mont, including the whole House of Bishops, are recruited from their ranks. But the great jurists who have adorned the British bench or the British bar, and the eminent physicians who have shed luster on the medical science of England, have derived very little of their knowledge of law or of medicine from the universities; and of the great architects, engineers, naturalists, artists, and explorers, whose works or whose achievements constitute a large proportion of the national glory of the empire, not one can be said to have been made by these famous institutions. The British universities have, on the other hand, been rather administered in the interests of the aristocracy than of the people of England, and they have been adapted to the wants or the preferences of a class whose wealth lifts them above the necessity of labor, and who have no desire to be initiated into any professional career, unless it be the political-a career which is not a profession, and for which no especial training is esteemed to be necessary. It is therefore quite true that the British universities are not universities at all, if we use the word in its modern popular acceptance; if we understand it to mean, as it meant originally, institutions possessing and exercising the power to confer degrees, then they are entitled to the name.

The Universities of Germany correspond more nearly to the popular idea. They are devoted to supplementary education exclusively and altogether. They do not concern themselves in the least with questions of mental discipline. Their object is not to form, but to inform the mind. Constituting, moreover, as they do the only channels of access to the liberal professions and to the civil service of the empire or of its component states, they possess a political importance which is not equally enjoyed by institutions of corresponding grade in other countries. The students (native to the country) who attend these great institutions come up from the Gymnasia and the Realschulen, which occupy the position and fulfill the functions of the colleges of our country. The course of instruction in the Gymnasia covers quite as much ground as that of the American college of the eighteenth century, and in its practical enforcement is believed to be carried out much more thoroughly than can with truth be asserted of many of our collegiate institutions. Hence one is a little surprised to find in an able article on this subject, by a well known educationist,* published in March, 1880, the stricture on the German University system, that it leads to unsatisfactory results because the Gymnasium "does not carry the general culture high enough." There is another fault imputed by the same writer to this system which seems to be better founded. He says: Everywhere in Europe, and nowhere more than in Germany, society is burdened with an unnatural and irrational aristocracy. Hence there is also an unnatural and irrational aristocracy of intellectual pursuits-unnatural and irrational because founded on tradition and not on culture alone. To this aristocracy belong the three traditional liberal professions, the*Joseph Le Conte, in Princeton Review, March, 1880, p. 201.

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ology, law, and medicine, together with the professions of the scholar and scientific investigator. The so-called technical professions, equay intellectual-i. e., requiring equal general culture-are denied the cognomen of 'liberal,' banished with scorn from the university, and compelled to seek refuge in separate technical schools. Thus thought and action, the ideal and the practical-a twain that should be joined in indissoluble marriage-are forced into unnatural divorce, to the loss and injury of both. On the one hand, the technical professions would be imbued with the lofty spirit of true culture, and thus elevated and ennobled into true liberal professions; on the other, the culture of the university would be quickened and vitalized by the earnestness of men having practical ends in view. On the one hand, the general culture would create a soul under the dead ribs of the technical professions; on the other, the technical professions would give practical body to the too ideal culture of the university."

*

If any

The exclusion of the technical professions from the university is a practical and economical error, which in our gradually developing American universities we have had the good sense to avoid; but it is certainly a mistake to attribute this exclusion in Germany to the unnatural constitution of German society, or to the existence of class distinctions among that people. The technical professions are not held in contempt because the occupations they offer are presumed to be unfit for noblemen. The prejudice against them, so far as it exists, is a prejudice which men of literary culture, not in Germany only but everywhere, feel toward pursuits to which the idea of a mercenary character in any way attaches. It is a feeling which those in whom it exists entertain as scholars and not as aristocrats. * tradition has been more persistently and consistently maintained from the earliest times down to the present, it has been the profound contempt of the man of letters for the lucre of gain. And such are the men who have always had possession of the universities of the Continent of Europe. So far, therefore, as science has presented itself in a character purely intellectual, it has received the hospitality of the universities; but at every point at which it has manifested a tendency to ally itself with the spirit of cupidity, it has been met by the scholar's dislike for the mean and mercenary, and contemptuously turned away. This is the reason, and the only reason, that the technical professions are driven to take refuge in Germany in separate technical schools.

In our own country, though universities, in the full significance of that term, cannot be said as yet to exist, yet they are gradually growing up by the expansion, on the part of some of our colleges, of the sphere of their teaching in the upward direction. One form of this expansion consists in the creation of professional schools, and in this process there is no such invidious distinction made with us as that above noticed as occurring in the German universities. On the other hand, in some instances, the technical professions have been provided

for where "the learned professions" are neglected; and the reason for this obviously is, that the demand for well educated men of these professions has in recent years been steadily growing, while in the others the supply has been fully up to the demand, if not in excess of it. In a single instance—the Johns Hopkins University-the attempt has been made to assume the university form from the beginning; but this institution, like the others, maintains an undergraduate course, or School of the Liberal Arts, differing from them only in making this an inconspicuous feature of its system. Among the colleges which have made the largest steps in advance in the direction of the higher development, are Harvard, Yale, the College of New Jersey, and our own institution.

COLUMBIA COLLEGE AS A UNIVERSITY.

Within the last twenty-five years Columbia College has greatly enlarged the scope of its teaching and the sphere of its usefulness. During the year ending in June, 1857, the total number of students matriculated was one hundred and forty-three, and the instruction given was confined to the department of Arts, and the number of professors and instructors was only six. Our School of Law, which was our first professional school, was opened just twenty-four years ago. Two years later the College of Physicians and Surgeons of this city became associated with us in an educational alliance as our School of Medicine. In 1864 was established our School of Mines, with the intention originally to confine its teaching to the object indicated by its name, that is to the preparation of well educated Mining Engineers; but, four years later, this design was enlarged by the institution of courses of instruction leading up to five different scientific professions, Mining Engineering, Civil Engineering, Metallurgy, Analytic and Applied Chemistry, and Geology and Palæontology. To these in 1881 was added a course in Architecture. In 1880 was established our School of Political Science, designed to train men for the domestic or diplomatic civil service, or to prepare them to discharge intelligently such duties of public life as may devolve upon them as members of our State or national legislatures, as members of municipal councils, or as public journalists. And in the same year was instituted the Department of Graduate Instruction, which opens up for us in the future a prospect of constantly increasing usefulness.

We have organized a course of instruction in the Modern Languages, the Romance, the Teutonic, and the Scandinavian, with the design not merely to afford, as is often the case in colleges, a few months' tuition in one or the other of these, for the purpose of imparting a more or less imperfect facility in translation, but to carry the student through a continuous course extending from the earliest undergraduate year into the department of graduate instruction if desired, and embracing not only a knowledge of the languages as spoken or written, but also a critical acquaintance with the masterpieces of their literature.

We have prescribed courses of study for the higher degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy; and have provided for the extension of the course of instruction in our School of Law to a third year, on the completion of which the students honorably proficient shall receive the superior degree of Master of Laws.

To a large extent, therefore, our institution has assumed the character of a university. This has not in any manner impaired its usefulness or diminished its attractiveness as a school for undergraduate instruction. On the other hand, in proportion as it has strengthened its professional schools and offered larger inducements to advanced students to come to us for that supplementary education which is needed after the training of the College is complete, in the same proportion the attendance in our undergraduate department has steadily grown.

On the literary side, we need a Department of Comparative Philol ogy, and this need will soon be urgent. We have already many of the elements satisfactorily provided, out of which such a department will be able to gather the material for its work.

It has for years been found impracticable for any one officer, charged at the same time with heavy duties of class instruction, to direct the preparation of the English essays of the students of all the classes, to read and criticise carefully all those performances, and finally to communicate personally to each individual the results of such examination in such a manner as to impress upon the several authors the lessons to be derived from their merits or their errors. To burden the Professor of English Literature with the whole of this intolerable task has long been seen to be impracticable, except at the cost of destroying his usefulness in any other respect; and the work has, therefore, by authority of the Trustees, been for many years divided among several hands, the Professor of English Literature being charged with supervising the performances of only a single class.

Another of the present wants of our College on the literary side of its university teaching is a competent instructor or lecturer upon archæology and ancient art.

Another educational want for which we have yet made no provision is a department of modern art-the Fine Arts-of which we have an admirable type in the School of the Fine Arts founded at Yale College by the late Mr. Street. We have already introduced into our School of Mines a course of Architecture, which, in one of its aspects, is counted among the Fine Arts, and is recognized and taught as such by the Ecole des Beaux Arts of Paris. But in our school the subject is necessarily taught less from the æsthetic than from the practical point of view; and we cannot properly be said to teach Architecture as a Fine Art at all.

There are several Schools of Art in our city, though not one which adequately meets the need of the time.

In passing from the Literary to the Scientific side, it is to be noted,

first, that the important subjects of Ethnology and Anthropology are wholly unrepresented in our scheme. These subjects, which together constitute what may be called the Natural History of Man, have been prosecuted in recent years with an activity and fertility of results which must be pronounced truly astonishing.

The sciences of Ethnology and Anthropology should have an especial interest for us, since some of their most earnest and successful investigators have been our own countrymen. One of the earliest of these was Prof. Samuel George Morton, of Philadelphia, who so long ago as 1839 published his able and original work on the Crania Americana, which was received throughout the scientific world with an admiration mingled with surprise. Later American investigators in the same field have been the late E. G. Squier, of this city, first president of the American Anthropological Society, to whom we owe the first thorough exploration of the numerous mounds of prehistoric antiquity so widely scattered over our Western plains; also the late Lewis II. Morgan, of Rochester, whose studies of the history, affinities, usages, arts and architecture of the aboriginal tribes of this continent and of their probable origin have been most laborious and exhaustive; to say nothing of men still living and hardly less distinguished, among whom may be mentioned Prof. F. V. Hayden, formerly Director of the United States Survey of the Western Territories; Col. J. W. Powell, present Director of the Geographical and Geological Survey of the same region; Wm. Henry Dall, Esq., the author of recent reports on the orarian tribes of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, the result of an exploration conducted under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution; Prof. Alexander Winchell, late Chancellor of Syracuse University, who in a recent work entitled Præ-Adamites," has presented in compact form one of the most able summaries of the present state of anthropological science which has yet appeared.

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Anthropology is but a single branch of Natural History, though, considering the comparative dignity of its subject, it is one of special importance. But it is unfortunately the case that, in respect to all departments of this extensive subject, our provisions are equally imperfect. Zoology, Botany, Physiology, and Biology are all unrepresented in our scheme of instruction.

Our sister institutions on all sides of us are provided in these matters with a completeness which puts us quite to shame. The College of New Jersey has a Professor of Natural History and three assistant professors; it has also a Museum or Laboratory for work in Botany and Zoology, and provides systematic lectures in these sciences, and graduate courses in Biology and Palæontology, with no fewer than five instructors. The Johns Hopkins University has a department of Biology, with a Biological Laboratory, provided with all the most perfect instrumentalities for experimental research, having at its head an accomplished professor who has the aid of five associates or assistants.