itself having offered but little inducement and no emolument
or honor to the cultivation of the modern languages. In all the
professional services, however, which I have had occasion to render to
the institution of late years, my qualifications and my efficiency could
never have been honestly or honorably questioned. I have prepared my own
text-books, which have found their way into most of the literary and
educational institutions of this continent to some extent into Europe
even. One of them was begun at the very time, when "the indications of a
disordered mind had become more decided," and was completed with
scarcely a day's intermission of my work at the lunatic asylum, where I
subsequently improved my leisure (as far as my shattered health would
permit) by zealously engaging in some preliminary studies for a history
of modern literature.--It is equally needless to expatiate on my
extensive acquaintance, direct and indirect, with academic men and
methods both in the United States and in Europe, where within a few
years past I spent an entire year in the pursuit of literary and
philosophical studies at two of its most prominent Universities.--_To my
morality, both private and social, and to my religion, no one but a
hyper-puristic religionist or a calvinistic tyrant could possibly
object._--The real objection, and the cause of my being unfitted for the
business of instruction must therefore be looked for elsewhere. From
various indications and from several catastrophes in my personal
history, brought about by sectarian jealousy and fanatical intrigue,
from certain significant changes in the faculty of the institution, and
from innumerable efforts to subject me to a creed, or to the social
control of certain religious parties, I should infer that it manifestly
and palpably resided in a mistrust of what is vulgarly termed "the
soundness of my views" on certain questions, never discussed in
respectable literary institutions, and beyond their jurisdiction, or in
other words _in a suspicion of heresy_.--I claim, however, in opposition
to all these pretensions, which I deem an absurdity, my right (which is
_inalienable_ and _imprescriptible_) to my moral and intellectual
culture, commenced under the auspices and fostering care of my Alma
Mater herself (during a former administration) and continued and
perfected by years of serious and earnest effort in America and Europe,
since. _I recognize no sectarian guidance or control