Five Years at an English University. By Charles Astor Bristed [pp. 294-311]

lFive Years in an English University.
If all the colleges of New England, instead of being scattered
over a vast extent of territory, each perfectly independent of
the other, each exercising the highest academic powers, were
gathered into a single town, and while still forming distinct
societies, each with its own endowments for the support of
tutors and students, and governed by its own laws, but collectively constituting the University, there would then be some
fairness in the kind of comparison which Mr. Bristed institutes.
That our American colleges labour under great defects, no
intelligent person will deny; at the same time, nothing can be
more unfair and unjust than to decry them as worthless
because they do not yield the same fruit as an English university. Viewing them from Mr. Bristed's stand-point, the
inquiry as to the relative value of the American and English
colleges, if properly conducted, would involve the question, are
the latter as much superior to the former in their actual educational facilities as they are in wealth and other external advantages? Is Trinity College, with its princely income, its numerous fellowships and scholarships, doing proportionately as much
in the work of training youth to cultivate literature, to enlarge
the domain of science, to enter public or professional life, as
Yale or Princeton in their comparative poverty, with their limited resources? We fancy that all who are competent to form
a judgment upon the subject, and are sufficiently free from prejudice, will give to these questions one and the same answer.
The great defect, according to Mr. Bristed, of the method of
education prevalent in our American Colleges, is the want of
thoroughness, while the presence of this quality in the English
system gives it its peculiar character and value. We are free
to confess that there is too much ground for this charge against
our educational institutions generally. Our students are too
often hurried through the elementary studies preparatory to a
collegiate course, and the momentum thus acquired in the
grammar-school or the academy is rarely lost after they have
entered college. Considering the imperfect preparation of
many students at their entrance into college, the immaturity of
others whose previous training may have been thorough enough,
and especially the brief period during which they reside in college, the question deserves at least to be pondered, whether the
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