Page 2

which the languages, can be correctly acquired. It is proba-
bly more propitious for the morals of the child, that he should
remain during the era of youthful effervesence under the imme-
diate inspection of the parent, and were the attainments requi-
site to admission of greater extent and higher accomplishments,
there would be precluded from this institution, many whose ma-
turity of experience had not armed them with principles fixed
and conviction adequete to guard them against the facinations
of pleasure and allurements of dissipation.

By requiring a greater proficientcy in Latin and Greek than
now demanded, the higher authors in those languages might be
read, the maxims of pure disinterested patriotism, more indeli-
bly impressed, and the philosophy of language more accurately
acquired; each class might be elevated a grade, and more time
given for application to natural, moral and political study.
Your Committee congratulates the University, the Legislature,
and the State, upon the establishment of the Morrison professor-
ship of mathematical science, which the munificence of the late
Col. James Morrison, has enabled the trustees of the Univer-
sity, to add upon a foundation which will be permanent. Such
a professorship had long been a desideratum in the institution,
and whilst law and medicine, phrenology, craniology, philoso-
phy of mind, metaphysicks, in all their multiplied and evanes-
cent, ramifications, were flourishing cultivating the fancy, the
heart and the affections, too little regard, your Committee ap-
prehend, was bestowed and too low rank was assigned to the ex-
act sciences, the most necessary and most useful, in teaching
how to think, to reason, to examine the truth, to know it when
found in their application, to affairs of life and of the world.

Thomas J. Matthews, who has been selected as Morrison
professor, is a gentleman whose reputation furnishes a pledge,
that the department entrusted to his superintendence, will be
conducted so as to increase that reputation, do credit to the
choice and redound benificially to the state.

The increase of the several cabinets of specimens in the aca-
demical and medical departments, indicate the interest which
exists in their prosperity and proves their growing importance.
The libary is extensive, flourishing, apparently, well selected
and under judicious management.

The philosophy of mind can be as well studied in the acquisi-
tion of useful practical knowlegde as in efforts to reconcile the
jargon of the schools, the confusion of theories in attempts to
thread the mazes of metaphysical labyrinths, or pursue the at-
tenuated fibres of speculative abstraction.

From the observations which an intercourse with the world,
has enabled us to make, sound information and elevated maxims
of morality, blended with a cultivation of taste, for the best