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gate the first floor rooms on the first stair on that side. The rooms consist at present of a small study with two windows looking into the court, and a very small bed-room adjoining. They do not seem to have been altered at all since Milton's time. When we hear of "Milton's rooms at College, however, the imagination is apt to go wrong in one point. It was very rare in those days for any member of a College, even a Fellow, to have a chamber wholly to himself. Two or three generally occupied the same chamber; and, in full Colleges, there were all kinds of devices of truckle-beds and the like to multiply accommodation. In the original statutes of Christ's College, there is a chapter specially providing for the manner in which the chambers of the College should be allocated; "in which chambers," says the founder, "our wish is that the Fellows sleep two and two, but the scholars four and four, and that no one have alone a single chamber for his proper use, unless perchance it be some Doctor, to whom, on account of the dignity of his degree, we grant the possession of a separate chamber." In the course of a century, doubtless, custom had become somewhat more dainty. Still, in all the Colleges, the practice was for the students to occupy rooms at least two together; and in all College biographies of the time, we hear of the chum or chamber-fellow of the hero as either assisting or retarding his studies. Milton's chamber-fellow, or one of his chamber-fellows, would naturally be Porey. But, in the course of seven years, there must have been changes.

The Terms of the University, then as now, were those fixed by the statutes of Elizabeth. The academic year began on the 10th of October, and the first, or Michaelmas or October Term, extended from that day to the 16th of December. Then followed the Christmas Vacation. The second, or Lent or January Term, began on the 13th of January, and extended to the second Friday before Easter. There then intervened the Easter vacation of three weeks. Finally, the third, or Easter or Midsummer Term, began on the eleventh day (second Wednesday) after Easter-day, and extended to the Friday after "Commencement Day,"—that is, after the great terminating Assembly of the University, at which candidates for the higher degrees of the year were said to "commence in those degrees; which "Commencement Day" was always the first Tuesday in July. The University then broke up for the "long vacation" of three months.

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The daily routine of college-life in term-time, two hundred and thirty years ago, was as follows:-In the morning, at five o'clock, the students were assembled, by the ringing of the bell, in the College-chapel, to hear the morning serv ice of the Church, followed on some days by short homilies by the Fellows. These services occupied about an hour; after which the students had breakfast. Then followed the regular work of the day. It consisted of two parts-the College-studies, or the attendance of the students on the lectures and examinations of the College-tutors or lecturers in Latin, Greek, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, etc.; and the University-exercises, or the attendance of the students, together with the students of other Colleges, in the "public schools" of the University, either to hear the lectures of the University-professors of Greek, Logic, etc., (which, however, was not incumbent on all students,) or to hear, and take part in the public disputations of those students of all the Colleges who were preparing for their degrees.* After four hours or more so spent, the

* The distinction between College-studies and University-exercises must be kept in mind. Gradually, as all know, the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, originally mere places of res

students dined together at twelve o'clock in the halls of their respective Colleges. After dinner, there was generally again an hour or two of attendance on the declamations and disputations of contending graduates, either in college or in the "public schools." During the remainder of the day, with the exception of attendance at the evening-service in chapel, and at supper in the ball at seven o'clock, the students were free to dispose of their own time. It was provided by the statutes of Christ's that no one should be out of college after nine o'clock from Michaelmas to Easter, or after ten o'clock from Easter to Michaelmas.

Originally, the rules governing the daily conduct of the students at Cambridge had been excessively strict. Residence extended over nearly the whole year; and absence was permitted only for very definite reasons. While in residence, the students were confined closely within the walls of their respective colleges, leaving them only to attend in the public schools. At other times they could only go into the town by special permission; on which occasions, no student below the standing of a B. A. in his second year was suffered to go unaccompanied by his tutor or by a Master of Arts. In their conversation with each other, except during the hours of relaxation in their chambers, the students were required to use either Latin, or Greek, or Hebrew. When permitted to walk into the town, they were forbidden to go into taverns, or into the sessions; or to be present at boxing-matches, skittle-playings, dancings, bear-fights, cockfights, and the like; or to frequent Sturbridge fair; or even to-loiter in the market or about the streets. In their rooms they were not to read irreligious books; nor to keep dogs or "fierce birds;" nor to play at cards or dice, except for about twelve days at Christmas, and then openly and in moderation. To these and other rules, obedience was enforced by penalties. There were penalties both by the College and by the University, according as the offense concerned the one or the other. The penalties consisted of fines aceording to the degree of the offense; of imprisonment for grave and repeated offenses; of rustication, with the loss of one or more terms, for still more flagrant misbehavior; and of expulsion from College and University for heinous criminality. The Tutor could punish for negligence in the studies of his class, or inattention to the lectures; College offenses of a more general character came under the cognizance of the Master or his substitute; and for non-attendance in the public schools, and other such violations of the University statutes, the penalties were exacted by the Vice-Chancellor. All the three-the Tutor and the Master as College authorities, and the Vice-Chancellor as resident head of the Univer- . sity-might in the case of the younger students, resort to corporal punishment. "Si tamen adultus fuerit," say the statutes of Christ's, referring to the punishment of fine, etc., which the Tutor might inflict on a pupil; "alioquin virgâ corrigatur." The Master might punish in the same way and more publicly. In Trinity College there was a regular service of corporal punishment in the hall every Thursday evening at seven o'clock, in the presence of all the undergraduates, on such junior delinquents as had been reserved for the ceremony during the week. The University statutes also recognize the corporal punish

idence for those attending the University, have, in matters of teaching, absorbed or superseded the University. Even in Milton's time, this process was far advanced. The University, however, was still represented in the public disputations in," the schools," attendance on which was obligatory.

ment of non-adult students offending in the public schools. At what age a student was to be considered adult is not positively defined; but the understanding seems to have been that after the age of eighteen corporal punishment should cease, and that even younger students, if above the rank of undergraduates, should be exempt from it.

In spite of old decrees to the contrary, bathing in the Cam was a daily practice. The amusements of the collegians included many of the forbidden games. Smoking was an all but universal habit in the University.* The academic costume was sadly neglected. At many Colleges the undergraduates wore "newfashioned gowns of any color whatsoever, blue or green, or red or mixt, without any uniformity but in hanging sleeves; and their other garments light and gay, some with boots and spurs, others with stockings of diverse colors reversed one upon another, and round rusty caps." Among graduates and priests also, as well as the younger students, "we have fair roses upon the shoe, long frizzled hair upon the head, broad spread bands upon the shoulders, and long large merchants' ruffs about the neck, with fair feminine cuffs at the wrist." To these irregularities arising from the mere frolic and vanity of congregated youth, add others of a graver nature, arising from different causes. While, on the one hand, all the serious alike complained that "nicknaming and scoffing at religion and the power of godliness," nay, that "debauched and atheistical" principles prevailed to an extent that seemed "strange in a University of the Reformed Church," the more zealous Churchmen about the University found special matter for complaint in the increase of puritanical opinions and practices, more particularly in certain colleges where the heads and seniors were puritanically inclined. It had become the habit of many masters of arts and fellow-commoners in all colleges to absent themselves from public prayers. Upon Fridays and all fasting days the victualling houses prepared flesh, "good store for all scholars that will come or send unto them." In the churches, both on Sundays and at other times, there was little decency of behavior; and the regular forms of prayer were in many cases avoided. "Instead whereof," it was complained, 'we have such private fancies and several prayers of every man's own making, (and sometimes suddenly conceiving, too,) vented among us, that, besides the absurdity of the language directed to God himself, our young scholars are thereby taught to prefer the private spirit before the public, and their own invented and unapproved prayers before the Liturgy of the Church." In Trinity College, "they lean or sit or kneel at prayers, every man in a several posture as he pleases; at the name of Jesus few will bow; and when the Creed is repeated, many of the boys, by some men's directions, turn to the west door." In other colleges it was as bad or worse. In Christ's College there was very good order on the whole; but "hard by this House there is a Town Inn (they call it the 'Brazen George') wherein many of their scholars live, lodge, and study, and yet the statutes of the University require that none lodge out of the college."

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It yet remains to describe the order of the curriculum, which students at Cambridge in Milton's time went through during the whole period of their Uni

* When the tobacco-hating King James visited Cambridge for the first time, in 1615, one of the orders issued to graduates and students was that they should not, during his Majesty's stay, visit tobacco-shops, nor smoke in St. Mary's Chapel or Trinity Hall, on pain of expulsion from the University.

versity studies. This period, extending, in the Faculty of Arts, over seven years in all, was divided, as now, into two parts-the period of Undergraduateship extending from the time of admission to the attainment of the B. A. dedegree; and the subsequent period of Bachelorship terminating with the attainment of the M. A. degree.

Originally, according to the statutes, a complete quadriennium or four years' course of studies-that is to say, twelve full terms of residence in a College, and of standing as matriculated students in the books of the University*-was required for the degree of B. A. Each year of the quadriennium had its appropriate studies; and, during the last year of it, the students rose to the rank of "Sophisters," and were then entitled to partake in the disputations in the public schools. During the last year (and in practice it was generally during the last term) of their quadriennium, they were required by the statutes of the University to keep two "Acts" or "Responsions" and two "Opponencies" in the public schools-exercises for which they were presumed to be prepared by similar practice in their respective Colleges. The nature of these "Acts" and แ 'Opponencies" were as follows:-One of the Proctors having at the beginning of the academic year collected the names of all the students of the various Colleges who intended to take the degree of B. A. that year, each of them received an intimation shortly after the beginning of the Lent Term that on a future day (generally about a fortnight after the notice was given) he would have to appear as "Respondent" in the public schools. The student so designated had to give in a list of three propositions which he would maintain in debate. The question actually selected was usually a moral or metaphysical one. The Proctor then named three Sophisters, belonging to other Colleges, who were to appear as "Opponents." When the day arrived, the Respondent and the Opponents met in the schools, some Master of Arts presiding as Moderator, and the other Sophisters and Graduates forming an audience. The Respondent read a Latin thesis on the selected point; and the Opponents, one after another, tried to refute his arguments syllogistically in such Latin as they had provided or could muster. When one of the speakers was at loss, it was the duty of the Moderator to help him out. When all the Opponents had spoken, and the Moderator had dismissed them and the Respondent with such praise as he thought they had severally deserved, the "Act" was over.

When a student had kept two Responsions and two Opponencies, (and in order to get through all the Acts of the two or three hundred Sophisters who every year came forward, it is evident that the "schools" must have been continually busy,) he was further examined in his own College, and, if approved, was sent up as a "quæstionist," or candidate for the B. A. degree. The "quæstionists" from the various Colleges were then submitted to a distinct examination-which usually took place on three days in the week before Ash Wednesday week-in the public schools before the Proctors and others of the University. Those who passed this examination were furnished by their Colleges with a supplicat to the Vice-Chancellor and Senate, praying that they might be admitted, as the phrase was, ad respondendum quæstioni. Then; on a day before

*The reader must distinguish between admission into a College and matriculation in the general University Registers. Both were necessary, but the acts were distinct. The College books certified all the particulars of a student's connection with his College and residence there; but, for degrees and the like, a student's standing in the University was certified by the matriculation-book kept by the University Registrar.

Ash Wednesday, all the quæstionists from each College went up, headed by a Fellow of the College, to the public school, where, some question out of Aristotle's Prior Analytics having been proposed and answered by each of the quæstionists, (this process being called "entering their Priorums,") they became what was called "determiners." From Ash Wednesday till the Thursday before Palm Sunday, the candidates were said to stand in quadragesimâ, and had a further course of exercises to go through; and on this latter day their probation ended, and they were pronounced by the Proctor to be full Bachelor of Arts.

Many students, of course, never advanced so far as the B. A. degree, but, after a year or two at the University, removed to study law at the London Inns of Court, or to begin other business. Oliver Cromwell, for example, had left Sidney Sussex College in 1617, after about a year's residence. Those who did take their B. A. degree, and meant to advance farther, were required by the original statutes to reside three years more, and during that time to go through certain higher courses of study and perform certain fresh Acts in the public schools and their Colleges. These regulations having been complied with, they were, after being examined in their Colleges and provided with supplicats, admitted by the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor ad incipiendum in artibus; and then, after certain other formalities, they were ceremoniously created Masters of Arts either at the greater Comitia or general "Commencement" at the close of the academic year, (the first Tuesday in July,) or on the day immediately preceding. These two days-the Vesperia Comitiorum, or day before Commencement-day, and the Comitia, or Commencement-day itself-were the galadays of the University. Besides the M. A. degrees, such higher degrees as LL. D., M. D., and D. D. were then conferred.

By the original statutes, the connection of the scholar with the University was not yet over. Every Master of Arts was sworn to continue his "regency" or active University functions for five years; which implied almost continual residence during that time, and a farther course of study in theology and Hebrew, and of Acts, disputations and preachings. Then, after seven full years from the date of commencing M. A., he might, after a fresh set of forms, become a Doctor of either Law or Medicine, or a Bachelor of Divinity; but for the Doctorate of Divinity, five additional years were necessary for the attainment of the rank of D. D.; and fourteen years for the attainment of the Doctorates of Law and Medicine.

Framed for a state of society which had passed away, and too stringent even for that state of society, these rules had fallen into modification or disuse. (1.) As respected the quadriennium, or the initiatory course of studies preparatory to the degree of B. A., there had been a slight relaxation, consisting in an abatement of one term of residence out of the twelve required by the Elizabethan statutes. This had been done in 1578, by a formal decree of the ViceChancellor and Heads. It was then ordered that every student should enroll his name in the University Register, and take his matriculation oath within a certain number of days after his first joining any College and coming to reside; and that, for the future, all persons who should have so enrolled and matriculated "before, at or upon the day when the ordinary sermon ad Clerum is or ought to be made in the beginning of Easter Term," and who should be proved by the Commons-books of their Colleges to have in the meantime resided regu

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