AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 79 



It has, also, by its action on the popular will, raised up for itself 

 a competitor in the Naval Academy, which will, in time, vie with 

 the elder institution in its good work. 



The youth of our country, in their impatience for entering life, 

 have, no doubt, diminished too much the period of preparation 

 for it by study, and their parents have, in a degree, conspired 

 with them in their demands for railroad speed in the college 

 course, diminishing, especially in certain portions of the country, 

 the age of matriculation and graduation, and therefore necessarily 

 lowering the grade of collegiate instruction. But, after all, there 

 has been great improvement in these institutions. Minds of high 

 grade, thoroughly trained, are connected with them, and earnest 

 zeal and exalted talent are devoted to their improvement. Our 

 colleges have done well in the past, they will do better in the 

 future. 



In this country our ambition led us at an early day to endeavor 

 to imitate or even rival the Old World institutions, and before 

 the way was fairly open by education, we proceeded to tlie estab- 

 lishment of colleges and universities. We thus followed the 

 examples of the philosophers of Laputa, who, according to Dean 

 Swift, began the erection of their houses at the roof. The colleges, 

 however, it must be admitted, helped to invigorate the schools 

 below them. 



The organization of universities in the early colonial days was 

 like the construction of those enormous hotels in the west, rival- 

 ing the St. Nicholas and Metropolitan of Broadway, while the 

 land was scarcely cleared. But Chicago has grown up to its 

 hotel, and others are required upon even a larger scale. And 

 the country has grown up to its early organization and has passed 

 it. Good Bishop White, of Pennsylvania, used to relate with 

 great pleasure the meetings of the trustees of the college of 

 Philadelphia by the bedside of the venerable Franklin, and the 

 quaint ways which he took to convince them that they wanted an 

 academy where the English branches should be foremost, and not 

 a college for classical instruction. He traced in turn the theory 

 of different parts of wearing apparel, how the rim of the hat, 

 now in its narrowness, a useless appendage, had once been the 



