founder of Greek philosophy resembles him." Even Plato was content to have his ideal Republic on paper. An The ideal of a community of perfect order, each having his place, learner at the feet of teacher, novice gladly subordinate to sage, when carried out into the political world, means an aristocracy. aristocracy, with one provision, is the most perfect type of Government conceivable. It must ever maintain the condition of its title by being an administration conducted by such as are, at the time, being, the noblest souls, and the fittest to rule, of the whole community. Such a Government possessed of absolute power would raise life to its highest possible perfection. But in this world, even if the maintenance of an unimpeachable and trusted body of administrators could be ensured, the system will not always work so well in practice as in theory. We seem to need to live by actions and reactions, rather than by the placid perfection which wise theory would dictate. : Questions difficult to answer arise whose choice decides who are the aristocracy? what is to be done when corruption follows the temptations of power? These do not seem to have arisen to complicate the political problem on which the Pythagoreans were labouring. They came into power of their own inherent force; their discipline was not impaired by the exercise of power for its own sake. But the system is too perfect to work. There are jealousies and discontent among the masses, to whom to be free is a more intelligible ideal than to be orderly. A democracy, if it suffer, has no one to blame but itself, it can but supersede individual officials, grumble and go on. Under aristocratic rule there is a ready target for the vials of the popular wrath to accumulate themselves against. The masses are like children, they love their own way, and that way is not always the way of wisdom. The ardour of inharmonious life, the sway of popular caprice, Pythagoras meets by a system as rigidly perfect as that of the steps of his disciples' initiation. His standard is too high, his ideal of life too solemn and religious, too much like the life of the Egyptian priests in the temple. The higher natures. cannot always allow for the lusts and loves and self - will of the lower; they would make those wise who prefer to retain the prerogative of not being wise until they want to be. It is easy to understand how a restless, pleasure-loving community might baffle the benevolent schemes of a calm philosopher, and how he should vainly seek to remedy the difficulty by relaxations of one kind, restrictions of another. The late Lord Lytton, a man of statesmanlike mind, comments thus: "Pythagoras committed a fatal error when, in his attempt to revolutionise society, he had recourse to aristocracies for his agents. Revolutions, especially those influenced by religion, can never be worked out but by popular emotions. It was from this error of judgment that he enlisted the people against him; for by the account of Neanthes, related by Porphyry, and, indeed, from all other testimony, it is clearly evi dent that to popular, not party, commotion his fall must be ascribed. It is no less clear that after his death, while his philosophical sect remained, his political code crumbled away. The only seeds sown by philosophers which spring up into great States, are those that, whether for good or evil, are planted in the hearts of the many." The good influence of the Pythagorean school must have been enormous. From great luxury and licentiousness, the community was in great part converted to sobriety and order. The original constitution of the city appears to have been aristocratic; the Pythagoreans held in especial request existing laws, but probably they consolidated, and made more theoretically perfect the aristocratic system. Jealousies arose; party spirit developed, and with that the calm rule of wisdom, such as we may imagine to hold good amongst angels, or perfectly trained Pythagoreans, must at once be impaired. On the one side was the strong tumultuous agitation and excitement of a popular movement; on the other the calm, beneficent, impassive philosophers, impressed with the religious conception of the moral utility of obedience ! To Pythagoras the licence of a mob must have meant servitude to passion. Excuses were not long wanting among those who sought to throw off the strict, but kindly Pythagorean yoke. Trifles or monstrosities of well-marked colour, these please savages and mobs. It was urged that the members of the order had a separate life from that of the other citizens; that they gave their right hand to those of their own sect alone (it was probably the secret grip by which members recognised one another); that they shared their possessions with each other in common, but excluded Kylon, who had been found unfitted to go through with the Pythagorean training, on account of his violent, undisciplined character, delivered long harangues against the society. Another individual followed suit with a garbled and calumnious version of certain of the maxims of the order. In fact, it was discovered their whole system of pretended philosophy was a mere plot and conspiracy against popular rights! These articles of impeachment, industriously circulated, produced their natural effect. The people for whom the right to magistracy was claimed, took the law into their own hands, set on fire a temple where a number of Pythagoreans were assembled, or, according to another account, the house of Milo, and all but two of those within were burned or massacred. It is not known whether Pythagoras himself was among the number present; and whether he went into sorrowful exile or was killed is a matter of doubt. A simultaneous wave of democracy was advancing in Greece herself, and Pythagorism, as a political rather than a philosophical institution, was crushed for ever. SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITIES. UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA. In the great national movement referred to in my last letter, the citizens of Lisbon took a prominent part, and it is presumed that the students of the University, following the standard of Mestre d'Aviz, which was one of liberty and independence, combined with the inhabitants of the city to secure a signal triumph; this presumption is supported by the fact that the King, D. João I., invariably accorded to the University his favour and protection from the very commencement of his reign. Whilst yet governing under the simple title of Defender of the Kingdom, he confirmed, in October, 1384, all the ancient privileges of the University, promising that it should remain radically established in the city of Lisbon. He gave ample powers to the doctors, licentiates, and bachelors to advocate any cause without further licence; he sanctioned a resolution which the University had adopted prohibiting the discipline of any faculty to be taught outside their schools, and that no one should be empowered to teach unless examined and approved of by some professor or doctor in the faculty he wished to teach. Numerous indeed are the provisions decreed by the King, D. João I., in favour of the University, all tending to the advancement of instruction, and the improvement of its financial condition in order to lighten the heavy burthen borne by masters and students, which the extraordinary state of the kingdom at that period laid upon every citizen. Meanwhile the revenues of the University no longer sufficed to defray the necessary expenditure of the schools and the maintenance of their professors. It became necessary to create new resources. The administrative body of the University therefore resolved to exact from the students a contribution in proportion to their individual means; the more wealthy among them to pay the professors £20, those less wealthy to contribute £10, and the poorest ones £5. When this resolution was laid before the King for his sanction, he deemed these sums inadequate, and he ordered, by a letter dated 6th February, 1392, that this contribution be doubled. He also on his part helped to increase the rents of the University by annexing to it other churches, for which he solicited and obtained the authorisation of the Holy See. It is not to be wondered at if at this epoch the financial state of the University should be so little prosperous. Its own revenues, from the very nature of their provision, must needs be diminished in consequence of the war which was maintained against Castille to secure our independence; while, on the other hand, the expenses of the University necessarily increased with the augmentation of the teaching body which the progressive development of science entailed. We cannot state with any degree of certainty the exact period when this increase in the number of professors took place in our University; but it is certain that it was after the last transfer of the schools from Coimbra to Lisbon during the reign of D. Fernando. We find, on examining royal letters of the 25th of October, 1400, issued for the reduction of certain imposts, that at that date there already existed three professors in the faculty of laws, three of canons, four of grammar, two of logic, one of that of medicine, and one of theology, and this is the first time that we find mentioned in the plan of studies of the University a professor of theology. From this simple enumeration we can judge how greatly the studies in the University had increased during the reign of João I., if we compare them with what they were during the reigns of the former kings, when we could discover only four professors, scarcely one for each faculty. We also find a nomination by the King of a director of studies in some royal letters of the 26th of January, 1415, and the 23rd of August, 1418, which still exist in the green book of the University; and we also learn by them that in 1418 this office was conferred upon Dr. Gil Martins, who had succeeded the celebrated jurisconsult, and chancellor of the King, João das Regras, he who took such a notable part in the glorious national revolution which conferred the crown upon the Mestre d'Aviz in the Cortes of Coimbra. Dr. João das Regras, who had been a student of the University of Bologna, where he had pursued the study of jurisprudence, must needs. have brought to the Portuguese University great improvements, particularly in the faculty in which it was pre-eminent. It appears that D. João I. entrusted to him the translation into the vernacular of the Codices of Justinian, with the expositions of Accursio and Bartholo. Another great auxiliary, even more powerful and efficacious than Don João das Regras, because to a vast knowledge and superior intelligence he united great resources and the means of action, came in that same reign to infuse a new and brilliant life into the University. This auxiliary was the Infante D. Henrique, one of the illustrious sons of the King, and of his virtuous queen D. Philippa de Lancastre, who gave to Portugal the most glorious generation of princes. The wise Infante D. Henrique, the immortal pioneer of the wondrous maritime discoveries of that epoch, which opened the oceans to great navigators, was the first protector elected by the University, and, always true to his device-Talent de bien faire-influenced in a signal manner, by his official intervention and personal direction, the rapid development of the studies. This is not the proper place to speak of the celebrated Nautical and Cosmographical School of Sagres, where the illustrious Duke of Vizeu prepared and arranged the prodigious maritime scheme which opened so vast a field for human industry, and for giving activity to science and commerce, the civilisation of the world, and international polity-it suffices to say that the labours of that Academy, spreading far and wide the mathematical, astronomical, and geographical knowledge of the ancients, the Arabs, and of the Jews, who had during the darkness of the middle ages preserved the love of these sciences in the Iberic peninsula, necessarily brought a strong influence in favour of the entrance of the study of these sciences into the range of university studies. It is enough for our purpose to cite a letter of the Infante, bearing the date of the 12th of October, 1431, in which we see that he endowed the University with some property, with the object that all the sciences and liberal arts, which included grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astrology, should be read there. The Infante, like the practical and experienced man that he was, also apportioned the halls wherein the different faculties and arts should hold their sessions, ordering appropriate emblems to be placed in each; that of Theology to bear the emblem of the Trinity; in the case of Medicine, the statue of Galen to be erected; in that of Laws, the figure of an emperor; while in the hall of Decrees, a pope, and in that of Philosophy, the image of Aristotle were to be set up. But the liberality of the first protector of our University was not limited to the simple endowment of buildings to which I have referred, for we know that from the rents he derived from the island of Madeira, in his quality as the Grand Maître of the Order of Christ, he stipulated for salaries to be paid to the professor of divinity in the faculty of theology. It is impossible to follow in this brief résumé all the provisions adopted for the advancement and improvement of the University during the reign of D. João I. and under the protectorate of the Infante D. Henrique, a protectorate which was continued during the reign and regency of his two brothers, D. Duarte and D. Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, and part of the reign of his nephew D. Affonso V. I shall simply speak of the more interesting ones, and such as are conducive to the end I have proposed to follow. These will suffice to demonstrate clearly that our University had entered into an epoch of a more decided and favourable evolution, following the great literary and scientific movement which announced the setting of the Middle Ages, and heralded the bright dawning of the new Aurora of a modern epoch. The formation or reformation of statutes is generally held to be a notable event in the history of universities. The year 1431 was signalised in regard to our University by the promulgation of what must be considered its first statutes. These statutes were formed upon the basis of the authorisation granted by the organic letter of 1309, and were solemnly affirmed by the see of Lisbon on the 16th of July. However incomplete these statutes may have been, yet they reveal a certain order in the academic discipline which has been preserved down to our days in all universities whose foundation dates from the Middle Ages. The old abuse of extra-scholastic tuition by unauthorised persons, which had been prohibited by D. Pedro I., still continued to take place, and needed a fresh repression; at the same time that in the classes extraordinary lectures by bachelors or simple students duly approved were allowed, or by doctors of the faculties, as is at the present day the case in nearly all the universities of Germany. Few and irregular were the public examinations which were held for obtaining degrees, and on this point the new statutes introduced a more definite order, as I shall show further on. Another point was also taken into consideration and regulated on this occasion; this was the dress to be worn by professors and students. The new statutes regulated the academic terms and the form to be followed in the examinations for taking degrees. Students from foreign universities could also be admitted to take degrees after following the course of studies laid down. The fees and other privileges, as well as the ceremonial to be followed, |