society, and who may justly be taken as fair samples of its feelings
and talents. It is formation of character that I regard as one of
the greatest of the many great ends of a university system; and if
for this reason alone, I should advise you to send your future
country squire to college. Where else will he be able to meet with
so great a number of those of his own class, with whom he will have
to mix in the after changes of life, and for whose feelings and tone
a college-course will give him the proper key-note? Where else can he
learn so quickly in three years, what other men will perhaps be
striving for through life, without attaining, - that self-reliance
which will enable him to mix at ease in any society, and to feel the
equal of its members? And, besides all this, - and each of these
points in the education of a young man is, to my mind, a strong one, -
where else could he be more completely 'under tutors and governors,'
and more thoroughly under ~surveillance~, than in a place where
college-laws are no respecters of persons, and seek to keep the wild
blood of youth within its due bounds? There is something in the very
atmosphere of a university that seems to engender refined thoughts
and noble feelings; and lamentable indeed must be the state of any
young man who can pass through the three years of his college
residence, and bring away no higher aims, no worthier purposes, no
better thoughts, from all the holy associations which have been
crowded around him. Such advantages as these are not to be regarded
with indifference; and though they come in secondary ways, and
possess the mind almost imperceptibly, yet they are of primary
importance in the formation of character, and may mould it into the
more perfect man. And as long as I had the power, I would no more
think of depriving a child of mine of such good means towards a good
end, than I would of keeping him from any thing else that was likely
to improve his mind or affect his heart."