Europe.

In all other things there is so great equality between these two
universities as no man can imagine how to set down any greater, so that
they seem to be the body of one well-ordered commonwealth, only divided by
distance of place and not in friendly consent and orders. In speaking
therefore of the one I cannot but describe the other; and in commendation
of the first I cannot but extol the latter; and, so much the rather, for
that they are both so dear unto me as that I cannot readily tell unto
whether of them I owe the most good-will. Would to God my knowledge were
such as that neither of them might have cause to be ashamed of their
pupil, or my power so great that I might worthily requite them both for
those manifold kindnesses that I have received of them! But to leave these
things, and proceed with other more convenient to my purpose.

The manner to live in these universities is not as in some other of
foreign countries we see daily to happen, where the students are enforced
for want of such houses to dwell in common inns, and taverns, without all
order or discipline. But in these our colleges we live in such exact
order, and under so precise rules of government, as that the famous
learned man Erasmus of Rotterdam, being here among us fifty years passed,
did not let to compare the trades in living of students in these two
places, even with the very rules and orders of the ancient monks,
affirming moreover, in flat words, our orders to be such as not only came
near unto, but rather far exceeded, all the monastical institutions that
ever were devised.

In most of our colleges there are also great numbers of students, of which
many are found by the revenues of the houses and other by the purveyances
and help of their rich friends, whereby in some one college you shall have
two hundred scholars, in others an hundred and fifty, in divers a hundred
and forty, and in the rest less numbers, as the capacity of the said
houses is able to receive: so that at this present, of one sort and other,
there are about three thousand students nourished in them both (as by a
late survey it manifestly appeared). They were erected by their founders
at the first only for poor men's sons, whose parents were not able to
bring them up unto learning; but now they have the least benefit of them,
by reason the rich do so encroach upon them. And so far has this
inconvenience spread itself that it is in my time a hard matter for a poor
m