280 Promotion of Scientific Agriculture. [June, 



agriculture, it must be from other sources than those now in existence. 

 Hence, we see multitudes thronging our colleges and higher seminaries 

 yearly, many of whom, yea, most, on leaving, enter upon the study of 

 the professions, while not a few are thrown upon society as helpless as 

 infants, and as incompetent to provide for themselves, or to serve their 

 generation in any valuable calling, having acquired habits and tastes 

 unfitting them for the industrial pursuits, and causing them to attach to 

 these pursuits the idea of serfdom and servility. We come, then, to 

 plead the necessity and importance of the introduction of a more thor- 

 oughly scientific and practical course of instruction to be ingrafted upon 

 our present system if you please, and adapted especially to the wants 

 of the great agricultural population. The curriculum of this course, in 

 its full extent, should embrace such number and variety of suljccts, as 

 would give a training to the mind as liberal, at least, as any now pursued, 

 and to its completion should be appended equal academic honors. Such 

 a system Americans — republicans — it is believed, would receive at 

 once, sanction and support ; and instead of lowering, would elevate the 

 present standard of liberal scholastic education, while the present is 

 most obviously tending to the extreme of superficiality. We would at 

 once and forever deprecate the sentiment now acted upon, if not enter- 

 tained, that the Eticydopedia of tetters and science can be mastered in 

 the brief period allotted, and that the compass of human knowledge can 

 be loxcd in the short space of four years ; or that other, e(iually erro- 

 neous, that one must be a classical scholar, or no scholar at all. 



The number and variety of subjects now introduced into our catalogues, 

 can not be thoroughly or even profitably canvassed in the short period 

 of four years. If this time was spent upon a course of liberal training, 

 when there was no Chemistry, no Geology, no Political Economy, in 

 short, when there was almost no physical science at all, what can be 

 said of the attainments now made when the subjects of investigation are 

 treble, and no more time granted to the aggregate ; when English litera- 

 ture, with its treasures of genius and wisdom, and the literature of 

 cotemporary nations, their philosophy, their poetry, the light that their 

 languages shed on the history and character of our own, are presented 

 for our study and investigation. All must agree that though a famil 

 iarity with ancient literature is desirable, yet the man of the present 

 day may be highly enlightened without possessing it. Besides, the result 

 upon the mind, of one subject thoroughly mastered, is worth more than 

 the whole course laid down but imperfectly gone over. The habit of 

 examining a subject profoundly once fixed, and the mind, in an impor- 

 tant sense, may bo said to be educated ; fo: everything afterward taken 



