the case of Prague, sometimes interfered with this free resort of
foreigners to places of education, it was in general a wise policy of
government, as well as of the universities themselves, to encourage it.
The thirty-fifth article of the peace of Bretigni provides for the
restoration of former privileges to students respectively in the French
and English universities.[836] Various letters patent will be found in
Rymer's collection, securing to Scottish as well as French natives a
safe passage to their place of education. The English nation, including
however the Flemings and Germans,[837] had a separate vote in the
faculty of arts at Paris. But foreign students were not, I believe, so
numerous in the English academies.

If endowments and privileges are the means of quickening a zeal for
letters, they were liberally bestowed in the last three of the middle
ages. Crevier enumerates fifteen colleges founded in the university of
Paris during the thirteenth century, besides one or two of a still
earlier date. Two only, or at most three, existed in that age at Oxford,
and but one at Cambridge. In the next two centuries these universities
could boast, as every one knows, of many splendid foundations, though
much exceeded in number by those of Paris. Considered as ecclesiastical
institutions it is not surprising that the universities obtained,
according to the spirit of their age, an exclusive cognizance of civil
or criminal suits affecting their members. This jurisdiction was,
however, local as well as personal, and in reality encroached on the
regular police of their cities. At Paris the privilege turned to a
flagrant abuse, and gave rise to many scandalous contentions.[838] Still
more valuable advantages were those relating to ecclesiastical
preferments, of which a large proportion was reserved in France to
academical graduates. Something of the same sort, though less extensive,
may still be traced in the rules respecting plurality of benefices in
our English church.

[Sidenote: Causes of their celebrity.]

[Sidenote: Scholastic philosophy.]

This remarkable and almost sudden transition from a total indifference
to all intellectual pursuits cannot be ascribed perhaps to any general
causes. The restoration of the civil, and the formation of the canon
law, were indeed eminently conducive to it, and a large proportion of
scholars in most universities confined themselves to jurisprudence. But
the chief attraction to the s