AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 101 



Gi'otius, and the physician, Boerhaave, were among the professors 

 and scholars, and Goldsmith and Evelyn, and othel- distinguished 

 Englishmen studied there. It is divided into four Departments : 

 Law, Theology, Medicine, and Philosophy, and has twenty Pro- 

 fessors. It is an example of a University without buildings except 

 for Museums and Lecture Rooms, its Professors living in private 

 houses, and its Students in lodgings. It has an observatory, an 

 anatomical theatre, and a musewm, a botanic garden, a chemical 

 laboratory, and a natural history museum, founded on the basis of 

 the products of Japan. 



United States. 

 Many distinct movements have been made in various parts of 

 the United States towards the establishment of an American Uni- 

 versity. I will not pretend to enumerate them. While there is, 

 of course, considerable diversity of opinion as to what such an 

 institution should be, — whether the National Government should 

 be invoked, the State Government, or private munificence, or 

 whether it should be self-supporting — and endless modifications 

 of these; the want is admitted, of an institution, supplementary 

 to our colleges, where young men can be carried onward beyond 

 a college course in literature and science, where our young mer- 

 chants, and mechanics, and teachers may find incentives and means 

 of progress — a great University of the arts and sciences, in wliich 

 the practical man may meet on equal terms with the scholar. 

 Whether it shall give professional education like the institutions 

 of the same name in the old world is a matter not organic; the 

 great field must be, that unoccupied by our colleges, and it must 

 be tilled to suit American soil and climate. The circumstances 

 of society here are peculiar, and the organization must be adapted 

 to them. The object is not to supersede existing institutions, but 

 to establish one supplementary to them. The number of ^oung 

 men now sent abroad to attend courses of chemistry, mineralogy 

 and geology, mining and metallurgy, to study civil engine ering, 

 to perfect their knowledge of ancient and modern laiigu;iges, 

 would of themselves make a respectable number of pupils iov a 

 University. 



