--method and curriculum. So far as
method is concerned we have considered that we are bound to be not less
thorough, but more thorough, if possible, than the universities
themselves, in proportion as our clients work under peculiar
difficulties. But in the matter of curriculum we have felt it our first
duty to be elastic, and to offer little or much as may in each case be
desired. Accordingly, we have elaborated an educational unit--the three
months' course of instruction in a single subject: this unit course we
have used all the resources we could command for making as thorough in
method as possible; where more than this is desired, we arrange that
more in a combination or series of such unit courses. The instruction
can thus be taken by retail or wholesale: but in all cases it, must be
administered on the same rigorous method.

The key to the whole system is thus the unit course of three months'
instruction in a single subject. The method of such a course is
conveyed by the technical terms lecture, syllabus, exercises, class. The
lectures are addressed to audiences as miscellaneous as the congregation
of a church, or the people in a street car; and it is the duty of the
teacher to attract such miscellaneous audiences, as well as to hold and
instruct them. Those who do nothing more than simply attend the lectures
will at least have gained the education of continuous interest; it is
something to have one's attention kept upon the same subject for three
months together. But it may be assumed that in every such audience there
will be a nucleus of students, by which term we simply mean persons
willing to do some work between one lecture and another. The lectures
are delivered no oftener than once a week; for the idea is not that the
lectures convey the actual instruction--great part of which is better
obtained from books, but the office of the lecture is to throw into
prominence the salient points of the study, and rouse the hearers to
read, for themselves. The course of instruction is laid down in the
syllabus--a document of perhaps thirty or forty pages, sold for a
trifling sum; by referring for details to the pages of books this
pamphlet can be made to serve as a text-book for the whole course,
making the teacher independent in his order of exposition of any other
text-book. The syllabus assists the general audience in following the
lectures without the distraction of taking notes; and guides the reading
and thinking of