not too much interfere with their own. In the theologic faculty alone occasional examinations are held, conducted by the professors; all other departments are exempt from these, except on entrance, and afterwards on taking the degree of doctor, when it is required to write a Latin treatise, and undergo a severe examination.

The examination upon entrance is enforced only in the case of those under the Prussian government, and an exception is made in favour of foreigners, but the compliment is diminished by the easiness of the task. The object of this institution was to ensure the student from total ignorance, and more especially those of the Catholic persuasion, briefly called Cathologians, who come up at times miserably provided in every department of polite literature. The age of entrance must not be under sixteen, and the usual time is from eighteen to twenty, though several very aged candidates for spiritual orders may be observed amongst the just mentioned class. The degree of doctor, as has been said, is obtained after an examination, the writing of a dissertation, and holding a dispute in Latin on a certain number of appended theses, with three appointed combatants, whose objections he is to satisfy or admit; it is celebrated in a large room appropriated to similar ceremonies, and open to the public. Professors frequently speak on these occasions, and the dispute, which continues for some hours, may be interesting, or the contrary, according to the talent of the candidate and the versatility of his adversary. Whatever good it may have in giving the learned doctor a readiness in the use of the parts of speech, it is undoubtedly the means of improving him in a vulgar pertinacity, and a sophistic disputatiousness in all common argument. After all quibbles are concluded, the Dean of the Philosophic Faculty reads a Latin oration or commentary on some selected subject. The oaths and an admonition are administered to the doctor, and after fulfilling certain forms, such as the partial investment of a red mantle and cap, and other testimonials of dignity, he descends to receive congratulation. The two beadles meanwhile take their station on each side of the pulpit, clothed in sable robes, and holding the insignia of authority with a taciturn severity of countenance that seems never to have relaxed into a smile. In order to become an advocate, a professor, and to fill many other government offices, as a general rule, the candidate is required to have taken this degree. A considerable number always remain at every university as privatim docentes in every department of science and literature, who give private tuition, and have

permission to hold lectures, which are paid for like those of a professor.

Each professor holds private and public lectures; the latter are frequented twice a week, and open without payment; the former, which are paid for, are held in general four times, or every day of the six. Every student carries a heft, or roll of paper, pens, and ink into the lecture-room, and takes down in writing the substance of the lecturer's discourse, who only dictates to his auditors without questioning them, but (if he be a professor of philology) first translates a portion of the book, which is the subject of lectures, and afterwards critically explains it. In the higher classes of many of the gymnasiums, the scholars are also free from all obligatory duties, and merely hear the opinion of their master, with full liberty at their leisure to contrast it with their own. Much may be said for and against this practice. In German universities the student is seldom independent of his own exertions; he feels the truth of this, and a consciousness of its truth begets in him diligence, and diligence abolishes the necessity of strictness. Again, every man of a certain standard must have some convictions of his own; and is it not better that those convictions should be strengthened, or refuted by others more mature, than that he should listen to the echo of his own voice? But it is equally true that both systems can be combined; the student may give his own opinion, and at the same time be made better informed through the conviction of a contrary one, and may be improved in numerous ways, which, in the silence of mere listening, he must have neglected. This combined method ensures him a safe knowledge of the subject in hand; it guards him against carelessness of translation, and in time endues him with a confidence which is less daunted at the meeting of the public eye. But indeed confidence is a quality which is rarely deficient in the German student, though there is no man more devoid of pride. Loss of time and the inequality of talent may be objected to the combined system, and that a sufficient guide for elegance in translation may be found in the professor; moreover German students consider themselves in a manner independent of instruction from the professor, and come merely to hear his opinion, and not his dictates. Some are so expert in the art of writing as to be enabled to take down the whole lecture, though the German character of handwriting is much more difficult to transcribe than the Roman; and not merely will they take down a critical examination of an author, but an historical and uninterrupted discourse. This they have afterwards bound

up. It is common for students to migrate from one university to another, in order to hear different professors, eminent in particular departments, as every professor holds lectures on a certain number of subjects, which he repeats at certain periods. As there is little or no emulation in a German university, the most distinguished men in several classes meet in each other's rooms, and read over together carefully and critically either the subject of their lectures or some other selected work. Diligence follows not alone the student to his desk, but an absorbed devotion, heedless of all but its idol. Sunday evening is generally devoted to the perusal of a play, to pipes, tea, or a bowl of punch. Our authors of any repute are all known and appreciated. Sir Walter Scott is universally admired, so much so, that he is charitably honoured with a translation of several books, called his, which he has never seen, and much less written. Shakspeare, we will venture to say, however paradoxical it may seem, is more generally read in Germany, than in the country which has given him birth. Great talent has been employed in illustrating him, and Schlegel has clothed his shadow with a palpable form. He has transfused his spirit into a powerful language, without derogating from the wit or pathos of the great original. Tieck has published an introduction to his works, consisting of old plays, some of which have never appeared in English print, but were translated from the original manuscripts in the British Museum. Scarce a work of any merit appears in English before it is immediately translated, whereas, in England, many of the most valuable works of Germany are unheeded and unheard of.

On entrance at a university, the student, after the payment of some fees, is entrusted with a matriculation paper and a book of rules. There is no necessity imposed as to the number of lectures the student should attend, and none but voluntary attendance expected. Long absence from the university, and all university duties, is punished with expulsion, if not accounted for by some reasonable excuse. Four lectures in the day are as much as can be with profit attended, as each lecture continues an hour, and much preparation and after-reading are required to digest its contents. The seats in the lecture-room are numbered, and the student obtains a ticket, according to which he takes his place. They are not elevated above one another, but consist of continued rows of benches, with raised ledges before, large enough to allow the student to write with ease. Poor students are allowed by the professors to attend their lectures free of expense; and talent, in a German university, though it be linked Jan.-April, 1832,

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with poverty, if joined with application is always sure to meet with its merited reward. All distinction of person is levelled in the ardour of the pursuit, and though difference of political opinion may disturb tranquillity in other respects, all conspire in harmony to the furtherance of one great object, namely, the cultivation of learning.

In the philologic department there is a seminary, consisting of twelve members, presided over by one of the philologic professors; one member explains the appointed book in Latin, liable to be opposed by another of the members in the same tongue, and swayed by the judicial opinion of the president. Amongst these, with regard to their means, is distributed a certain sum by the government. The exercise is held every day in the week. Prizes are bestowed each semestre for the best dissertations on given subjects in all departments, adjudged by the professors in each.

Attached to the university is a library, from which books, on the recommendation of a professor, are lent out to students, to be returned before the expiration of a month, when, if there be no previous engagement, the loan is prolonged if required, with the same restriction as before. Independent of the mineralogical museum there is besides a museum of arts, open once a week to the inspection of the public. It contains models of some of the best statues, and various antiquities found in Bonn, amongst which, worthy of notice, is a Greek inscription, on a tablet of stone, deciphered by Professor Welcker in a work on Fragments of Greek Epigrams, and described in a treatise, by the same gentleman, on the statues and antiquities of this collection. In a recess of the Catholic church are preserved, as relics of the days of yore, and with a sacred veneration of priesthood, the ARA UBIORUM of the ancients, and a primeval German shield. The former depends only on the enthusiastic devotion of antiquaries for its authenticity; the latter inspires no sublimer idea than the barber's basin of Don Quixote. There are curiosities, though of little connexion with the subject, worthy of being seen by the traveller, whose interest it is always useful to consult, especially on the Rhine, where the influx of Englishmen is more than abundant. To him, then, as one of the curiosities of Bonn, we would recommend the inspection of a vault in a chapel, on a hill in the vicinity, where there are deposited a number of the bodies of monks (who originally possessed a monastery on the same site,) withered, but not decomposed, owing to the peculiar properties of the air of the vault. They were laid in open coffins in the same dress in which they expired; a few shreds of which

are still visible, though centuries have elapsed since the interment of many. The same expression of death which accompanied them to the grave is still traceable in their countenances: pain, horror, and devotion are there marked in indelible lines.

THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES.

THE universities of Spain present us with subjects for inquiry, which are, in many respects, the same with those afforded by the other academical institutions of Europe. They are the offspring of the middle ages and of the wants then felt by the literary world; they owe their origin to causes embodied in the character of that period, their endowments to its resources, their laws to its spirit; and, until a time not very distant from our own, the results have been such as might have been expected from such institutions. The university of Salamanca had at first a kindred form to those of Coimbra, Paris, and Oxford. Its founder, the celebrated Alphonzo el Sabio, collected within its walls whatever knowledge the thirteenth century could supply, whether in science, arts, or literature, all of which had been raised by the Spanish Moors to a perfection far beyond the general ignorance of the age. The university of Alcala was established by Cardinal Cisnero, and the omnipotence of that monk-minister armed its theological instructions with all the authority of intolerant power, and all the arrogant infallibility of the chiefs of the inquisition. The university of Valladolid was exalted by the patronage of the Austrian dynasty into rivalry with the two above-named institutions, and completed the trinity of universidades mayores, or great universities, which are so respected in Spain, and which have uniformly braved every power in the state, except that of the Inquisition. Besides these three principal establishments, there was a fourth beyond the limits of Spain, and which, like them, was in the highest class of academic greatness. This was the college exclusively for Spaniards, founded in the university of Bologna, by the Cardinal Gil de Albornoz. He was compelled to fly from the wrath of Peter the Cruel, who delighted in humiliating the pope and his delegates; and the cardinal took into Italy a crowd of distinguished men, who, in turn, brought back to Spain that subtilty and those other peculiarities of the scholastic taste, afterwards so deeply rooted in the Peninsula.