30 UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL. [LECT. 



effect a really considerable and effectual scheme of 

 elementary education through the length and breadth 

 of his dominions. 



No doubt the idolaters out by the Elbe, in what is 

 now part of Prussia, objected to the Frankish king's 

 measures ; no doubt the priests, who had never hesi- 

 tated about sacrificing all unbelievers in their fantastic 

 deities and futile conjurations, were the loudest in 

 chanting the virtues of toleration ; no doubt they de- 

 nounced as a cruel persecutor the man who would not 

 allow them, however sincere they might be, to go on 

 spreading delusions which debased the intellect, as 

 much as they deadened the moral sense, and under- 

 mined the bonds of civil allegiance ; no doubt, if they 

 had lived in these times, they would have been able 

 to show, with ease, that the king's proceedings were 

 totally contrary to the best liberal principles. But it 

 may be said, in justification of the Teutonic ruler, 

 first, that he was born before those principles, and 

 did not suspect that the best way of getting disorder 

 into order was to let it alone ; and, secondly, that his 

 rough and questionable proceedings did, more or less, 

 bring about the end he had in view. For, in a couple 

 of centuries, the schools he sowed broadcast produced 

 their crop of men, thirsting for knowledge and craving 

 for culture. Such men gravitating towards Paris, as 

 a light amidst the darkness of evil days, from Ger- 

 many, from Spain, from Britain, and from Scandinavia, 

 came together by natural affinity. By degrees they 

 banded themselves into a society, which, as its end 

 was the knowledge of all things knowable, called itself 



