ties. Accustomed as we are to the
prevalence of the tutorial system, the use of text-books,--in many parts
of the Union not defining clearly the difference between the terms
University, College, Institute, and Academy, giving the first name often
to institutions having but one faculty, and that at times incomplete,
with no theological, and often no law or medical department, forgetting
that the University should, from its very name, be as universal as
possible in its teachings, comprehending in its list of studies the
combined scientific and literary pursuits of the age,--we are apt to
look upon foreign schools of learning as similar in nature and purpose
to our own, differing not in the quality or specific character of the
teaching, but rather in the scope and extent of the branches taught. Yet
nothing is farther from the truth. The result is, that many a one starts
for Europe full of hope, to seek what he would have found better at
home,--or, when prepared and mature for European travel, is left to
chance or one-sided advice in the choice of a locality in which to
prosecute further studies. Often with only book-knowledge of the
language of the country, accident will lead him to the very university
the least adequate to his purpose.

Having now spent some time in four of the leading German universities,
and contemplating a longer stay for the purpose of visiting others, the
writer has thought that some general remarks might call attention to
points often disregarded, and serve to give some insight into the nature
of the institutions of learning of the country,--rather aiming to
characterize the system of higher education as it now exists than to
give detailed historical notices, including something of student-life,
and the professors,--in fine, such observations as would not be likely
to be made by a general tourist, and such as native writers deem it
unnecessary to make, presupposing a knowledge of the facts in their own
readers.

The German universities are the culminating point of German culture.
They concentrate within themselves the intellectual pith of the country.
Dating their foundation as far back as the fourteenth century, as
Prague, Vienna, and Heidelberg,--or established but of late years in
the nineteenth, as Berlin, Bonn, and Munich,--they attract to themselves
the mental strength of the land, forming a focus from which radiates,
whether in Theology, Science, Literature, or Art, the new world of
thought