When the work of the Foundation began five years ago the trustees found themselves intrusted with an endowment to be expended for the benefit of teachers in the colleges and universities of the United States, Canada, and Newfoundland. It required but the briefest examination to show that amongst the thousand institutions in English-speaking North America which bore the name college or university there was little unity of purpose or of standards. A large majority of all the institutions in the United States bearing the name college were really concerned with secondary education. Under these conditions the trustees felt themselves compelled to begin a critical study of the work of the college and of the university in different parts of this wide area, and to commend to colleges and universities the adoption of such standards as would intelligently relate the college to the secondary school and to the university. [...]

On former occasions we have expressed our approbation of the plan of this popular work, and our satisfaction with the general execution. The present volume, just issued from the press, contains, among the additions by the American editors, biographical notices of James Monroe, Gen. Richard Montgomery, Gen. Daniel Morgan, William Morgan, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, Gen. William Moultrie, William Vans Murray, James Otis, Robert Treat Paine, Theophilus Parsons, and C.W. Peale (the founder of the Philadelphia Museum.) It is to be regretted that the department of American Biography presents generally only a few meager details.[...]