There is but one session annually, commencing on the tenth of September, and ending on the twentieth of July. Commencement is on the last day of the session, when there are public exercises, and at the same time the certificates and diplomas are awarded. Number of students, in 1833, one hundred and fifty-seven.
Kenyon college, at Gambier, in the central part of a tract of land belonging to it, five miles east of Mount Vernon, and fifty-two north-east of Columbus, was founded, in 1828, by the exertions of bishop Chase, who went to England in 1823, and returned in 1825, having there obtained for it about thirty thousand dollars; and he gave to the college the name of ‘Kenyon,’ from lord Kenyon, one of its principal benefactors, and to the town the name of ‘Gambier,’ from lord Gambier, another of its benefactors. It has received considerable additions to its funds from individuals in several of the states; and it possesses eight thousand acres of land. The college edifice, which is of stone, contains thirty-six rooms, and forms only one third part of the entire design. The library contains two thousand, three hundred volumes. The college is under the direction of aboard of sixteen trustees, of which the bishop of Ohio is president ex officio. The college has connected with it a theological department and a grammar school.
Kenyon College, Ohio.
It does not fall within our plan to give a particular description of the numerous collegiate institutions throughout the country. In addition to this account of the most prominent establishments, we have added a list of colleges in the appendix, for which, as well as the previous descriptions, we have been indebted to the American Almanac for 1834. To that valuable work we refer the reader for a collection of much useful and interesting matter on the subject of education in the United States.
‘Less attention,’ says Mr. Cooper, ‘is paid to classical learning here than in Europe; and, as the term of residence (at our colleges) rarely exceeds four years, profound scholars are by no means common. This country possesses neither the population nor the endowments to maintain a large class of learned idlers, in order that one man in a hundred may contribute a mite to the growing stock of general knowledge. There is a luxury in this expenditure of animal force, to which the Americans have not yet attained. The good is far too problematical and remote, and the expense of man too certain, to be prematurely sought. I have heard, I will confess, an American legislator quote Horace and Cicero; but it is far from being the humor of the country. I thought the taste of the orator questionable. A learned quotation is rarely of any use in an argument, since few men are fools enough not to see that the application of any maxim to politics is liable to a thousand practical objections, and, nine times in ten, they are evidences of the want of a direct, natural, and vigorous train of thought. They are the affectations, but rarely the ebullitions, of true talent. When a man feels strongly, or thinks strongly, or speaks strongly, he is just as apt to do it in his native tongue, as he is to laugh when he is tickled, or to weep when in sorrow. The Americans are strong speakers and acute thinkers, but no great quoters of the morals and axioms of a heathen age, because they happen to be recorded in Latin.
‘The higher branches of learning are certainly on the advance in thiscountry. The gentlemen of the middle and southern states, before the revolution, were very generally educated in Europe, and they were consequently, in this particular, like our own people. Those who came into life during the struggle, and shortly after, fared worse. Even the next generation had little to boast of in the way of instruction. I find that boys entered the colleges so late as the commencement of the present century, who had read a part of the Greek Testament, and a few books of Cicero and Virgil, with, perhaps, a little of Horace. But great changes have been made, and are still making, in the degree of previous qualification.
‘Still, it would be premature to say, that there is any one of the American universities where classical knowledge, or even science, is profoundly attained, even at the present day. Some of the professors push their studies, for a life, certainly; and you well know, after all, that little short of a life, and a long one too, will make any man a good general scholar. In 1820, near eight thousand graduates of the twelve oldest colleges of this country (according to their catalogues) were then living. Of this number, one thousand, four hundred and six were clergymen. As some of the catalogues consulted were several years old, this number was, of necessity, greatly within the truth. Between the years 1800 and 1810, it is found that of two thousand, seven hundred and ninety-two graduates, four hundred and fifty-three became clergymen. Here is pretty good evidence that religion is not neglected in America, and that its ministers are not, as a matter of course, absolutely ignorant.
‘But the effects of the literary institutions of the United States are somewhat peculiar. Few men devote their lives to scholarship. The knowledge that is actually acquired, is, perhaps, quite sufficient for the more practical and useful pursuits. Thousands of young men, who have read the more familiar classics, who have gone through enough of mathematics to obtain a sense of their own tastes, and of the value of precision, who have cultivated belles lettres to a reasonable extent, and who have been moderately instructed in the arts of composition, and in the rules of taste, are given forth to the country to mingle in its active employments. I am inclined to believe that a class of American graduates carries away with it quite as much general and diversified knowledge, as a class from one of our own universities. The excellence in particular branches is commonly wanting; but the deficiency is more than supplied by variety of information. The youth who has passed four years within the walls of a college, goes into the office of a lawyer for a few more. The profession of the law is not subdivided in America. The same man is counsellor, attorney, and conveyancer. Here the student gets a general insight into the principles, and a familiarity with the practice of the law, rather than any acquaintance with the study as a science. With this instruction, he enters the world as a practitioner. Instead of existing in a state of dreaming retrospection, lost in a maze of theories, he is at once turned loose into the jostlings of the world. If, perchance, he encounters an antagonist a little more erudite than himself, he seizes the natural truth for his sheet-anchor, and leaves precedent and quaint follies to him who has made them his study and delight. No doubt he often blunders, and is frequently, of necessity, defeated. But in the course of this irreverent treatment, usages and opinions, which are bottomed in no better foundation than antiquityand which are as inapplicable to the present state of the world, as the present state of the world is, or ought to be, unfavorable to all feudal absurdities, come to receive their death-warrants. In the mean time, by dint of sheer experience, and by the collision of intellects, the practitioner gets a stock of learning, that is acquired in the best possible school; and, what is of far more importance, the laws themselves get a dress which brings them within the fashions of the day. This same man becomes a legislator, perhaps, and, if particularly clever, he is made to take an active part in the framing of laws, that are not to harmonize with the other parts of an elaborate theory, but which are intended to make men comfortable and happy. Now, taken with more or less qualification, this is the history of thousands in this country, and it is also an important part of the history of the country itself.’
We may not inappropriately introduce in this connection the following account of the Military academy at West Point, for which we have been indebted to an able article in the North American Review for January, 1832.