the wane. Ecclesiastics, of course, will still have to be sent abroad to develop in a purer atmosphere, and will continue to prefer Rome to Louvain; large numbers of them still receive their ordinary training in Spain or at Rome. Still Louvain could boast many nationalities amongst its 1,600 students.
The long struggle between Catholicism and Liberalism in Belgium has had the effect of marking off Louvain amongst its universities as distinctively Catholic. Distinguished by a long tradition of orthodoxy and many illustrious names, the clerical party concentrated themselves upon it, and determined to exclude the liberalising tendencies which had either mastered, or threatened to master, the other universities, Brussels, Ghent, &c. The control is exclusively clerical, both rector and vice-rector being high ecclesiastical dignitaries, and every orthodox family with a care for the orthodox training of its sons is expected to send them to Louvain.
It is a great error to suppose, however, that Louvain is, like the Roman institutions, merely a centre of clerical training; Belgian Catholicism is fallen much too low to realise so ambitious a dream. During the year which I spent there—1893-4—there were not more than fifty clerical students out of the 1,600; ecclesiastical studies were, therefore, working at a dead loss, for the theological staff was numerous and distinguished. The greater part of the students were in law and medicine, though there were also
