its symbol, a book, instead of being conferred at the hands of an ordinary doctor, was now to be presented by the Archdeacon of Bologna, who, in course of time, came to be known as the chancellor of the university.

Yet the lay predominance continued, and was even further strengthened by the addition of universities in medicine and in arts. And when at last a theological faculty was constituted in 1352, it did not invade the independence of the others.

The story of development cannot be sketched further in this paper. Already the university type of institution which Bologna had evolved for herself had been carried elsewhere, by secessions to Vicenza, Arezzo, Padua, and Siena. In course of time it may be said, without exaggeration, to have been set up throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, extending to cities so widely separated as Lisbon and Naples, Cracow, Upsala and Aberdeen.

[Note. This essay is drawn mainly from The Universities of Europe, 2 vols., by Hastings Rashdall, 1896. Cf. Laurie's Rise and Constitution of Universities.

Bologna was less prominent than Padua in the revival. of Greek studies at the beginning of the fifteenth century. And, speaking generally, the ideal of pure scholarship, as distinguished from a strictly professional training, arose with great teachers at courts like that of the Gonzaga, rather than at the Italian Universities. See Rev. W. H. Woodward's recently published Vittorino da Feltre and other Humanist Educators.]

AN EXAMINATION OF EPHRAEM SYRUS' HISTORICO-POETICAL NARRATIVE OF THE EVENTS WHICH ACCOMPANIED AND FOLLOWED THE PREACHING OF JONAH IN NINEVEH, AND ALSO AN EXAMINATION OF THE OTHER EVENTS WHICH PRECEDED IT. By J. BIRKBECK NEVINS, M.D., LOND.,

EX-PRESIDENT.

SYLLABUS.-Origin of the following Paper-Discovery in Syria, about A.D. 1715, of an Historical Narrative Sermon, in Syriac Poetry, by Ephraem Syrus about A.D. 340-Question: What saved Jonah from being at once killed by the Ninevites ?-Answer: An accompanying earthquake which terrified and deterred them - Events during his Preaching-His trial by the King-Results-Jonah intreated by the Ninevites-His refusal at first to listen, but eventual compliance, and cessation of the earthquake—Jonah escorted home from Nineveh in triumphal procession-The Ninevites desire to enter his city with him-Jonah's excuses - Ninevites horrified by what they did see there, and their return home-Jonah's subsequent life in exile-Is still held in high honour in Syria, and his tomb still an object of pilgrimage-Ephraem Syrus-His life and character-His Poetical Sermons and Hymns still in use in Syria and its neighbourhood-Metrical Sermons in use in India at the present time-Examination of the narrative of Jonah and the Whale, and of the Gourd, from the point of view of a naturalist and a physiologist.

THE origin of the following paper was an advertisement in a second-hand book catalogue of The Repentance of Nineveh, a Metrical Sermon in Syriac, by Ephraem Syrus, about A.D. 340, translated into English by the Rev. Dr. Burgess, an accomplished Syrian scholar, 1853.

The work proved, on careful perusal, to be of great interest, and to contain much matter of an historical character little known, if not entirely unknown at the present time, and entirely absent from the Biblical Book of Jonah; and also throwing such light upon the period itself, and the character and surroundings of Jonah, that it appeared to be well deserving of notice and discussion as a professedly historical work by a "literary" society, such as the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, and hence its present appearance.

THE SPECIAL FEATURES OF NOVELTY ABOUT ITS CONTENTS.

The incidents throughout the whole narrative turn upon a great earthquake that commenced at the same time as Jonah's entry into Nineveh, and continued throughout the forty days of his preaching; that this event was so well known at the date when Ephraem was preaching that he makes no attempt to prove it, but alludes to it throughout in the same simple matter-of-fact way in which a modern writer would say, "At the time of the earthquake in Lisbon so-and-so occurred;" that this earthquake so alarmed the Ninevites that they connected it with Jonah's denunciations, and so far impressed them with a dread of his power that it saved him from being lynched by mob violence, or put to death judicially as an enemy to the community; that when the earthquake ceased, and the city was at last delivered, the king and the community did not know how to bestow honour enough upon Jonah for his final intercession, and that he was escorted back to his home with royal triumph, but that his own people heaped such mockery upon him as an ignorant or false soothsayer or prophet that he left Judea, and lived in exile for the remainder of his life, in order to avoid their scoffings. The absence of any allusion what

ever to such an event in the Book of Jonah itself is striking, and the first suggestion of it to an ordinary reader is so startling, that the question naturally arises, on hearing of it as a professedly historical event-“ What warrant have we for accepting this narrative and describing it as history, and not simply as a poetical creation, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, or Ossian's Poems?"

The answer is now to be given.

In the first place, the narrative, i.e., Ephraem's sermon, was delivered above 1,500 years since, and in the country or neighbourhood where the events are alleged to have happened. Many events of very great importance are forgotten in that long interval of time, and may easily be unknown in Europe in 1897, though well known in Palestine in 340. The alleged events occurred also in the East, and in a region so entirely forgotten or neglected in the West, that the very existence of such a city as Nineveh itself was almost unknown to western Christendom until about half a century ago (1839),* except through the Book of Jonah itself, which is a very short narrative of three or four pages only, and without beginning and without ending. Such events are much longer remembered in the changeless East than in the ever-changing West; and it is not inherently improbable that such an event as an exceptionally great earthquake should be long remembered in the eastern region where it occurred. There is also no more reason for discrediting the narrative of such an event when made by a competent relator like Ephraem, than for rejecting any of the marvels of science that we are now familiar with, such as the flames of hydrogen in the sun said to rise hundreds if not thousands of miles high in a few seconds of time, or the recession of Sirius at

* When Layard published his startling discoveries in Nineveh, which took all the world by surprise.