THE WEALTH OK NATIONS.

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after they were made; and several of those learned societieshave chosen to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries inwhich exploded systems and obsolete prejudices found shelterand protection, after they had been hunted out of every othercorner of the world. In general, the richest and best en-dowed universities have been the slowest in adopting thoseimprovements, and the most averse to permit any consider-able change in the established plan of education. Those im-provements were more easily introduced into some of thepoorer universities, in which the teachers, depending upontheir reputation for the greater part of their subsistence, wereobliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of theworld.

But though the public schools and universities of Europe were originally intended only for the education of a parti-cular profession, that of churchmen; and though they werenot always very diligent in instructing their pupils even inthe sciences which were supposed necessary for that pro-fession ; yet they gradually drew to themselves the educationof almost all other people, particularly of almost all gentlemenand men of fortune. No better method, it seems, could befallen upon of spending, with any advantage, the long intervalbetween infancy and that period of life at which men beginto apply in good earnest to the real business of the world, thebusiness which is to employ them during the remainder oftheir days. The greater part of what is taught in schools anduniversities, however, does not seem to be the most properpreparation for that business.

In England, it becomes every day more and more thecustom to send young people to travel in foreign countriesimmediately upon their leaving school, and without sendingthem to any university. Our young people, it is said, gene-rally return home much improved by their travels. A youngman who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returnshome at one-aud-twenty, returns three or four years olderthan he was when he went abroad ; and at that age it is verydifficult not to improve a good deal in three or four years.In the course of his travels, he generally acquires someknowledge of one or two foreign languages ; a knowledge,however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either tospeak or write them with propriety. In other respects, hecommonly returns home more conceited, more unprincipled,m °re dissipated, and more incapable of any serious applica-