158 UNIVERSITY LIFE. [VII. and belongs to the Magister Vacarius of 1149, he must have been very old and of little use. The history, however, both of Peter of Blois and of Vacarius, has been carefully worked out by independent writers of authority, and I use them here only as examples. Mere ecclesiastics, such as Simon of Apulia, who was made Bishop of Exeter by King John after having been Dean of York for many years ; and ministers of state, such as Walter of Coutances, William of S. Mere l'Eglise, and perhaps William Longchamp, call for no notice in this connexion ; and I pass on to the much more important point—the literary intercourse and activity promoted by University life. I have already mentioned the two or three foreign schools which were most frequented by English scholars. Paris was the centre of theological learning and general culture, Bologna was the school for lawyers, especially the canon lawyers ; for the civil law, although equally well taught there, did not obtain much favour with Englishmen ,· and besides these, the pupils who either could not afford to go to Paris, or could afford to exhaust all the teaching that the neighbour lands afforded, went to the school of Tours. Tours had the advantage of being locally situated within the dominions of the king of England, and although it did not aspire to the character of a University, as later understood, it had a very ancient and very eminent succession of teachers. John of Salisbury, in the second book of the Metalogicus, sketches the twelve years of his University career; in 1136 he went to Paris and studied at S. Genevieve's under the clarus doctor identified with Abelard, who taught him dialectic, as did also Master Alberic, who succeeded, and Robert of Melun, the English doctor who, after the accession of Henry II, was invited home again and made Bishop of Hereford. He then read for three years, with William of Conches, grammar ; then, with Richard l'Evêque, he attacked