2

University of Virginia

April 18. 1860.

Right Reverend & dear sir

Owing to circumstances which I could not
alter an unusual amount of professional but extra-
collegiate duty has devolved on me for the last two
or three months and has precluded the possibility of
of an earlier answer to your communication of the 5th
ultimo. I beg you to be assured that I have neither been
unmindful of the subject to which you have invited
my attention nor indifferent to the respect with which
you have honored me to express my views "with
unrestrained freedom, whether upon things omitted
or things embraced" in the Report of the Committee
on a Code of Statutes for your University.

It is, however, with real and unaffected distrust of
my ability to furnish you with any suggestion likely to
be useful that I yet venture to give expression
to some of the reflections which have occured to
my mind during the perusal of the Report in question.

It is proper to premise that I have had no personal
experience in connection with any other collegiate system
than the one adopted in this institution, where either
as Student or Professor I have passed the whole
of my life since boyhood with the exception of
{illegible: five? four?} years of medical pupilage in the northern cities
and in Paris. I am aware that this circumstance
must detract very largely from the value of any opinions