Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/76

Rh instruction may be, matters little. It is sufficient to know that the students generally leave the college with similar acquirements to those Gil Blas possessed when he departed from the university of Salamanca. The chief of the state in his speeches to the assembly, has several times alluded to the necessity of a change in the plan of study, but hitherto it has remained unaltered.

There is besides an academy of drawing, which has now about nine or ten students, and merits notice as being the only memorial of a society which was formed in the year 1795, called the Economical Society of Friends of the Kingdom, for the diffusion and encouragement of Literature and Science. Its labours were suspended by an arbitrary decree of the court of Madrid, in 1799.

The public offices of government are conveniently arranged, but as edifices possess no peculiarities. The three hospitals which are described by Juarros as existing in the old city, are now comprised in one, called St. Juan de Dios, which consists of four cuadros or squares, around which are the different wards for the sick. The rooms are high, and tolerably clean, but not well ventilated. It is calculated to hold 300, but at the time I visited it, had not more than 200 occupants, mostly wounded in drunken quarrels, of whom about a fourth were females. This