I REGARD, then, the academical institutions of England and Scotland, as things specifically distinct, both in their structure and in their effects. The Universities, here, educate, in proportion to the size and wealth of the two countries, twenty times a larger number than ours in England educate. They educate these persons in a very different way, and for totally different purposes—in reality at least, if not in profession. They diffuse over every part of the kingdom, and over many parts of the neighbouring kingdoms, a mighty population of men, who have received a kind and measure of education which fits them for taking a keen and active management in the affairs of ordinary life. But they seldom send forth men who are so thoroughly accomplished in any one branch of learning, as to be likely to possess, through that alone, the means of attaining to eminence; and, what is worse, the course of the studies which have been pursued under their direction, has been so irregular and multifarious, that it is a great chance whether any one branch of occupation may have made such a powerful and commanding impression on the imagination of the student, as might induce him afterwards to perfect and complete for himself what the University can only be said to have begun.

In England, the object of the Universities is not, at present, at all of this kind. In order to prepare men for discharging the duties of ordinary life, or even for discharging the duties of professions requiring more education than is quite common in any country, it is not thought necessary that the University should ever be resorted to. Those great and venerable institutions have both existed from the very commencement of the English monarchy, and have been gradually strengthened and enriched into their present condition, by the piety and the munificence of many successive generations of kings and nobles. They are frequented by those only, who may be called upon at some future period to discharge the most sacred and most elevated duties of English citizenship; and the magnificence of the establishments themselves carries down a portion of its spirit into the humblest individual who connects himself with them.