enlarged. For whereas in 1881 we stated that the total attendance at the polytechnicums was little more than 2,000, the attendance of students at Charlottenburg alone, irrespective of the Berlin University, is now 3,000, while the number of students in the physical and electro-technical laboratories at Darmstadt is already in excess of the accommodation. Indeed, it is worthy of remark that the same object which called into existence some forty or fifty years ago the technical universities has recently led to their extension and development in a new direction. As far back as that period Germany began to prepare herself for becoming a inanufacturing people. It was her belief in the future application of chemistry to industrial purposes that led to the erection and equipment at a great cost of chemical laboratories and to the encouragement held out to students to pursue their studies in those laboratories for a period of five, six, or even seven years. The success that has attended the efforts of the Germans to appropriate many important branches of chemical manufacturing industry is well known, and the dependence of those industries on the researches of chemical experts employed in the works is generally recognized. At the Badische Analin-und Soda Fabrik alone are now employed 100 scientifically trained chemists and 30 engineers. Her brilliant achievements in the field of chemical industries have encouraged her to establish well-equipped electrical laboratories and to develop the practical teaching of physics with the view of assisting the electrical trades, which are comparatively of recent growth. Nevertheless there is a precaution to be taken in all experimentation, not only in the fields of intellect and gentility, but in that of industrial education. This is to be patient in awaiting returns, especially if inferior methods be used. Professor Atwater, while chief of the Experiment Station Office of the Federal Agricultural Department, has spoken on this subject to this effect: Whoever has had experience in field experiments and has taken the pains to look through the mass of reports of such work that has accumulated during the past fifty years in Europe, as well as in this country, must be impressed with the smallness of the visible result in proportion to the expenditure of labor, thought, and money. The great difficulty is that the conditions, particularly of soil and weather [and he might have added social conditions], are entirely beyond not only the experimenter's control, but also his means for measuring them; and what is still worse, inequalities of soil which are hidden from his observation are often responsible for a large part of the differences in yield, so that the results give entirely wrong answers to the questions he is studying. While the importance of duplication of trials and of continuing them through a series of years can not be too strongly insisted upon, it is also very desirable that investigations should be made with special reference to the improvement of the methods of experimenting. The acts of 1862, 1889, and 1890 have been frequently referred to in the foregoing, and it is useful, perhaps, to summarize their provisions as the most important efforts made by the people of the United States to foster higher scientific education, Federal laws regarding institutions created by the act of 1862 and modified or enlarged by those of 1887 and 1890. SYNOPSIS OF THE LAW OF JULY 2, 1862. 1. The grant. 2. The object of the grant. Ten per cent or less of the entire gross proceeds of The interest of the entire remaining gross proceeds An annual report shall be made regarding the prog- There shall be appropriated annually, until the pro- 2. The object of the subsidy. There may be expended out of the first annual ap- There shall be established under the direction of the There shall be annually appropriated until the pro- 2. The object of the subsidy. The amounts annually received by each designated An annual report shall be made by the president of Federal laws regarding institutions created by the act of 1862 and modified or enlarged by those of 1887 and 1890-Continued. 3. The conditions attached to the grant. act. SYNOPSIS OF THE LAW OF MARCH 2, 1887Continued. 3. Conditions attached to the subsidy. The legislature of each State must formally accept Each station shall annually, on or before February Bulletins shall be published by each station at least 4. Federal jurisdiction. The Secretary of Agriculture shall furnish forms, Whenever there is unexpended a portion of an SYNOPSIS OF THE LAW OF AUGUST 30, 1890- 3. The conditions attached to the subsidy. 4. Federal jurisdiction. The Secretary of the Interior is charged with the proper administration of this law, and the treasurer of each college shall report to him (and the Secretary of Agriculture), on or before the 1st day of September of each year, a detailed statement of the amount received in virtue of this law and its disbursement, and if any State misapplies or loses any portion of the appropriation and does not replace the same the Secretary of the Interior shall withhold all subsequent appropriations, and notify the President of the United States of his reasons therefor; but the State may appeal to Congress, and if Congress uphold the Secretary, the amount withheld shall be covered into the Treasury. STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. The first and all-important active power of Congress is the obligation "to lay and collect taxes and duties." It is well known that nothing of this kind has been done by that body for higher educational institutions. The millions spoken of above have arisen not from taxation, but from the sale of lands. The extraordinary slowness with which new ideas, if left to themselves, are disseminated, so that practically the large mass of people, as Burke says, are fifty years behind the times,' has caused the Federal Government to provide agencies for the investigation and careful compilation of new conceptions concerning public health-intellectual, moral, and physical-and national interests, but no institution for the classroom instruction of young persons has been established by the Federal Government, except for the education of the officers of the Army and Navy, the emancipated slaves, and for the wild Indians. The Federal Government has given lands; it is left to the States to tax the property of its citizens for higher education, with which the Federal Government has had nothing to do except so far as the acts of 1890 and 1887 are concerned, and the limitations imposed by the acts of 1787 and 1862 as to the use of the funds granted during those years. Let us see how the States have availed themselves of this privilege of taxing themselves for higher education. In making this study it is convenient to single out the State of Massachusetts for her early action; the State of New York for her administratively comprehensive action; the State of Virginia for her treatment of the university as the universitas scientiarum of the schoolmen, or the "Einheit der Lehre" of the Germans, and the State of Michigan as effecting a sort of hybrid of these three, at first, in 1817, with marked preference for the Virginia idea, then of the New York idea of a university distributed all over the State, and finally of the Massachusetts college idea combined with the Virginia idea again, as in the first place, when the paper institution on the Jeffersonian plan, called University Michigania, or Catholepistemiad, was characterized by the French Revolutionary craze for bastard verbal compounds from the classic languages.? In Massachusetts, says Prof. C. K. Adams, we find the legislature, before the seventeenth century had half run its course, doing six different acts in connection with higher education-to wit, by making a grant for a college (Harvard), by laying an annual tax to support it, by fixing its location, by superintending the erection of its buildings, by appointing a curator paid by the State, by removing an incumbent and appointing his successor. In other words, in order to found a college, Massachusetts, though having fewer than 4,000 inhabitants, gave £400 in cash, the annual earnings of the Boston-Charlestown ferry, and to a man who had promised that he, as president, would devote his life to building up the college 500 acres of land, and when he failed turned him out forthwith. This was in 1636-1640. The ministers of George III, one hundred and It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon th cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years at least behind in their politics. There are very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before their eyes at different times and occasions so as to form the whole into a distinct system. But in books everything is settled for them without the exertion of any considerable diligence or sagacity. For which reason men are wise with but little reflection and good with little self-denial in the business of all times except their own. (Present Discontents.) Catholepistemiad-the place where knowledge or all the sciences are taught. A professorship was called a "didaxia." Absurdities of this kind are common to revolutions. The French Revolution turned 1793-94 into "the year 1;" so did the revolting Sicilians in their age; so did Rienzi. The later scholastics changed their names-Schwartzerde became Melancthon-black earth, etc. Mr. Jefferson wanted the States on the Northwest to be called Michigania, Polypotamia, etc. forty years later, came with great rapidity to the conclusion that Boston was not a good center from which to subdue the rebellion of their fellow-citizens, though a decided center of the rebellion. The fact is now accepted-higher education is the best national defense." "You are eternally quoting Germany to us," said a member of the French House of Representatives to the minister of public instruc tion, Mr. Berthelot, who was addressing that body on higher education. "Yes," replied the minister, blandly, "always Germany. We all very well know why." "It was not the schoolmaster that conquered at Sadowa," said Renan, "but German science," which is just as much as to say the German universities." The earliest direct tax for education was imposed for this Massachusetts college (1 peck of corn, or its equivalent, 12d.), paid by each family. So much for Massachusetts and her college, which all educated Americans regard as an Englishman regards Oxford or a Frenchman regards the Sorbonne. The State of New York has shown in the management of all the higher educational institutions within her borders a sense of the importance of their influence and of its own moral duty to supervise as well as to foster them which was manifested by no other State of the Union until recent years. Her method of treatment was quite original, being unlike that of the Université de France, which came, indeed, shortly after it, and of the University of Oxford, which had preceded it many centuries. The French Revolutionary assemblies had early united the five great scientific bodies of France into a federal system called the Institut de France. This much being accomplished for literature and science, two projects were advanced about 1790, one for centralizing and one for federalizing the influence of higher education in France. The abbé, politician, and subsequent prince, Talleyrand, advocated the first and would have l'institut enseignant (the teaching institute or university) centralized at Paris; but the federal system was advocated by the celebrated Condorcet, scientist and martyr. Mr. Condorcet remarked in the French Assembly, "We propose to establish in France nine colleges which will be lights shining from many points at the same time, and thus their effect will be more equally distributed among the citizens." The projects fell through, until, in 1806, Napoleon created the Université de France, originally intended-as an examining body, with a grand master at Paris and committees or "faculties" in the provinces. Far different is the system at Oxford. There, as originally in France, the "university" is equally unreal as a teaching entity; nevertheless the University of Oxford has a definite habitat and is an idea founded on facts, which facts are the colleges and halls which have been from time to time established by private or royal benefactions as the dwelling place of instruction. Scatter the Oxford colleges over the State of New York and increase their number and you have made the initial step in conceiving the character of the institution called the University of the State of New York. It is an institution sadly needed in other States to go up and down testing the fitness of people to begin higher studies, and deciding upon the fitness of institutions to be incorporated, especially those who wish to be empowered to confer degrees. Pennsylvania has within a year adopted, though creating a different agency, this wise administrative measure. There is no more substantial monument to the respect paid to the character of Mr. Jefferson than the founding of the University of Virginia by that State. It was an institution conceived on university lines, in which the curriculum embraced the world of science while preserving the unity of instruction known among the Germans as the Einheit der Lehre. It does not appear that there was any enthusiasm created among the Virginians for an institution with such an ideal. Private colleges were meeting the demands of the people, who were justifiably satisfied that the education given in those institutions was as good as any given elsewhere. Liberty, not science, was the object of their aspirations, and they preferred a village Hampden refusing ship money for the use of a tyrannical king to a Humboldt traveling about the globe collecting snakes and climbing vol |