PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. 893 



ablest professors which this or any other country could pro- 

 duce. It should have an extensive library, complete philo- 

 sophical and chemical apparatus, and laboratories for practi- 

 cal instruction. Avoiding rivalry with the State institutions 

 of the country, its design should be to complete what they 

 have begun. It should be an institute for men, not boys, 

 and should be designed to supply the defects which cannot 

 be reached bv the limited means of the States. 



Such an institution would regulate and elevate the stand- 

 ard of learning throughout the country, and, above all, it 

 would be the means of supplying our colleges and acade- 

 mies with thoroughly educated and well qualified professors 

 and teachers. It is in this last respect that the deficiency of 

 education in this country mainly consists. So limited is 

 the course of instruction in most of our colleges, that their 

 graduates on entering upon the duties of professors are 

 oftentimes very little better qualified than the pupils of the 

 higher classes themselves. Who can expect an able profes- 

 sor of chemistry, when the amount of instruction consists 

 in two or three lectures a week for one short year ? No lab- 

 oratory no practical instruction and a bare acquaintance 

 with the more common experiments introduced in a course 

 of lectures. Who can make an efficient professor of math- 

 ematics, when the course is in many instances limited to 

 mere mechanical operations? How is it in languages? 

 How far do the beauties and defects of the classics claim 

 the attention of the student, so as to fit him to criticise the 

 various authors read by his class? Is it not the fact that 

 our professors are oftentimes elected and enter upon their 

 duties, not from a sense of present fitness, but from the hope 

 that by proper diligence they may make themselves useful 

 instructors? And even with the best natural abilities, how 

 often are their energies and efficiency contracted, by the 

 want of proper books for study and reference ? Few of the 

 libraries in our State institutions contain more than five 

 thousand volumes, and rnuivy of them do not number as many 

 hundred. Most of these books are of a character little suited 

 to meet the wants of the inquirer, and he is thus left to rely 

 upon his own resources for whatever attainment he may 

 make in the study of his profession. The writer has felt 

 the inconvenience of which he complains, an inconveni- 

 ence sufficient to dampen the ardor and contract the useful- 

 ness of any one. lie has been engaged in the duty of pub- 

 lic instruction for many years, and he has rarely been able 

 to command one volume in twenty, which in the common 



