266 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



man who has left this testimony of scholastic pursuits : " the 

 business of life," says he, "is with matter, that gives tangible 

 results; handling that, we come at the knowledge of the axe, 

 the plough, the steamboat, and every thing useful in life ; but 

 from metaphysical speculations, I have never seen one useful 

 result." Fortunately, the argument of the scholar, on that occa- 

 sion, fell into something very like the laboratory he so much ab- 

 horred, where it was first analysed, and then weighed in the 

 balance of common sense ; and the result of the whole was, 

 that, in spite of it, that noblest bequest of a practical chemist, to 

 a practical people, was saved from what would have been little 

 better than a sequestration. 



The time has fairly arrived, when society should understand 

 what it has a right to expect from the college; when it should 

 know this at least, that it is not the most likely place to look for 

 melioration in the practical arts, especially in that of agricul- 

 ture. The college has enough to do, to qualify for head-work. 

 There must be some other institution, in which young men can 

 be taught to work on matter, as well as upon mind. To send a 

 lad to college, whom you intend to make a farmer, is putting 

 him on the wrong track. The four years spent there, would be 

 an episode, a parenthesis, in the preparation for active life on a 

 farm. I say not that it would disqualify him from leading the 

 life of a gentleman, provided his means were sufficiently ample ; 

 but it would assuredly be a bad thing for him, ever to take off 

 his gloves on a farm, after he had touched his diploma.* 



I should shrink from the attempt, even to draw oufcthe plan 

 of such an institution as is required to meet the wants of this 

 greatest of all the branches of practical industry. To frame 



* In these remarks upon the inadequacy of the college proper, for preparing persons for 

 the practice of the arts, I trust that I shall not be thought wanting in a proper regard for 

 these institutions. Having, either as pupil or teacher, passed the greatest part of my life in 

 connection with the college, I can but accord to it the highest respect and even filial affec- 

 tion : but this veneration is solely on account of the important and truly noble end it accom- 

 plishes, in laying the foundation of professional or literary eminence ; and not on account of 

 its direct service to the manual arts. These it never has embraced within its plan ; nor is it 

 easy to see how any change can ever be made in this respect, which shall fully answer the 

 wants of practical men ; although there is nothing to prevent the existence of an agricultural 

 school in immediate connection with a college, whose scientific faculty might even assist in 

 a school of arts, and, in this way, materially abridge the expensiveness of such an institution. 



