Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

TABLE II.-Showing the area of the several States and Territories containing public lands, and the quantity devoted for educational

purposes by Congress up to June 30, 1867.

[Compiled from Report of the Commissioner of the Land Office for 1867.]

[blocks in formation]

Sq. miles.

Acres.

Acres.

Acres.

Acres.

Acres.

Acres.

Acres.

Ohio

39, 964

25, 576, 960

704, 488

69, 120

Indiana

35, 809

21, 637, 760

650, 317

46,080

Illinois

55, 410

35, 462, 400

985, 066

46,680

[blocks in formation]

500. CO
2,000.00

2,000.00
1,835, 892. 71
6,915,081. 32
4,930, 893. 56
6,582, 841.54
5, 180, 640. 63
11,757, 662, 54
17,540, 374.00
3, 113, 464. 18
10, 016, 700. 87
106, 062, 392. 13
36,776, 170.89
52,742,078.96
43, 148, 876. 44
67,090, 382. 62
42, 523, 627. 38
41,627, 464.39
73, 005, 192.00
51, 139, 646. 00
145, 295, 284. 97
62,870,665.83
86,904, 605. CO
68,855,954,00
54,963, 343. 00

44, 154, 240. 00
369, 529, 600.00

Total.

2,867, 185

1,834, 998, 400

67, 983, 914

1,082, 880 1, 159, 499. 65 3, 192, 382. 22

44, 971. 11

1,414, 567, 574.96

The whole quantity liable to be issued under the act of July 2, 1862, is 9,600,000 acres.

CONSOLIDATION AND OTHER MODIFICATIONS OF AMERICAN COLLEGES.

BY RT. REV. ALONZO POTTER.*

THIS Occasion seems to me to furnish an omen of national interest; may I not add, of world-wide interest. As connected with higher education-with the administration of Colleges and Universities-it appears to furnish, at least, some hope that several movements, which I believe are imperiously needed, may, at no distant day, be secured. In the first place, this is a consolidation of two independent collegiate institutions, and as such, I hail it as an event which might be repeated in our own State, and throughout the land, with the utmost advantage. Hitherto the tendency has been to multiply colleges, and to isolate them. There are now some hundred and fifty colleges in the United States. They all claim to stand on the same level, to teach the same branches, and to have the same right to public confidence and support. Resources which, if concentrated, would have been ample for the thorough endowment of a few institutions, have been so scattered, and so large a part of them have been so improvidently expended, that nearly all our colleges are crippled for want of libraries, apparatus, and a competent staff of accomplished teachers. In their relations to each other, there is neither affiliation, subordination, nor-except casually-even co-operation. With a population greater than that of Britain, we are without one University proper. Our college system is now, in respect to organization, where our common or public school system was before the establishment of High Schools. The citizens of Lancaster know how that one measure infused new life and vigor into the whole school system of this town-how, by a proper distribution and gradation of work, the teaching has been improved in every department; and a portion of the pupils carried forward much further than formerly. What has thus been done for common schools needs to be done for colleges. If they would not be distanced in the work of progress and improvement, they must no longer remain in a state of estrangement from each other. They must contemplate the necessity of hearty co-operation, if not of combi

* Remarks at the formal opening of Franklin and Marshall College-formed by the consolida tion of two chartered institutions-Franklin College located at Lancaster, and Marshall Col lego, located at Mercersberg.

nation and consolidation. They must prepare the way for the open University which, like the Universities of London and France, may be merely an organic center for purposes of supervision; or it might be constituted by a Board of Professors delegated from different colleges, and giving, personally, higher courses of instruction at some convenient point. I hail the union of Franklin and Marshall College, in the hope that we are on the eve of a general movement among similar institutions towards more of centralization.

II. In another respect, this event seems to me to be auspicious. I observe among your Professors, one gentleman, at least, who was reared in a Foreign University, and who has held an honorable post as teacher in a College in Southern Europe.* I hear too, that a distinguished German Professor, who, several years since, was invited to leave his fatherland for a chair in the Theological Faculty of Marshall College, has been invited to become your President.† Though I have not the honor of his acquaintance, and can presume to have no opinion of his qualifications for such a post, yet there is one reason why I earnestly hope he may accept this place. I desire to see the example followed which Marshall College has given. In almost every country of Europe, there are men of high endowments, of admirable erudition, capable of giving instruction to the most advanced students, who are yet languishing in obscurity and poverty. Such talent exists in Germany to so great an extent, that the intellectual and scholastic market is actually glutted. Here it is far otherwise. Pursuits of a more exciting and engrossing nature absorb, with us, the energy and enthusiasm which are given among the laborious earnest-minded Germans to literary toil. We import their laboring population by thousands-we import their accomplished artisans and agriculturists-we import from all the countries of continental Europe, teachers in the rudiments of their respective languages. Why should we not have a portion of their illustrious scholars and savans also. Where can they find a larger field, or the promise of better pecuniary remuneration?

This policy is recommended by various considerations—and there are special reasons why it should originate in Pennsylvania. This State has one characteristic, till recently, almost peculiar to it, but which is fast growing to be the characteristic of our nation. It is the somewhat heterogeneous nationalities that are represented in its population. Not only Old and New England, but Germany, Scotland, Wales and Sweden, have long had within this Commonwealth colonies of their people. This will soon be the case with every part of the United States. Ingredients, which have hitherto been regarded

[blocks in formation]

as incongruous and discordant, are seething in our great national cauldron, and we confidently expect to see them fused and blended into one harmonious whole-penetrated by the one American spirit. This result will be sure and speedy, in proportion as the culture which we apply to the rising generation is large-minded and liberal-having respect to national peculiarities and combining, in a wise eclectic spirit, the methods of different fatherlands. Where can such a policy originate so properly or so readily as in Pennsylvania?

There is another reason why it appears to me desirable that our higher instruction in this country should have an infusion from Germany. That country has given to the world an open Bible, the common school and the printing press. Wherever these its gifts are fully enjoyed-there a reading and thinking people must be formed. Combined, as they are in this country, with a free political system and with prodigious industrial activity, they make a nation of readers, a nation of workers and to some extent a nation of thinkers. Our intellectual activity is widespread and intense, and it associates itself intimately with active practical life. But the predominance of that life with us is not friendly at present to deep erudition or to profound and comprehensive thinking. We have literature, but we want ripe thorough scholarship. We have philosophies, but they are crude, presumptuous, and narrow. Errors and extravagancieswhether pertaining to speculation or to practical questions-swarm over the laud, and in the absence of vigorous habits of investigation and of a copious learning, they perpetuate themselves to the equal injury and disgrace of our national character. To her other gifts, then, let Germany add one more. Let her scholars teach us the patience, the thoroughness, the unquenchable zeal and lofty enthusiasm with which subjects should be considered; and the manly frankness and boldness with which results should be announced. Let her assist in putting into our hands the true Ithuriel spear, one touch of which will suffice to unmask pretentious sophisms, and one-sided schemes, and ambitious, unscrupulous sciolism.

Would the German scholastic mind be injured by such an association with ours? No wise German will think so. I am not prepared to adopt the saying of a distinguished scholar (I think) of the fatherland, that while the English ruled over the sea, the French over the land, the sway of Germany was over the air. I honor the passion for the ideal, and the stern enthusiasm with which the most abstruse philosophical questions are discussed among that noble people. But no candid observer will deny, that while the AngloAmerican is too much given to empiricism, the German is rather too much addicted to speculative dogmatism-too impatient of qualifying

theories by practice-too disdainful of the wisdom which comes only from a combination of high thought with active efficiency. Could the speculative tastes and liberal enthusiasm of the one be combined with the robust sagacity and indomitable enterprise of the other, we might inaugurate a form of culture, nobler and more beneficent than the world has yet seen. May we not hope that to promote such a blending and interpenetration of these national characteristics will be one of the cherished objects of Franklin and Marshall College?

III. I cannot but anticipate another benefit from this movement. The teaching in this college, I trust, will always be the result of earnest thinking, of profound research. It is time we had done with the notion that superficial men make the best teachers. It is a notion which has been quite too prevalent in this country; the effect of it has been not only to emasculate our teaching, but to paralyze the studies of our professors and instructors. It has taken from them that stimulus to daily effort, to continued freshness of thought and ardor of inquiry, which ought to have been supplied by their profession. The universities of Germany contain a great practical refutation of this pestilent heresy. The most popular teachers have been their ablest thinkers and profoundest scholars. They-and the remark applies in some measure to the professors of Scottish universities have shown that a talent for elementary exposition is perfectly compatible with habits of the most devoted and intricate researchthat, in truth, each promotes and is promoted by the other.

And the same lesson has been taught in the public schools of this city. There are those present who remember well a modest, unobtrusive teacher, in one of those schools, who was always assiduous and successful, especially in the department of mathematics. He left here a few years since to become a teacher of the same branch in the Academy at Pottsville; and scarcely had he departed, before the scientific men of both hemispheres were startled by the tidings that from that remote and obscure institution had emanated a discovery which was to rank forever by the side of those which have made the names of Kepler and Newton so illustrious. While a resident of Lancaster, Mr. KIRKWOOD was slowly but surely elaborating that law or principle which bears his name. Let his example teach us then, that clear and interesting teaching in the class-room, is not inconsistent with profound thinking in the closet. Let it imprint upon the soul of every professor a sense of the debt which he owes, as an original inquirer, to the department of science or letters which he has in charge. Let it inspire all-teachers and pupils with the generous ambition to make colleges, here and now, what they were in the days of Abelard in Europe-places all alive

« ForrigeFortsett »