for a student at our universities to obtain as thorough an education as he desires in any branch of learning. The country needs nothing just now, so much as men of culture. In making any reform, we must carefully avoid lessening in any way the present efficiency of the institution. The American college, with all its defects, is the natural outgrowth of American institutions and character, and, on the whole, has satisfied the requirements of American culture. Further, these requirements will continue to be, for the mass of students, precisely what they have been. But new requirements, for a limited number of students, are now added to the old: the community has advanced to the point when it demands, not merely the broadening of its general culture, which we have already spoken of, but the deepening and intensifying of special culture. To meet this want, the plan proposed by the writer in the "Atlantic" seems to us precisely adapted. He would continue a curriculum like the present, imposed upon all students as a pass course, containing the minimum required for graduating without special honors; and, in place of the present elective studies, would institute a class course, consisting of a number of special triposes, of which each student of ambition would select one or two for exhaustive study, and for honors, if rank should continue to be given. We do not desire here to do any thing more than direct attention to the general outlines of a plan, which appears to promise all that could be desired in elevating the general character of American scholarship. Such a system, adopted and tested in any one of our first-class universities, would, if found to work well, be introduced gradually into other colleges, wherever it should be found desirable.

The introduction of this plan, and we hope the progress of public sentiment at any rate, would carry with it the abolition of marks for recitation, and of rank, unless perhaps as depending upon a final examination. It would not be possible to devise any more effectual means of taking all the enthusiasm and inspiration out of a recitation, than one which makes a scholar afraid to answer lest he should be wrong, and therefore receive a low mark; and, on the other hand,

forces the teacher to keep his eye open to every blunder or forgetfulness, not with a view to setting it right, but to determine whether the abstract value of the performance is six, seven, or the coveted eight. Marks may sometimes be of service in giving the first impulse to ambition, where the standard of study is very low: but even here we believe they generally do more harm than good; and, where there exists the slightest spark of intellectual ambition, nothing is needed but good teaching to quicken it into a flame.

These discussions have proceeded upon the assumption, that a broad line is to be drawn, as Dr. Hedge proposes, between the Freshman year and the college course proper, with a view, indeed, to eventually abolishing this year altogether. For the present, no doubt, it is necessary that there should be a preparatory and probationary year in the college itself, inasmuch as many of the preparatory schools are quite incompetent to fit scholars for the advanced college course. We believe, however, that the difficulties from this source, in the way of giving up the Freshman year, are exaggerated; and that, if it were boldly lopped off, say at two years' notice, the schools would adapt themselves without difficulty or delay to their new duties. The smaller schools would fit for the academies, and the academies for the universities; and a consideration which is often overlookedwho can doubt that experienced teachers, like Mr. Dixwell and Dr. Taylor, would prepare students on the studies of the Freshman year much more satisfactorily than the average of college tutors upon whom the work is put, who are necessarily inferior both in scholarship and skill to these gen

tlemen?

The establishment of these triposes for the three years of the college course would necessitate an enlargement of the preparatory course, by making it embrace not merely Latin, Greek, and mathematics, as at present, or natural science, as urged above, but also some general though accurate knowledge of modern history and the English language. Modern history is too much neglected in this country; and, while there is much force in Mr. Mill's doubts as to the possibility of its

being taught efficiently in school, it certainly ought to be known, in some way, before entering college. We are inclined to think that the best way would be to prescribe an acquaintance with some particular works, the preparation in which should be left to the private reading of the scholar, stimulated by the knowledge that he has to pass an examination upon them, and assisted by occasional familiar talks and lectures by the teacher.

With the Freshman year cut off, the studies made so largely voluntary, and the average age of the students so much advanced as would necessarily be the case, the college discipline might be very materially diminished in amount, and relieved of harshness and obtrusiveness, might, indeed, almost be reduced, as Dr. Hedge suggests, to the single item of expulsion. It is safe to say, that twofifths of the misconduct of students arises from the natural repugnance of young men to arbitrary rules, and another twofifths to the dormitory system. Cornell University promises to be free from both these sources of trouble. The dormitory system, at any rate, is there placed upon its true basis, as simply a convenience, a favor to students, and, to a certain extent, a protection against exorbitant charges in private houses. The inmates are to be treated as gentlemen, and left to maintain order among themselves. If they cannot do this, they will be turned out in a body; and, if no body of students can be found who can live together orderly and respectably, the dormitories will be closed. We venture to say that the dormitories will never be closed.

Another good result of the separation of the Freshman year from the college course proper would be the greater freedom and variety which it would be possible to introduce into the preparatory course, and the increased dignity it would give to the preparatory schools. Exeter and Andover would be raised at once to the rank of the German gymnasia, and would be able to have the same completeness and variety in the course that is usual there. There is a kind of superstitious feeling in regard to the course as prescribed in the college catalogues, as if there were something sacred in

the whole of Virgil and Cæsar's "Gallic War," and in those particular orations of Cicero which Mr. Folsom happened to adopt from a selection made for this purpose fifty years ago. And, although the catalogue distinctly offers to recognize equivalents, hardly any school avails itself of the permission; less than ever, since this particular set of prose authors has been petrified into one big book, which has been adopted in nearly all schools. We may feel sure that, when the great schools have the work of the Freshman year added to their present duties, they will not any longer submit to the drudgery of going over the same unvarying round, year after year. There is another consideration of great importance, to which, we believe, attention was first directed by the most eminent of American classical teachers, Dr. Taylor, of Andover, the burden that is imposed upon preparatory schools, by the necessity of preparing every part of this great mass of Greek and Latin for examination in detail. There should be a distinction made between two classes of work, -analysis and translation. A scholar kept at drill all the time, as is too often done now-a-days, fails to acquire that facility in the use of the language which certainly ought to be possessed upon entering college. We have the testimony of Professor Bowen to the striking fact, that all the time that the standard of scholarship has been rising at Cambridge, and the knowledge of the classic languages becoming more minute and accurate, the knowledge of classical literature, and familiarity with the classic authors, have been on the decline. One of the chief aims of a course should be to read a large amount, to go over a great deal of ground, not carelessly, but, on the other hand, without dwelling upon minute points of grammar and antiquities, simply with a view to obtaining a practical mastery over the language. The amount of Latin and Greek upon which a scholar is expected to pass a critical examina tion, in order to enter Harvard, is much larger than at the English universities; and, as a necessary consequence, the critical study being spread over so wide an extent, cannot be so accurate and thorough anywhere as it is in England, in regard to the smaller amount of Latin and Greek examined

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upon. We venture to say, that a rigid examination upon one book each of Cæsar, Virgil, Xenophon, and Homer, and one Oration of Cicero, if combined with some assurance that a much larger amount had been carefully translated, and a test as to the capacity to translate a passage from some author that has not been read, would give a better result than the present examination.

We are not willing to close without drawing attention to one or two points in Mr. Mill's address, so wise in themselves, and yet so at variance with the prevailing practice, that it seems impossible to repeat them too often, or insist upon them too earnestly. One is as to dogmatism in teaching. He says of instruction in moral philosophy (p. 78), “ I could wish that this instruction were of a somewhat different type from what is ordinarily met with. I could wish that it were more expository, less polemical, and, above all, less dogmatic." And again (p. 80), as to the question of religious instruction in schools, "On neither side of this controversy do the disputants seem to me to have sufficiently freed their minds from the old notion of education, that it consists of the dogmatic inculcation, from authority, of what the teacher deems true." It were to be wished, that our American instructors would follow the hint here given more largely than they do. Our national practice of teaching every thing from books tends, no doubt, to render instruction here even more dogmatic than in England. We should be glad to have more of these branches, which are mainly the objects of abstract thought, rather than exact science, treated in a more personal manner, by the intellectual contact of professor and students. One reads the Dialogues of Plato, with a sort of despairing wish, that those who have the forming of the minds of the young men in our colleges had some process for reaching and influencing them, as effective as that of the ancients.

We cannot better close than with a second quotation, full of encouragement to those who have feared moral deterioration from the secularizing of our American education. We believe that this fear is utterly groundless; that the objects of education are in themselves so high,- the forming of char