Heidelberg is one of our most ancient university-cities. Heidelberg, in the unfolding history of German science and German spirit, took a distinguished stand, and yet exists it, in the full-grown image of this scientific life of Germany, an important and essential member. At the mention of this university, start up in the memory renowned names, the recollection of great crises in the history of literature. It is, to the whole student youth of Germany, the spot of promise and of desire. It stands foremost amongst those German universities to which even from abroad, from beyond the Rhine, the Alps, even the ocean, scholars assemble themselves. The most numerous and the most living traditions of German literature and German spirit amongst the French and English, date from Heidelberg, and Heidelberg is therefore pre-eminently the representative of our education, the type of the German universities, with those nations. The founding of the university took place in the year 1386; a period in which, though literature flourished in Italy, a deep night still brooded over Germany. The then Emperor Charles IV. had erected a school of general study at Prague, on the model of the Paris university; and the advantages of this institution could not escape the eyes of the Elector, a friend of the Emperor's, in his frequent visits to Prague--advantages which were derived to the whole country from this establishment. He, therefore, resolved to erect a university in his city of residence, Heidelberg. On the other hand, the foundation of the university had a political object. It was intended to prove an instrument for advancing the interests of Pope Urban VI., whose partisan Rupert I. of the Pfalz was. In this cause it stood forth in opposition to the university of Paris, which had declared for the other pope, Clement VII. Notwithstanding this circumstance, it was equally formed on the model of that of Paris, and received part of its first teachers thence. As there, the scholastic studies acquired an exclusive influence. Theology was in the ascendant; the Aristotelian philosophy, and the Canon Law, followed in immediate connexion; medicine, somewhat later, raised itself out of its scanty beginnings. Dialectical contentions take up nearly the whole of the early history of the university. Yet it is to be remarked, that the returned spirit of living experience announced itself, as it had earlier done here, through the predominance of Nominalism. Perhaps the study itself of the physical writings of Aristotle, slight and confined as it always was, might lay the first foundation of the empirical researches into nature; which later, here, as in Paris, came forth so conspicuously. On the contrary, the university closed itself resolutely against the humanity tendency, which penetrated into Germany out of Italy, and which Philip the Upright also was anxious to plant in Heidelberg; but which Frederick II., and his successor Otto Henry, were the first to