148 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



honest bricklayer, and make him build you just such rooms 

 as you really want, leaving ample space for expansion. And 

 a century hence, when the Baltimore and Ohio shares are 

 at one thousand premium, and you have endowed all the 

 professors you need and built all the laboratories that are 

 wanted, and have the best museum and the finest library 

 that can be imagined; then, if you have a few hundred 

 thousand dollars you don't know what to do with, send for 

 an architect and tell him to put up a fagade. If American 

 is similar to English experience, any other course will 

 probably lead you into having some stately structure, good 

 for your architect's fame, but not in the least what you 

 want. 



It appears to me that what I have ventured to lay down 

 as the principles which should govern the relations of a 

 university to education in general, are entirely in accord- 

 ance with the measures you have adopted. You have set 

 no restrictions upon access to the instruction you propose 

 to give; you have provided that such instruction, either as 

 given by the university or by associated institutions, should 

 cover the field of human intellectual activity. You have 

 recognised the importance of encouraging research. You 

 propose to provide means by which young men, who may 

 be full of zeal for a literary or for a scientific career, but 

 who also may have mistaken aspiration for inspiration, 

 may bring their capacities to a test, and give their powers 

 a fair trial. If such a one fail, his endowment terminates, 

 and there is no harm done. If he succeed, you may give 

 power of flight to the genius of a Davy or a Faraday, a 

 Carlyle or a Locke, whose influence on the future of his 

 fellow-men shall be absolutely incalculable. 



You have enunciated the principle that "the glory of 

 the university should rest upon the character of the teachers 



