itutions are established. Liberal and wealthy individuals contribute
funds, and the legislatures of the States also lend assistance, so that
every State in this Nation has from one to twenty such endowed
institutions, supplied with buildings, apparatus, a library, and a
faculty of learned men to carry forward a superior course of
instruction. And the use of all these advantages is secured, in many
cases, at an expense, no greater than is required to send a boy to a
common school and pay his board there. No private school could offer
these advantages, without charging such a sum, as would forbid all but
the rich from securing its benefits. By furnishing such superior
advantages, on low terms, multitudes are properly educated, who would
otherwise remain in ignorance; and thus the professions are supplied,
by men properly qualified for them.

Were there no such institutions, and no regular and appropriate course
of study demanded for admission to the bar, the pulpit, and to medical
practice, the education of most professional men would be desultory,
imperfect, and deficient. Parents and children would regulate the course
of study according to their own crude notions; and, instead of having
institutions which agree in carrying on a similar course of study, each
school would have its own peculiar system, and compete and conflict with
every other. Meantime, the public would have no means of deciding which
was best, nor any opportunity for learning when a professional man was
properly qualified for his duties. But as it is, the diploma of a
college, and the license of an appointed body of judges, must both be
secured, before a young man feels that he has entered the most promising
path to success in his profession.

Our Country, then, is most abundantly supplied with endowed
institutions, which secure a liberal education, on such low terms as
make them accessible to all classes, and in which the interests of
education are watched over, sustained, and made permanent, by an
appropriate board of trustees.

But are not the most responsible of all duties committed to the charge
of woman? Is it not her profession to take care of mind, body, and soul?
and that, too, at the most critical of all periods of existence? And is
it not as much a matter of public concern, that she should be properly
qualified for her duties, as that ministers, lawyers, and physicians,
should be prepared for theirs? And is it not as important, to endow
ins