The complaint has sometimes been made, and not without reason, against the situation of our University, that it is placed in the most open and desolate part of one of our least interesting counties. Whether this circumstance is accidental, or whether it is to be accounted as one of the standing monuments of the “wisdom of our forefathers,” we are not prepared to determine; but certain it is, that the desolate appearance of the surrounding country has a marvellous influence in chaining the flighty spirits of our students to the spot intended for their study; and they become more than ordinarily attached to the “brown o'er arching groves” of the Colleges, for lack of other and greater attractions in the neighbourhood.

The same argument is equally applicable, in the case of our University, to its position and appearance in regard to the Town of Cambridge. For if the vicinity to a lately uninclosed dull and unplanted champaign give additional beauty to the walks and wood at the backs of our Colleges, most assuredly their fronts are not less indebted to the foil afforded them by one of the most irregular ill-arranged and ill-built towns in the land.