or who desire to cultivate, for some special purpose, the subjects which it embraces. In 1865, it numbered 28 students.

The Ladies' Course is designed for girls who desire a thorough education, and yet do not aspire to graduate in the College proper. In some studies, however, the students recite with the College Classes, where the stage of progress is similar in each. The number of students in this department was 175.

The Preparatory Department is placed under the management of one of the Professors, and the classes in it are mainly taught by graduates or undergraduates of the College, of either sex. The attendance in this department is very numerous, comprising both students who desire to fit themselves for entering o the College course, and those who wish for a thorough groundwork of education, without expecting to pursue their studies further. In the latter class especially one may expect to find those "working students" who have had small opportunities of early instruction, and now seize eagerly on mental study while supporting themselves by manual labour. At the time of my visit, Oberlin, as well as the other

Western colleges, showed visible signs of the recent Peace, in the number of military or semi-military jackets scattered throughout the class-rooms, the wearers having left their homes, or their half-completed studies, at the national summons, and now returned to resume their books with an ardour and simplicity in no wise lessened by their warlike experience.

It was a very curious sight to go into the recitation-rooms, and see some benches filled with young men "bearded like pards," and others with young women of corresponding age, many of them of different shades of "colour," labouring painfully at the elements of grammar or geography, under the auspices of some young undergraduate (more often a woman than a man), often much their junior; while side by side with them would sit, perhaps, children of twelve or fourteen, their equals in book-learning, if in nothing else.

Besides the General Preparatory Department, there is another division specially adapted for girls preparing for the "Ladies' Course," but the classes of the two sections are not, I think, kept distinct, except where

studies pursued are different.

The whole

number of students in the Preparatory Departments was 570.

The general system of instruction at Oberlin (and, indeed, with some modifications, throughout most of the Schools and Colleges I saw in America) differs considerably from that most generally approved in England.

Certain test-books, none of which were familiar to me, are appointed for study, and the students are generally given a certain portion to be mastered before their next meeting.

The class-hour is little more than a daily examination by the Professors, whose share of actual teaching (with few exceptions) seems to be infinitesimal.

The Professor of Physiology, indeed, gave something more resembling a lecture, and illustrated his teaching by reference to a skeleton at his side, and the Professors of Geology and Chemistry were also provided with cabinets of specimens.

It is part of the plan pursued here to attack a subject very vigorously by means of daily recitations, and an amount of study which, if thorough, must be very stiff, and so to "be

through with it" in two or three terms, when its place would be taken by another study, to be in its turn completed in short space; there being thus only three or four subjects pursued simultaneously. We were told, for instance, that students were "expected to have studied Algebra one term before entering College, and then to complete the subject in their first term." This statement greatly amazed and bewildered me, till I saw the text-book in use, the author of which (Professor Loomis, of Yale,) professed only to have summed up therein so much of the more practical parts of the science as might be mastered "in the time usually allotted to the study in American Colleges."

It is only right to say that we had previously heard some accusations against Oberlin of want of thoroughness in study, and the recitations at which we were present hardly convinced us of the injustice of the charge.

Be these charges more or less well founded, I do not doubt, however, that the results produced by this College are such as are invaluable to the class of students seeking instruction, and are very likely adequate to the demand in the

West, where, even less than in the New England States, the full requirements of elegant scholarship would be likely to find appreciation.

The total number of students at Oberlin in 1864-5 was 901, of whom 409 were males, and 492 females.

Of these students, a considerable number board in the College "Halls," the "Ladies' Hall" being wholly occupied by female students, some of whom repay their expenses by doing the housework, and " Tappan Hall" being similarly appropriated to young men, all the students of both sexes who "room in either place meeting for meals in the refectory attached to the Ladies' Hall. A larger number still board in those neighbouring families "whose piety is satisfactory to the College authorities," and the rules of the College apply equally to all.

Recitation hours begin after breakfast, at 8 A.M. and continue till noon, when dinner is served, and after this few classes meet, except for the study of French and the Natural Sciences.

The female students are under the general