the truth already by revealing it; and he is at 15 all times ready to learn, in those merely secular matters, from those who can teach him best. Thus it is that Christianity, even negatively, and without contemplating its positive influences, is the religion of civilization. 20 III. UNIVERSITIES WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a _Studium Generale_, or "School of Universal Learning." This description implies 5 the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot--_from all parts_; else, how will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge? and _in one spot_; else, how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple 10 and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are requisite to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such as this a University seems 15 to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country. Mutual education, in a large sense of the word, 20 is one of the great and incessant occupations of human society, carried on partly with set purpose, and partly not. One generation forms another; and the existing generation is ever acting and reacting upon itself in the persons of its individual members. Now, in this process, books, I need scarcely say, that is, the _litera scripta_, are one special instrument. It is true; and 5 emphatically so in this age. Considering the prodigious powers of the press, and how they are developed at this time in the never intermitting issue of periodicals, tracts, pamphlets, works in series, and light literature, we must allow there 10 never was a time which promised fairer for dispensing with every other means of information and instruction. What can we want more, you will say, for the intellectual education of the whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant 15 and diversified and persistent a promulgation of all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will ask, need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge comes down to us? The Sibyl wrote her prophecies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted 20 them; but here such careless profusion might be prudently indulged, for it can be afforded without loss, in consequence of the almost fabulous fecundity of the instrument which these latter ages have invented. We have sermons in stones, 25 and books in the running brooks; works larger