Institutions that have become venerable by age, powerful in resources and patronage, may go forward to introduce, not only accredited improvements but doubtful changes; and may bring the systems, which either the wise have devised, or the popular voice has required, to the test of actual experiment. But feebler institutions cannot leave the ground of general principles, which, however it may be safer and ultimately more subservient to their true interests, cannot always be easily ascertained, and frequently fails of being approved amidst the varying circumstances, relations, and interests of society. "The principle which has generally obtained in regard to the colleges of this country, of making them merely introductory to a professional education, is one too important in its connections and results to be hastily relinquished. The correspondence which usually exists between the genius of civil governments, and the arrangement of literary institutions, has been very happily exemplified in our system of schools, rising in regular gradation from the primary to the professional, and wisely accommodated to the public convenience and necessity. This system, whatever defects may have existed in some of its practical operations, has been found, on the whole, admirably suited to the condition of society. Its parts having kept their fair proportions, each one performing its peculiar office, and all acting and reacting upon each other, it is out of question that the results of the whole, in the general diffusion of knowledge and elevation of the public character, have been salutary to a degree unprecedented in the history of the world; and its general adoption, with modifications according to the different circumstances of society, may be contemplated as one of the surest pledges of our national prosperity. Apart from the multiplied facilities of instruction, which upon this system are afforded at the cheapest rate to all who would enjoy the benefits of education, that spirit of fair and honorable competition, which is necessarily excited between so many kindred institutions, would seem to insure improvements proportioned to the means which are afforded them, and prove a check upon those abuses which have usually attended establishments of more extended influence and less responsibility.