174 EEVIEWS— THE COEESE OE COLLEGIATE EDUCATION. 



first rear."* At Tale Mr. Bristed carried off three out of the four 

 classical prizes of his four years' course ; graduated ; devoted still 

 another year at New Haven to College study ; and then, dissatisfied 

 -with his acquirements, and wishiug " to make himself a scholar," 

 he resolved to spend some time at a European University. By chance 

 Cambridge, in old England, became his foreign Alma Alater, and 

 there the Yale graduate found he had the whole process to go over 

 again ; won, only with hard labor, and with a corresponding pride, a 

 foundation Scholarship in Trinity College ; and at length after five 

 years of study there, learned to look with a philosophic sense of justice 

 on his owu coming out in the Tripos, only "second in the second 

 class." On this subject he concludes by saying that "to take, at 

 Cambridge, even a good Second in Classics, one must, as a general 

 rule, have read a large quantity, and be able to display a considerable 

 knowledge of the Ancient languages. No one knows how hard a first 

 class is to obtain, unless he has either just got it, or just missed it."t- 

 And this native American, returning to his own country, and writing 

 for behalf of his countrymen, says : " were I to be questioned by an 

 educated foreigner, an Englishman or Frenchman, German, Hol- 

 lander, or Dane, upon the standard of Scholarship in our Colleges and 

 Univerisities, I should be obliged to answer, not having the fear ot 

 King Public before my eyes, that it was exceedingly low, and that 

 not merely according to his idea, but according to the idea of a boy 

 fitted at a good school in New York. When I went up to Yale 

 College in 1835, the very first thing that struck me was the classical 

 deficiency of the greater part of the Students and some of the in- 

 structors. Yale is the largest College in our country, and one 

 of the two most distinguished. The result of my inquiries has not 

 led me to believe that Harvard is any better oft'. That the other 

 Colleges throughout the country, many of which derive their in- 

 structors from these two New England Colleges, are if anything in at 

 worse state, may be easily inferred." J 



Columbia College, N. Y., as we have already seen, is excepted, 

 to some extent from this sweeping censure ; and indeed the State of 

 New York is the only one which has had the courage to attempt 

 centralization. All its Colleges are now embraced by a central organi- 

 zation, consisting of a Board of B-egents,§ or Senate, presided over by a 



* Five years in an English University, p. 6. 

 f Ibid., p. 283. 

 jlbid., p. p. 374, 377. 



§ The term is by no means an American novelty, but pertains to the nomencla- 

 ture of the ancient European Universities, and we should be glad to see it adopted 



