disruption of society which existed some months after the surrender of the rebel forces, there was, in fact, but little work to do. Only partial crops had been planted during the last throes of the confederacy, in March, April, and May, and when peace came it was too late to put in larger ones. That thousands should be idle under such circumstances was to be expected, and it is an undeniable fact that there was quite as much idleness among the whites as among the blacks. But in spite of much bad feeling and occasional disorders, there is a general disposition among all classes to resume habits of regular labor. There are still to be found groups of helpless women and children who need the support of the government. They have been driven from their homes, in many cases by their former owners, (as they say,) because their husbands and brothers have left; and they have been abandoned by their husbands, if they ever had any. That they are unable to support their children and themselves in the present disordered state of southern society is not to be wondered at, nor does the fact furnish a sufficient reason for condemning the whole race as idle and worthless. According to the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau, as many of the white people as blacks of the south need government aid, and receive daily or weekly grants of rations.

It would be a most surprising fact if four millions of people suddenly released from centuries of bondage should not indulge in a protracted holiday, and the wonder is that the negroes have demeaned themselves with so much moderation. The fact would not be creditable to them if they failed to show their appreciation of the boon of freedom by a degree of noisy demonstration, accompanied by idleness for a brief season. To remain at home and pursue ordinary occupations with stolid indifference at such a time, they must have been less or more than human. But the idleness exhibited by the negroes has, for the most part, been inevitable in consequence of the lack of remunerative employment. No rational man could expect them all to go to work quietly for their former masters without a prospect of fair wages, yet, in point of fact, thousands have done so, and there is abundant reason for believing that, as a class, the negroes will become an industrious, thrifty, and law-abiding people, eminently docile, and emulous of improvement.

AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES.

BY HENRY F. FRENCH, PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE.

Until the close of the past century we find no account of any school or college of agriculture. In 1799 Thaer, the celebrated German writer upon agriculture, founded at Celle, in Hanover, an agricultural school, and in 1806 the king of Prussia granted him a large tract of land, which he exchanged for another at Mæglin, where, in 1807, he founded a practical school of agriculture, which, in 1810, was constituted the royal school of agriculture.

This school is especially interesting, not only because it was the earliest on record, but also because it furnishes an excellent model, in many respects, for similar institutions. It is thus described by an English traveller who visited it in 1820: It comprised a model farm of 1,200 acres, and a college for instruction. The education was partly theoretical and partly of a practical description. The former was provided with three professors, who lived upon the premises: one for mathematics, chemistry, and geology; one for the veterinary art, and the third for botany and the use of the various vegetable productions of the materia medica as well as for entomology. The practical instruction was communicated by an experienced agriculturist, who pointed out the method of applying the principles of the several sciences to the daily routine of husbandry. The course commenced in September. During the winter months the time of the pupil was occupied in the study of mathematics, and the six books of Euclid were mastered by him, whilst in the summer the knowledge thus obtained was applied to the measurement of land, timber, buildings, and other practical purposes. The first principles of chemistry were also unfolded. By means of a good but economical apparatus various experiments either on a large or small scale were performed. For the larger ones, the brew-house and still-house, with their appendages, were found to be highly useful.

Much attention was directed to the analysis of the soils, and the different sorts met with, distinguished according to the relative proportion of their component parts, were arranged on the shelves with great order and regularity. There was an extensive botanic garden arranged according to the system of Linnæus, an herbarium containing a large collection of dried plants, a series of skeletons of different animals connected with husbandry, and models of agricultural implements-all open to the examination of students. The various implements used upon the farm were all made by smiths, wheelwrights, &c., residing around about the institution, and the pupils were allowed access to the workshops, and encouraged to make themselves masters by minutely inspecting the implements and the niceties of their construction.

This school is set down in Dr. Hitchcock's report in 1851 as still flourishing, with four professors, twenty students, and 2,480 acres of land.

In the same year, 1799, Fellenberg established upon his estate of Hofwyl, near Berne, Switzerland, his celebrated institution, where, in addition to a school for the poor, was also one for the sons of gentlemen of wealth who wished to study agricultural science and practice. This institution survived its founder about three years, and was discontinued about 1847. In the same year, 1799, the Prince Schwartzenberg founded a similar institution at Kruman, in Bohemia, on

a domain of 300,000 acres. This school is still in successful operation, although we find no recent account of it. It is set down in Dr. Hitchcock's list, with its immense territory, its number of professors and pupils being blank. It is described in the new American Cyclopedia as having large collections, comprising models of agricultural implements, insects, fruits, plants, minerals, and a her barium, with a botanic garden, conservatory, and astronomical observatory. The instruction is gratuitous, and the object of the institution is to render the sciences taught as practical as possible.

Next to these were established the institutions in Germany, to be mentioned in their place.

DEMAND FOR PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

Both in Europe and this country there is a growing impression that our colleges and schools give too much of their time to the classics and to abstract knowledge, and too little to what is practical. There was good sense in the ancient philosopher who, when asked what is most proper for boys to learn, answered "that which they will want to practice when they are men."

If all men could learn everything, or if the major part of our youth, even, were training for a life of study and not of work; or, again, if we were not, in general, compelled to give up study at twenty or twenty-five, and attend to carning a living, we might well enough devote all our school and college days to mere discipline of the mind. The following statement by one of the visiting committee of Harvard University will help to illustrate our views:

"To be admitted into the freshman class, the candidate must pass an examination in Greek, Latin and mathematics, in which he must show himself to be well acquainted with all Virgil, Cæsar, Cicero's Select Orations, &c., with the Anabasis of Xenophon, three books of the Iliad, &c. But he is not required to be acquainted with any modern language, not even his own. He must be able to write Latin and Greek, but he need not be able to write English," &c. Again: "For the two ancient languages, Greek and Latin, the University provides six instructors. For the four modern languages, French, German, Spanish, Italian, it provides three instructors. The compensation paid to those teachers is so small that one of them has been compelled to resign his situation during the last year, and another very valuable teacher of German is scarcely retained." He says further, "Hitherto the study of modern languages in the University has been systematically discouraged by a lower scale of rank for good scholarship in this department than in the others. The best recitation in French and German only gave a mark of 6, while in Latin, Greek, and mathematics the highest mark was 8. Scholars, therefore, who studied for rank, and desired a part in commencement, could not afford to take modern languages as an elective in the senior year."

We are happy to learn that French is hereafter to be required, and not taken as an elective in the freshman and part of the sophomore years, though German is still an elective.

Here we find that in a republic, where German and French are the only languages spoken by a large proportion of the inhabitants of some of the States in a country where the citizens of each State enjoy equal rights of citizenship in every other State-where the whole people are restless, and are drawn by self-interest to try their fortunes far away from their native homes, and so are constantly finding occasion and almost necessity to use both French and German-we find in this republic the leading university completing the education of her students without requiring them to understand a word of either language. And the same, substantially, is true of our other colleges, and of the great universities of England.

We can hardly find among our political men competent ministers to foreign courts, who can speak the court languages. Now, while, in the language of the

act of Congress, we would not exclude classical studies, but would allow all who please to pursue them, we would insist that no young man should be pronounced educated at any college until he could speak and write readily the French and German languages.

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The advocates for the classics claim that, in addition to these studies being best for the discipline of the intellect, taste, memory, and imagination, their students are enabled to study in the original Greek and Latin the works of the great master minds of antiquity. "Nor," says one of these advocates, translations avail anything for this purpose. The essential spirit and etherial beauty of the orignal vanish entirely with the version." If, however, it be true, as the report of her Majesty's commissioners upon the great schools and colleges of England, made to Parliament in 1864, seems to show, that graduates of the universities, after all their training, cannot read these originals, it would seem to be wise to resort to translations before, rather than after, some ten years' study of the dead languages. Mr. Neate, M. P. for Oxford, gives the following as his estimate of the grand result of education at Oxford: "I do not hesitate to say that the great majority of those who take a degree in Oxford, after having spent ten or twelve years of their life in the all but exclusive study of Latin and Greek, are unable to construe, off-hand, the easiest passages in either language if they have never seen them before." The commissioners themselves say, "Of the young men who go to the universities, a great number never acquire so much Latin and Greek as would enable them to read the best classical authors intelligently and with pleasure."

A careful investigation would no doubt lead to the same conclusion in reference to the graduates of American colleges.

While we do not undervalue the classics, and should hope that every boy would, if possible, possess some knowledge at least of Latin, as being the basis of modern languages, and while we would give to abstract mathematics all the time that the student can spare from such knowledge as we include among "the necessaries of life," we do believe that, for a large class of our people, a system of education should be framed which may combine more of the practical with the theoretical. Borrowing from the heathen mythology some reverence for that Titanic power with which all its deities and heroes are endowed, we would foster a more rigorous manhood, that shall not undervalue muscle and energy to perform the actual labors of life. The goddess of wisdom (as Pallas-Athene) was also the goddess of arts and of scientific war; and knowledge is always consistent with power to execute some practical work.

The establishment of scientific schools in connexion with most of our colleges, and the existence of such institutions as commercial colleges and institutes of technology in various States, indicate that there is a public sentiment demanding something different, at the present time, from the facilities for education given by our literary colleges. Even the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in England, have so far yielded to this popular sentiment that they have, within a few years past, established what are termed "middle class examinations" for the promotion of education outside of their regular classes. Examinations of youth of the middle classes are held at stated times, by committees, and certificates given them, which may secure them situations to which their education may entitle them. The objects of the examinations are to encourage the middle classes in the pursuit of learning, and to guide them in their progress in their preparations for business in trade, manufactures, the arts, or agriculture. The foundation stones of republicanism are equality, progress, and the dignity of labor. We who are charged with the establishment of educational institutions should see to it that every element that savors of caste, of aristocracy, of distinctions against labor as such, should be carefully excluded. Labor is degrading only as it is associated with ignorance and vice. The skilful surgeon, the hospital physican, the great captains by sea and land, per

form labors disagreeable, disgusting, arduous to the extreme of human endurance, and yet we reverence and applaud the laborers for the skill, the intellect, the high and noble motives which actuate them. By combining with all labor, intellect and skill, or, in other words, by educating the man who performs the labor, we may abolish these distinctions, and place the farmer and mechanic on the same plane with the learned professions.

THE ACT OF CONGRESS.

Congress by an act entitled "An act donating public lands to the several States and Territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts," approved July 2, 1862, granted to each State, for such purposes, an amount of public land equal to thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative in Congress, to which the States are respectively entitled by the apportionment under the census of 1860.

The subject of agricultural schools and colleges has long attracted the attention both of our people and legislators, and many attempts, most of which have proved failures, have been made to establish such institutions. The disposition to expend money in large and expensive buildings, and to indulge the American propensity to own all the lands that join us, induced Congress, in the act referred to, to fix judicious restraints upon the States accepting its grant. To the careless observer, a college is, chiefly, a group of magnificent buildings, with pleasant surroundings of lawns and trees, where students are expected some how to gain an education, however starved and pinched may be the internal organization, including the corps of professors and teachers.

Seeing how many institutions have been ruined or contracted in their usefulness by extravagance in the external management of their affairs, and especially by indulgence in architectural display, Congress wisely provides "that all the expenses of management, superintendence, and taxes, from the date of the selection of said lands previous to their sales, and all expenses incurred in the management and disbursement of the moneys which may be received therefrom, shall be paid by the States to which they may belong, out of the treasury of said States, so that the entire proceeds of the sale of said lands shall be applied, without any diminution whatever, to the purposes hereinafter mentioned;" and that "no portion of said fund, nor the interest thereon, shall be applied directly or indirectly, under any pretence whatever, to the purchase, erection, preservation or repair of any building or buildings."

To guard against loss of the fund by improvident investment, the act provides that all moneys derived from the lands granted shall be invested in stocks of the United States, or of the States, or some other safe stocks yielding not less than five per cent.; and that if any portion of the fund, or of the interest thereon, shall be lost or diminished, it shall be replaced by the State, so that the capital shall remain forever undiminished, except that a sum not exceeding ten per cent. upon the amount received by any State under the act may be applied to the purchase of lands for sites or experimental farms, whenever authorized by the legislature.

The general object and character of the colleges thus to be established is briefly stated in the fourth section of the act, which provides that the interest of the fund shall be inviolably appropriated by each State which may take and claim the benefit of the act, "to the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college, where the leading object shall be without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life."