Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/188

176 of conference, are points which I do not feel competent or inclined to discuss. The probable fate of its university, when the sword shall be sheathed, and harmony restored to Europe, is a subject more congenial to my heart.

A period of general warfare is unfavourable to all seminaries of learning, because it calls into the active employments of military life, a number of youths of fortune and condition who probably otherwise would have embraced some of the erudite professions, or at least have completed their education in a college. From this cause the university of Leyden has suffered a diminution of its students in common with all the public academies of Europe, but more than those of Great Britain and the other states, into whose territories the actual flames of war have not been carried. It has also sustained a great loss of students from the interruption, of the intercourse between the republic and those countries (the dominions of the Emperor and Great Britain) from whence Leyden attracted every year many pupils.