The university was endowed with a handsome revenue, principally derived from the ancient abbey of Egmont, and was provided with a number of professors, selected for their genius, learning, and piety among all the most distinguished scholars of the Netherlands.  The document by which the institution was founded was certainly a masterpiece of ponderous irony, for as the fiction of the King’s sovereignty was still maintained, Philip was gravely made to establish the university, as a reward to Leyden for rebellion to himself.  “Considering,” said this wonderful charter, “that during these present wearisome wars within our provinces of Holland and Zealand, all good instruction of youth in the sciences and liberal arts is likely to come into entire oblivion. . . . .  Considering the differences of religion—­considering that we are inclined to gratify our city of Leyden, with its burghers, on account of the heavy burthens sustained by them during this war with such faithfulness—­we have resolved, after ripely deliberating with our dear cousin, William, Prince of Orange, stadholder, to erect a free public school and university,” etc., etc., etc.  So ran the document establishing this famous academy, all needful regulations for the government and police of the institution being entrusted by Philip to his “above-mentioned dear cousin of Orange.”

The university having been founded, endowed, and supplied with its, teachers, it was solemnly consecrated in the following winter, and it is agreeable to contemplate this scene of harmless pedantry, interposed, as it was, between the acts of the longest and dreariest tragedy of modern time.  On the 5th of February, 1575, the city of Leyden, so lately the victim of famine and pestilence, had crowned itself with flowers.  At seven in the morning, after a solemn religious celebration in the Church of St. Peter, a grand procession was formed.  It was preceded by a military escort, consisting of the burgher militia and the five companies of infantry stationed in the city.  Then came, drawn by four horses, a splendid triumphal chariot, on which sat a female figure, arrayed in snow-white garments.  This was the Holy Gospel.  She was attended by the Four Evangelists, who walked on foot at each side of her chariot.  Next followed Justice, with sword and scales, mounted; blindfold, upon a unicorn, while those learned doctors, Julian, Papinian, Ulpian, and Tribonian, rode on either side, attended by two lackeys and four men at arms.  After these came Medicine, on horseback, holding in one hand a treatise of the healing art, in the other a garland of drugs.  The curative goddess rode between the four eminent physicians, Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, and Theophrastus, and was attended by two footmen and four pike-bearers.  Last of the allegorical personages came Minerva, prancing in complete steel, with lance in rest, and bearing her Medusa shield.  Aristotle and Plato, Cicero and Virgil, all on horseback, with attendants in antique armor at their back, surrounded the daughter of Jupiter, while the city band, discoursing eloquent music from hautboy and viol, came upon the heels of the allegory.  Then followed the mace-bearers and other officials, escorting the orator of the day, the newly-appointed professors and doctors, the magistrates and dignitaries, and the body of the citizens generally completing the procession.