r, James Robertson, famous in the annals of
his Hebrew-loving family.

With an average attendance of forty young men, mostly residing under his
own roof, this Academy would have furnished abundant occupation to any
ordinary teacher; and although usually relieved of elementary drudgery
by his assistant, the main burden of instruction fell on Doddridge
himself. He taught algebra, geometry, natural philosophy, geography,
logic, and metaphysics. He prelected on the Greek and Latin classics,
and at morning worship the Bible was read in Hebrew. Such of his pupils
as desired it were initiated in French; and besides an extensive course
of Jewish Antiquities and Church History, they were carried through a
history of philosophy on the basis of Buddaeus. To all of which must be
added the main staple of the curriculum, a series of two hundred and
fifty theological lectures, arranged, like Stapfer's, on the
demonstrative principle, and each proposition following its predecessor
with a sort of mathematical precision. Enormous as was the labor of
preparing so many systems, and arranging anew materials so multifarious,
it was still a labor of love. A clear and easy apprehension enabled him
to amass knowledge with a rapidity which few have ever rivalled, and a
constitutional orderliness of mind rendered him perpetual master of all
his acquisitions; and, like most _millionaires_ in the world of
knowledge, his avidity of acquirement was accompanied by an equal
delight in imparting his treasures. When the essential ingredients of
his course were completed, he relieved his memory of its redundant
stores, by giving lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres, on the
microscope, and on the anatomy of the human frame; and there is one
feature of his method which we would especially commemorate, as we fear
that it still remains an original without a copy. Sometimes he conducted
the students into the library, and gave a lecture on its contents. Going
over it case by case, and row by row, he pointed out the most important
authors, and indicated their characteristic excellences, and fixed the
mental association by striking or amusing anecdotes. Would not such
bibliographical lectures be a boon to all our students? To them a large
library is often a labyrinth without a clue--a mighty maze--a dusty
chaos. And might not the learned keepers of our great collections give
lectures which would at once be entertaining and edifying on those
rarities, printed a