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University of Utrecht, during the four years I resided there, was to me unknown. The students, who attend to the different branches of science, repair all to their own respective lecture-rooms, and have little or no knowledge of any others. And, as there are several professors, even of the same science, each of them has a distinct number of students, who seldom associate familiarly with those who attend a different professor. It was, therefore, no easy matter to ascertain the whole number, and impossible to become familiarly acquainted with all."

Such a plan of conducting the education of youth, is decidedly preferable, — in the judgment of the writer at least, — to that which has obtained at many of the seats of science in this country. For a number of students to reside together in the same building, who are come from various parts; whose domestic education has been, in many respects, widely different; who, during their collegiate course, are thus put, in a measure, out of the reach of the influence of public opinion upon them as individuals; who are swayed in their conduct, rather by that ardour of feeling peculiar to their age, than by the sober dictates of reason, or sound principle — is not a plan the best calculated, it would seem, to promote either their moral or intellectual improvement.

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And, most assuredly, the money expended in the erection of a building of a proper size and convenience, would, if judiciously invested, yield much for the support of a competent number of able professors, or for providing other necessary helps to the acquisition of learning. Some of the colleges that furnish rooms and commons for their students, certainly rank high as literary institutions, and their celebrity is deserved. They have supplied the pulpit, the legislative hall, the highest offices of state, with men of great worth and distinction, whose names are, and will be on the page of history with imperishable renown; and it is probable that the established economy referred to was, in their infancy, indispensable to their prosperity. But still, every candid person must admit, that it is but too frequently attended with mischievous consequences; that it often leads to injurious intimacies among youth — to overt acts of rebellion and folly, which leave a taint of guilt or infamy not easily effaced — to the loss or subversion of the best principles and habits, in which they had been carefully trained up at home, and the salutary impressions of which were plainly to be seen when they first became inhabitants of a college. And how far such evils might be diminished or prevented, by the adoption of another and more liberal economy; one better suited to an age, as different from that of