Presbyterian.  During the months of July and August the cadets all turn out of their barracks, pitch their tents, and live regular camp life—­only going to the barracks to eat their meals.  During the time they are tented, the education is exclusively military practice; the same hours are kept as in the barracks; the tents are boarded, and two cadets sleep in each.  They are all pitched with scrupulous accuracy, and they are obliged to keep their camp as clean as a new pin—­performing among themselves every duty of a complete regiment—­cleaning their own shoes, fetching their own water, &c.  They were all in tents at the time of my visit, and I fear not particularly comfortable, for there had been two days and nights’ hard rain, and the wet mattresses were courting the warm rays of the afternoon sun.  Whatever jobbery is attempted in the selection of candidates for admission to the Academy, is soon corrected by the Academy itself; for, though the entrance examination is simple to a degree, the subsequent examinations are very severe, and those who cannot come up to the mark get notice to quit; and the unerring tell-tale column of demerit soon obliges the turbulent to “clear out.”

The result of this system is, that when I saw them under arms, their soldierlike appearance struck me very much; and the effect produced upon them by discipline was very marked.  You might almost guess the time they had been there by their gentlemanly bearing, a quality which they do not readily lose; for the officers of the American army who have been educated at West Point, enjoy a universal reputation for intelligence and gentlemanly bearing wherever they are to be met with.

The discipline here is no fiction; they do not play at soldiers; they all work their way up from the ranks, performing every duty of each rank, and the most rigid obedience is exacted.  In the calculations for demerit, while idleness in the Academy obtains a mark of three, disobedience to a superior officer is marked eight.  There is no bullying thought of here; the captain of his company would as soon think of bullying the cadet private as a captain of a regiment of the line would of bullying any private under his command.  An officer who had been for many years connected with West Point, told me that among all the duels which unfortunately are so prevalent in the United States, he had never either known or heard of one between any two gentlemen who had received their education at this Academy—­tricks, of course, are sometimes played, but nothing oppressive is ever thought of.

I did hear a story of a cadet, who, by way of a joke, came and tried to take away the musket of a wiry young Kentuckian, who was planted sentry for the first time; but he found a military ardour he had little anticipated; for the novice sentry gave him a crack on the side of the head that turned him round, and before he could recover himself, he felt a couple of inches of cold steel running into the bank situated at the juncture