higher institutions filled with a class of boys; we want men of some maturity. We claim to be the pedagogues, the trainers of the children; we want that order distinctly for ourselves, and we do want that the colleges shall take them after they have been trained to a certain point, for instance, old enough to leave their fathers and mothers with safety. But I submit that in times past boys have gone to college and have been received there when it was not safe to trust them away from their parents. The place for boys is in the preparatory schools, and that work, I believe it is not egotism for the principals of the academies to say, that that kind of work can be better done in the academy than in the college. I should deprecate very much the academy attempting to make of itself a college, and have just as much right to deprecate the college trying to make of itself a preparatory school. Let these lines of division be closely, sharply drawn, and the colleges themselves will be more happy, and the academies will rejoice thoroughly. We have hard work enough to get students to fill our schools when we use all the legitimate means in our power to call them in; it is hard work enough to do that, if we do not have the colleges coming to them and saying, “Do not stay there, but come to us; do not stay down there in the lower, when you can have the higher; and think of the dignity and honor that comes to you from being counted a member of college." I believe those days are rapidly passing away, if not already gone, and I shall expect as the result of this conference to-day, good fruit. I believe that the colleges have the right and ought to have the right to say that the boys shall be prepared, either by man or by God. If there is a man that goes to the president of a college, a man to whom God has given unusual ability, and he does not quite come up to this standard, I for one would not say he should be sent back, but let him come in. But when they go there fitted neither by nature nor culture, I do decidedly object to their being taken in pell-mell, without any restrictions or limitations. Give discretionary power to the colleges; I do not believe they will abuse it, when they understand exactly that the principals are willing to do the work. But may it not have been the fact that heretofore they were not willing to do the work the colleges have required, and hence it was a necessity that the colleges should do it. May it not be possible that the blame is there? I am inclined to believe it is. I believe that the secondary schools of this State are able to meet reasonably well the requirements of our colleges. I believe they have the right to say to us, "You must do this work." When the principals are obliged to do it, they are going to do it.

REMARKS OF PROFESSOR J. R. FRENCH.

MR. CHANCELLOR.-I only desire to state the attitude of the institution with which I am connected, on this matter. I think we are in accord with this movement on the part of the principals. So far as the classical course is concerned, our requirements are just about what are here stated. When we come to the scientific course, the case is different. And I may here state, sir, that the scientific course with us is not a popular course. We do not advise students to take it, if they can do better; it was made to meet an emergency. In the class of thirty-one which graduated last year, we had if I remember correctly, but two graduates in the scientific course. The number of students in that course is few, and we desire to make them fewer, for the reason that the preparation is so slight that the culture represented by it does not equal that furnished by the classical course. We have made some attempts to introduce some of the subjects that are here mentioned as preparatory work in the scientific and Latinscientific courses, so that graduation in the several courses, should represent more evenly the same grade of scholarship. We have thus far found it impracticable. We cannot arrange our work without enlarging our teaching force. There are only ten of us in the college of liberal arts, and we find ourselves very busy. If we introduce these subjects into the preparatory course, then we must, in college introduce other things, or other grades of the same subjects, and this requires a multiplication of classes. We have not been able to make such arrangements, although we would be glad to do so. As I said the scientific course was made to meet an emergency. Students come to us sometimes who, from advanced years, or lack of means, or late thought of entering college, have not the acquirements requisite for entering the classical course. Must they give up college culture entirely? They cannot spend the time that is necessary for this preparatory work-three or four years in an academy- and then four years in collegǝ. What is to be done? In order to meet such cases we have arranged the best course we could, saying to them, we will do the best we can for you, although we do not advise it as the best course by any means; but rather if funds will warrant, or circumstances possibly permit, we advise you to go back to the preparatory school, get your Latin and Greek ready, take up the classical course and handle it strongly." Our scientific course is well packed. It contains four years of solid work, but we are all the time suffering in it for want of this preparatory training, and we do not see how we can help it at present. If we could introduce all the subjects named here as preparatory to the scientific course, for example, as much time

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would be required as to prepare in Latin and Greek, which we think would be better. Nothing can take their place in broad culture. We do not profess to make scientists in our scientific course, we only do what we can to meet such an emergency as we have found.

REMARKS OF DR. N. T. CLARKE.

MR. CHANCELLOR.- I did not expect to take any part in this discussion, and, therefore, I shall cheerfully give place immediately to a signal from the chair.

I remember in my reading that in the early settlement of this country, the grants to the North Virginia Company and the South Virginia Company, made by James I., were separated by a strip of territory nearly two hundred miles wide, a sort of border-land, so that if either company should get off from its own territory it would not be likely to trespass up to the lands of its neighbors. So it came to pass that the border lines between these two companies like the line between our own State and Pennsylvania were never very well defined.

Now in a well-ordered system of educational institutions there should be a clearly-defined boundary between the secondary and the higher schools, or between the academies and the colleges, which in this country has never been established. The reasons for this are easily seen, mainly, however, from the fact that, in the early days of colleges, they had of necessity to prepare their own standards for college work, and so became, to a certain extent, preparatory schools. And also the academies being the finishing schools of the great mass of students in higher education had to embrace in their course much of the college work. These conditions and difficulties have continued in a greater or less degree through all our educational history to the present time, and hence we find no land-mark to show the proper field each should occupy. Now we all believe that the colleges, academies and common schools have each their own proper work, and that our system of education would be greatly improved if these schools should confine themselves, as far as possible, to that which is peculiarly their own. Admitting that the work of the secondary and common schools is fairly defined, the question before us to-day is, how can the secondary and college work be better defined so that they shall not both cover to so great an extent the same field.

Two men graduate from the same college and in the same class; both excellent men and of good scholarship. One becomes a tutor in college, and the other takes the charge of a good academy, and as such teachers they enter upon almost precisely the same work. And it may be truly said that the work done in the academy is fully equal

in scope and value to the work in the college. Now if it is true that ninety-five per cent. of the pupils of the secondary schools never enter college, the academy principal is occupying a field of the highest importance, and he needs the stimulus of the higher department to give his school the character demanded by the thousands who can go no further in their educational work. To give all this higher work to the colleges would add no dignity or character to them, while to take it from the academy would prove their ruin.

The work of the college is in its plan a unit-to give the advantages of the higher instruction and training to men (not boys) who are beyond all need of elementary training in any field of study; hence they might, it seems to me, relegate most if not all of their freshmen work to the academies, and so be able to give their whole time to true college or university study.

The work of the academies is two-fold. It is preparatory to college to a very small number, and it is a completed work of general and higher education to the large number who cannot reach the college. The academies, therefore, should not be required to so much belittle their work as to make them only fitting schools for the poorer class of colleges. It has been among my duties for the last thirty years to find men from the colleges for our higher classical work, and as a general thing I have found those who, so far as scholarship was concerned, were satisfactory, but in mathematical or scientific departments I have rarely found them, except by special training, able to carry on the course of instruction laid down in our curriculum.

The secondary schools should all aim at a higher standard, even to that point which should relieve the colleges from any work in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, civil engineering (ordinary), and the natural sciences (elementary, and I do not mean by elementary, twelve weeks work), such as physics, chemistry, geology, etc., also physical geography, rhetoric, English and American history. I believe all this work can be well done by the academies and even more, and most of them are doing it now. And if the colleges would require this of the academies they would then have time to meet the larger demands, constantly increasing, which are now made upon them.

The boys go to college too early; they feel so, and are free to confess it, especially the scholarly portion of them. When they find themselves under the instruction of such men as President Anderson, President Dodge or President Dwight and the eminent professors associated with them, they feel that they are unfitted to profit as they ought under their instruction by their poor and fragmentary outfit in mental equipment.

I hope to see the day when a young man who leaves an academy and enters for the first time a college, shall feel that he is every inch a man; an honor to the academy that sends him and to the college that secures him, and who will give dignity and character to every department of college labor.

REMARKS OF REV. J. CONWAY.

MR. CHANCELLOR AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVOCATION.—I must say that I am rather surprised to be called upon to speak on this subject, as I am not a member of the committee and have no official appointment. But the Chancellor, in his kindness, asked me to do so, and I could not but submit.

I do not pretend to represent Father Antill, whose absence we regret. I am not prepared to speak of scientific courses, or of the teaching of the sciences in general. I do favor the teaching of science in the academy, and I do not believe that the amount required for the Regents' examination is exorbitant. I am also in favor of the study of history in general, and of English and American history in particular; and I should like to see the students, on entering college, well grounded in the English language and familiar with some of the master-pieces of our own literature. This latter I consider a necessary introduction to the study of English literature, as it should be pursued in the college department.

With regard to the classical studies, you will allow me a remark which has been suggested by the inspection of some of our college catalogues. In the catalogues of our most prominent colleges I see it put down as a requirement for admission that the student has mastered six books of Homer and the same number of books of Virgil's Eneid. Now, for my own part, I cannot understand how boys can be supposed to have read six books of Homer or Virgil within the short term of a four years academic course, considering the amount of time that can be devoted to these subjects. I know that in the best German gymnasia, students who have from fourteen to sixteen recitations a week in Latin and Greek, do not see a Virgil or Homer till their fifth year, and in this year they read, not six books of these authors, but perhaps one, or at most two books of them respectively. At Canisius College, where we follow more or less the same course of studies as in Germany, we are not able to put a Homer into the hands of a student till his fifth year, nor do we venture to introduce them to Virgil before that time. And yet, after six years of classical studies, they are able to come forward and explain and defend philosophical and theological theses, if not in elegant at least in fluent and tolerably correct Latin.