Professor Vethake of Princeton, New-Jersey--a communication from whom was read to the convention, and which exhibits sound practical sense, and ingenious and discriminating reflection--has exhibited the prevalent inaccuracy of information, regarding the system adopted at the southern university, to which, from its novelty, we have so frequently alluded. "I see no objection," he remarks, "to render it obligatory on them (the students) to attend at the same period of time, a certain number of courses, unless specially exempted for sufficient reasons, as is now the arrangement in the University of Virginia." _Journal_, P. 30. No such arrangement exists in that institution. The professor has been guilty of an _error loci_; the plan is pursued at the old college of William and Mary, in Virginia. In canvassing the comparative merits of the two systems, and, indeed, of every point of college discipline and education, it is necessary to take into consideration the age at which the students are received. In most of our colleges they are admitted when mere boys, and the course of instruction is necessarily made more elementary. In the University of Virginia, on the other hand, no student is received under the age of sixteen, and when, whatever may be the fact, it is to be presumed, that the more elementary portion of his education has been completed, and that he is now prepared for the prosecution of more advanced academic, or for professional, studies. To adopt a rigid rule, that students of this age should be compelled to pass a period of four or more years at college, before they can offer themselves for honours; or that they should be confined to classes, with boys, to whom a few years is a matter of comparatively little moment, would be manifestly unreasonable. This much is certain, that in this country few can spare the time in the mere attainment of academical or preliminary information. The truth is, our universities are, like those of Scotland now, and Oxford and Cambridge in former times--both schools and colleges. The under graduate course, in those venerable seats of learning, seems at first to have corresponded precisely, in point of age, with that of the modern schools. Many of the statutes, still in force at Oxford and Cambridge, respecting the discipline of students, sufficiently attest the boyhood of those for whom they were enacted. One of these directs corporal chastisement for those who neglect their lessons. Another, at Cambridge, prohibits the undergraduates from playing marbles on the steps of the senate house. In process of time, excellent schools arose, at which the ordinary preliminary education was obtained, and the period of resorting to college became thus postponed. The dislike to innovation, which augments in intensity according to the age of the establishment, prevented, however, any modification in the course of scholastic instruction, and thus it would seem was occasioned the length of time