dormitory system--not at once nor in all the fullness of a system. The
colleges were at first little more than schools. The scholars boarded
with the professors: there were no funds for the erection of separate
buildings. But soon we see the evidences of a persistent effort to
make each college an embryonic Oxford or Cambridge. Harvard, Yale and
Princeton before completing the first half century of existence were
committed to the dormitory system. Other colleges have followed the
example thus set. The exceptions are too few to need enumeration.

The mildest judgment that can be passed upon the system is that it has
cost us dear. Were all the figures accurately ascertained and summed
up, were we able to see at a glance all the money that has been
expended for land and brick and mortar by the hundreds of colleges
between Maine and California, even such an aggregate, startling enough
in itself, would fail to reveal the whole truth. We should have to
go behind the figures--to consider what might have been effected by a
more judicious investment of those millions--how many professorships
might have been permanently established, how many small colleges, now
dragging out a sickly existence, too poor to live, too good to die,
might have become vigorous branches in the tree of knowledge. What
have we in return for the outlay? A series of structures concerning
which the most ardent friend of the system cannot but admit that
they are inelegant, uninspiring and unpractical. Some of the newer
dormitories at Harvard and Yale, it is true, are decided improvements.
They are well built and supplied with many conveniences that will
serve to make student life less heathenish. But they can scarcely be
called beautiful, and they certainly are not inspiring. The heart of
the student or the visitor at Oxford swells within him at the sight of
the grand architecture, the brilliant windows, the velvet turf. It is
pardonable in us to wish for ourselves a like refining beauty. But