And Bede’s story contains no less wonder than beauty, when you consider how the fame of this holy and humble man of heart, who never left his cloisters at Jarrow, spread over Europe, so that, though it sound incredible, our Northumbria narrowly missed in its day to become the pole-star of Western culture.  But he was a disinterested genius, and his pupil, Alcuin, a pushing dull man and a born reactionary; so that, while Alcuin scored the personal success and went off to teach in the court of Charlemagne, the great chance was lost.

No one knows when the great Universities were founded, or precisely out of what schools they grew; and you may derive amusement from the historians when they start to explain how Oxford and Cambridge in particular came to be chosen for sites.  My own conjecture, that they were chosen for the extraordinary salubrity of their climates, has met (I regret to say) with derision, and may be set down to the caprice of one who ever inclines to think the weather good where he is happy.  Our own learned historian, indeed—­Mr J. Bass Mullinger—­devotes some closely reasoned pages to proving that Cambridge was chosen as the unlikeliest spot in the world, and is driven to quote the learned Poggio’s opinion that the unhealthiness of a locality recommended it as a place of education for youth; as Plato, knowing naught of Christianity, but gifted with a soul naturally Christian, ’had selected a noisome spot for his Academe, in order that the mind might be strengthened by the weakness of the body.’ So difficult still it is for the modern mind to interpret the mediaeval!

Most likely these Universities grew as a tree grows from a seed blown by chance of the wind.  It seems easy enough to understand why Paris, that great city, should have possessed a great University; yet I surmise the processes at Oxford and Cambridge to have been only a little less fortuitous.  The schools of Remigius and of William of Champeaux (we will say) have given Paris a certain prestige, when Abelard, a pupil of William’s, springs into fame and draws a horde of students from all over Europe to sit at his feet.  These ‘nations’ of young men have to be organised, brought under some sort of discipline, if only to make the citizens’ lives endurable:  and lo! the thing is done.  In like manner Irnerius at Bologna, Vacarius at Oxford, and at Cambridge some innominate teacher, ‘of importance,’ as Browning would put it, ‘in his day,’ possibly set the ball rolling; or again it is suggested that a body of scholars dissatisfied with Oxford (such dissatisfaction has been known even in historical times) migrated hither—­a laborious journey, even nowadays—­and that so

     A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
     From waves serener far!