is doubtless an advantage in finding, already formed, such groupings of studies as have been determined by the wisest educators, and proved by the experience of years to be best calculated to perfect their preparation for their respective callings in life-that is, if we may assume that the student, still feeling his way and only advancing by the aid of others, is less wise than the master, already familiar with the great highway, and even the by-ways, his feet have need to tread.

Intimately connected with this organization of faculties we have the question of discipline; concerning which, however, I deem it important to say only this much, namely: that the manifest and true tendency is a fair compromise between the rigid rule of the French and English universities on the one hand and the extreme license of the German university on the other; neither of which secures the best results. These contrasting policies have naturally grown out of the different governing ideas that characterize the universities of those countries respectively, and which, indeed, are essential to their differences in grade and real character. For the English university, as already shown, is only a haut lycée, and in no proper sense a university at all. It proceeds, therefore, upon the hypothesis that the students who resort to it are still boys, whose object is elementary culture and discipline, and whose need is the stimulation of examinations and high prizes and the severe restraints and penalties imposed by arbitrary authority. Whereas the German university is based on the theory that they who resort to its halls are young men already disciplined in mind and fashioned as to habits of intellectual and moral life, and hence duly prepared to enter upon their career of superior study in that true scientific and philosophic spirit whose glory is that it lifts the student by its own inherent power of inspiration high above all need of arbitrary rule and artificial stimulation.

That neither of these theories is perfectly adapted to the end proposed is apparent after a careful investigation; for, in England the proportion of students who attain to anything more than a pass degree, or even entitle themselves to that, is very small, while at the best of the German universities it is rare that more than a third of the whole number manifest their possession of the true wissenschaftliche Geist by continuous laborious effort during their period of study. Even at Berlin the scientific spirit which animates the whole institution and gives vitality and power to its teaching in every department, fails with the majority to supply the place of official and professional supervision. To the authorities of this, the foremost of the world's universities, it may with propriety be said, "This ought ye to have done and not left the other undone." The scientific spirit is above all price; but even the University of Berlin would accomplish yet more if, to its magnificent material and intellectual provisions for the education of the thousands who throng its famous lecture rooms, there were added such requirements as to attendance, and such frequent tests of progress and profi

ciency as have ever been found essential to hold the less ambitious and as yet uninspired majority of students to their work.

The English methods being simply a perpetuation of past errors, the French a system begotten of the too military spirit of the nation, and the German policy a natural reaction upon the too rigid systems that had been long in vogue when it was adopted, it is not strange that the leading educators of these and of other countries are at present earnestly striving to determine the golden mean.

Touching the organization of the professoriate, one risks nothing in conceding that the German universities, including the Swiss and Austrian, present the best models; and the wonder is that these have not been already universally adopted by other countries. Extraordinary professors, performing the office of assistants, with moderate salaries or half salaries, and thus supplementing the instruction given by the ordinary professors, at a considerable saving to the funds of the institution, are found, indeed, in all the European universities; but the Privatdocenten, giving private lectures on subjects of their own choice, dependent entirely upon their own powers of attraction for auditors and compensation, and powerfully stimulating both extraordinary and ordinary professors, for whose private pupils and fees they are authorized competitors, and for whose very places even they may be aspirants-these are a class of teachers peculiarly German, and a class of whom, in view of the great saving they make to the university, and the quickening and vitalizing influence they exert upon every department and member thereof, it is not too much to say that they are the most important class at present belonging to the university corps of instructors. That so important a feature of the professoriate as this is destined to be adopted at an early day, wherever practicable, seems to me almost certain. But with all the economy that may be used, in their organization and management, it is coming to be understood that it is not possible in any country to establish and maintain a real university without vast sums of money. And accordingly there is observed a corresponding tendency in those countries where the true idea of a university is best comprehended to a concentration of means and intellectual forces in a few great institutions, rather than practically squander them upon a great number of half-endowed, sickly institutions, which are not only not worthy of their high title, but whose meagerness and necessary imperfections constitute them a positive hindrance and curse to the cause of university education. It was the want of a due appreciation of this that led to the establishment in early times of so many universities in Italy and Germany. It will be remembered that as early as the year 1500 Germany alone had fourteen, and that the number continued to increase for a long time after that; every town of the second or third rank insisting on having its university, until at last, yielding to the contempt in which the majority of them had long been held by the learned men of the times, happily sustained by the necessary territorial changes that came of the

political commotions of the eighteenth century, those of them whose life was most sickly, such as those of Erfurt, Mainz, Helmstadt, Frankforton-the-Oder, Rinteln, Duisburg, Bamberg, Cologne, Munster, Paderborn, Dillingen, and Salzburg, were suppressed.

Italy, whose mania for numerous universities had run pari passu with that of Germany, has not even yet effected the requisite work of suppression. The need of such work has long been felt by leading minds, however, and has at length been fairly undertaken by the government, whose purpose it is, by reducing the number of state universities from fifteen to about half the number, and by the adoption of more thorough regulations for their management, to raise them to the high level of the foremost universities of Germany.

So, also, there is, of late, a growing appreciation in Great Britain of the importance of a more judicious concentration of means upon a less number of institutions, in order to the upbuilding of such as shall be more worthy of the high demands alike made by the country and the times. In pursuance of this felt necessity, the Scotch universities are to be consolidated; Queen's University, Dublin, is empowered to grant the degrees heretofore conferred by the colleges at Cork, Galway, and Belfast; and the University of London is gradually absorbing the degree-conferring powers of a large number of similar institutions in England.

In this country alone, where the ambition of new cities and new States, as well as of numberless religious sects, strongly wars against this true policy of the higher education, the opposite tendency still prevails. But even here more rational ideas of what constitutes a true university, and of the large amount of money and professional talent requisite to maintain such an institution, are rapidly gaining ground; so that we may reasonably hope to see a check, ere long, put upon the present insane policy of multiplication without regard to the necessities of education.

It thus appears that university education, notwithstanding its present low condition in most countries, and its serious imperfections in all, is characterized by tendencies that promise great things for the time to come. So much is already beyond question, namely, that the university of the future is to be not the mere college of America, nor even the college supplemented by one or more poorly organized and more poorly equipped professional schools; not that loose aggregation of grammar schools, supplemented by a few poorly attended courses of university lectures, that wear the title, by courtesy, in England; not the French grouping of academical faculties, limited-especially in the departments of letters and science-to a quite too narrow field of study; not the university of Spain, or Portugal, or Italy, from whose faculties for the higher general culture the powers of attraction and inspiration have long since departed; not the Scandinavian or Slavonian university, cast in the mold of mediæval times, or at the best a mixture of the old

and more modern types; nor yet the Germanic university, found, with but minor modifications, in all the States of Germany, in Austria, Switzerland, Holland, and Denmark, and which, though wherever found it presents the highest existing type, is nevertheless everywhere too limited in scope and generally too lax in its regulations-not any of these, but rather an institution more ample in its endowment, broader in its scope, more complete in its organization, more philosophical and prac tical in its internal regulations, and certainly not less high than the highest in all its educational standards; an institution above and beyond the best of the gymnasia, Latin schools, high schools, academies, and colleges, and, on its own higher plane, existing for the extension and diffusion of all branches of knowledge; a broad and noble institution, where the love of all knowledge, and of knowledge as knowledge, shall be fostered and developed; where all departments of learning shall be equally honored, and the relations of each to every other shall be understood and taught; where the students devoted to each and all branches of learning, whether science, language, literature, or philosophy, or to any combinations of these constituting the numerous professional courses of instruction, shall intermingle and enjoy friendly intercourse as peers of the same realm; where the professors, chosen, as in France and Germany, after trial, from among the ablest and best scholars of the world, possessed of absolute freedom of conscience and of speech, and honored and rewarded more nearly in proportion to merit, shall be, not teachers of the known merely, but also earnest searchers after the unknown, and capable, by their own genius, enthusiasm, and moral power, of infusing their own lofty ambition into the minds of all who may wait upon their instruction; a university not barely complying with the demands of the age, but one that shall create, develop, and satisfy new and unheard-of demands and aspirations; that shall have power to fashion the nation and mold the age into its own grander ideal; and which, through every change and every real advance of the world, shall still be at the front, driving back from their fastnesses the powers of darkness, opening up new continents of truth to the grand army of progress, and so leading the nation forward, and helping to elevate the whole human race. Such an institution would be to the world its first realization of the true idea of a university.

INTRODUCTION, WITH SELECTIONS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF COMMISSIONER GENERAL N. M. BECKWITH AND OTHERS.

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE EXPOSITION, WITH A REPORT ON THE CHARACTER AND CONDITION OF THE UNITED STATES SECTION.

REPORT ON THE FINE ARTS. BY FRANK LESLIE.

THE FINE ARTS APPLIED TO THE USEFUL ARTS.

EXTRACT FROM THE REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE ON WEIGHTS, MEASURES, AND COINS.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1867.

VOLUME II.

THE PRODUCTION OF IRON AND STEEL IN ITS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RELATIONS. BY ABRAM S. HEWITT.

REPORT UPON THE PRECIOUS METALS, BEING STATISTICAL NOTICES, ETC. BY WILLIAM P. BLAKE.

THE PROGRESS AND CONDITION OF SEVERAL DEPARTMENTS OF INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY. BY J. LAWRENCE SMITH.