masters,--alumni as we should say,--these historic institutions were
essentially democratic, and the student seems on the whole to have
been the most important figure; not only because at the beginning he
formed the constituency for the popular teacher, but because later
when these throngs of students formally organized he had the largest
share of privileges and for a long time the controlling voice in the
management of affairs.

"Universities," said Professor Croisat at the centenary of the
University of Montpellier in 1889, "do not come into the world with a
clatter. What we know least about in all our history is the precise
moment when it (Montpellier) began." It is impossible, in many
instances, to fix the date of organization of many of the foremost of
the older institutions; they were not made, they grew. There was a
deep necessity for their existence in the intellectual and spiritual
condition of the times, and they sprang into being here and there, in
Italy, France, Spain, and England, in response to that need. They were
notable, at the beginning, not for academic calm, but for turbulence
and vitality; for they were not universities of science, they were
universities of persons. The differences of scholastic rank were not
very sharply defined. In early days, whenever the university body was
formally addressed by Pope or Emperor, the students were named in the
same sentence as the masters.

It is unnecessary to recall here the changes in condition which have
separated the student class sharply from the teaching body and
divorced it almost entirely from governmental functions. What is
significant for the purpose of this article is an apparent disposition
in many quarters to recede from the extreme position of entire
exclusion of the student body and a tendency to move in the other