the teaching of general history in recent years. No argument is needed
as to the importance of such a collection for effective teaching of the
history of education; but I would urge that the subject requires in a
peculiar degree rich and full illustration from the sources. The life of
school, college, or university is varied, vivid, even dramatic, while we
live it; but, once it has passed, it becomes thinner and more spectral
than almost any other historical fact. Its original records are, in all
conscience, thin enough; the situation is still worse when they are
worked over at third or fourth hand, flattened out; smoothed down, and
desiccated in the pages of a modern history of education. Such histories
are of course necessary to effective teaching of the subject; but the
records alone can clothe the dry bones of fact with flesh and blood.
Only by turning back to them do we gain a sense of personal intimacy
with the past; only thus can we realize that schools and universities of
other days were not less real than those of to-day, teachers and
students of other generations not less vividly alive than we, academic
questions not less unsettled or less eagerly debated. To gain this sense
of concrete, living reality in the history of education is one of the
most important steps toward understanding the subject.

In selecting and arranging the records here presented I have had in mind
chiefly the needs of students who are taking the usual introductory
courses in the subject. Students of general history--a subject in which
more and more account is taken of culture in the broad sense of the
term--may also find them useful.

Within the necessarily limited space I have chosen to illustrate in some
detail a few aspects of the history of mediaeval universities rather
than to deal briefly with a large number of topics. Many important
matters, not here touched upon, are reserved for future treatment. Some