met with universal approval, and schools grew in number under its influence, in Milan and out of Milan, until 30 may now be counted in a flourishing condition, with an attendance of 1,600 pupils from 14 to 42 years of age, the largest portion of whom are from 14 to 18, the most propitious age for this moral life-saving effort. The rules of these schools admit pupils from 12 years of age upward; they are divided in classes according to the degree of education they are found already to possess. There is also a preparatory course for those who have escaped from taking the compulsory three years' elementary course, and for those who are illiterate from other causes.

UNIVERSITY EXTENSION.

Following the example of Belgium, popular universities have been lately instituted in Italy. But it is yet too early to determine their degree of success or give an account of them. However, judging from personal observation, the instruction attempted does not scem as yet to fulfill the object of the movement; it is entirely on too high a plane for the class of people for whom it is intended. The free lectures, so far as the writer has heard, are above the comprehension of the audience, when it is considered that it is composed principally of mechanics, artisans, and laborers who never have had that preliminary training that leads to the comprehension and appreciation of lectures on high art, on the most subtle sciences, on the highest culture in belles-lettres, literature, philosophy, etc. The professors who were engaged to lecture seemed to have had their personal reputation for learning far more at heart than the interests of the people who went to hear them. That is a national failing of the learned in Italy, if it is not of the whole continent of Europe. Vanity may destroy the praiseworthy object of the association. Let us hope that they will soon see their error and correct it. The people need such popular instructors as Professor Tyndall, of England.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

For documents and statistics the author is indebted to:

Comm. Piero Barbera, publisher, president of the Philological Club of Florence, active member of the "Dante Allighieri."

Professor Fumagalli, director of Brera Public Library, Milan.

Signor Bozzi Carlo, vice-president of the Milan Philological Club.

Signor Angelo Crespi, vice-secretary and counselor of the Milan Philological Club.

Comm. Luigi Bodio, senator of the kingdom, counselor of state, commissary-general of emigration, director of statistics, Rome.

Dr. Egisto Rossi, attached to the ministry of foreign affairs, commissary of emigration, Rome. Prof. G. Marenghi, University of Pavia.

Prof. Alexander Oldrini, doctor of philology, New York.

Dr. M. De Cristoforis, deputy of parliament, assessor of public schools, Milan.

II. THE BACCELLI BILL FOR THE REFORM OF SUPERIOR EDUCA

TION IN ITALY.

PRECEDED BY A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ITALIAN

UNIVERSITIES.

By Prof. ALEXANDER OLDRINI.

CONTENTS-I. Early education in Rome.-II. The Middle Ages and higher education.-III. Debates on the reform of superior education.-IV. Text of the Baccelli bill.

I. EARLY EDUCATION IN ROME.

The superior training that had reached its zenith in republican Rome in the teachings and writings of individual celebrities, was centralized in the first century of the Roman Empire in the rudimentary conception of the later "universitas studiorum," the forgotten traditions of which were developed during the

Middle Ages and in the modern high schools and universities of European countrics. The statement that the universities were evolved directly through the intellectual efforts of medieval times, whether from Bologna or from Paris, would do violence to history and lead to a fallacious understanding of the sequence of human intellectual conquests. It would limit the field of investigation necessary even in a cursory survey of the history of Italian universities. The gradual progress of Roman instruction to its highest position may be considered as including three distinct periods:

First. The private teaching of a primitive period in the early days of the city, which was restricted in a general way within the circle of the family (“suus cuique parens pro magistro"), while the plebeians scarcely frequented the "ludi litterarum" opened near the Forum. This was the period of the Saturnian verse, of the Etruscan fescennine verses, and of the burlesque "fabulæ Atellano.'

Second. The period when instruction, amid the long struggles of the “Urbs” for political supremacy in Italy and over Europe, Asia, and Africa, becomes public, but still remains independent of the central power. This is the century of the splendor of Roman letters.

Third. That of state education under imperial Rome, when the cycle of higher studies, the curriculum, is complete in its classical structure, and such that, although modified or enlarged according to the genius, the character, and the aspirations of future nations, it will always remain the standard par excellence. This was the period of grammar, rhetoric, eloquence, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, and the natural and mathematical sciences.

This onward triumphal transformation of education, consistent and parallel with the historical evolution of the republican genius of Rome itself toward centralization of power in the Universal Empire ("regere imperio populos"), well deserves a concise analysis.

The school, as has been well said, reflects the image of the community which creates it. Roman instruction in the early centuries of the "Urbs" was exclusive, as would be logical in a stern aggressive community, unwilling to form alliances, "imperium cupientibus nihil medium inter summa et praecipitia." The state being all, no limit could be admitted to the parental authority, since it was understood in early Rome that only by obeying their father's will young Quirites might learn how to obey the state; and no doubt such authority in instruction must have proved absolute with the scions of patrician families.

While there is no written history, except in the form of annals, to prove deñnitely in what instruction consisted, many historians express the opinion that higher education was imparted from the close of the fifth century, in patrician families, in accordance with their means and position in the state. The instruction bore upon the science of war, of law, and of eloquence, the sons following their fathers in the battlefields, in the forum, and in the senate, there to acquire that practical training that could alone account for the progress of the early Romans in political culture. This progress permitted the gradual accession of persons issued from the people to the ranks of the nobility, to the direction of public affairs. Later on, when the necessity was felt of a still wider range in higher education, the senate, according to Cicero, used to order a number of young patricians to be sent every year to Etruria, there to study the science of religion, which was characteristically considered by the Romans as bearing on human as well as transcendental problems.

Religion, according to the Romans, was the science that assured that moral and intellectual power which opened the way to the highest offices in the state, and gave to the Pontifex his great authority in Roman society in regard to the inter

a P. Rossi: Istruzione pubblica antica Roma (Siena University, 1891).

pretation of laws, of formulas, of civil procedure, of measures, of numbers, and in regard to the annual relation of public events.

After the ending of the third Punic war with the destruction of Carthage (146 B. C.) by Scipio, and after the destruction of Corinth by Mummius, new elements, such as Greek influences and customs, brought about a change in the destinies of Rome. The sixth century of the city is the period of the national unification of Italy, and of the replacing of the concept of the "Urbs" by the broader one of the Italian nation with Rome for its capital, ruling over partly conquered Europe, Asia, and Africa. Such an event prepared for the complete transformation of Roman society, altered the ancient rigidity of customs and family ties, and consequently the educational and political institutions.

The necessity was then felt of establishing permanent rules for the Latin language, "lingua urbana," now spreading to distant lands, to be used by other peoples, so that there was a great impulse toward the opening of schools of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy; this was a step toward the passage and transformation from the first period, that of private and home tuition, to that of a public system. This was not done, however, without opposition from the old patrician element, represented by Cato, who might be considered as the highest moral incarnation of the old circumscribed Roman ideas as well as of Roman austerity, virtue, and national pride. He went so far in his bitterness toward the new ideas as to ask the senate to send back to Greece such scholars and thinkers as Carneades the academic, Diogenes the stoic, and Critolaus the peripatetic, on account of the philosophical influence their lessons exercised on the young Roman generation. All this was of no avail, however, as each rich family vied with the other to secure, by the payment of large salaries, the most learned Greeks, whether slaves or free, to teach their sons Hellenic philosophy, sciences, fine arts, and manners. Thus there came about the establishment in Rome of that universal and almost encyclopedic character of studies, which answered theoretically to the ideals of Greece, but was to remain a characteristic prerogative of the most eminent citizens of the Roman Republic.

The fall of Corinth was the sign for legions of vanquished Greeks to invade the country of the victor-philosophers, scientists, rhetoricians, artists. "Grecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio" (Horace). Both the aristocracy and the new popular party took up the new studies in earnest and followed their teachings. Interest, fashion, and pleasure on one side, the acquired wealth and the new enlarged political empire on the other, fostered their rapid development.

The "schola" on the Hellenic plan then first appeared in Rome, and a number of high schools were opened in a short time; but they were not considered sufficient, either in number or grade, so that students who wanted to rise to the standard of the new ideas and to be in accord with the international development of the republic, began to go abroad to complete their higher education. They went to Athens for literature and philosophy; to Rhodes, Mitylene, and Apollonia for rhetoric; to Alexandria for the highest scientific training. It is the century of Sylla and Augustus (78 B. C. to 14 A. D.), the second period of free Roman letters and of the perfection of the Latin language; the beginning of the era when the Roman genius developed all the power of its national originality, graced by the Greek influence; when numbers of renowned authors showed that vast erudition which constituted one of the characteristic qualities of Roman superior education. It is the period when higher education assumed regular divisions, and conquered its highest standing in Rome, its effects extending from Rome to the uttermost borders of the empire, to the most distant peoples, to apprise them of her powerful and intellectual civilization.

ED 1902-49

Higher education, acquired during that period, was in fact such a power in Rome that the destinies of the state appeared to depend upon it more than upon the force of arms and political authority, so that the state gradually assumed the rôle of a protector of education at first, then that of a regulator of it, with the result that, from an independent public status, the whole system became official and was subservient to political power, thus losing the incomparable benefit of that free expansion that self-supporting institutions and unfettered liberty of teaching and learning can assure to a progressive nation.

The personal influence of the emperors since Augustus, then representing the State in its highest capacity, was felt so deeply in the educational field that the most independent and keenest poet of imperial Rome wrote: Et spes et ratio studiorum in Casare tantum" (Juvenal). They subsidized the professors of Rome, whether Greek or Latin; they provided for the instruction of the poorer classes, protecting and honoring equally both teachers and students.

Hadrian, a great scholar himself, is reported to have made the first step in the direction of encroaching on the freedom of public teaching by removing from their chairs those professors whom he had honored and enriched when he thought they had fallen from their high standing. He went further in the direction of imperial intervention by erecting a superb building for the debates and lectures of rhetoricians and poets, of professors and pupils alike, at the expense of the State. Hence the first Atheneum of Rome.

His successors extended their activities in the field of public education successively from the chairs at Rome to the high schools throughout the Empire by establishing chairs of rhetoric and philosophy "per omnes provincias," as decreed by Antoninus Pius. Marcus Aurelius raised the schools of Athens, then the most renowned, to the rank of true superior institutions, for the teaching of all philosophical doctrines of the period, the stoical, the epicurean, the platonic, and the peripatetic, while Alexander Severus provided by decree for the opening of special schools for the teaching of other sciences besides grammar and rhetoric, such as mechanics, architecture, medicine, and mathematics, and took a characteristic step in the direction of State authority over public education for the first time by granting, at the expense of the treasury of the State, sums of money to meritorious poor pupils that they might complete their higher studies.

All these still semiofficial high schools throughout the Empire, opened in even the most distant important centers of civilization, were not uniformly governed, nor with the same liberality as that of Autun, for instance, where Eumenes, the director, received no less than 600.000 sesterces a year salary, half of which sum was contributed by the State.

It was the Emperor Gratian who took up this subject of salaries in his reform "de medicis et professoribus," and Diocletian followed in his steps by fixing the amount of the monthly fees that each student was expected to present to his professors. The minimum was of 50 denarii for the "magister litterarum" and the pedagogues; the maximum 200 for the grammarian and geometrician and 250 for the rhetorician and the sophist. To the salaries of the professors were to be added special privileges and liberal immunities from different taxes and obligations which were common to all classes of citizens; these were regulated in accordance with the importance of the town where the professor resided.

The professors of law alone were excluded from all such benefits, at least until the advent of Justinian, on the plea that the science of law stood so high in its moral character that it would prove a degradation to put it under a money standard."

a The denarius was a Roman silver coin equal to $0.157.

The onward march toward the final type of the State university was greatly accelerated by the constitution of Julian, which on the one side regularly devolved the appointment to the different chairs, and the removal of unworthy professors, upon the college of centurions, subject to the approval of the Emperor himself; while on the other side it subjected the students to special strict by-laws and regulations bearing on their duties and obligations toward the school, as well as toward the city where they studied, and toward the State.

The limit of the discipline and centralization of higher education was finally reached by the State in the year 425 of our era, when Theodosius I and Valentinian III thought of uniting all the special schools of learning, until then independent of each other, in one single body and under one roof, The Institute, or "Universitas Magistrorum et Scholarium." This institute was opened in Rome at the capitol and provided with State professors appointed for the culture of the liberal sciences, embracing the following faculties, letters, rhetoric, philosophy, and law, thus giving birth to the first and most ancient type known to history of the "universitas studiorum."

II. THE MIDDLE AGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION.

In the great contest between the overwhelming materiality of paganism and the ardent spiritual tendency of the new Christianity, while the northern invaders were dismembering the Empire, the official system of Roman higher education was lost sight of. The exodus of the imperial authority from Rome to "Nova Roma," Byzantium (A. D. 330), hastened the final disorganization of the Roman world, and troubled days awaited Italy. However, amid the ruins of what had been the Roman educational system, toward the sixth century and the beginning of the seventh, in many parts of Italy the traditions and cult of Roman law and jurisprudence and of the liberal arts were still kept in great honor; this not as an exception among privileged classes, "but among all classes of citizens independently of the church at that period." It is stated that in the schools of Italy throughout the Middle Ages education was of a lay character. This was a unique example at a period when elsewhere in Europe theology absorbed most exclusively the attention of the scholar, who, as a rule, belonged to the clergy, while the laical elements of society, bent on conquest and other material pursuits, even if of noble descent or in a station of wealth and power, disdained the benefit of the very first elements of literary culture."

Most fortunately for the renaissance of letters, arts, and sciences between the sixth and twelfth centuries, the Italian cities, as heirs and trustees of Roman civilization, preserved their Roman municipal arrangements and laws, making them acceptable to their semicivilized conquerors, notwithstanding foreign invasions and the continuous upturning of governments and change of rulers. Roman jurisprudence, together with grammar and rhetoric, continued to be cultivated under the Goths also in Rome and during the Byzantine domination in Ravenna. It seems a logical historical conclusion, therefore, that to such a classical superior training thus kept alive Italy owed her escape from total disappearance as a nation after the fall of the Western Empire, while that same training led to her intellectual and national resurrection later on, when better times and more settled conditions existed. Between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, or as soon as the dark ages came to an end and permitted a more civilized social intercourse among European nations, and when a new and powerful spirit of life, enhanced by the commercial activity of the free cities of Milan, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi,

a William Giesebrecht, of Munich, was the first to point out the fact that literary education had a laical character in Italy at all times.