to run. He had rooms in college and lived in unexampled style, having
actually a carpet on his floor and superior furniture, also a good
collection of books, chiefly standard English poets. He at once took me
in hand and gave me a character.

Princeton College was entirely in the hands of the strictest of "Old
School" Presbyterian theologians. Piety and mathematics rated
extravagantly high in the course. The latter study was literally
reckoned in the grades as being of more account than all the rest
collectively. Thus, as eventually happened to me, a student might excel
in Latin, English, and Natural Philosophy--in fact, in almost everything,
good conduct included--and yet be the last in the class if he neglected
mathematics. There was no teaching of French, because, as was naively
said, students might read the irreligious works extant in that language,
and of course no other modern language; as for German, one would as soon
have proposed to raise the devil there as a class in it. If there had
been an optional course, as at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by which German
was accepted in lieu of mathematics, I should probably have taken the
first honour, instead of the last. And yet, with a little more Latin, I
was really qualified, on the day when I matriculated at Princeton, to
have passed for a Doctor of Philosophy in Heidelberg, as I subsequently
accurately ascertained.

There were three or four men of great ability in the Faculty of the
University. One of these was Professor Joseph Henry, in those days the
first natural philosopher and lecturer on science in America. I had the
fortune in time to become quite a special _protege_ of his. Another was
Professor James Alexander, who taught Latin, rhetoric, and mental
philosophy. He was so clear-headed and liberally learned, that I always
felt sure that he must at heart have been far beyond the bounds of Old
School theology, but he had an iron Roman-like sternness of glance which
quite suited a Covenanter. The most remarkable of all was Albert Dodd,
Professor of Mathematics and Lecturer on Architecture. This man was a
genius of such a high order, that had it not been for the false position
in which he was placed, he would have given to the world great works. The
false position was this: he was the chief pulpit orator of the old
school, and had made war on the Transcendentalist movement in an able
article in the _Princeton Review_ (which, by the way, was useful i