JUST RIGHT

Boston has the glory of having given in 1636 the first college or university to the New World. It is located on an extensive plain, four miles from Boston, at a place called Cambridge. The imagination could not fix on a place that could better unite all the conditions essential to a seat of education, sufficiently near to Boston to enjoy all the advantages of communication with Europe and the rest of the world, and yet sufficiently distant not to expose the students to the contagion of licentious manners common in commercial towns.

The buildings are large, numerous, and well distributed. But, as the number of students increases every day, it will be necessary soon to add to the buildings. jean Pierre Brissot   Nouveau Voyage dans lep Etats-Unis   de l'Amerique septentrionaie (1791)