the mainspring of mediæval intellectual activity, although how baneful such influence could be may be illustrated by the Spanish--that is, the ultra-Catholic University of Salamanca, where not until one hundred years ago were they allowed to teach the Copernican system of astronomy. Under the conditions existing during the Middle Ages, with relatively few institutions of advanced learning, and in the presence of that spirit which led men to travel long distances, and very widely out of the provinces, to the cities of the great scholia, or, as we call them now, universities, the most imperative common want was that of a common language; and so it happened that not only were the lectures all given in Latin, but that it was very commonly used for conversational purposes, and appears to have been almost a necessity of university life. Early in the history of the University of Paris a statute made the ability of the petitioner to state his case before the rector in Latin a test of his bona-fide studentship. This may perhaps, in some measure account for the barbarity of mediæval Latin. Still, as the listener said about Wagner's music, "it may not have been as bad as it sounded," since the period of greatest ignorance of construction and rhetoric had passed away before the university era began. John Stuart Mill even praised the schoolmen of the Middle Ages for their inventive capacity in the matter of technical terms. The Latin language, which was originally stiff and poor in vocabulary, became, in its employment by these mediæval thinkers, much more flexible and expressive. It was the Ciceronian pedantry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which killed off Latin as a living language. Felicity in Latin counted, then as now, as a mark of scholarship, and six hundred years ago a schoolmaster could come up to the university and, after performing some exercises and passing such an examination as the doctors of music do to-day, could write one hundred verses in Latin in praise of the university, and take his degree. The boys who went to the universities learned their Latin at inferior grammar schools, often in university towns. These schools were mainly connected with cathedrals or churches, although, in the later Middle Ages, even the smallest towns had schools where a boy might learn to read and write at least the rudiments of ecclesiastical Latin. In those days not only were the clergy Latin scholars, but the bailiff of every manor kept his accounts in Latin, and a tutor even formed part of the establishment of a great noble or prelate who had either a family or pages in his care.