lis, and thus to bring a matter of private and iniquitous dispute
before the forum of the public, after having vainly sought redress in
private. My main object was of course to vindicate and defend my
character, my professional honor and my most sacred rights as a rational
man and as a public educator, against the invasions of narrow-minded and
unjust aggressors, whose machinations have for several years been busily
at work in subverting what other men have reared before them, in
retarding and impeding what the intelligence of our age and country is
eager to accelerate and to promote. The much agitated question of
University reform and of the liberty of academic instruction, which of
late years has engaged the attention of some of the best intellects on
both sides of the Atlantic, and which within a month past has again
occupied the public mind, and even called forth legislative intervention
may, however, perhaps likewise receive some additional light from the
following pages, which I now submit, not from any motive of vanity, or
from the expectation of self-aggrandisement or of histrionic applause;
but from a sense of duty to the cause of liberal culture and of sound
morality, to which I have devoted many a year of laborious effort and of
earnest thought.

NEW-YORK UNIVERSITY, } G. J. A.
_June_, 1854. }

LETTER I.

New-York University, Sept. 10th, 1853.

Rev. Isaac Ferris, D. D.

Dear Sir,--I deem it a duty of justice towards myself, as well as to the
honor of the Institution of which I am an officer and yourself the
newly-elected head, to bring to your consideration a few circumstances
from the history of our incidental intercourse during the past winter,
which at the time of occurrence, struck me with painful surprise, and
which I cannot suffer to pass without my most earnest protestations.

1st, During the earlier part of the winter, in passing out of my
lecture-room one morning, I met you in the hall of the University with a
pale face, asking me in the most uncalled-for and singular manner the
strange question:--"_Are you my superior?_"--The reply, which I ought to
have written on the spot to such an enquiry, I would now make by saying,
that such an idea never occurred to me, and that, as I had never seen
any thing of your presence in the actual performance of duty in the
University at the tim