The academic year of 1849-1850 having been passed at this little college in western New York, I entered Yale. This was nearer my ideal; for its professors were more distinguished, its equipment more adequate, its students more numerous, its general scope more extended. But it was still far below my dreams. Its single course in classics and mathematics, through which all students were forced alike, regardless of their tastes, powers, or aims; its substitution of gerund-grinding for ancient literature; its want of all instruction in modern literature; its substitution of recitals from text-books for instruction in history--all this was far short of my ideal. Moreover, Yale was then far more under denominational control than at present--its president, of necessity, as was then supposed, a Congregational minister; its professors, as a rule, members of the same sect; and its tutors, to whom our instruction during the first two years was almost entirely confined, students in the Congregational Divinity. Then, too, its outward representation was sordid and poor. The long line of brick barracks, the cheapest which could be built for money, repelled me. What a contrast to Oxford and Cambridge, and, above all, to my air- castles! There were, indeed, two architectural consolations: one, the library building, which had been built just before my arrival; and the other, the Alumni Hall, begun shortly afterward. These were of stone, and I snatched an especial joy from the grotesque Gothic heads in the cornices of the library towers and from the little latticed windows at the rear of the Alumni Hall. Both seemed to me features worthy of ``colleges and halls of ancient days.'' The redeeming feature of the whole was its setting, the ``green,'' with superb avenues overarched by elms; and a further charm was added by East and West Rock, and by the views over New Haven Harbor into Long Island Sound. Among these scenes I erected new air- castles. First of all, a great quadrangle, not unlike that which is now developing at Yale, and, as a leading feature, a gate-tower like that since erected in memory of William Walter Phelps, but, unlike that, adorned with statues in niches and on corbels, like those on the entrance tower of Trinity at Cambridge--statues of old Yalensian worthies, such as Elihu Yale in his costume of the Georgian period, Bishop Berkeley in his robes, President Dwight in his Geneva gown, and Nathan Hale in fetters. There was also in my dream another special feature, which no one has as yet attempted to realize--a lofty campanile, which I placed sometimes at the intersection of College and Church, and sometimes at the intersection of College and Elm streets--a clock-tower looking proudly down the slope, over the traffic of the town, and bearing a deep-toned peal of bells.