home, after a twelvemonth's absence
from it. Our University, four miles distant, gives me frequent exercise,
and the oftener, as I direct its architecture. Its plan is unique, and
it is becoming an object of curiosity for the traveller. I have lately
had an opportunity of reading a critique on this institution in your
North American Review of January last, having been not without anxiety
to see what that able work would say of us: and I was relieved on
finding in it much coincidence of opinion, and even where criticisms
where indulged, I found they would have been obviated had the
developements of our plan been fuller. But these were restrained by the
character of the paper reviewed, being merely a report of outlines,
not a detailed treatise, and addressed to a legislative body, not to
a learned academy. For example, as an inducement to introduce the
Anglo-Saxon into our plan, it was said that it would reward amply
the few weeks of attention which alone would be requisite for its
attainment; leaving both term and degree under an indefinite expression,
because I know that not much time is necessary to attain it to an useful
degree, sufficient to give such instruction in the etymologies of our
language as may satisfy ordinary students, while more time would be
requisite for those who should propose to attain a critical knowledge
of it. In a letter which I had occasion to write to Mr. Crofts who sent
you, I believe, as well as myself, a copy of his treatise on the English
and German languages, as preliminary to an etymological dictionary he
meditated, I went into explanations with him of an easy process for
simplifying the study of the Anglo-Saxon, and lessening the terrors and
difficulties presented by it's rude alphabet, and unformed orthography.
But this is a subject beyond the bounds of a letter, as it was beyond
the bounds of a report to the legislature. Mr. Crofts died, I believe,
before any progress was made in the work he had projected.

The reviewer expresses doubt, rather than decision, on our placing
military and naval architecture in the department of pure mathematics.
Military architecture embraces fortification and field works, which,
with their bastions, curtains, hornworks, redoubts, &c. are based on a
technical combination of lines and angles. These are adapted to offence
and defence, with and against the effects of bombs, balls, escalades,
he. But lines and angles make the sum of elementary geometry, a bra