EDUCATION-LITERARY SOCIETIES-LIBRARY-PHILOSOPHICAL APPARATUS -CABINET OF MINERALS COMPARISON OF AMERICAN AND SCOTISH UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. New Haven, August, 1818. THE buildings of Yale College make a conspicuous appearance when entering the town from the castward, and the effect is considerably heightened by three churches, which stand at a little distance in front in a parallel line. The ground between the College and the churches is neatly divided and enclosed, and ornamented with trees. The College buildings are seven in number;1 five ranging with each other in front, and two behind. Three of those in front are plain but uniform erections of brick, four stories high, containing apartments for the students. A chapel with a spire, and a Lyceum with a belfry, occupy the in tervals. 'An eighth was erected in 1821. It is exactly uniform to the three larger buildings, and is a continuation of the front line, with space left vacant for a new Lyceum or some corresponding edifice. Yale College was established at Saybrook in the year 1700,2 and was incorporated by the colonial legislature in 1701. In 1718 it was removed to New Haven. It was originally intended only for the education of young men for the ministry, but as it gathered strength, from individual liberality and public patronage, the range of its studies was gradually extended, until it now embraces the more essential parts of a complete literary, scientific, and medical education. The College received its name in commemoration of the bounty of the Hon. Elihu Yale, a son of one of the early settlers; who went to England in early life, thence to India, where he received the appointment of Governor of Madras, and afterwards on returning to England was elected Governor of the East India Company. From him the infant institution received donations at various times to the amount of £500 sterling, and a short time before his death he directed another benefaction to the same amount to be transmitted, but which unfortunately was never received. Among its early benefactors was the celebrated Dean Berkely, who, having been frustrated in his efforts to establish a College in the island of Bermuda, presented to this institution a farm which * President Dwight's Travels contain, in Letters 16th and 17th, a pretty copious account of Yale College. The reader has here less historical detail but a much more circumstantial view of discipline and study, the whole of which I have derived from official sources. HISTORY AND ENDOWMENT. 127 he had purchased in Rhode Island, and afterwards transmitted to it from England a very valuable collection of books. Sir Isaac Newton, and many other distinguished men presented their works to the library. Although founded under the sanction of the legislature, and partially endowed by it, the College was for a long time more indebted to individual than to state patronage; for the first ninety years of its existence, the whole amount bestowed by the local legislature, did not much exceed £4500 sterling. When the Federal government however was consolidated, the debts of the individual States were assumed by Congress, and a considerable amount of uncollected arrears of war taxes due to the State, was left at its disposal. In 1792 part of these debts was granted to Yale College, and in 1796 the grant, after a severe struggle to oppose it, was enlarged. By the very judicious management of those who collected the arrears, about 60,000 dollars were realized from them; £13,500 sterling which imparted to the College a degree of vigour which it had not hitherto known, and to this day nearly the whole of its funded income arises from this source. The affairs of Yale College are under the superintendence of a board of Trustees, consisting of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of the 3 Vide North American Review, No. XXXIX. p. 386. |