A University in its original signification meant
no more than our modern term an Association. When men associated
together for purposes of trade, they were a trading _Universitas_;
when they associated for religious objects, they were a religious
_Universitas_; when they associated for the promotion of learning,
they were a learned _Universitas_. But the men came first, the bricks
and mortar followed long after. The architectural history, in its merely
technical and professional details, could only start at a point where
the University, as an association of scholars and students, had already
acquired power and influence, had been at work for long, and had
got to make itself felt as a living force in the body politic and in the
national life. It was because the antiquaries of a former age lost sight
of this truth that they indulged in the extravagances they did. Starting
from the assumption that stonewalls make an institution, they professed to
tell when the Universities came into existence and who were their
earliest founders. The authors of this modern _Magnum Opus_ have
set themselves to deal with a far more instructive problem. Their
object has been to trace the growth of the University of to-day in
its concrete form, down from the early times when it existed only in
the germ; and to show us how "the glorious fellowship of living men,"
which constituted the _personal_ University of the eleventh or
the twelfth century, developed by slow degrees into the brick-and-
mortar Universities of the nineteenth--such Universities as are
springing up all over the world; their teachers advertised for in
_The Times_, and their students tempted to come and be taught in
them by the bait of money rewards.
Pages:
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254