EEYIEWS— THE COURSE OE COLLEGIATE EDUCATION. 173 



ehairs of the Scottish Universities, are supplied from the ancient seats 

 of learning on the Cam and the Isis. The English college tutor 

 again is precisely what we term in Canadian or American Institutions 

 a professor ; his functions in no degree differ, and the more our Cana- 

 dian professor imitates the thoroughness of the English college tutor 

 in his mode of instruction, the better will it be for the future scholar- 

 ship of the province. 



We have heard much talk in America of the "Prussian system" 

 and read much more in " Commencement Day" and other college 

 orations, of its adaptability to American Institutions, and the great 

 advantages already flowing from its adoption. Tet what is the fact ? 

 Amid all their differences, the University systems of England and 

 Germany, agree in the thoroughness and substantiality of their 

 training in so far as the subjects taught are common to both. The 

 difference in the result lies in the character of the national mind. 

 Germany has produced her Niebuhr, Boeckh, and Midler, but has 

 not England also her Arnold, Thirwall, and Grote, whose synthetical 

 cast of intellect is no less the admiration of Germany than of England. 

 As to America's Colleges and Universities, the number in all, accord- 

 ing to the last American Almanac, is one hundred and twenty-two ; and 

 the greatest immediate blessing that could possibly befal them, would 

 be the adoption, not in name but in reality, of the Prussian system, 

 or any other system with a uniformity of plan and centralising con- 

 trol. As it is, an American College degree may mean anything, 

 every thing, or nothing. A student may graduate as M. A. at one 

 College, with acquirements that would not enable him to matriculate 

 at another. And yet this is not because of any extravagant excep- 

 tional standard at the latter. Mr. Bristed, to whom we have already 

 referred, thus describes his first American experiences as a student : 

 " I was fifteen years old when I went to New Haven to enter the 

 Ereshman class, at Tale College. In the School where I prepared, 

 one of the masters was an Englishman, and the instruction given 

 partly on the English model. I had been fitted for Columbia Col- 

 lege, the standard for the Freshman class in lohich institution ivas then 

 nearly equal to that for the Sophomore at Yale. The start which I 

 had thus obtained confirmed me in the habits of idleness to which a 

 boy just emancipated from school is prone, when he has nothing 

 immediately before him to excite his ambition. During the first 

 year I did little but read novels and attend debating societies ; and the 

 comparison of my experience with that of others leads me to conclude 

 that this is the case with most boys who enter well prepared at a 

 New England College ; they go backwards rather than forwards the 



