s not the criterion by which
it is judged. All that such a foundation can be expected
to do is to render the advantages of learning
as accessible as possible, upon reasonable terms, that
genius, not wealth alone, may be able to avail itself of
its advantages. If the present sum be too high, let its
reduction be considered with a view to any practicable
change. The pecuniary resources of the collegian it
becomes no part of the duty of the university to control,
beyond the demands necessary for the main object
of instruction. As the circumstances of parents vary,
so will the pecuniary allowance made to their offspring.
It would be a task neither practicable nor justifiable
for the university to regulate the outlay of the collegian,
or, in fact, become the paymaster of his menus plaisirs.
Only let such a task be imagined in its enormity of
control, from the son of the nobleman with an allowance
of a thousand a year to one of a hundred and
fifty pounds. It is not in the college, but prior to the
arrival there of the youth, that he should be instructed
in the views his relations have in sending him, and be
taught that he must not ape the outlay and show of
those who have larger means. If a youth orders a
dozen coats within a time for which one only would
be found adequate, I do not see what his college has
to do with it. Youths entering the navy and army
are left in a much more extended field of temptation.
No time-hallowed walls shelter them. No salutary
college rules remind them of their moral duties, daily
and almost hourly. They go up and down the world
under their own guardianship, exposed to every sinister
influence, and with inclinations only restrained by their
own monitorship. The college discipline, even if it
extend not beyond college duties, is a perpetual
remembrancer of the high moral end for which the student is
placed within its precincts. His only allurement to
extravagance is the desire of vying with those who make
a greater display than himself, or else it arises from,
if possible, a less defensible motive, namely, that of
becoming himself an object of emulation to others. It
is not the duty of the college authorities to compensate
by their watchfulness the effects of a weak understanding,
or that lax principle, or the want of self-command,
of which the neglect of the parent or guardian has
been the cause. If the freshman is destitute of
self-dependence and self-restraint he must suffer from
the c