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as much to the honors of a college, as anything to be found in the 

 humanities of a four years' university curriculum. 



Within the memory of many of those who now live, the advance- 

 ment of the useful arts and sciences is supposed to have eclipsed all 

 previous records. Modern text-books of chemistry, botany, entomol- 

 ogy, forestry, geology, metallurgy, electricity, mechanics, architecture 

 and zoology, would be unknown, if not " all Greek," to most college 

 graduates of fifty years ago ; but since the date of the Land-Grant 

 Colleges, other colleges, endowed with sufficient means, have also 

 responded with more or less liberality to the demand for instruction 

 in these branches, leaving many of them elective or optional. The 

 Land-Grant Colleges have, therefore, not only done good work of 

 their own, but have prompted, perhaps, some good work upon the 

 part of others. 



It should not be forgotten that the living languages of commercial 

 nations are beginning to be held by a vast majority of our busy world 

 at least of equal value to those which, if the slang may be pardoned, 

 are "as dead .as Julius Caesar." The hundreds of thousands of 

 immigrants who come to us annually often learn how to vote before 

 they have learned the American language, and they must be addressed, 

 if addressed at all, in their mother tongue. It would not become me 

 to depreciate the value of the language of Plato, nor that of Cicero ; 

 let us bid those in their pursuit God-speed ; to what has hitherto been 

 called " the learned professions," wherein the Press should be includ- 

 ed, they are undeniably useful, and even the exaggeration of this 

 usefulness may well be excused ; but the increased value of time, in 

 the present age of the locomotive, telegraph and telephone, makes 

 them to much more than half of the world a costly acquisition, espec- 

 ially so if we consider how quickly the acquisition often vanishes 

 unless permanently held fast through daily reading by such tireless 

 students as Choate or Gladstone. 



Eloquence and scholarship are nowhere more highly appreciated 

 than in America, and nowhere are creditable achievements in arts 

 and sciences more swiftly rewarded. Our country will welcome 

 " bright, particular " stars in whatever constellation they may appear, 

 and give a home to them all. 



The establishment in many of our cities of what are known as 

 " Business Colleges " discloses how inadequate have been the means 

 of instruction for those engaged in trade and commerce ; and business 

 men everywhere have seemed ready to accept of any remedy offered. 



