PROPOSED FOR BROWN UNIVERSITY. 479 



ology, and geology, or a course of political economy, and 

 one of chemistry, and of mechanical science applied to 

 the arts. And thus he makes up an amount of mental 

 labour during the four years as great, on the whole, as 

 that undergone by his fellow-students who prefer the 

 Greek and the Latin ; and at the end of the four years 

 he passes his examination in the branches he has studied, 

 and, like them, he obtains his degree. Or he chooses to 

 confine himself during the whole time of his stay at 

 college to one or two special studies the classics, or 

 mathematics, or chemistry and before his departure he 

 passes an examination and receives honours accordingly. 



The object of this change, as I have said, is to adapt 

 the institution to the wants, not of a class, but of the 

 whole community. This adaptation as he has since 

 argued in a published report to the Corporation of Brown 

 University is just to the community, is expedient as a 

 means of promoting the general welfare of the country, 

 and is necessary to the future prosperity of the univer 

 sity, &quot; since the relative position of the professions, on 

 which it hitherto depended entirely for support, and that 

 of the mercantile and manufacturing interests in any of 

 our cities, has greatly altered within the last twenty 

 years.&quot; 



I have, in the preceding pages, mentioned that I 

 was early struck with the lower relative position occu 

 pied by professional men in the United States than 

 among us. But the same change is also taking place, a 

 little more slowly perhaps, among ourselves ; and cer 

 tainly from the same cause. The middle classes, in 

 general information on subjects connected with the actual 

 line of advancing civilisation that of the applied sciences 

 are ahead of those who are educated in the universi 

 ties; and, instead of looking up to, are rather beginning to 

 look down upon them. Hence the struggle and difficulty 

 which university men find to keep that place, formerly, as 



