956 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



mastery over them, and might he qualified to prosecute inquiry 

 iudependently and profitably after he had mastered them. 



Probably the faults of our present system of liberal education 

 result to a great degree from the fact that our young. men are in 

 too great haste to be educated. It does not seem to me that the 

 sj'stem can be radically reformed until our colleges shall declina 

 to receive students below the age of seventeen or eighteen years. 

 Some of them, perhaps a majority, have placed their minimum 

 age at fourteen. Some of them have no provision of law upon 

 the subject at all ; but all receive candidates who give evidence of 

 having read a certain limited amount of Latin and Greek. The 

 other qualifications required are exceedingly moderate and are 

 not very severely insisted on. Nor, though there are some who 

 enter later in life, is it possible to secure to such the advantage 

 this fact should bring with it. The course of study prescribed 

 must be the same for all, and must not be beyond the capacity 

 of the youngest. In the British universities, the average age 

 of students at admission is, according to the reports of the royal 

 commissioners, about eighteen years and a half. Were it the 

 same with us, or were it a year less, there would be ample time 

 in the earlier years for such a course of preliminary training as 

 to insure, what we l)y no means now insure^ a thorough educa- 

 tion. But even without any such modification of our exactions 

 as to age, there is still room for a sensible improvement of the 

 existing state of things. And having said this, I shall probably 

 be expected to state specifically Avhat are the improvements which 

 I consider practicable. 



First, then, I would say that I believe that boys should not, as a 

 rule, be required to take up the study of Latin before the age of 

 fourteen or fifteen years. The earlier years may be much more 

 profitably employed in other things; and if so employed, the 

 stud}- of the ancient hmguages may afterward be pursued much 

 more rapidly and much more intelligently^ It is a fact which 

 has been frequently observed, which every teacher has probably 

 observed for himself, that youths who have even not had the 

 advantage of early sy.'^ematic training, but possess only the greater 

 maturity of the faculties which comes with advancing years, and 

 who, at a period much later than the average, have resolved to 

 fit themselves for admission to college, have been able to accom- 

 plish all that is required in a singularly short space of time, often 

 within the compass of a single year. And such students, Avhen 



