The balance of evidence suggests that there is a very strong connection between the early history of the colleges which eventually became the Royal Society and the early history of English Freemasonry. The Bacon tradition had been handed down in full and successfully in so far as the exoteric or scientific side of his concept was concerned, but the inner secrets of his philosophy - the esoteric teaching of Rosicrucianism had not been transmitted. The scaffolding of symbolism remained, bits and pieces of the tenets, ideas, suggestions but not the all-essential clues. The secrets had been lost. The best brains of the time set to work to recover what could be recovered of the tradition. Freemasonry was a popularized version of what could be gathered. It had a secondary potential purpose. If the times had changed again, and science had once again been outlawed, the tradition of scientific work could have been kept alive under the cover of the Craft. The chief executive authorities of the Royal Society and of Freemasonry were at that time one and the same individual. We can imagine the enthusiasm inspired by the widening of knowledge in science, and the natural assumption that Bacon's wisdom-which had borne such fruit in the realm of natural philosophy would yield no less on the mystical side. It is probably more than coincidence that Sir Isaac Newton - who was not an original member of the Royal Society and who did not become a member till 1672worked for some years at cabalistic researches, and is believed to have in the end destroyed the results of his labor. There are endless mysteries about Bacon. His parentage is attributed to Elizabeth Tudor; he can be proved by true believers to have written Shakespeare's plays, Cervantes's Don Quixote and almost anything. Massive structures of most sedulous error have been reared on matters of biliteral ciphers, of watermarks, of type fonts, in his books. His date of death and place of burial are none too well established, and altogether he is a puzzling individual. Yet if we reject the wildest and most entertaining theories, it it is difficult not to find some excuse for sympathizing with the people who believe in them. Bacon's work had to be done in secret, according to the need of the times and the rule of the order of which he was a member. His work led to the establishment of organized science and the foundation of the Royal Society, the first official body of its kind to be founded in Europe. It also led to the establishment of Speculative Freemasonry. To-day both these great things radiate all over the world. The man of science and the Freemason alike should give honor to the man whose work three hundred years ago gave expression to concepts of freedom of thought, tolerance, and clear thinking which were then three centuries before their time, and have been generally accepted by the world only during the last three generations. STUDENT LIFE IN PARIS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES1 BY PAUL FUCHS THE twelfth century was a great epoch for Christianity. The Western world undertook the Crusades, the Papacy extended and consolidated its power, and the Communes conquered their independence. A great desire for education was born of that general fermentation of the mind, and to it we owe the foundation of the University of Paris. Around the first church of Notre Dame, the church that had followed the temple of Esculapius of the ancient Lutecia, schools were formed in those distant times, under the authority of the Bishop of Paris, in which clerks were to be taught what clerks at that time had to know in the first grades, grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric; in the second, arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy; and finally theology, canon law, and medicine. All that was needed in order to open a school was the permission of a bishop or of the chancellor of Notre Dame. Once the license was obtained, the master had the right to address all comers. He spoke now in the open air, in the street, in the square, or at a crossroads, now indoors in some cloister, hall, or grange, perched upon a chair or on a simple stool, while his pupils sat about him on bundles of straw. At the beginning of the twelfth century these episcopal schools were the principal schools of the kingdom and the country of France, but at the time of which we have just spoken their renown had spread throughout all Europe, and their stu 1 From the Figaro (Paris Radical Party daily), May 8 dents were numbered by the thousands. They stayed in these schools for ten, fifteen, or even more years. 'Happy city,' said a contemporary, Philippe de Harvengt, abbé of Bonne-Espérance, 'where the students almost outnumber the lay inhabitants of the city.' This migratory crowd increased each year, and soon overflowed the borders of the city, but remained on the left bank of the Seine, near the Petit Pont. Not a few of them were quite willing to put the river between them and the rude authority of the chancellor of Notre Dame. At length a more general rapprochement was brought about, on the day when on the north flank of the Mont Sainte-Geneviève a group of masters which included Guillaume de Champeaux and Abélard drew the crowd of students around them and aroused their enthusiasm. It was not long before this turbulent tribe, impatient of any constraint, rose up against authority. It was as a consequence of numerous quarrels, some of which were serious enough to bring the civil power and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to blows, and even to summon the intervention of the Pope himself, that the students of Paris, masters and pupils, acquired their corporate independence. In the year 1200 a clerk quarreled in the cabaret with the owner of the place. His comrades took his side, invaded the shop, and left the tavern keeper half dead. A great uproar ensued. Philippe Auguste's provost, followed by the burgesses in arms, broke into the house of the clerks and STUDENT LIFE IN PARIS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES 683 left five of them dead on the pavement. Immediately masters and students carried their troubles to the King. They decided to suspend their lectures and to leave Paris, as the murderers were not punished. The threat was a serious one. The importance of the University of Paris for the recruiting of the clergy was so great that a suspension of instruction was tantamount to a brusque interruption of the whole ecclesiastical life. The King had to give in. The provost of Paris was flung into prison with all those of his accomplices who could be found, some of the murderers having taken flight. The King had their houses demolished and their vines torn up. The masters and students were triumphant. This incident, slight as it was in itself, won for them that same year the grant of a charter which made them independent of the municipal police and the royal judges, and henceforth they were dependent only on the judges of the Church. The provost of Paris was forbidden to lay hands on a scholar except in a case of flagrante delicto, and even then he had to surrender him at once to ecclesiatical justice. Even from that authority the clerks were not long in freeing themselves. Numerous conflicts soon sprang up between them and their bishop. He suspended their professors a sacris, imprisoned the students, and pronounced excommunication. An appeal was made to the Pope, resulting in a new and decisive victory for the students. The Pope annulled the excommunication and ordered the chancellor to come and justify himself at Rome. Innocent III forbade the bishop to imprison any masters or pupils, and he deprived. him also of his monopoly of the students' food. In fact, in 1222 he was despoiled of all power, and from then on our roisterers depended only on the Pope. The Pope, to be sure, was very far away. At this period, and in consequence of the almost absolute liberty confirmed more than once by the pontifical power, there was organized on the Mont Sainte-Geneviève that sort of State within a State which lived its own life, had its own jurisdiction, its own customs, and constituted, for about three or four three or four centuries, the most characteristic group of old Paris. Today, as one wanders through the Latin Quarter entirely undistinguished from the rest of the capital, and pauses in front of those vast, light-colored buildings,-lycées, universités, instituts of all kinds, one can reconstruct only with difficulty what in the Middle Ages must have been the aggregation of buildings that rose on this spot and where there dwelt a host of clerks come from all provinces of France and all foreign countries. To form an idea of it one must remember first that there was almost no secondary education in that period. When a pupil had learned reading, writing, and the elements of Latin grammar he became a student and took university courses. He began ordinarily at fourteen or fifteen, as the masters themselves were for the most part very young. A man could be a master at the age of fourteen. A close solidarity bound the masters to the students. They led the same life together, often shared the same lodgings, and did their work and took their pleasures in common, accompanied one another on nocturnal expeditions, and participated the masters not always least actively in dissipations. Both masters and students, practically certain as they were of impunity, gave themselves over to excesses of which more than one would to-day lead to imprisonment. Not only did they, like the students of all times and places, frequent cabarets and worse resorts, ransoming newcomers, who were called béjaunes, but they would run through the streets mistreating inoffensive pedestrians, and even take to housebreaking. A very natural sentiment grouped the students according to their origin into communities that were called 'nations' the nations of Normandy, of Picardy, of France, of England, of Germany. When two nations met each other they would often fall to mutual recriminations and come to blows. to blows. These battles were frequently sanguinary, and had to be suspended, if possible, by the watch. As soon as he intervened, all of the students joined hands in order to attack him. Everything was a pretext for drinking bouts and feasts the arrival of a new master, as much as the end of examinations. Some of them, however, were studious and fairly well behaved. They could be seen in the evening, walking along the banks of the Seine and along the Pré-aux-Clercs, repeating the master's lesson and reflecting on his instruction. A few of them were rich, but the majority were poor ragamuffins. Writings of the period show us the students living in wretched hovels, dressed in rags, and reduced to eating the most meagre victuals in dirty taverns. Their chief drink was water, with a rare allowance of wine- and what wine it was! Many of them ate nothing but dry bread and drank a mixture of broth and wine. Meat and fish were served on Sundays and feast days, or on the occasion of a visit by a friend. Three companions who had rented a room in common, we are told by a chronicler of the time, had no furniture but a single small bed, and no headgear but a single bonnet between them to wear to their lectures. The one tunic that was left for the two students who stayed at home was worn by one of them, while the other stayed in bed. Deprived of the glamour that always clings to the past and the picturesque, the life of the medieval student seems crude and even painful. He left his bed as the clock in the neighboring convent struck five. Lectures began at six, even at five at the faculty of law, and it was necessary to get to chapel to hear the Mass before lectures. Dressed in a simple robe or a gray cape, the student had to brave the darkness of the winter night, grope his way down a tortuous staircase, draw the bolt of a low door, slip out into the dark and narrow streets, and then make his way to the rue du Foirre, where he entered a stable or a barnyard. The listeners took their seats in the summer time on the ground or on the limbs of trees, in the winter time on straw, since the use of benches or stools was forbidden. The rooms were never heated and the windows never paned. A simple candle served for illumination. At ten or eleven o'clock the work was at an end. The student went back to his room to have a meagre meal. At noon he had to return to the school, to be present at the meridian disputations. The afternoon passed in learning tomorrow's lessons and attending free courses or repetitions. During the lecture he took his notes on a writing desk which he held on his knees and which had a square hole in one corner for the inkwell. Books were rare and expensive, consisting of manuscripts on parchment. The books which the student needed he had to rent at a high rate. The student of those days paid dearly for the right to get an arduous education in which the greatest place was reserved for the study of logic, the art of arts and the science of sciences. The liberties he enjoyed and the few celebrations he could make were slight compensation for his miseries. As a result, to relieve his existence, new in stitutions came into being, and toward the end of the thirteenth century special houses were opened for poor students, where they found board and lodging. These houses increased in importance. They soon became colleges, and modified the life of the University. Royal authority favored their creation and their development, though, on the other hand, it deprived the clerks progressively of the liberties that had been granted them. In the middle of the fifteenth century the majority of the students were pensioners. In 1445 an order of Charles VII withdrew the University from ecclesiastical jurisdiction and subjected it to the common law. When, in the time of Henri II, a scuffle took place on the Pré-auxClercs between the citizens, the police, and the young students, who, far from being able to avenge themselves on their adversaries as they could have done under Philippe Auguste, were forced to seek pardon from the King. Finally, under Henri IV, the town assumed the right to regulate alone the education of the youth of the kingdom. That was the definite end of all the noisy, troubled, picturesque life which for three centuries had burgeoned on the flanks of the Mont Sainte-Geneviève, and which was one of the most singular pictures of mediaæval Paris. NEW YORK VERSUS STOCKHOLM 1 BY PAULA VON REZNICEK AND ANNA VON WESTRUP NEW YORK THE husband devotes the day to business, the wife to entertainment, social duties, sport, and welfare work. The last of these occupies a large place in the programme of a modern American society woman. It includes work in so-called girls' clubs or boys' clubs, meetings of various charitable organizations, and serving on the committees of social-service bodies. Many also attend lecture and university courses. The importance attached to physical exercise requires part of the morning to be devoted to outdoor sports. Consequently a nation of early risers. In the forenoon my young lady drives out in a little runabout, which she has 1 From Berliner Tageblatt (Liberal daily), May 8 bought with her own earnings or has been given by her father, much as a Swedish girl might be given a wrist watch. Such a car costs very little. She may ride out to the country club for a game of tennis, or go shopping. Paris is still trumps in ladies' fashions. Those who can do so make their purchases during an annual trip to that city and the Riviera, or else buy imported costumes. Sports are taken seriously and pursued with great enthusiasm. Money-making is not the first interest of society ladies, and sports afford the same outlet for their energies that business does in case of men. About half-past one luncheon-almost never at home, and rarely alone, generally with a friend or an acquaintance at a hotel or restaurant. Not in |