AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES CONTRASTED.

The following is the substance of a recent lecture by Pres. Porter of Yale as reported by the News :

The American college is a cross between the English public school and university. At Oxford and Cambridge there are registered between 3,000 and 4,000 students. These are sub-divided as to their residence and instruction into colleges distinct from the university. The university holds examinations and gives degrees for the different colleges. There are twelve great public schools, intimately connected with the universities, one to one, anther to another. The student passes from the school to the university without an examination. He is retained at the school six years. Add two years to our preparatory school and two to our college and we have the English system. The universities control parishes. There are also fellowships with very liberal incomes which the graduate may enjoy, wherever his home, whatever his occupation. So that the pecuniary inducements are far different from our college honors. Then in aristocratic England a university man has great political and social advantages which in a democratic country like America count for very little.

In Scotland, instead of public schools there are parochial schools. The university is in a city where the students, poor, live by their wits, living scattered about as our freshmen are obliged to do. Instruction is given mainly in lectures, examinations are lenient.

Going to France where the student is kept until a later age under the supervision of instructors than with us, we find in the lyceum careful discipline and school-boy training.

Germany presents several unique features. First there is the gymnasium through which the student must reach the university unless he is rich enough to employ some influential tutor. The gymnasium is a classical school, divided into six forms. Every year examinations are held by government officials. In the gymnasium the discipline is rigid, in the university very free, the chief end of the student being to prepare for examinations. All through the system is one of examinations. Political offices are given to university graduates in proportion to their success in examinations.

The American college, like the English school and French lyceum have daily recitations for two purposes,-your attendance and preparation whether you feel like it or not. The theory is that intellectual men, political men, all men of any prominence must apply their minds under pressure to new matter at short notice and for this you are trained, in meeting your tasks day by day. It would doubtless be much pleasanter to both students and instructors, were it differently arranged. The American college is a social institution. It is right that it should be so. It gives a charm and usefulness. You make here a new home, new friends, new social and personal life and lay foundations for friendships in after life ; friendships which if you ask old graduates they will tell you are the best they have ever formed. Here your standards are moulded and fixed by which you decide a good fellow or a bad fellow and if you remain here through the course you will find much pleasure and enjoyment.