0"T' LAERT> "! - USP

LEARNED SOCIETIES AND UNIVERSITIES. 393
mark in the political, military, artistic, manufacturing, and
industrial walks of life, who by their residence abroad had
acquired a wider outlook, laughed at the narrow views of
the bookworms who sometimes cut a pitiful figure in con­
sequence of the awkwardness of their manners.
A wild and a rough life prevailed at the German univer­
sities of that time. " At our German high schools," writes
the doctor LOTICHIUS in 1631, "the attention of the
students is devoted, not to books, but to quarrels ; not to
literary compositions, but to daggers ; not to the pen, but
to the sword and plume; to bloody feuds instead of to
learned discussion; to drinking and riot instead of to
assiduous work ; to the tavern and the brothel rather than
to the study and library."* The fagging of freshmen, a
custom which by usage came to be a regular practice, led
to terrible excesses, to cruelty and even to crime. The
students indulged also in many acts of insolence towards
the townsmen, f The senate of the University of Leipzig
found themselves compelled, in 1625, to forbid the students
"" to disturb weddings, to strike strangers, to insult ladies
and young women by obscene remarks, or to trip them
up." J At Jena, in the year 1660, the students gave actual
battle to the police, in which conflict many were killed.
-Similar excesses also occurred at Ingolstadt.
But it was not surprising if such things did occur among
the students; for the tone which prevailed among the pro­
fessors was at times not much better. In 1663 a professor
was punished by the Rector with imprisonment because he
had cudgelled his father-in-law.§ The University of Helm-
•stadt was admonished by the reigning prince not to bring
forward as candidates, at the appointment of professors,
any "who were given to drinking." || Of the University
* Oratio de fatalibus academiarum in Germania periculis in acad. Rintel.
xec. 1631, p. 67 according to MEINERS : Gesch. d. hohen Schulen.
t THOLUCK op. cit. i, x, 264 et seq.
X GEBHARDT in ZWIEDINECK-S*UDENHORST'S Zeitschr., 1887, iv, 955.
§ PRANTL op. cit. i, 500, ;;o3.
|| THOLUCK op. cit. i, 1, 142.