Education had felt the onward movement of the country and the times.  The whole system was, however, pervaded by the monastic spirit, which had originally preserved all learning from annihilation, but which now kept it wrapped in the ancient cerecloths, and stiffening in the stony sarcophagus of a bygone age.  The university of Louvain was the chief literary institution in the provinces.  It had been established in 1423 by Duke John IV. of Brabant.  Its government consisted of a President and Senate, forming a close corporation, which had received from the founder all his own authority, and the right to supply their own vacancies.  The five faculties of law, canon law, medicine, theology, and the arts, were cultivated at the institution.  There was, besides, a high school for under graduates, divided into four classes.  The place reeked with pedantry, and the character of the university naturally diffused itself through other scholastic establishments.  Nevertheless, it had done and was doing much to preserve the love for profound learning, while the rapidly advancing spirit of commerce was attended by an ever increasing train of humanizing arts.

The standard of culture in those flourishing cities was elevated, compared with that observed in many parts of Europe.  The children of the wealthier classes enjoyed great facilities for education in all the great capitals.  The classics, music, and the modern languages, particularly the French, were universally cultivated.  Nor was intellectual cultivation confined to the higher orders.  On the contrary, it was diffused to a remarkable degree among the hard-working artisans and handicraftsmen of the great cities.

For the principle of association had not confined itself exclusively to politics and trade.  Besides the numerous guilds by which citizenship was acquired in the various cities, were many other societies for mutual improvement, support, or recreation.  The great secret, architectural or masonic brotherhood of Germany, that league to which the artistic and patient completion of the magnificent works of Gothic architecture in the middle ages is mainly to be attributed, had its branches in nether Germany, and explains the presence of so many splendid and elaborately finished churches in the provinces.  There were also military sodalities of musketeers, cross-bowmen, archers, swordsmen in every town.  Once a year these clubs kept holiday, choosing a king, who was selected for his prowess and skill in the use of various weapons.  These festivals, always held with great solemnity and rejoicing, were accompanied bye many exhibitions of archery and swordsmanship.  The people were not likely, therefore, voluntarily to abandon that privilege and duty of freemen, the right to bear arms, and the power to handle them.