196 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



recites that in the Colleges to be established " the leading object shall 

 be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including 

 military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to 

 agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the Legislatures of 

 the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal 

 and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits 

 and professions of life." 



It will be seen from this that these Colleges are not to be agricultural 

 only. The education of the mechanic, manufacturer, merchant, and 

 miner, is demanded, as well as of the tiller of the soil. All the indus- 

 trial classes are to be fitted for an intelligent career in the several pur- 

 suits of life. Anything less broad would not have been equal justice to 

 all. It requires, too, military instructidn — that the citizen may be quali- 

 fied for duties the discharge of which is now demanded of so many ; 

 and it does not exclude " other scientific and classical studies." 

 p The American youth have a broad career before them. Neither the 

 farm, nor the workshop, nor a subdivided labor in either, is to be the 

 bound of their emulation or labor. The son of the farmer must be per- 

 mitted to obey the promptings within him, and, like Mr. Webster, to 

 hang the scythe on the tree, or, like Mr. Clay, to ride to the highest 

 political stations, as well as on the horse's back to mill. Like Washing- 

 ton, he should be fitted for the chain and the compass, or the camp, or 

 political rule, or the management of a landed estate. 



It maybe answered in the senseless aphorism that a "Jack of all 

 trades is master of none." The career of Henry Ward Beecher fur- 

 nishes a reply. He lately told us, when in England, that he was bell- 

 ringer, too, in his first church. When at Indianapolis he published an 

 agricultural paper; and, during the past summer, the Journal of that 

 city, alluding to the admiration of strangers for the beauty of its gar- 

 dens and yards, ornamented with flowers, and evergreens, and shrubs, 

 gave all the credit to Mr. Beecher's teachings when there. He left in 

 the west ""the Beecher rhubarb " — a seedling variety, originated by him, 

 not inferior to any other — and he reformed the butter market of that 

 city. And he did these things while he was the first of its preachers. 

 His recent political speeches in England exhibit his power in another 

 field. 



Another case, showing the superiority of a general education of the 

 faculties of the mind over the disciplining of a few only, is seen in an" 

 eminent American manufacturer and investor. In exhibiting in Eng- 

 land one of his inventions he had the work mostly done there, but made 

 slow progress in completing it. Writing home, he said that in English 

 shops the workmen are trained to such subdivisions of labor that one of 

 them can do the work of only one part of an engine ; " that one part 

 must be done before another workman can do his part; that few of them 

 can superintend the entire work of an engine ; whilst in his own manu- 

 factory here most of his workmen were competent to do this." And to 

 this subdivision he attributes the want of inventive talent in England. 



Apart, then, from pre-eminent ability, we see that, both in education 

 and labor, a development of mental power is promoted by a general dis- 

 cipline of all the faculties of the mind, and that instruction dwarfed to 

 a particular pursuit results in a dwarfed mind itself; that the powers of 

 tho mind, like those of the bod}-, achieve most when their fully devel- 

 oped strength is centred, for the timej on the accomplishment of a cer- 

 tain object. If our greatest minds have found this developed strength 

 in liberal studies, lesser minds must be governed by the same law of 



