BEVIEWS — THE COUESE OE COLLEGIATE EDECATION. 183 



his further studies to his future career in life, aud taking his degree 

 at the University -with honors, while the knowledge of which it is the 

 guarantee, is available for all the objects of his further aim and 

 aspirations. It might be a question, indeed, whether a fourth class 

 of options, including the Natural Sciences alone,* without Mathe- 

 matics, but with correspondingly high requirements in the narrower 

 field of study, might not be wise, with a special view to induce the 

 student of Medicine to graduate in Arts, and thus lay a foundation 

 calculated to fit his mind for appreciating the philosophy of the 

 Science of Medicine, which, in the hands cf so many of its half- 

 educated practitioners degenerates into mere empiricism. 



After all, however, be it remembered that a complete, efficient, and 

 practical University system, accompanied by well organised Colleges 

 and crowded lecture rooms, caunot be created in a new country like 

 Canada in a day. The unfortunate University of Toronto, with all 

 its wealthy endowments, has hitherto been treated as the Tahitians 

 treated the first crop of wheat the Missionaries introduced among 

 them. They constantly pulled it up by the roots to see how it was 

 thriving ! Somehow we are rather too prone to despond, and have 

 inherited so much of John Bull's propensity to grumble that we are 

 very difficult to inoculate with those sanguine anticipations of ri- 

 pening triumph aud glory, in which our neighbors indulge with such 

 magnificent amplitude. The new President of McGill College con- 

 cludes his Inaugural Discourse with the expression of a modest " hope 

 that the utmost possible success and permanence may attend their 

 united efforts in behalf of good learning." But the Inaugural Dis- 

 course of the Michigan Chancellorf winds up in a very different vein ; 

 which, considering that he is speaking of a great State not so old as 

 some of Mr. Dawson's present under-graduates, may well put the 

 Montreal President and the rest of us to the blush : 



"Let me remind you that it is not in accordance with the spirit of our country 

 to let improvements grow slowly. This great State is the growth of a quarter 

 of a century. In our Industrial arts and improvements we are not willing to 

 fall behind Europe according to the ratio of our respective ages. ¥c aim not 

 merely to equal, but even to surpass the old nations of the world, in our manu- 



* Say : Chemistry, Botany, Natural History, and a choice of some such addi- 

 tional studies as Natural Philosophy in some of its branches most useful to the 

 medical man, Geology and Mineralogy, with Pal&ontolgy aud comparative 

 Anatomy. The latter of these might be further encouraged as the special subjects 

 for an honor degree in Medicine 



f A discourse delivered by Henry P. Tappan, D. D., at Ann Arbor, Mich., OB 

 the occasion of his inauguration as Chancellor of the University of Michigan, 

 December 21st, 1852. PP. 51, 52. 



