LETTER FROM EMERSON. 621 



I cannot defend my lectures, — they are 

 prone to be clumsy and hurried botches, — 

 still less answer for any report, — which I 

 never dare read ; but I can tell you the 

 amount of my chiding. I vented some of the 

 old grudge I owe the college now for forty- 

 five years, for the cruel waste of two years of 

 college time on mathematics without any at- 

 tempt to adapt, by skillful tutors, or by pri- 

 vate instruction, these tasks to the capacity of 

 slow learners. I still remember the useless 

 pains I took, and my serious recourse to my 

 tutor for aid which he did not know how to 

 give me. And now I see to-day the same in- 

 discriminate imposing of mathematics on all 

 students during two years, — ear or no ear, 

 you shall all learn music, — to the waste of 

 time and health of a large part of every class. 

 It is both natural and laudable in each pro- 

 fessor to magnify his department, and to seek 

 to make it the first in the world if he can. 

 But of course this tendency must be coiTected 

 by securing in the constitution of the college a 

 power in the head (whether singular or plural) 

 of coordinating all the parts. Else, important 

 departments will be overlaid, as in Oxford 

 and in Harvard, natural history was until now. 

 Now, it looks as if natural history would ob- 



