Series 1 > Journals of Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, with his observations on public affairs and other memoranda, 1665-1676

SYSTEM OF GRADUATION
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be. Saumurs is a pretty little toune wt fields upon all hands
most pleasant.
I, amongs other things, enquired at Mr. Doull what was their
manner in graduating their students their. He told me it was
wholly the same wt that in other places. They give out Theses
which the students defended, only they had a pretty ceremony
about the close : each of these to be graduat got a laurell
branch, on the leaves wheirof was every mans name engraven in
golden letters. Item, he said that when he reflected on the
attendance that the Regents in Scotland gave to ther classes,
he thought he saw another Egyptiacall bondage, for wt them
they attended only 4 dayes of the weeks, and in thess no
longer than they took account of ther former lesson, and gave
them out a new one, which they send them home to gett.
On a afternoon I was their I made a tour doune throu the
suburbs of the toune to the Convent of Nostre Dame des Ardil-
liers.1 On my return Mr. Doull and Mr. Crightoun demand¬
ing of me wheir I had bein, I freely told: wheirupon they fell to
to scorne me, asking what I went to seek their. I told meerly
to walk. They alleadged that John Ogilvy at Orleans bit to
have told me of the place; that it was the most notorious
part of France for uncleanness, and that women that could not
gett children at home, coming their ware sure to have children.
To speak the truth the place seimed to me wery toun like,
for their came a woman to me and spered whey I all alone.
The night before my parting from Saumur a young
gallant of the toune, to show his skill, showed the wholle
toune some fireworks in a boat on the river, but they ware
wery pittifull, the principall thing we saw being only some
fireballs which they cost up in the air to a considerable hight
som tymes.
Theirs one thing we most not forget in the river. In
our coming doune in sewerall places on the syde of the rivers
bank we saw pleasant little excrescencyes of litle rocks and
craigs, which makes exceidingly to the commendation of the
places. In thes craigs are built in houses, which be the vertue
of Antiperistasis is cold in summer and hot in winter, tho
1 The Church of Notre Dame d’Ardiliers, of the sixteenth century, was
enlarged by Richelieu and Madame de Montespan.