In the current North American Review is an article from the pen of Rossiter Johnson, on "College Endowments." The writer asserts that the establishment of small and weak colleges throughout the country has not been a mistake, as is sometimes stated, but has been the means of diffusing the greatest possible amount of learning and intelligence among the many American citizens. "What we want," he says, "is not two or three centres of learning, like Oxford and Cambridge in England, where all young Americans can collect who want more than a common school education, but small colleges scattered broadcast over our three million square miles of territory where a good practical education may be obtained by students who desire to devote the four years to the mere purpose of cultivation, broadening and strengthening their minds and characters for whatever calling they may ultimately choose."

The writer, however, seems to forget that the larger colleges, like Harvard and Yale, have much better facilities for furnishing the much-talked-of "practical" education, than do his "small and weak colleges." They, like our high and grammar schools, are of the greatest importance in promoting education, but to maintain that there is no need of universities like our own, where "the purpose is to impart a high scholarly finish to the accomplishments of a privileged class," seems to be going a little too far.