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INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 347
have originated in individual enterprise and rest upon individual responsibility, the teachers hold an intimate and kindly intercourse with the pupils, supplying, in a great degree, and in some instances fully, the place of parents. It. is seldom that we find a chartered institution, sustained by its own funds, where this state of things exists. If parents are obliged to send their children from home for instruction, it will be well for them to see that they are placed in schools where the principal feels it to be a duty to act as a father to his pupils, and at the same time has the happy faculty of gaining the kindly position of a parent in their hearts.
As to colleges and universities, I need say but little. They originated in ages of darkness, long before our humble village seminaries were dreamed of. They were not designed as benefits to the whole community, by aiding in the general diffusion of knowledge: on the contrary, they were connected with a selfish scheme of imparting light to the few and withholding it from the many. In later times, they have been encouraged from a better feeling, and, in this country, colleges have been of incalculable benefit ; but it has been affirmed, by high authority, that the two great universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in England, the most splendid estab- |
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