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exist, to what extent they ought to be endowed, in what man- 

 ner they should be conducted, and how they may be support- 

 ed. I regard them as occupying a rank in the educational 

 scale, certainly not above the German gymnasia, though, 

 with the introduction of improvements in subjects and me- 

 thods, they may, undoubtedly, maintain an equal elevation, 

 and answer a similar purpose. Great mischief has been done 

 by allowing it to be supposed that the colleger was to traverse 

 the curriculum and come out a perfect scholar. So far is this 

 from the fact, that nearly every college graduate in the land, 

 who is now a scholar, will bear willing testimony, that not 

 even the true fundamentals of his scholarship were laid there, 

 but that he constructed them afterwards with his own hand. 

 What a college ought to be, and is, or will be, when properly 

 conducted^ is this, and nothing more: A place where a young 

 gentleman may be inducted into a thorough acquaintance 

 with the elements of the sciences and of learning generally, 

 so that entering it at fourteen, he may leave it at sixteen, 

 eighteen or twenty, according as his previous preparation and 

 his actual progress may have been, amply fitted for many of 

 the employments of active life, or prepared to work out his 

 own advancement in knowledge on the foundation already 

 laid, or to enter with advantage on professional studies, or, 

 finally, to join a university, properly so called, and, with the 

 aids there afforded, make himself master of the deepest secrets 

 which science or philosophy has to unfold. 



In this view of the business of college instruction, it must 

 be evident that Ave have two kinds of schools which now in- 

 terfere injuriously with each other. I mean academies and 

 colleges ; and. I am serious when I say, that a just equality 

 requires that we shall call the better order of our academies, 

 colleges, or that our colleges should be called academies. It 

 is perfectly well known, for example, that no college in the 

 State can turn out scholars more thoroughly or more exten- 

 sively instructed, than the Albany academy is prepared to do. 

 And in passing, I cannot forbear to urge on those who have 

 charge of this institution, that, in justice to it and to this city, 

 they wUl not suffer another year to pass without an effort to 



