simply destructive manner, with no provision to substitute any
thing better in their place. The growth of science, of the knowledge of
history, of culture in every branch, has, however, of late, so vastly
increased, that the proposition to reform the old system of study is
really one not to tear it down, but to build it up, to extend it and
develop it on a grand scale. Since, for example, the influence of
science has been felt in philology, how inconsiderable do the Bruncks
and Porsons of the old school, appear before the Bopps, Schlegels,
Burnoufs, and Muellers of the new! For as yet, even where here and there
in colleges a liberal and enlightened method is partially attempted,
still the old monkish spirit appears, driving away with something like a
'mystery' or 'guild' feeling the merely practical man, and interposing a
mass of 'dead vocables,' which must be learned by years of labor,
between him and the realization of an education. The young man who is to
be a miner, a cotton-spinner, an architect, or a merchant, may possibly
find here and there, at this or that college, lectures and instruction
which may aid him directly in his future career, but he soon realizes
that the general tendency and tone of the college is entirely in favor
of abstract studies quite useless out in the world, and apart from
preparation for one of 'the three professions.' He himself is as a
'marine' among the regular sailors, a surgeon among 'regular doctors,'
or as a dentist among surgeons. And this in an age when we may say that
what is not to be studied scientifically is not _worth_ studying. As our
principal object in writing these remarks has been to assert that the
Polytechnic Institute, in its either partial or entire form, should
exist entirely independent of all other influences, we might be held
excused from any mention of such scientific schools as are attached to
our Universities. That of Cambridge, Massachusetts, would, however,
deserve special mention, from the celebrity of its teachers. In this
institute, which has between seventy and eighty students, we have a
single school divided into the following departments: that of Chemistry,
under supervision of Professor Horseford, in which instruction is both
theoretical and practical; that of Zooelogy and Geology, in which the
teaching consists alternately of a course of lectures by Professor
Agassiz, on Zoology, embracing the fundamental principles of the
classification of animals as