that time probably have the Universities or the Colleges so completely secured the objects at which they aimed. But first, the Reformation; then, the Civil Wars; then, the Restoration of Charles II.; then, the Revolution of 1688; and lastly, the silent changes gradually brought about by the increasing age of the students, the increasing proportion of those destined for secular pursuits, and the growth of luxurious habits in the country at large, have left little surviving of this cunningly devised system. The aims of modern times, and the materials with which we have to deal, have necessarily become different; but we may well envy the zeal for religion and learning which animated the ancient founders, the skill with which they adapted their means to their end, and the system of instruction and discipline which converted a body of raw youths, gathered probably, to a large extent, from the College estates, into studious and accomplished ecclesiastics, combining the new learning with the ancient traditions of the ecclesiastical life.