It is a fact: while out of ten ladies you find nine, who know two modern languages, besides their english; out of ten gentlemen, you can scarcely find two. It is not because I teach the italian language that I praise the study of languages; I praise my profession, because I think it the most useful, and the most able to develop the faculties of human understanding. I cannot deny that few american ladies, as gentlemen, study also imperfectly the greek, and latin languages, and for which I do not see why their parents do not wish rather, that their young ladies would study the sanscrit, the ancient persic, or the hebrew. But, the plurality of the american ladies, studying modern languages from foreigners, who know well the very languages of their own country, the young ladies, I say, do not lose their time, like the plurality of gentlemen in learning greek, and latin from native americans, who get the professorship in colleges, because they have friends in this country. Hence the study of greek, and latin becomes a necessary thing in the american colleges: nay, it is a faculty, without which, a student cannot receive his diploma. And the foreigners, who would be the most useful as professors of modern languages in colleges, have but a blank name of professors. So, the student, who can get his diploma without any of the modern languages, study only what he is compelled to do; and the foreign professors, having neither fee, nor pupils, stand there to fill up the required number of professors, without which those colleges could not be called universities.