We can here but briefly characterize the University as an institution undergoing modification, rather by the decay of the old than by the intrusion of the new.

The revolution by which mathematics became the principal instrument of culture was still to be deferred forty years.

Milton, who tells us that he delighted in mathematics, might have been nearly ignorant of that subject if he pleased, and hardly could become proficient in it by the help of his Alma Mater.

The scholastic philosophy, however, still reigned.

But even here tradition was shaky and undermined; and in matters of discipline the rigid code which nominally governed the University was practically much relaxed.