340 Report on a Course of Liberal Education. 



purpose of perpetuating abuses, and that the college is 



much the same as it was at the time of its foundation, are 



wholly gratuitous. The changes in the country, during the 



last century, have not been greater than the changes in the 



college. These remarks have been limited to Yale College, 



as its history is here best known ; no doubt, other colleges 



alluded to in the above quotations, might defend themselves 



with equal success* 



* * * * * * 



In a report, in which so many interests of the college are 

 brought into view, and in which it is deemed proper that 

 some of its internal regulations should be stated and defend- 

 ed, it may be justly expected by the committee, that some 

 notice should be taken of certain statements lately made re- 

 specting all our colleges by a writer, who from his situation 

 mio-ht be believed fully acquainted with the real state of 

 facts, and to have w^eighcd with some care the import of 

 his declarations. Ordinary mistakes or misrepresentations 

 should pass unheeded ; but, in the present instance, silence 

 might be interpreted as an admission, that charges of very 

 grave import have been correctly |)rcferred. This is the 

 apology, if any is necessary, for making two of these charges 

 the subject of remark. 



.According to this writer, " the public examinations at most 

 of our places of education, except West Point, have been 

 miseral)le farces, which have imposed on nobody ; not even 

 on the students subjected to them." " It is idle," he says, 

 to think of hurrying, in a single day^ through the examina- 

 tion of sixty young men in the studies of a year," &c. Though 

 the gentlemen of the committee may be aware how little ap- 

 plicable this censure is to the examinations of this college, yet 

 it may not be improper to state with some particularity, how 

 these examinations are in fact conducted. If they are really 

 farces, it is time that a reform should commence. Each of 

 our classes is examined twice a year. At the close of the 

 vear, the three lower classes are examined in the studies of 

 the year, each of them in two divisions. Somewhat more 

 than a day is assigned to each class ; and as each class is ex- 

 amined in two divisions, the time is the same as if each class 

 was examined in a body about two days and a half. At the 

 close of the month of April of each year, the three lower 

 classes are examined in all their studies from the time of 

 their admission to college. The time is extended ; in other 



