it is divided into five departments--collegiate, law,
medical, theological, and scientific--affording education to 652
students, of whom one half are undergraduates. There are forty-five
instructors, all men of unquestionable attainments, and capable of
leading the students up to the highest steps of every branch of
knowledge; the necessary expenses of a student are about 45l. a year;
the fee for a master of arts, including the diploma, is 1l. sterling.

Meritorious students, whose circumstances require it, are allowed, at
the discretion of the Faculty, to be absent for thirteen weeks,
including the winter vacation, for the purpose of teaching schools.
Parents who think their sons unable to take care of their own money, may
send it to a patron duly appointed by the college, who will then pay all
bills and keep the accounts, receiving, as compensation two and a half
per cent. I think the expenses of this establishment will astonish those
who have had to "pay the piper" for a smart young man at Oxford, as much
as the said young man would have been astonished, had his allowance,
while there, been paid into the hands of some prudent and trusty
patron. Tandems and tin horns would have been rather at a discount--_cum
pluribus aliis_.

The college has a look of antiquity, which is particularly pleasant in a
land where almost everything is spick-and-span new; but the rooms I
thought low and stuffy, and the walls and passages had a neglected
plaster-broken appearance. There are some very fine old trees in the
green, which, throwing their shade over the time-worn building, help to
give it a venerable appearance. A new school of science has just been
built by the liberality of Mr. Lawrence,[AL] late Minister of the United
States in this country; and I may add that the wealth and prosperity of
the college are almost entirely due to private liberality.

As the phonetic system of education has been made a subject of so much
discussion in the United States, I make no apology for inserting the
following lengthy observations thereon. A joint committee on education,
appointed to inquire into its merits by the Senate, in 1851, reported
that there was evidence tending to show--"That it will enable the pupil
to learn to read phonetically in one-tenth of the time ordinarily
employed. That it will enable the learner to read the common type in
one-fourth of the time necessary according to the usual mode of
instruction. That its acquisition l