which might have confidently been looked for-notably the Garden Warbler, Lesser Whitethroat, Wood Wren, and Reed Wren. Rodd believed the Dartford Warbler to be on the increase. It is possible that, like some of the Crakes, owing to its love of seclusion, it may at times be present when unobserved. A place, too, is given to the beautiful little Fire-crest. The Hooded Crow, which from its former frequency was known as the 'Market Jew Crow,' is now diminishing, and the Chough is dwindling to extinction. Its pedigree, in its traditional home, is vouched for by the early writers. Upton, a Canon of Salisbury, speaks of the families who bore it on their arms. Turner in 1544 and Camden mention it as peculiar to Cornwall, and the latter repeats the old-world tales about its habit of carrying lighted sticks from the fire, and its thievish propensities, whence Carew declares it to be a slaunder' to his county. True sportsmen find delight in observing the ways of Nature, and to them the Scilly Islands offer even greater attractions than the mainland. The letters of Mr. Rodd's nephew bear witness to his enthusiasm:- Non homini cuivis contingit,' he truly says, 'to see Snipes feeding with the poultry in front of the drawing-room window.' He describes a tour of the ponds where flocks of Widgeon, Wild-ducks, Teal, and Sheldrakes were quietly resting, together with a mixed company of Coots, Moorhens, Gulls, and Plovers. Here, too, a host of Starlings, Thrushes, Redwings, and Blackbirds had found sanctuary, all within the range of the glass at once.' Such a peaceful scene is disturbed at times by the rush of the Peregrine, -dispersing the wild-fowl in terror. The interest, however, culminates when an easterly gale, laden with snow, brings up its countless flocks. Some descend to rest, while others pursue their course right out to sea. At night the air is filled with their cries, and each morning brings its surprise. The reverse of the picture is seen in the multitude of birds which exhaust the available food and perish before they can recruit their strength for a further flight. Here in this furthermost corner of our island-we lay aside a theme which may serve to divert the thoughts from graver topics. Many who may be induced to pursue the study further will reach the conclusion that it is one of the few innocent pleasures of youth which follow a man into mature years, and upon which he can look back in the decline of life with feelings of pure and unalloyed delight.' The courtier who found a new pleasure for the Persian king was a smaller benefactor than than the man who interprets the book of Nature. It is an old tale, but one of infinite variety. It affords, too, a much-needed sedative-if we will decline to be swept into the mill-race, which is hurrying even Science to ill-considered generalizations. We cannot pretend to give statistics, as some have done, of the birds that fall, thick as the leaves of Vallombrosa, on their appointed flights; nor can we reduce to rule the caprices which enter into even this overmastering impulse. We cannot tell why some species of the Cuckoo deviate from the ways of other members of their family, nor account for the many contradictions that perplex us. It may rebuke our impatient dogmatism to find how often theory meets with a rude shock from experience. We admit the influence of individual caprice on our own conduct must we deny its working in other creatures, because we attribute to them a lower intelligence? When, however, we assume the humbler rôle of the minute philosopher, we may feel that each verified observation casts a gleam of light on the beauty of an unseen world. We may think that we have added our mite to the sum of happiness. It may be that we shall have done as much as more obtrusive workers towards bringing back the Golden Age of unbought pleasures, which is to be the reward of our descendants for the feverish unrest which we are called upon to undergo. ART. ART. VII.-The Universities of the Middle Ages. By Hastings Rashdall. Three Vols. Oxford, 1895. 'I HAVE a strong idea of the irrationality of the Middle Age,' wrote Matthew Arnold in a letter dated 1860, and of the utter folly of those who take it seriously and play at restoring it.' Since this verdict was delivered, the period, which it was once the fashion to misname the Dark Ages, has been taken seriously' by gifted and laborious scholars, who have 'restored' it with more insight and sympathy than is usual with 'restorations.' Yet if we sum up the Middle Ages as culminating in sacerdotium, imperium, studium (the three mysterious 'virtues' of Christendom, according to a mediæval chronicler), we may safely assert that the Papacy and Empire have been investigated with a loving thoroughness, all the more remarkable because the third great mediæval creation, the University-as splendid a constructive effort as Empire or Papacy-has been the victim almost of a conspiracy of silence, and this too in a generation which has achieved the most valuable results in the embryology of Institutions. Mr. Rashdall's long-expected volumes are therefore all the more welcome; for already we have had to wait too long for a comprehensive, critical treatment of the Mediæval University based on the comparative method and on really original research. Previous to Father Denifle's volume, University literature is best described in that writer's caustic remark— 'Previous University literature presents us with no pictures that are particularly pleasing.' In spite of ample materials and some excellent monographs on isolated Universities, the student desirous of a complete survey had to be content with either perfunctory sketches in the classical historians, the unsifted statements of University Laureates,' or the uncritical accounts of professed specialists, of which Huber's English Universities' is no unfair sample. When historical scholars of the eminence of Savigny, Maurer, Räumer, Gregorovius, Döllinger, Stubbs, not to mention lesser luminaries, had erred, it was high time for a new departure. Fortunately this new departure was made by the appearance in 1885 of the first volume of Denifle's 'Die Universitäten des Mittelalters,' in every way an epoch-making book, for it literally made an epoch by the light that it threw on the Middle Ages, as well as marked an epoch in the study of Institutions. In its prodigious learning and elaborately scientific critical method it almost anticipated the impossible qualities recently demanded by Lord Acton from those who Vol. 183.-No. 366. 2 H would would sail the uncharted sea of original research'; at the same time, the work of the erudite sub-archivist of the Vatican had certainly the defects of its qualities. It was only an instalment, a Cyclopean fragment of what, when completed, will not be a history so much as an encyclopædic Baedeker. It dealt solely with the Entstehung of Universities (and even then Oxford and Cambridge received but scanty treatment), the fuller development and working of which, together with an appreciation of their place in the history of thought and education, have yet to come. Written in German, without any literary finish, it is not surprising that the book with difficulty found an audience, fit perhaps, but certainly few. Its author's object was a purification of the idols of the study, and this he carried through with remorseless severity, tabulating the results of his investigations with the austere asceticism of a scientific dictionary. Almost the only easy reading to be found in its pages are the copious notes, where, with academic impartiality, verdicts are meted out. Open the volume where you will, you are sure to find some eminent historian impaled. Indeed the notes form an Index Expurgatorius, a historical wreck-chart, while the pages of text are fringed with the scalps of distinguished scholars. Such a work is, of course, of enormous value, but it emphasizes the impossibility of writing a real history from MSS. Mr. Rashdall's essay' is far different. Though not on the same scale, it embodies a masterly survey of the Mediaval University from its rise in the twelfth century to its decline in the fifteenth; and it may be said at once that it forms a historical contribution of which Oxford and English scholars have every reason to be proud. The wealth of detail proves that in learning Mr. Rashdall is inferior only to Father Denifle, while in effective presentation of his subject he is immensely his superior. Mr. Rashdall, perhaps, would modestly disclaim pretensions to style, if by that is meant phrase-making or picture-painting. None the less he possesses a remarkable capacity for exposition, and he invariably writes with polish, clearness, and vigour,-qualities which, aided by the saving gift of humour, make his three stout volumes most interesting reading. He has even a lurking fondness for the 'drum and trumpet' method, and when occasion requires can tell a stirring story in a stirring way; nor is he by any means of opinion that the historian who is guilty of an epigram would forge a document. In his handling of so complex a subject Mr. Rashdall fully recognises that the historian of the Mediaval University must show more than a Dryasdust's voracity for masses masses of indigestible facts; that he must in addition have the strategic eye for grasping the important stages in a tedious process of growth, a philosophical insight into cause and effect, be always ready to tear the hidden truth from crucial instances, and, while giving his readers their fill of multiplicity, never lose sight of the central informing unity. The centuries in which the University grew to maturity were centuries in which the human mind was ever grappling with the deepest spiritual and intellectual problems, in which the fabric of institutions was ceaselessly moulded by, and saturated with, the play of mighty mental forces. To this, the most difficult part of his task, Mr. Rashdall brings not only the vivid interest of the constitutional specialist, but, what is far better, the disciplined and critical knowledge of the trained thinker; and in this aspect of the Medieval University he is perhaps at his best. In a series of luminous prolegomena-for example, on Abelard and the twelfth-century Renaissance, on the history of Aristotelianism, on the position of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford in the world of thought, questions raising the broadest issues of intellectual and social evolution-Mr. Rashdall clothes the bare bones with flesh and blood, and describes the Mediæval University as it really was. We gratefully acknowledge that he has given us a learned study, the execution of which is as workmanlike as are its independence of thought, breadth of conception, and ripeness of judgment. " What, then, was this Mediæval University, and by what mysterious process did it come into being? To answer this we must forget the embarrassing existence in the fifteenth century of some seventy Universities in every country and with apparently every kind of constitution; we must sternly disregard the Universities of to-day. For, as Denifle is never tired of telling us, the plentiful crop of errors that has disfigured so many previous investigations has mainly arisen from repeated attempts to write history a priori' from uncritical 'confusion of epochs,' and obstinate adherence to the conviction that what an institution came to be that it was from the outset. Nowadays, to be sure, we commonly imagine a University as a vague kind of educational body, with a mysterious machinery of colleges and professors, more or less endowed, supplying higher education' to a mass of all sorts and conditions of students, who, on satisfying certain requirements, are finally hall-marked with a degree, and so become 'graduates' of the institution. We recklessly apply the term to 'constitutional monstrosities,' such as London; to an aggregate of lecture-rooms, such as existed at Athens, Rhodes, or Byzantium; to a con |