legislature will appropriate from the University fund such amount as this College may be justly entitled to."

It may be said in answer to this that there is no reason to believe that a fully reconstructed board, with control of the entire University, including the College branch, would act prejudicially to the combined intererests or any interest of the University and all its branches collectively considered, according to their respective merits, if all were fully placed under their control.

As if anticipating trouble from the legislature when the University came to be established, on account of the conflicting management of the College, Governor Roberts in his message to the Seventeenth legislature made the following recommendations: "I would respectfully recommend that the board of directors of the Agricultural and Mechanical branch of the University be dispensed with, and the number of regents be enlarged so as to incorporate in the same body the directors and regents. There is no use for two boards. A positive disadvantage might often result from a want of harmony between them. With a common control by the board of regents over all of the branches, and provision of ample means to support them all and build them up gradually together according to the relative importance of each one, all strife for the advancement of one to the prejudice of the others would not be allowed to exist, and each one could have its due share of promotion according to the means at command, and as would best forward the interests of the country."

VIEWS OF LEADING MEN.

Ex-Governor Roberts, now one of the law professors of the University, Col. Ashbel Smith, first president of the regents, and Hon. A. W. Terrell, among others, have been active promoters of the Lamar policy as to higher education, while Governor Ireland, a man of vigorous intellect and strong convictions, seems to have been governed by something like the Houston idea, or at least as far as he has expressed himself, by a preference for the common schools as quite sufficient for the State to provide, and probably better for the people

under his view of the situation than keeping up the expense of both the common schools and the University. His idea more properly, perhaps, was, without really opposing the University plan, to have a more diffused system of higher education by means of "district colleges" fairly distributed as "feeders for a University," and have the University await the establishment of the colleges, before putting it into operation, and then to inaugurate it on a grand scale. State Senator Pfeuffer was noted for his advocacy of something like this policy, and for his introduction of a bill accordingly while a member of the legislature during Governor Ireland's administration, in which bill among other features he provided for "establishing one University preparatory school in each congressional district in the State under control of an auxiliary professor at a salary of $1,500 per annum, to be appointed by the University board of regents, which schools shall be organized as high schools in harmony with the University course, and serve as feeders to the University.

The bill, however, did not pass in either branch of the legislature.

In order that no injustice be done Governor Ireland in this connection, the following extract is given from his address at the University June commencement in 1884: "A good deal has been said about an antagonism between the free schools and the University. I do not think there is any, and there should not be. The man who attempts to array the one against the other is a friend of neither. There is room for both if wisely managed. They may be likened to a shipwreck; all are afloat with one plank between them, which may with prudence carry all ashore; but if a struggle occurs for complete possession all will probably be lost. The common schools could live without the University, but the University cannot live without primary and collegiate education. The great question to be solved is: How and where are students to get their education to fit them for the University? There are a few high schools in Texas. The schools at Independence, Waco, Georgetown, and a few other places are turning out good scholars, who

may enter the University, but they are few. There might be created in each congressional district a school of high grade, placing them as near the poor young men and women as possible. These could be under the patronage of the University, or may be a free school system proper. This is a mere suggestion; it is not a pet theme of mine, but I have heard of nothing better." Governor Ireland claimed that his policy of postponing the opening was best for the University, and that he advocated it purely in that interest, and from no spirit of hostility to the institution.

Dr. Hadra, of San Antonio, while one of the University regents, like Governor Ireland, opposed what he considered the premature opening of the University. Senator Knittel seemed to entertain about the same views as those of Senator Pfeuffer as to the College and the University.

After the defeat of the Pfeuffer bill, and at the close of the session, March 31, 1885, Senator Pfeuffer, rising to a question of privilege, addressed the senate at considerable length, and in rather remarkable vein, using the following strong language in the course of his address:

"I claim the right in these last hours of this session, when it may no longer be urged that I am in debate by an insiduous move on questions for legislation, to reply to the charges that, as stated, have been made in a thousand forms-misrepresentations that each day assume new phases.

"I was made chairman of the committee of education at this session of the legislature. For some years past I have been one of the directors of the A. and M. College, located at Bryan. I have felt a profound interest in the success of that institution. This legisiature had scarcely met when we heard words of ridicule addressed against the A. and M. College, and derisive sneers at its efforts, and suggestions that it be abandoned as an educational institution and be converted into an asylum. These enemies of the A. and M. College thought that it was inimical to the State University at Austin. The A. and M. College had friends. There were those amongst us who believed it was an

institution that should receive the first care of the State. We may have been of opinion that the class of our youth that the A. and M. College proposed to cultivate was as important to the State, and would, when leaving that institution, be worth, as much for her prosperity as urbane scholars versed in the languages of Greece and Rome, or proficient in the soft tongues of Spain and Italy, the brilliant language of France, or the stately manliness of the language of my fatherland.

"There were some who thought that the schools where the farmer's sons were taught the nature of soils, the chemistry of crops, were as important as the schools in which metaphysical jargon is heard in wrangling from morning to night. There were some who thought that sound instruction in the history of domestic animals, a knowledge in the capacities of their different breeds, their adaptability to our climate, their diseases and remedies and best modes of rearing, their anatomical structure, and everything necessary for their successful management, was as useful as the pleasing science of entomology that may expand itself in volumes on the anatomy of the carrion beetle, or tremendous discussions unfolding the purpose the house fly or the swamp gallinipper serve as assistants in hygiene in our kitchens and around our poisonous lagoons.

"There were some of us who had these thoughts relating to the relative utility of the two classes of what is termed higher education-the one looking to grain producers on our farms and ranches, the other as supplying material from which the bench and the bar, the pulpit, the medical corps, are recruited, and from which, also, come the vast herd of idlers that is too highly cultivated to work in manual labor, and too worthless to follow out any line for which their education may fit them to be useful as members of society.

"We think we may be pardoned for holding in importance the science which teaches our youth to look to the earth and inspect its soils, and discern the hidden powers of nature that, when applied, will make teeming crops and an abundant yield. We may be

pardoned if we think this science equal in dignity and equally useful with the science that would consult the stars and the planets, and endeavor to determine their occult influences-influences which, if discovered, could never be controlled. It may be discovered that spots on the sun control vegetation, and the phases of the moon regulate the tides and the weather; but it is beyond the powers of man to regulate these awful influences. Metaphysical wranglers may worry their minds over innate ideas, questions of time and space, or even the calculation of the number of angels that might dance upon a needle point. The practical knowledge of one's own self, as each man may discover, and an analysis of, and knowledge as it grows with us, and a knowledge of things that are actual around us, are as worthy of thought as these questions of the schoolman. It is as important and dignified to know how to stretch and preserve the skins of cattle slaughtered with the knife, and save their meat for food, and pack it in barrels with salt, as to be able to kill the ephemeral butterfly with chloroform and preserve it with arsenic, packed away in a show case, with a Greek name in polysyllables pinned on its back, doing the honors of an epitaph and biography, offered as an atonement for its poor little life, that was taken for science's sake by some murderous crazy bug hunter.

"There were those who thought the studies of the proper application of the pulley, the lever, the wedge and wheel and axle to aid the powers of man's feeble muscles, and the principle of machines that assist to make work easy and redeem men, women and children from a life of toil, were quite as important and dignified as the study of the mechanics of the solar system, or as the dreams of the fanciers, who imagine in their reveries that they hear the music of spheres.

"Enough, however, of these comparisons In practical life and practical work there are no useless, senseless humbugs. In the pastimes of science, literature and art, there are thousands of things that the world were better had they never been, but being, if they were forgotten. Still, in contrasting much that is embraced in polite learning with the useful and practical knowl