A soger may make his testament quolibet modo in France:  he may write it on the sand, the dust as his paper, his sword he may make his pen and his blood his ink, according to Justin.  T. Institut.[281] de Testam.  Militis.

    [281] Justinian, Inst., 2.  II.

Seweral tymes they have bein 3 moneth wtout a drop of rain in France, in which cases they make a great deall of Processions to obtain rain, tho they never do anything.

Some winters it freezes so hard wt us (as Mr. James [P.  Ramsay][282] is Author, to wit, that winter after the visitation in 1646 when the Colledge was translated to Lighgow),[283] that in a basin of water after ye have lift your hand out of the water ere ye dip it again it was al covered wt a thin striphen[284] ice, and the 3d, 4t, etc. tymes.

    [282] Interlined.  It appears to be a correction.  Patrick Ramsay was
        ‘laureated’ in 1646.

    [283] The plague in Edinburgh, 1645-6, obliged the University to
        remove to Linlithgow for a few months.—­Waldie’s History of
        Linlithgow.

    [284] Striffan, film.

On the 17 of November opened the Law University at Poictiers, at present the most famous and renouned in France, usually consisting of above tuo 100 scholers, some coming to it from Navarre in the very skirts of Spain, sewerals from Tholouse, Bordeaux, Angiers, Orleans, Paris, Rouan, yea from Berry it selfe, tho formerly Bourges was more renouned—­their’s almost nothing to be had their now—­and tho in all these places their be Universities.

On its opening Mr. Umeau, our Alex’rs Antagonist, and who that year explained of the D.,[285] belonging ad nuptias, made a harangue of wery neit Latin, which is the property of this University.  His text was out of the 4’t book of the C.T.[286] 5 de condictio Indeb. l., penultima, whence he took occasion to discourse of the Discord amongs the Jurise.[287] raising 2 quoest. 1’o, utrum recentiores sunt proeferendi antiquioribus:  2’do, utrum juniores natu maioribus, wheir he ran out on the advantage of youth:  Quot video Juvenes candidatos tot mihi videor videre aequissimos Servios, sublimissimos Papinianos gravissimos Ulpianos, et disertissimos Cicerones:  quod plura[288] stellae indubio[289] sunt jae magnitudines in Sphaera nostra Literaria.

    [285] Digest.

    [286] Code, title.

    [287] Jurisconsults.

    [288] Query, plures.

    [289] Query, sindubio.

The Rector of the University was their, the Mair, the Eschewines, the President of the Palais, the University of the Physicians, wt a great heap of al orders, especially Jesuits.

We might easily discover that basenese we are so subiect to in detracting from what al others do’es but ourselves in that groundless censur of many things in this harangue which our Alex’r had wt another of his partizans.