It is therefore greatly to be wished, that preliminary schools, either on private or public establishment, would be distributed in districts thro the state, as preparatory to the entrance of Students into the University.
I'm assuming that they're referring to something similar to what we know as public and private high schools today? When did public schooling become commonplace and when was it considered the step before college?
French VI Botany Spanish Zoology Italian VII Anatomy German Medicine Anglo-Saxon
I think it's really interesting to note that the languages offered at the time were extremely Euro-centric, reflecting the values and international relationships of the time. Obviously, now we have an extremely robust language program that offers languages from every corner of the world. I wonder when other languages, such as Chinese or Arabic, were added to the language program?
viz,
I was unsure as to what this meant, but after looking it up, it means, "namely; in other words (used especially to introduce a gloss or explanation)." Is this a relatively archaic way to say "namely" or is it just uncommon?
with him
The word "him" peppers this document and is perhaps the only pronoun used throughout. While I am not completely surprised that it appears here as well, I am still somewhat shocked that every position of power (especially one as influential as a visitor of the University) was automatically assigned a male pronoun. While this was 200 years ago, it is interesting to note that even today, out of the Board of Visitor's 19 members, only 5 are women. Adding on to that, only 3 are people of color.