illustrated the honors of literature more conspicuously by the pomps
with which it invested the ministers and machinery of education, than
any entire university of the continent.

What is a university almost everywhere else? It announces little more,
as respects the academic buildings, than that here is to be found the
place of rendezvous--the exchange, as it were, or, under a different
figure, the _palestra_ of the various parties connected with the
prosecution of liberal studies. This is their "House of Call," their
general place of muster and parade. Here it is that the professors and
the students converge, with the certainty of meeting each other. Here,
in short, are the lecture-rooms in all the faculties. Well: thus far we
see an arrangement of convenience--that is, of convenience for one of
the parties, namely, the professors. To them it spares the disagreeable
circumstances connected with a private reception of their students at
their own rooms. But to the students it is a pure matter of
indifference. In all this there is certainly no service done to the
cause of good learning, which merits a state sanction, or the aid of
national funds. Next, however, comes an academic library, sometimes a
good one; and here commences a real use in giving a national station to
such institutions, because their durable and monumental existence,
liable to no flux or decay from individual caprice, or accidents of
life, and their authentic station, as expressions of the national
grandeur, point them out to the bequests of patriotic citizens. They
fall also under the benefit of another principle--the conservative
feeling of amateurship. Several great collections have been bequeathed
to the British Museum, for instance--not chiefly _as_ a national
institution, and under feelings of nationality, but because, being
such, it was also permanent; and thus the painful labors of collecting
were guaranteed from perishing. Independently of all this, I, for my