A traveller can scarcely enter a town in Holland which has not given birth to some genius, whose fame reflects lustre upon his country. Utrecht enrols amongst those illustrious sages who resided, or were born within its walls, and who have bestowed upon it immortal celebrity, the learned Gronovius, the critic; Grævius, his pupil, one of the most profound writers of the middle of the sixteenth century, so well known for his Thesaurus Antiquitatum et Historiarum Italiæ, in thirteen folio volumes, and the two erudite Burmans. Doctor Johnson thus speaks of Peter Burman, and Gronovius, and Grævius, “One of the qualities which contributed eminently to qualify Grævius for an instructor of youth, was the sagacity by which he readily discovered the predominant faculty of each pupil, and the peculiar designation by which nature has allotted him to any species of literature and by which he was soon able to determine that Peter Burman was remarkably adapted to classical studies, and to predict the great advance he would make by industriously pursuing the direction of his genius. On the other hand, animated by the encouragement of a tutor so celebrated as Grævius, Peter Burman, by continuing the vigour of his application, fulfilled his master’s prophecy; and it has been asserted, that he passed honourably and fairly through the classes, and was admitted into the university at the age of thirteen. “His biographer allows this to have been so stupendous a progress as to surpass the limits of all probability; of which indeed every man must be sensible, who considers that it is not uncommon for the highest genius in our country, to be entangled for ten years in those thorny paths of literature, which Burman is represented to have passed in less than two. But this prodigy has been cleared up very satisfactorily by the following observation. In the universities of foreign countries, they have professors of philology or humanity, whose employment is to instruct the younger classes in grammar, rhetoric, and languages; nor do they engage in the study of philosophy, till they have passed through a course of philological lectures and exercises, to which in some places two years are commonly allotted: whereas the English scheme of education, which, with regard to academical studies, is more rigorous, and sets literary honours at a higher price than that of any other country, exacts from the youth who are initiated in our colleges a degree of philological knowledge sufficient to qualify them for lectures on philosophy, which are read to them in Latin, and to enable them to proceed in other studies without assistance; so that it may be conjectured that Burman, at his entrance into the university of Leyden, had no such skill in languages, nor such ability of composition, as are frequently to be met with in the higher classes of an English school; nor was perhaps, at that time, more than moderately skilled in Latin, and taught the first rudiments of Greek.”