of country, and to all which is truly conservative of the principles and institutions of a free country.

There is, if possible, still less ground for hesitation in respect to withdrawing capital from active business, to be appropriated to collections of books, apparatus, scientific specimens, and other instruments of instruction. It is in respect to these very things more than to anything else, that we suffer by comparison with many other nations, which are immensely inferior to us in wealth and resources. In the number and extent of our lines of railway, telegraph, and steam navigation, in the beauty and magnificence of our structures devoted to merchandise, and in all commercial and business facilities, we can bear a very favorable comparison with any other nation on earth. But when our libraries are inquired after, our repositories of the garnered wisdom of ages, our collections of instruments, inventions and specimens, for advancing the sciences, enlarging the sphere of human knowledge, and extending the conquest of mind over the powers and forces of matter, we are obliged to hang our heads for the most part, and put off the curious inquirer with promises of what is to be in the days of our grandchildren.

For the want of such facilities thousands of our countrymen, with minds as active and vigorous as any on earth, are blindly treading the intricate and perplexing paths of invention and discovery, with infinite labor and difficulty rediscovering what has been already discovered to their hands, and trying over and over again, at enormous cost, experiments which have been already tried and failed; and thus employing with no useful result powers which, properly directed by the lights of experience and scientific learning, might have extended the boundaries of human knowledge, and opened new sources of human happiness. No one who has not turned his thoughts to the subject has any adequate conception of the enormous waste of mental power and activity, which in this manner we are constantly suffering. The only remedy for the evil is to be found in a vast increase among us of the resources of learning, and the instruments of thorough and accurate instruction

in the principles of science, and the progress thus far made in applying them.

Indeed, there is not a possible appropriation of capital to the requisite amount, which would in this country be more efficiently productive of additional facilities in every department of trade and business; none which could in its results be more truly economical. Our American mind is truly and intensely inventive, and requires only to be guided by all the lights of learning, and aided by all the facilities which the last improvements in science and useful art afford, to produce results the most creditable to us as a nation, and the most beneficial to mankind.

If men of wealth will go so far; if they will furnish to our institutions devoted to the higher instruction, buildings corresponding in architectural beauty and substantial durability, with the dignity of that great interest which they are to represent, and with the costly magnificence of our commercial architecture, and supply them with libraries and collections of the various instruments of instruction, which will place within the reach of the gifted, the curious, and the studious among us, the treasured achievements of the human mind in all ages, they will perform a truly noble service to the cause of learning, to their country and to mankind.

And yet, as society is constituted in this country, should their liberality embrace no other objects than those which we have thus far specified, they would leave their work so incomplete, that small results comparatively could be expected from it. In a country where, as in ours, all the lower walks of instruction are rendered by public endowment as free to all as the air and the water, it is indispensable that the institutions devoted to the higher departments of learning should be endowed also. If teachers in the higher walks of learning are compensated only by fees exacted from their pupils, those charges must become so burdensome, as to exclude all except the wealthy from enjoying their instructions; and inasmuch as it does not appear that either genius or the love of learning are to be reckoned among the good things which money will purchase, such an arrangement is obviously unwise and un

suited to the ideas or the wants of a democratic people. In a nation so pervaded as ours is by democratic principles, the higher instruction must not stand by itself, as a solitary ex ception to the care and fostering liberality of the public; if it does so it will utterly perish; it must be so provided for by liberal endowments, as not to be beyond the reach of any gifted and enterprising mind, though born and reared in poverty and toil. If then our higher seminaries of learning are practically to bring their benefits within the reach of the people, they must be to a very considerable extent furnished with endowed professorships in the various branches of science, art, and liberal learning; and any man, who appropriates a few thousands of his wealth to the founding of such a professorship is eminently a public benefactor.

It is at this point, more than anywhere else, that we have met the objection, that such an appropriation of capital is withdrawing it from active business; that college corporations are not able to make capital as productive as it may be in the hands of an active and skillful business man. What is claimed in this objection is often true; and it may be a very good reason why, as long as one needs, and can employ his capital in active business, he should retain it in his own hands, and, for the time being, only aid the cause of learning by bestowing upon it a portion of his annual income. But many wealthy men are unable to unite their whole capital with their own industry and skill; and in the swift course of human life, every capitalist soon reaches a point where he can only derive benefit from his capital in the form of interest. Old age comes on, chills his blood, paralyzes his energies, and blunts the once keen edge of his perceptions; or he must pass away from earth, and leave his estate to be managed by heirs, who may be as industrious and skillful as himself, or they may be utterly destitute of both these qualities, and quite deficient in the virtue of frugality besides. When a man's years of active business are gone, he may well be satisfied that his estate should thenceforward yield to its holder bank interest. Few rich men we suspect succeed in so disposing of their wealth as for any great length of time to produce even that, when their

own care and skill and frugality are withdrawn from it. We believe there are few appropriations, which could be made of it, in which it would be so sure to produce a fair rate of interest, even down to the distant future, as the one which we recommend.

We admit that our age has produced not a few schemes' for founding new seminaries, which have proved utterly chimerical, indeed were known by experienced educators to be so from their very inception; and that they have made grievous waste of the benefactions which have been bestowed upon them by incautious liberality, cannot be denied. But for such untried enterprises we are not pleading. We have in nearly every portion of our country institutions, which are founded on principles well settled and tested, and managed by Boards of Trust, that have learned wisdom by experience, and can be trusted implicitly to manage wisely any funds which may be committed to their hands. It is in the power of men of large wealth to make a noble and efficient provision for the higher culture, by enlarging the resources of these established institutions. There is not a State east of the Mississippi, certainly not a free State, which has not more than one such, with a foundation broad and solid enough to sustain such a superstructure as the age demands. It is only necessary that we know what instruction is requisite and provide these institutions with the means of imparting it. Nothing need be risked in any doubtful or untried enterprise.

What more, for example, is needful in New England, than to enlarge the circle of instruction in such institutions as Cambridge, and Yale, and Williams, and Amherst, till provision has been made for all that vast variety of culture which the age requires? And the same is true of many of the colleges, even of the Western States, except that their present resources are much more limited. Their foundations have been well laid, and sufficiently tested by time and experience; it is only requisite that such additions be made to their resources as shall enable them to furnish the needed facilities in every department of human knowledge.

We have heard much, in our day, of Industrial Universities,

Farmers' Colleges, and the like. The use of such phrases savors a little of the demagogue: it should surely be avoided as not suited to American society. What we need is not class education, nor schools of instruction which shall recognize and provide for classes; but instruction for all who will avail themselves of it, in every department of literature, science, and art; and that our institutions devoted to the higher instruction be enlarged and liberalized, till they meet this want in its largest extent. Let us recognize and practically illustrate the unity of the republic of letters, consisting indeed of many departments, but having the one aim, to cultivate, adorn, and enrich the mind.

We are not then called, for the most part, to lay new foundations; we have no need to engage in doubtful and untried experiments. No investment can be safer. We do not believe that any man can dispose of at least a portion of his fortune in any other way, in which it will fairly promise to add so much to the real wealth, prosperity, and happiness of his country, as by devoting it to the cause of learning.

In determining to what purpose he will devote his wealth, a man ought to consider what wants of society are most likely to be neglected, and remain unprovided for, and to do that which there is most danger that others will neglect to do. Every good man feels it to be his duty to provide for his own household; and there will of course be great diversity of judg ment, as to what amount of pecuniary provision will be most conducive to the happiness of his family and dependents. These are questions which every one must decide for himself and with which we presume not to intermeddle. But as to that part of one's fortune not absorbed by the paramount claims of those whom nature has made dependent on him, it seems to us, that the claims of the higher seminaries of learning are vastly stronger than any other, upon the simple principle, that in this country there really is no other way in which they can be adequately provided for, except by the liberal contributions of the wealthy. Some may be disposed to think that provision for the poor is a nobler charity. But experience shows that public provisions for the relief of the poor are mischievous in