"The sup of wisdom," interrupted Enderlin, "that we have eaten with a spoon, is a more beautiful metaphor--" I warn the indiscreet hearer--said the _pro tempore_ professor, Von Kronen, sternly frowning,--of Tit ii. section 27, of the academical laws, where it is declared that--'insults towards persons who are placed in authority in the university, or towards the persons connected with them, shall be strictly punished; if they are offered from revenge, so must the punishment be made the sharper, and, according to circumstance, may be even penally amerced.' After this, let no man insult or interrupt. Our European universities, as they at present exist, are the production of a comparatively late period, since, though we find institutions resembling them in very early times, yet they were essentially and wholly different to ours. History shows us how, through the continually progressing culture of a people from age to age, institutions for the fostering and diffusion of knowledge formed themselves; and thus we find, at first, the so-called Priest-Schools in Egypt, Persia, India, and amongst the Hebrews; amongst the Celtic people the cloister-like unions of the Druids, which in caves and solitary woods, imparted to the most distinguished of the youth oral instruction. The business of teaching was confined to expounding of the laws, of the holy books, and so forth, and was communicated in verses. The educational institutions of the Greeks were of a higher grade. The first and most celebrated High School was Athens; which also in still later times, maintained a high rank in this respect. We must here only remind ourselves of the gardens of Plato, in which he imparted his instructions in philosophy. The Cynosarges, where Antisthenes taught; the Poikyle or Stoa, where Zeno assembled his disciples; the gardens of Epicurus, and afterwards of the museum at Alexandria. Philosophy was the great science: as to them the Faculties, as well as the so-called Bread sciences (sciences made a trade or profession of) were totally unknown. The Greeks also possessed public libraries, as those at Alexandria and Pergamus. The educational institutions of the Romans were modelled essentially upon those of the Greeks, and enjoyed the most extensive influence from the 607th year after the building of Rome; and the highest veneration was shown to professors from Greece, who taught in them philosophy and the arts. The Romans also held it indispensable to visit and study in the schools of Greece, and their young nobility especially resorted to Athens, Rhodes, Alexandria, etc. The Romans, moreover, were not acquainted with the division into Faculties, and every man of standing studied the liberal arts--studia humaniora--in their whole compass; and libraries, and collections of works and remains of art, were much more numerously and richly at their command. The study of philosophy was not the less zealously prosecuted