as followed by the
extinction of one _collegium_ which has left a record of the fact, and
probably by many others. The master of the college of Jupiter Cernenius,
with the two quaestors and seven witnesses, attest the fact that the
college has ceased to exist. "The accounts have been wound up, and no
balance is left in the chest. For a long time no member has attended on
the days fixed for meetings, and no subscriptions have been paid" (Dill,
op. cit. p. 285). The record of similar extinctions in the centuries
that followed, were they extant, would show us how this interesting form
of crystallization, in which the well-drilled people of the empire
displayed an unusual spontaneity, gradually melted away and disappeared
(see further GILDS and CHARITY AND CHARITIES).

Besides the works already cited may be mentioned Mommsen, _de
Collegiis et Sodaliciis_ (1843), which laid the foundation of all
subsequent study of the subject; Marquardt, _Staatsverwaltung_, iii.
134 foll.; de Marchi, _Il Culto privato di Roma antica_, ii. 75 foll.;
Kornemann, s.v. "Collegium" in Pauly-Wissowa, _Realencyclopadie_.
(W. W. F.*)

_Modern Clubs._--The word "club," in its modern sense of an association
to promote good-fellowship and social intercourse, is not very old, only
becoming common in England at the time of _The Tatler_ and _The
Spectator_ (1709-1712). It is doubtful whether its use originated in its
meaning of a knot of people, or from the fact that the members "clubbed"
together to pay the expenses of their meetings. The oldest English clubs
were merely informal periodic gatherings of friends for the purpose of
dining or drinking together. Thomas Occleve (temp. Henry IV.) mentions
such a club called _La Court de Bone Compaignie_, of which he was a
member. John Aubrey (writing in 1659) says: "We now use the word
_clubbe_ for a sodality in a tavern." Of these early clubs the most
famous was the Bread Street or Friday Street Club, originated by Sir
Walter Raleigh, and meeting at the Mermaid Tavern. Shakespeare,
Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden and Donne were among the members. Another
such club was that which met at the Devil Tavern near Temple Bar; and of
this Ben Jonson is supposed to have been the founder.

With the introduction of coffee-drinking in the middle of the 17th
century, clubs entered on a more permanent phase. The coffee-houses of
the later Stuart period are the real originals of the modern club-house.
The club