The Latin language, both because it enters so largely into our own and other modern languages, and because it is to such an extent the language of science, will demand a place in the course. As an instrument of linguistic culture, it greatly surpasses modern languages, and its literature is of perennial value. When well taught, no study more richly rewards the student. The Greek should be afforded, at least as an optional study, to all who desire to pursue it. It will never lose its value in the eyes of the highest grade of scholars.

Mental and Moral Philosophy, Logic, History, Political Economy, Civil Polity, and Constitutional Law, will all properly enter into the course as philosophical and speculative studies, and because of their high practical values.

A course, composed of these studies, reaching through four years, will fully equal, in its disciplinary power, the ordinary college course, and be of much more value to the student of the industrial arts.

It seems almost idle to say, we admit, many of these studies are not necessary to the mere practical farmer. Latin will not help a man to hold the plow, nor will mental philosophy teach how to fatten hogs. But, we reiterate, the Industrial Uni versity is not needed and was not founded for the common education of men, farmers or others. "The liberal and practical education" proposed by Congress will require all the amplitude of study here described.

It is not insisted that all students shall take this general course, though it is strongly recommended. Students may take up special courses without stopping to complete this, just as they may take a medical or law course at any other University, without first graduating from the college course.

The special courses in agriculture and the arts will comprehend many of the studies belonging to the general course, and they may be so arranged that a diligent student, of good abilities, while pursuing the regular University course, may also take up and carry forward one of the special technical courses. The studies of the University course being the minimum of study required to entitle the student to regular standing, it will be found that many students can perform, successfully, more than this minimum.

By further arranging the special courses so as to connect them with the last three years of the University course, and by bringing them, as far a practicable, into the fall and winter session, we may comply with the provision of the law, and also allow students of Agriculture or Horticulture, alone, to complete their special studies in a three years' course.

OPTIONAL AND SELECT COURSES.

The opinion gathers currency that students of mature age and experience should be permitted to enter our universities and colleges, and select for themselves such studies as they may need, and as they are qualified to pursue successfully with the regular classes in those studies. It may sometimes also occur that persons will desire to enter the university simply to attend some course of lectures, or to attain an insight into some agricultural or other industrial process, as the budding, grafting or pruning of trees, the management of a grapery, etc. Such students should be furnished with all the facilities consistent with the good order of the institution.

QUALIFICATIONS FOR ADMISSION.

The question of the qualifications required for admission to the University is one demanding careful consideration. These requirements should not be so high as to virtually exclude those who might successfully pursue the course of studies, nor so low as to permit those who are unprepared to profit by a residence at the Institution, and whose time would be uselessly wasted in the attempt to grasp studies beyond their comprehension.

The law prescribes that "no student shall be admitted to instruction in any of the departments of the University, who shall not have attained to the age of fifteen years, and who shall not previously undergo a satisfactory examination in each of the branches ordinarily taught in the common schools of the State." The committee understand this language, not as axing definitely the qualifications for admission, but only as determining their lowest limit. The Trustees may require both a maturer age and a higher grade of scholarship, whenever, in their estimation, the interests of the State and of the University require it. It would certainly be better if students never entered college under eighteen years of age; but the average age of those applying for admission will doubtless be above this, without any special rule requiring it. Experience shows that students who enter college at a less age than that here indicated, are often injured by being thrown so early into the indiscriminate associations and powerful stimulation of college life. The University is the place for men rather than for mere boys.

It seems requisite that two different sets of qualifications shall be prescribed: the one for students who wish to pursue simply the studies of some select or partial course, and the other for candidates for the regular University courses.

1. QUALIFICATIONS FOR ADMISSION TO SELECT courses.

Students may properly be admitted to take some select course, on passing a thorough examination in the common school branches of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and grammar, and on evidence of sufficient maturity and intelligence to pursue successfully the studies selected by them.

2. ADMISSION TO REGULAR UNIVERSITY COURSES.

While the Committee would wish to open the University as widely as possible to the youth of the State, they can not forget that its real utility will depend on establishing and maintaining a high standard of scholarship. As it can not legally do common school work, so neither ought it to undertake to do the work already provided for in the public high schools. It would prove a most sorry blunder if in our too eager desire to popularize the Institution, and under pretence of bringing its advantages within the easy reach of all, we should create a gigantic and expensive high school, and, having thus consumed our means, should fail to make any University at all. It is absolutely essential, if the University is to do the higher and scientific work required of it, that it shall leave the preparatory work mainly, if not entirely, to the public high schools and academies of the State; else it may fritter away its funds and its teaching forces, on the mere elementary work already sufficiently provided for, and leave undone all the great work which we ask at its hands for scientific agriculture and industrial arts.

The reasonable construction of the statute is, that while the University shall not comprehend the ordinary common school studies, it shall so arrange its terms of admission that the public schools may be able to meet them, and that there be left no unbridged chasm between the body of the State school system and the University at its head.

In the better class of public schools there are now taught, not only Grammar, Geography and Arithmetic, but also Algebra, Geometry, Natural Philosophy, History of the United States, and Human Physiology, and in very many of them the Latin language. All these may properly be prescribed, therefore, as preparatory studies for the University. They are all so elementary in character as to come within the easy comprehension of students under fifteen years of age; they all need to be studied as preparations for mastering the University course; and they may all be successfully taught in public high schools. In the Latin, the quality of the scholarship attained, rather than the quantity of the reading, may wisely be made the test, and the student should be admitted who can construe readily any passage in Cicero's Select Orations, or Virgil's Georgics and Æneid.

The preparatory course above indicated, differs from that ordinarily prescribed for admission to colleges, in [the omission of the Greek language, and in the extension of the requirements in mathematics and other studies. It is believed that this variation will not only better adapt the preparation to the peculiar character of the University, but will adjust the University much more nearly to the ordinary course of studies now generally taught in our public high schools. These schools universally teach Geometry and Algebra; but only in a few cases teach Greek to any great extent. The grade of scholarship required for admission will thus be made as high as that required at other Universities, though made up of different elements. To make the work of the Industrial University thorough and complete, demands that the preparation for it shall be also full and sufficient.

The argument for an elevated standard of qualifications for admission gains great force from the fact, that until the student has made as much progress as this preparatory course requires, he has not usually formed his purpose and tested his strength and ability to pursue a course of liberal or scientific study. The history of preparatory schools is full of proof that many of those who set out for a College course stop short of the College doors. Science, like scripture, has its " stony ground hearers, who at first receive the word with joy, but who, when the hot sun of hard study is up, wither away. If our doors must be held open to every half-taught youth who is seized with a sudden ambition to "go to the University," our halls will be flooded annually with fresh hosts of mere tyros, who will stay only long enough to manifest their unfitness for the place, and then go forth to shame the Institution whose students they will claim to have been; thus ruining its reputation, after helping to destroy or impair its usefulness.

Among this host of short-lived "students of the Industrial University" the State will look in vain for that long line of graduates-the ripe and scholarly leaders in her agriculture and her great industries-which she has hoped to see proceed annually from the University halls.

The Committee are confident that no person who properly considers the amount of more important work which the University has to accomplish, will wish to see its forces diverted to the teaching of these elementary branches which the high schools may properly claim as their own ground; and certainly no one who desires the success of the University, as a great scientific and industrial college, will wish to see students entering its classes with less preparation than is here prescribed.

departments, as may be required to teach, in the most thorough manrer, such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, and mili. tary tactics, without excluding other scientific and classical studies." This slight change of the order of the language of the Congressional enactment, gives addi, tional emphasis to the opinion that it was intended to prohibit the exclusion of other scientific and classical studies." Under any construction the Legislature evidently intended to insist-as the law of Congress insists-on the industrial and military education, yet explicitly allowing the trustees to enlarge the scope of studies as they may see fit.

A clear insight into the real intention of the Congressional grant may be gained if we call to mind that the colleges, existing at the time of the passage of the act making this grant, were adapted only to fit men for the so-called "learned profes sions," and that the influence of these colleges tended to withdraw their students from the pursuits of industry. Congress therefore proposed to create a new class of colleges, which should train men for industrial pursuits, and help to turn some por. tion of the great currents of educated life into the channels of industry. They aimed to link learning more closely to labor, and to bring the light of science more fully to the aid of the productive arts. Any other interpretation of the design of Congress than this would involve an absurdity.

The Industrial College was not an expression of Congressional condemnation of the ordinary college, or opposition to it. A grant of a township of land in each new State had already provided for State Universities of the common sort. And besides these, rich and powerful seats of learning were every where fitting men for the great public fields of Law, Medicine and Theology. Congress only sought to extend still wider the benefits of science and liberal culture. They wished to establish other seats of learning, equally great and equally powerful, which should send scholars of high scientific attainments and broad and liberal culture, to the farms and workshops of the country.

And finally, as it was not the object of the Industrial Colleges to educate simply the sons of farmers and mechanics, so it was not their design to teach the mere manual arts of agriculture and manufacture. The college course can not replace the apprenticeship in the shop or on the farm; and if it could, a hundred such Universities as this could not train to their various trades, the future farmers and mechanics of this State. Some practice should, if possible, accompany the scientific study of the several arts, but the aim of this practice must be to insure the thorough comprehension of the principles involved. To teach the millions their trades, however desirable, is beyond our power. To so teach the few who will come and patiently complete their course, that they shall be thorough masters of practical science, and able in their turn to teach others, this is the worthy and attainable end of the University.

The committee profoundly appreciate and commend the far-reaching wisdom and beneficence of these aims of the Congressional grant, and would seek to carry them out to the very letter. They have discussed thus fully the intent of the Congressional enactment, in order to brush aside the false impressions which may have gained currency, and to bring out into clearer relief this grand idea of the Industrial University, as it lies involved in both State and National statutes-a true University, organized in the interest of the industrial, rather than of the professional pursuits, and differing from other Universities in that its departments are technological rather than professional-schools of Agriculture and Art, rather than schools of Medicine and Law. Its central educational courses, while equally broad and liberal

are to be selected to fit men for the study and mastery of the great branches of industry, rather than to serve as introductions to the study of law, medicine, or theology.

This broad idea of the Industrial University proceeds upon the two fundamental assumptions: First, that the agricultural and mechanical arts are the peers of any others in their dignity, importance and scientific scope: and, Second, that the thorough mastery of these arts, and of the sciences applicable to them, requires an education different in kind, but as systematic and complete as that required for the comprehension of the learned professions. It thus avoids the folly of offering as leaders of progress in the splendid industries of the nineteenth century, men of meager attainments and stinted culture, and steers clear also of that other and absurder folly of supposing that mere common school boys, without any thorough discipline, can successfully master and apply the complicated sciences which enter into and explain the manifold processes of modern agriculture and mechanic art.

Nor is it forgotten that man is something more than the artisan, and that manhood has duties and interests higher and grander than those of the workshop and the farm. Education must fit for society and citizenship, as well as for science and industry. The educated agriculturist and mechanic will not unfrequently be called to serve in Senate Chambers and gubernatorial chairs, and will need an education broader and better than the simple knowledge of his art.

The State has need every where, but especially in the center and at the head of the great industries, on which, as on corner stones, rest down her material progress and power, of broad-breasted, wise-hearted, clear-thinking men-men of rich, deep culture, and sound education.

And besides all this, it should be reflected that half the public value of a body of educated and scientific agriculturists and mechanicians will be lost, if they lack the literary culture which will enable them to communicate through the press, or by public speech, their knowledge and discoveries; or if they are wanting in that thorough discipline which will make them active and competent investigators and inventors, long after their school days are over.

Nor would we forget, nor attempt by a one-sided education to restrain, that free movement and versatility of American life and genius which leads so many of our more eminent citizens to the successive mastery of several vocations. Let us educate for life, as well as for art, leaving genius free to follow its natural attractions, and lending to talent a culture fitting it for all the emergencies of public or private duty. If some of our graduates shall quit, for a time, the harvest field for the forum, or prefer medicine to mechanic art, we shall hope they will demonstrate that, even in professional life, the education we give is neither inferior nor inadequate. And in riper years they will return to their first love, and bring their gathered wealth and honors to lay them in the lap of the agriculture and art we have taught them. Let the State open wide, then, this Pierian fount of learning. Let her bid freely all her sons to the full and unfailing flow: those whose thirst or whose needs are little, to what they require; those whose thirst and whose capacities are large, to drink their fill. Let the University be made worthy the great State whose name it bears; worthy the grand and splendid industries it seeks to promote; and worthy of the great century in which we live.

Vol. II-10