Would it not be convenient and profitable if there were one college where nothing was professed but languages, to be thoroughly acquired as a means to further study within the university, and to public service outside? That being the professed end, and nothing else being dealt with there, would not a high standard of sufficiency be the better reached through general agreement? And would not daily conference and continuous application in the same subject be likely to secure efficiency? As it is now, when everyone deals confessedly with everything, no one can say with certainty, “Thus much can such a one do in this particular thing,” but he either speaks by conjecture that may often deceive even the speaker, or else out of courtesy which as often beguiles those who hear and believe. For where all exercises, conferences, and conversations, both public and private, are on the same subject, because the soil bringeth forth no other stuff, there must needs follow great perfection. When the tongues are thus separated from other learning, it will soon appear what a difference there is between him who can only speak and him who can do more. No subject can be more necessary than languages in university training. For the tongues being the receptacles of matter, without a perfect understanding of them what hope is there of understanding matter? And seeing words are the names of things, applied and given according to their properties, how can things be properly understood by us, who make use of words to know them by, unless the force of speech is thoroughly understood? I do see in writers and hear in speakers great defects in the mistaking of meanings, and evident errors through insufficiency in the study of language. Such study should be well advanced by the Grammar School, but it needs to be brought to greater perfection than it can be there. And it may be that some, wishing only a general culture, will be content to rest in this literary faculty, taking delight in the writings of the poets and historians, and not passing on to any professional study. A College for Mathematics.