I never shall forget the impression which I received at my first entrance at the _Aula Maxima_[523] on the evening of Sunday, January 8th, 1843. At the farther end of the hall, on an elevated platform, the benches of which rose above each other like the seats of a theatre, sat the assembled pupils, arranged with some view to effect, in the order in which they were to take part in the exercise. They seemed of all ages, from the dawn of youth to mature manhood. It would be difficult to find elsewhere collected together so many specimens of the minor varieties of the human race. Gazing upon the eager faces crowded within that little space, one might almost persuade himself that he had the whole world in miniature before him, with all its motley tribes and races— Che comprender non può prosa ne vérso:— Da India, dal Catai, Marrocco, e Spagna. Some of the varieties, and perhaps those which present the most marked physiological contrasts with the rest, it is true, were wanting; but all the more delicate shades of difference were clearly discernable; the familiar lineaments of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon race; all the well-known European types of feature and complexion; the endless though highly contrasted varieties of Asiatic and North African form—the classic Indian, the stately Armenian, the calm and impassive Chaldee, the solemn Syrian, the fiery Arab, the crafty Egyptian, the swarthy Abyssinian, the stunted Birman, the stolid Chinese. And yet in all, far as they seemed asunder in sentient and intelligent qualities, might be traced the common interest of the occasion. Each appeared to feel that this—the feast of the illumination of the Gentiles—was indeed his own peculiar festival. All were lighted up by the excitement of the approaching exercise; and it was impossible, looking upon them, and recalling the object which had brought them all together from their distant homes, not to give glory to God for this, the most glorious work of his church: in which “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews also, and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, speak the wonderful works of God;”—not, as of old, in one tongue, but each in the tongue of his own people.