What is a University almost everywhere else? It announces little more, as respects the academic buildings, than that here is to be found the place of rendezvous--the exchange, as it were, or, under a different figure, the _palæstra_ of the various parties connected with the prosecution of liberal studies. This is their "House of Call," their general place of muster and parade. Here it is that the professors and the students converge, with the certainty of meeting each other. Here, in short, are the lecture-rooms in all the faculties. Well: thus far we see an arrangement of convenience--that is, of convenience for one of the parties, namely, the professors. To them it spares the disagreeable circumstances connected with a private reception of their students at their own rooms. But to the students it is a pure matter of indifference. In all this there is certainly no service done to the cause of good learning which merits a state sanction, or the aid of national funds. Next, however, comes an academic library, sometimes a good one; and here commences a real use in giving a national station to such institutions, because their durable and monumental existence, liable to no flux or decay from individual caprice, or accidents of life, and their authentic station, as expressions of the national grandeur, point them out to the bequests of patriotic citizens. They fall also under the benefit of another principle--the conservative feeling of amateurship. Several great collections have been bequeathed to the British Museum, for instance--not chiefly _as_ a national institution, and under feelings of nationality, but because, being such, it was also permanent; and thus the painful labours of collecting were guaranteed from perishing. Independently of all this, I, for my part, willingly behold the surplus of national funds dedicated to the consecration, as it were, of learning, by raising temples to its honour, even where they answer no purpose of direct use. Next after the service of religion, I would have the service of learning externally embellished, recommended to the affections of men, and hallowed by the votive sculptures, as I may say, of that affection, gathering in amount from age to age. _Magnificabo apostolatum meum_ is a language almost as becoming to the missionaries and ministers of knowledge, as to the ambassadors of religion. It is fit that by pompous architectural monuments a voice may for ever be sounding audibly in human ears of homage to these powers, and that even alien feelings may be compelled into secret submission to their influence. Therefore, amongst the number of those who value such things upon the scale of direct proximate utility rank not me: that _arithmetica officina_ is in my ears abominable. But still I affirm that, in our analysis of an ordinary university, or "college," as it is provincially called, we have not yet arrived at any element of service rendered to knowledge or