President Porter of Yale has been delivering some excellent observations on the two recent propositions which seem to promise results of the greatest importance to American university education, namely, the plan of establishing a great American school of Philosophy at Princeton and the proposed attempt to convert Columbia College into a great national university.

"Such a course of advanced study as that proposed at Princeton," says President Porter, "is the legitimate way for colleges to pass into universities, and there is need now of a university, liberal and comprehensive, to which the graduates of Harvard and Princeton and Yale may go for post-graduate instruction. The place for the founding of such a university is in a large city; there it is where best can be gathered great minds. It is at London today that many of the greatest lectures are delivered, and not at the English universities." And, with this in view, President Porter points to the future of Columbia should she found an advanced school, for which President Barnard has already asked $4,000,000. "The great obstacle in the way of a university, in its truest sense," he continues, "in America, is the need of proper preliminary instruction. We may have all the departments, but, when entrance to these departments can be made from a mere high school education, we have not a university; to obviate this, two paths are open, either to improve and enlarge the two or three leading colleges and greatly increase their requirements so that the smaller colleges shall offer preliminary instruction to the larger, or else all the present American colleges must be preparatory to a higher university, yet to be established. We much prefer the former; the present education, however, rather tends towards the latter."

It is precisely the former plan, it may be remarked, that includes Harvard's ideal of an American university. Towards the realization of such a plan she has already advanced a long way. In many respects her position at present is one of transition; her course but marks the change from the older to the newer methods of instruction - from college to university life.