nsion of the public
mind and progress of society, which necessarily take place in a
country favored with advantages of elementary instruction and general
information, will always be creating just demands upon the higher
seats of learning, which will task all their energies, and bring into
requisition all their resources. The mass of the community, becoming
more enlightened, will call for proportionally higher qualifications
in those who are sent out to preside over the public interests, and
their progress in influence will produce a yet more powerful reaction.
But to meet these demands amidst the conflicting sectional interests
and fluctuations of public feeling, which are usually attendant upon a
state of freedom, to discriminate rightly between the diverse systems
of instruction and discipline, which are set forth with such frequency
and such earnestness of commendation; to keep so near the public
sentiment as not to lose the confidence of the community, and yet not
to follow it so implicitly as to sacrifice the more desirable good of
self-approbation; this is a labor which can be estimated by those only
who have had the trial of sustaining it. Institutions that have become
venerable by age, powerful in resources and patronage, may go forward
to introduce, not only accredited improvements but doubtful changes;
and may bring the systems, which either the wise have devised, or the
popular voice has required, to the test of actual experiment. But
feebler institutions cannot leave the ground of general principles,
which, however it may be safer and ultimately more subservient to
their true interests, cannot always be easily ascertained, and
frequently fails of being approved amidst the varying circumstances,
relations, and interests of society.

"The principle which has generally obtained in regard to the colleges
of this country, of making them merely introductory to a professional
education, is one too important in its connections and results to be
hastily relinquished. The correspondence which usually exists between
the genius of civil governments, and the arrangement of literary
institutions, has been very happily exemplified in our system of
schools, rising in regular gradation from the primary to the
professional, and wisely accommodated to the public convenience and
necessity. This system, whatever defects may have existed in some of
its practical operations, has been found, on the whole, admirably
suited to the c