840 PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. 



tion in the broad and philosophical principles of a profes- 

 sional education. 



The demand for such instruction now exists very exten- 

 sively. A very considerable portion of our best scholars 

 now graduate as early as their nineteenth, twentieth, or 

 twenty-iirst year. If they are sufficiently wealthy they pre- 

 fer to wait a year before studying their profession. Some 

 travel, some read, some remain as resident graduates, and 

 many more teach school for a year or two, for the purpose 

 of reviewing their studies. These would gladly resort to 

 an institution in which their time might be profitably era- 

 ployed. The rapidl}' increasing wealth of our countr}' will 

 very greatly increase the number of such students. 



The advantages which would result from such an institu- 

 tion are various. It would raise up and send abroad in the 

 several professions a new grade of scholars, and thus greatly 

 add to the intellectual power of the nation. But, specially, 

 it would furnish teachers, professors, and officers, of every 

 grade, for all our other institutions. As the standard of 

 education was thus raised in the colleges, students would 

 enter the national university better prepared. This would 

 require greater efibrt on the part of its professors, and thus 

 both would reciprocally stimulate each other. 



The branches which should be taught there, I suppose, 

 should be the same as in our colleges, only far more gener- 

 ously taught — that is, taught to men, and not to boys — and 

 the philosophical principles of law and medicine. This 

 would embrace lectures on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and the 

 Oriental languages ; all the modern languages of any use to 

 the scholar, with their literature; mathematics, carried as 

 far as any one would desire to pursue them ; astronomy, 

 engineering, civil and military; the art of war, beginning 

 where it is left at West Point ; chemistry ; geology ; min- 

 ing; rhetoric and poetry; political economj^; intellectual 

 philosophy ; physiology, vegetable and animal ; anatomy, 

 human and comparative ; history; the laws of nations; and 

 the general principles of law, the Constitution of the United 

 States, &c. 



5. Supposing such an institution to be established, some- 

 thing may be added respecting the mode of its constitution 

 and organization. 



I suppose, then, that an institution of this kind is a sort 

 of copartnership between the instructors and the public. 

 The public furnish means of education, as building, libra- 

 ries, apparatus, and a portion of the salary. The professors 

 do the labor, and provide for the remaining part of their 



