as Bacon expresses it, the food; and that the teacher may know to impart instruction in the measure that they are able to receive it. With the lecture, which can only be heard once, and if lost on that one occasion, is lost forever, there should be text-books, on which the student may turn back once and again, as may suit his capacity and convenience. I hold that every professor should have not only a large general class, to which he gives an impetus by lecturing, he should have a small class of those who lag behind to be taught by an assistant, and also a select class taught by himself, and composed of the few who are to be made thoroughly masters of the subject, or engage in independent research. I am most anxious to see whether the American method, with its combined lectures and recitations, does or does not supply and unite these requisites. IV. WHAT IS THE PLACE AND THE VAL UE OF EXAMINATIONS? Then there is if it is making progress. the evil of cram, in which an immense mass of food is taken at once, without the possibility of digesting it, and with all the evil of a surfeit. I have been told by young men, who have made up a science in a month or two for an examination, that they have lost it as speedily as they gained it, and have retained little else than an aversion to the study. It is certain that the preparation for an examination and a successful competition can never serve the purpose accomplished by a College residence: by well-cooked food being served up from day to day; by sitting habitually under a teacher competent for his work, and interested in it; by constant intercourse and interchange of thought with fellowstudents; by recourse to well-furnished libraries and museums, and by the stimulus of College societies. The London Univerdegrees to all who can stand a trial on the sity is now a mere examining body, giving subjects prescribed. I have no objection I refer now not to class-examinations or that there should be one such University to recitations which ought to be weekly, almost meet the case of those diligent youths who daily, but to general College-examinations can not find it possible to attend a College on courses gone over or on subjects pre- course. But I should deplore to find the scribed. These occupy a very important other Universities of the country reduced place in European Universities. A "first" to the same level when an attempt was and a "double first" class in Oxford, a made to turn the Queen's University into place as a wrangler" in Cambridge, are an examining board we successfully resisted obtained by examinations, and upon these the attempt. We must beware of making the valuable money fellowships depend. learning appear in the view of youth with The fellowships in Dublin, which are of the fixed passive gaze of the Egyptian great value, are gained directly by compet- Sphinx; we must seek to make it wear the itive examinations. The honors and the life and the play of the Grecian Apollo. scholarships of the Queen's University and In a properly regulated course of study Queen's Colleges are determined in the there must be leisure for rest and refreshsame manner. Of late years the Scottish ing, for occasional promiscuous reading, Colleges have been copying from the Eng- and for rumination on the past, and for lish ones; on this point, I believe greatly looking into the future. The student charto their advantage. In Germany there are acter and solid scholarship are to be formed, no ordinary Class or College examinations, as the crust of the earth has been, by conbut at the close, the students are examined tinual deposits building up layer upon layby bureaus in order to their entrance on er; and the competitive examinations are any office, ecclesiastical or civil. to come in at the close, like the upheaving forces of the earth to consolidate what is scattered as sand, and to uplift it and expose it to the view. 66 Some people think that in certain of these Colleges there is too much of official and grading examination, and that the aim of the teaching is not to improve the mind, or even to convey a mastery of the subject, but simply so to drill that the result may appear in the answers; and the impression left is that subjects and studies are valued not for their own intrinsic value, but as they come out in the examinations. It is certain that the examinations may come so often as to interrupt the course of study or bring it to a premature conclusion in short the plant may be kept from growing by fumbling too often about its roots to see VOL. XII. 494 LIVING AGE. You see what is the view I take of examinations. I object to their being made a substitute for College residence, College attendance and training, which are of more value than any competitive trials. They are the folding and sealing of the document, which, however, in order to fulfil any purpose must first have been written out. But then they do serve a most important end when they come in to complete a collegiate course, shorter or longer. They then wind up the previous studies; they necessi tate a revision of the whole; they bring every route to a point, and thus show us the connections of the studies gone over separately. It is a matter of fact that there is always more of accuracy of scholarship, and mastery of detail in those Colleges, in which there are careful revising examinations, than in those, in which there are merely loose lecturing and daily recitations. And there is no other way of determining fitness for graduation, for scholarship and for fellowships, than by some sort of competition, in which examinations must constitute the main element, always it may be with essays and original research. is the Guthrie Fellowship devoted to classical literature, worth £100 a year, and tenable for four years; and the Hamilton Fellowship, allocated to logic, metaphysics and moral philosophy, of the value of £100 a year, and continued for three years; and the Classical Fellowship with £100,.and tenable for three years. There are scholarships in divinity and medicine, which I pass over-to refer only to the Swiney Lectureship in Geology, worth £144; and tenable for five years. Besides these endowments confined to Edinburgh, there are others open to the graduates of any Scottish University; thus there are three Ferguson Scholarships, of £80 each, devoted respectively to classics, mathematics and mental science; and the Shaw Fellowship tenable for two years. It is acknowledged on all hands that an immense impulse has been given to learning by these munificent In many of the Colleges of Europe im-in mental philosophy, worth £160, and mense sums are expended every year in prizes, scholarships and fellowships. In Oxford there are eighty scholarships, of the average value of £65, open to competition foundations. every year on the part of undergraduate In such American Colleges as Princeton, students; and for those, who have taken the average answering at graduation, is the degree, there are three hundred fellow- quite equal, I believe, to that of the best ships, worth about £300 a year each; the of the European Universities.* But I whole amounting to £90,000, and some rather think that there are a select few in twenty or thirty of these fall vacant annu- several British and German Universities, ally. In the Queen's Colleges £1500 a year who go beyond what has been attained on set apart in each for scholarships; and this side the Atlantic. And, I believe, that there are large money honors to be obtained this has been effected very much by the en by competition at the examinations of the couragement given to higher scholarship on Queen's University. The scholarships and the part of the students. Is there no way fellowships, connected with the University by which you Americans, while retaining all of Edinburgh, are especially worthy of be- your present excellencies, may acquire what ing looked to by the friends of higher edu- others have gained? This, I believe, could cation in America, inasmuch as they have be accomplished by providing some sort of all been supplied by private benevolence, higher Scholarships or Fellowships as a reand within the last few years. I will not ward of diligence and success in the past; specify those allocated to junior students, and obliging those who accept them to conbut it may be useful to refer to those re-tinue their studies after graduation under served for graduates or advanced students. There is the Mackenzie Scholarship worth £120 a year, gained by eminence in classical and English literature, and tenable for four years. There is a Greek Travelling Scholarship, tenable for one year, and worth £70. There are four Baxter Scholarships, each worth £60 a year, and tenable for not more than four years; one for the best answering in mathematics, the second for the best answering in mental philosophy, the third for the best answering in physics, and the fourth in natural history. The Drummond Scholarship is worth £100 a year, and is tenable for three years; it is devoted to mathematics. There are three Tyndal Bruce Scholarships, each worth £100 a year, and ten-versities, such as we understand by the term; the able for three years; one for general scholarship, a second for philosophical and a third for Mathematical Scholarship. There the superintendence of the College. The grand hinderance to higher learning in the Colleges here is to be found in the circumstance that the best students, after getting their degree, rush at once into professional pursuits, and make no farther progress, if indeed they do not lose what they have so laboriously acquired. The friends of the American Colleges could not benefit them so effectually as by providing that those who have taste and talent for higher scholarship should have an inducement to continue their studies after graduation as having a means I am surprised to find Mr. Pattison (Academical Organization, p. 150) saying." In America scientific culture has never been introduced. It has no Uniinstitutions so called being merely places for grant ing titular degrees." He refers in proof to the course of studies in Yale University-a course which seems to me to be a very good one. of sustaining themselves while they do so. | to public competition instead of being de These distinguished alumni should be re-termined by political partisanship. VI. SHOULD THERE BE UNIVERSITY EX TENSION? This is a question, which requires to be agitated in some parts of Europe. The German speaking nations, with their fiftyeight universities and nineteen thousand students, do not seem to stand in need of such extension; nor does Scotland, with its four old efficient universities; nor Ireland with its two universities, and its four stateendowed and its various denominational Colleges. But England certainly has much need of the establishment of new Colleges, especially in its great centres of wealth and population, such as London, and Manchester, and Bristol, and Newcastle. the Pacific, from Maine to New Mexico; advancing with the population of the country, refining its energy, and purifying its wealth. But we have a right to ask that, while new Universities are encouraged, the old be not discouraged. I believe that excessive multiplication of small and ill-sustained Colleges in a district may be an enormous evil. In these days of rapid lo quired to pursue special lines of study or to travel; and might be encouraged to produce the results in brief courses of lectures, delivered under the sanction of the College, and sure to be appreciated by the students. There is another way in which the interests of education have been much promoted both in Prussia and Great Britain, and that is by Government patronage bestowed on those who succeed at public examinations. In Prussia, young men can enter the learned professions of law, medicine, and the church only through the Universities and an examination. Not only so, but in order to entrance on the civil service of the country, an attendance at a gymnasium or University, followed by a rigid examination, is required. In Great Britain, all young men entering the public service, Every friend of education and of manmilitary, medical, or civil, down to tide-kind will rejoice to see Colleges extending waiters and office porters, must submit to all over this country; from the Atlantic to a literary examination. In many, offices such as the Royal Engineers and the Medical and Civil Service of India are to be had in this way and in no other. Some of the most valuable public offices in the world are gained in this way, such as the civil offices of India, which begin with £400 or £500 a year, and speedily rise to £1000, or possibly £1500, open to all young men. I am far from saying that this mode of ap-comotion it is of little moment to a student, pointment to Government employment is whether he have to go ten or twenty miles not liable to theoretical objections; but to a College, one hundred miles or five practically it is found to be vastly prefer- hundred. I believe that there is always able to the old method, which proceeded more of stimulus, more of success, more of by nepotism, or by political partisanship, life, less of conceit, less of narrowness, of in which the Member of Parliament was sectarianism, of knottiness, in large classes obliged to recommend the youth, who was and large Colleges than in small ones. pressed upon him by his supporters in his Care should certainly be taken that, in the county or borough. There is, of course, excessive competition, the food do not bealways a risk of failure in the case of the come adulterated; that the new Colleges appointment of untried young men; but do not drag down the old till all sink to a when it depends on the success at a severe Dead Sea level. We should rather strive competitive trial in the higher branches, that the old be bringing up the new to a there is a security that the youth must pos- higher standard; and that we have a numsess good abilities; that he has a power of ber of Colleges thoroughly equipped by application and perseverance; and that he able men, by extensive apparatus, and by has not spent his time in indolence or vice chairs for teaching every high branch of -which last capacity or incapacity was literature and science. We must not yield sometimes reckoned as constituting his ap- to the temptation, to which we are exposed, titude for the situation - those, unfit for of sending unripe fruit into the market: or, anything else, being often foisted into a gov- to vary the metaphor, of resting contented ernment office, when their friends happened with lumber fabrics. In new and waste counto have influence with the dominant party. tries they must be satisfied, and we do not It is surely worthy of consideration, whether blame them, with the log cabin; but then they the offices in this country, requiring to be rise as speedily as possible to the frame filled by young men, might not with ad- house; and as the country becomes older vantage to the community, and to the great they would have the more solid brick and encouragement of learning, be thrown open the stone; and now not only your capitols, 1 but not a few of your private dwellings, ries of our hard-working and under-paid are of marble. There ought to be such an professors, who should be set free from ascension in your Colleges as the country drudgery and worldly anxieties to give a grows older and richer: in the far West they may start with little better than our High Schools; but in the older East we must not rest satisfied till we have institutions to rival the grand old Universities of Europe, such as Oxford, and Cambridge, aud Berlin, and Edinburgh. What makes Oxford and Cambridge have such an influence on those who live within their walls, and which is sensibly felt even by those who pay them only a passing visit ? The great men who have been there, and who still seem to look down upon us; the living men, not unworthy of them, and who are pointed out to us, as they walk through the courts; the talk of the tripos and the first class, and the double first and the wranglerships; the quiet life in the Colleges, and the active life in the examination halls, in the societies and the great University meetings; the manuscripts, the old books, the museums, all these create an academic atmosphere, in which it is bracing to breathe, and is felt to be more stimulating than all the excellent teaching of the tutors. Will our numerons friends not join with the professors and students in striving to create such an atmosphere here in Princeton, where we have grand names in the past, and need only like men in the present: by accessions to our apparatus and our library, and encouragements to the students to go on to the higher learning; and by the founding of new chairs of literature and science to make our College as adapted to these times as our forefathers made it suitable to their day? For the handsome and considerate kindness shown by those who have so endeared themselves to me, as well as benefited this College, by endowing the presidential of fice, and furnishing me with a comfortable home, I here give public and hearty thanks. My personal comforts being provided for, I am free to look to other interests. Of late years, certain generous benefactors have endowed chairs in the College, and now we have a princely merchant devoting a large sum to its extension generally, and a well-known friend of science aims at placing on our height, with its wide horizon, the finest observatory in the world. They will be followed, I trust, by others. The friends of Princeton must come forward at this time to uphold her, and make her worthy of her ancient reputation, and enable her to advance with the times: one whom God has blessed, increasing the sala portion of their energy to the furtherance of learning and science; a second, by providing further accommodation for our students, that we may receive and house comfortably all who apply; a third by erecting a gymnasium for the bracing of the bodily frame; * a fourth, by enlarging our library or scientific apparatus; a fifth, by founding a scholarship, or junior fellowship for the encouragement of letters and high merit among students; and a sixth, by founding a new chair required by the progress of knowledge: we have scope here for every man's tastes and predilections. Speaking of the desirableness of elevating the learning in our higher institutions, I have sometimes thought that, as Oxford University combines some twenty-two Colleges, and Cambridge eighteen, so there might in this country be a combination of Colleges in one University. Let every State have one University to unite all its Colleges, and appointing examiners and bestowing honors of considerable pecuniary value on more deserving students. Some such combination as this, while it would promote a wholesome rivalry among the Colleges, would, at the same time, keep up the standard of erudition. Another benefit would arise: the examination of the candidates being conducted not by those who taught them, but by elected examiners, would give a high and catholic tone to the teaching in the Colleges. I throw out the idea that thinking men may ponder it. But returning to ourselves. New Jersey College has a great prestige, second, I believe, to no other in the United States. But we cannot live on our past reputation - any more than our frames can be sustained on the food which we have partaken days ago. In these times, when it is known that all things move, earth and sun, stars and constellations, we cannot stop or remain stationary, except at the risk of being thrown out of our sphere, without the power of returning to it. In this new country, we have to look to our children more than our fathers, and "instead of the fathers shall be the children." You will have seen from the whole train of these observations, that I aim at keeping up academic standard at Princeton. I have not torn myself from my native land and friends to be the mere head of a Mechanics' Institute; I would rather you should the Immediately after the Inauguration, two gentlegymnasium. men subscribed $10,000 each, for the erection of s send me back to my old country at once VII. -- WHAT PLACE SHOULD RELIGION In Scotland the Established Church long claimed an authority over the Colleges, and over all their teaching, and provided a form of religion.. I can testify that it was little more than a form, and this not always the form of sound words. For years past the control of the Church of Scotland over anything but the theological professors has been taken away, and with it all that remained of the form has disappeared: and now the Scottish Colleges profess to give nothing more than secular instruction, men of piety always seeking to imbue their whole teaching with a religious spirit. The keen battle being at present fought in England is likely to terminate in the same issue. But good men concerned about the religion and morality of young men cannot allow things to continue in that state. How, then, is religion to be grafted on State Colleges open to all whatever their religious profession? I have thought much on this subject, and labored with some success to realize my idea in Belfast.* Let the State provide the secular instruction and the churches provide the religious training in the homes in which the students reside. But, passing from foreign topics, this College has had a religious character in time past, and it will be my endeavor to see that it has the same in time to come. Religion should burn in the hearts, and shine, though they wis it not, from the face of the teachers; and it should have a living power in our meetings for worship, and should sanctify the air of the rooms in And in regard which the students reside. But you will expect of one descended from the old Covenanting stock, who fought so resolutely for the rights of conscience, and whose blood dyed the heather hills of Scotland; from one who was brought up in a district where there are martyrs' tombs in every church-yard; from one who was connected for so many years with the Irish system of national education, which allows no one to tamper with the religious convictions of pupils, that he shall take care that every one here shall have full freedom of thought: that whatever be his religious creed or political party, be he from the North, or be he from the South, be he of a white or a dark color, he shall have free access to all the benefits which this college can bestow; and that a minority, nay, even a single conscientious individual, shall be protected from the tyranny of the majority, and encouraged to pursue his studies with• The Methodist body has spent £24,000 in erect-out molestation, provided always that not ing a tine College in the immediate neighborhood of Queen's College, Belfast. The students take the being interfered with himself, he does not ordinary academic branches in Queen's College, and interfere with others. receive specially religious and theological instruction in their own College. The Irish Presbyterians have subscribed £3,000 for the erection of students' chambers attached to their Theological College, and open to all students intended for the ministry, whether in the Queen's College or the Theological College. I am convinced that it is in some such way as this that the churches are to provide religious instruction in connection with the State Colleges of Great Britain, You have called me to the highest office, so I esteem it, which your great country could place at my disposal. But if I know my own heart, I am not vain, I am not even proud, as I might be, of the distinction conferred upon me. I am rather awed at the thought of the responsibility |