At last, in some hour of dream, the form of his dead mother floated into the room where the teacher stood among his mathematical diagrams.

"What are these ?" she seemed to say; and seizing Edmund's right hand, she drew on the palm three circles interlaced, each of which bore the name of a Person of the Christian Trinity.

"Be these," she cried, as the figure faded away, "thy diagrams henceforth, my son." [Sidenote: The University and Feudalism] The story admirably illustrates the real character of the new training, and the latent opposition between the spirit of the Universities and the spirit of the Church.

The feudal and ecclesiastical order of the old mediaeval world were both alike threatened by this power that had so strangely sprung up in the midst of them.

Feudalism rested on local isolation, on the severance of kingdom from kingdom and barony from barony, on the distinction of blood and race, on the supremacy of material or brute force, on an allegiance determined by accidents of place and social position.