No. i216.J 473 



These are the durable springs from which sre to flow accomplished 

 scholars, moulded to enter on a professional career, to swell the in- 

 creasing tide of American learning and elegant composition, to be 

 enrolled as useful masters of those numerous subordinate schools, that 

 shine as lesser lights in the literary firmament, or mingle with the 

 masses whom they will enlighten and elevate. 



For every seminary of knowledge, whether it bases or decks the 

 pinnacle of the educational pyramid, forms a link in the vast chain 

 of intercommunication, which will give an impulse to be felt in all 

 the ramifications of civil society. 



If these classic grounds have heretofore been too slow and reluc- 

 tant to colonize modern improvements within their enclosures, it is 

 to be hoped, that the dread of falling in the arrear of the mighty 

 and rapid revolutions of all circulating science, or being crushed be- 

 neath the weight of competition, will ere long rouse them to shake 

 off the incubus, which may, in some measure, have paralysed their 

 efforts, and come forth free from the fetters that bind many of their 

 European models. 



Indeed, it is a matter of congratulation for the scholar and philo- 

 sophic statesman to see a majority of our public institutions of learn- 

 ing in the full tide of prosperity. 



And long may the stream of private and State bounty continue to 

 invigorate and fertilise their borders. 



But it must be a source of poignant grief and deep humiliation for 

 a son of the empire State to see a disposition manifested in the halls 

 of legislation, or elsewhere, to stint their growth by diverting the 

 nourishment from its wonted channels. 



Let us not carry our veneration for these institutions at the ex- 

 pense of that just admiration which is due to other edifices, which 

 have been often attacked with petulance and no scrupulosity for the 

 weapons which sophistry and declamation too often and too success- 

 fully wield. 



Among the foremost of these may be mentioned, the military 

 academy at West Point, environed by nature's great bulwarks, com- 

 manding a landscape full of beauty and grandeur, but more exalted 

 for a school, which has fostered talents that have adorned every de- 



