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have yielded so far to the pressure as to admit scientific courses of study. The demand at length, made itself heard in the halls of Congress, and gained from the national repre. sentatives a munificent grant of public lands to found colleges for the industrial classes. A new era dawned. New institutions were to be organized, devoted to the industries, and having for their chief object, "the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." The eyes of the nation have been turned towards the rising light, and vague, but mighty, hopes have gathered in the public mind. To us it is committed, here in Illinois, to realize these hopes. Rarely has a grander duty, nor, perhaps, a more difficult one, fallen to the lot of any body of men. We are the servitors of the age itself.

The great movements of the world are not the results of agitation; the agitation is, rather, the effect and evidence of the rising movement. Not the invention of any reformer, but the logical outcome of the progress of science and art, is this new demand for a higher and better education of the industrial classes. The rising light of a new era of science has stolen over the world. A wakeful few, standing on some favored eminence, caught, before their fellows, the illuminating rays, but no buman hand could much hasten its dawning, nor hinder its progress. The earth itself, obedient to the celestial attractions, was slowly, but steadily and with resistless force, rolling its inhabitants into the light. Sleepy eyes may refuse to see it, or fogy stupidity may obscure its progress, but the day never goes backward. The sun of the new era will rise to the zenith. Its light and heat will re-vitalize the world. The institutions which it brings forth will live and flourish in spite of all storms which may greet their birth or oppose their beginnings. The great demand which created them will insure their continuance, and urge them forward to their triumph. Should they fail, at first, the public voice will demand reconstruction, not destruction. The people, once aroused, will not endure to be cheated of their hopes. Industrial education-education devoted to the improvement of the great industries of the world, and to the enlightenment of the industrial classes, which is, in its fullest and best sense, the education of the people-this is the logical end to which all popular movement marches. Thus, gentlemen, we ride the crest of a great tidal wave of popular want and popular will, and this wave must bear us resistlessly forward to our destiny and our crown.

Let me not, in this, be the least unjust to other and. older institutions of learning. They, too, have felt, deep within their venerable halls, the rising pressure of this popular want, and they are responding to its cry, by attempting such modifications in their courses of study as may adapt them to meet the wants of practical men. It has become fashion. able for men to decry the old colleges, as though they were wholly antiquated and useless in this swift and practical age, but no true men will thus decry them. All over the land, their graduates lead the van in the struggle to elevate and bless the race of man. In the war for the Union, their professors and students enlisted among the earliest and fought with the bravest for the salvation of their country. Even this movement for industrial education found its earliest, strongest and most ardent advocates among the men who had been trained to think and speak at the old altars of learning, and the movement would never have come to this hour but for the able advocacy and the determined efforts of men whom these very colleges reared up to power. We do not need to tear down others in order that we may take their places. Let these grand old institutions still go on with their work. Humanity owes them a great debt of gratitude for the light of learning shed by them o'er the homes and walks of men. But it is ours to organize a University wholly on this new and grand idea of education devoted to the practical industries of the world.

But though this University is thus the child of a great popular movement and is borne forward by the very tide of popular progress, it is not wholly without difficulties and dangers. Nay, let us not shut our eyes to the fact, more than ordinary perils surround it and obstacles of unwonted magnitude lie on its path. The very might of that great popular movement which bears us forward, threatens us always with catastrophe. He who navigates a torrent, will find abundant perils, however rapidly it may carry him on

to his purposed end. It is no unfit service, and certainly is a prudent one, for this opening hour of the public career of the University, to note some of the chief difficulties which lie in its way. Caution will arm itself with new prudence, and courage will rise to s loftier energy and determination, from a nearer and clearer view of the obstacles to be encountered and overcome. And, perhaps, thoughtless and impatient criticism may abate some of its arrogance, and captious fault finding, when it sees how beset with difficulties is your way, as Trustees, and how mighty is the problem with which you are called to grapple.

The difficulties which lie in the way of a successful inauguration and operation of an Industrial University are chiefly of two classes:

1st. Those which are found in the internal organization and working of the institution; and,

2d. Those which lie in its external relations and surroundings.

Those of the first class consist mainly in the difficulty of combining the theoretical and the practical in education, and in the further difficulty of uniting the several departments of practical instruction in the same institution. These difficulties are much greater than a casual or careless observer will suspect.

To secure a familiar knowledge and mastery of the sciences is a work both toilsome and time-consuming. To accomplish this in the weakness and imperfection of youth necessarily so absorbs the strength and occupies the time, that the most practical teacher is puzzled to find leisure, either for himself or his pupils, sufficient to allow him to train them in those quick and accurate perceptions, those prompt and familiar judgments, and that ready and skillful grasp and mastery of facts, formulas and forces which the practical applications of the sciences require. It is comparatively easy to load the youthful memory with the knowledge which has been wrought out by other minds, and to send our students forth to the encounters of life burdened, rather than armed, with the pon. derous armor of some Saul of science. Education, under careless or unskillful teachers, always tends strongly towards this excessive use of mere verbal memory. It is much easier to learn and remember, than to investigate and think. But to link the scholarly study of truths and theories, the reasoning upon general laws, and the comprehension of sciences, in their completeness, with a practical mastery of their applications in the arts, is a work of double difficulty. Shall we simply teach the sciences without attempting to teach their practical applications, then we fall again into the error of the old schoolmen. Our science will be bookish learning. We have failed to forge the golden fetter which binds learning to labor. The industries will look in vain for skilled leaders from among our graduates. Shall we neglect all of science except its results, and grasping these by mere force of memory, give our whole attention to the processes of art? What is this more than the old apprenticeship? For science thus learned neither educates nor enlightIts possession would be an evanescent dream, and its influence a mere passing shadow.

ens.

Our problem requires us to unite scientific and art education-to make true scholars, while we make practical artisans, and to do this, not in one or two arts, but in the whole round of human industries.

But, great as are these internal difficulties, they are not insuperable. They may be met by a due union of patience and power. All the practical arts rest down on the great natural sciences, and every process of art is a scientific experiment. What we have to do is to combine, in some central and fundamental course of liberal education, these sciences in such measure and position that they may properly synchronize with and support the several art studies. And such is our plan. Our course in "Science, Literature and Art," is richly charged with the knowledges which underlie all the industrial arts, and these are so placed that all the special courses of instruction may grow from the cen. tral course, as branches grow from a supporting and nourishing trunk. We shall thus educate and teach at the same time. While we develop, we shall also direct; and the applications of science will help to give zest and power to the study of science.

The propriety and utility of an educational course in an institution designed to teach the practical arts has been severely questioned. As well question the value of the trunk and roots to the tree. It is the branches, indeed, that bear the desired fruit, but branches and fruit must alike wither if the trunk be girdled or the roots decay. Our only hope for a successful solution of our problem lies in this possible union of sound education and the practical study of the arts. To make educated farmers and mechanics, we must both educate and teach farming and mechanics. Let either factor be wanting and the product will never be attained.

But it is to the external difficulties which surround our work that I wish to give the chief consideration of this hour. These difficulties lie mainly in the crude, vague, and often contradictory and impracticable opinions which occupy, to some extent, the public mind in regard to these industrial schools.

In a country like ours, where the people are the repositories of power, and where the will of the people is the real constitution of the State, where the public opinion is so often the standard of right, and where the popular feeling is the "power behind the throne" to which all rulers and institutions must alike bow, the public approval is the guerdon of success, and the prevalence of hostile or even of dissentient opinions becomes a real, if not an insuperable obstacle to the triumph of new plans. The vague and unconsidered judgment which simply criticises and objects is often as fatal as the settled and intelligent opposing convictions of those who hold another theory, especially in matters in which the public mind has not been fully enlightened.

The Industrial University is peculiarly a child of the popular will. Designed to promote, by education, the industrial interests of the largest classes of the people, and challenging, on this very ground, popular sympathy and support, it is on these accounts more liable to be affected by the fluctuations of public sentiment regarding it than institutions of a less popular constitution. A thousand noble but vague hopes and aspirations will look here to find the help they crave; a thousand deeply felt needs of skill or power will turn to this University for their supply without knowing precisely how it is to be gained. Evils long endured will send up here their appeal for remedies. Fierce resentments against old wrongs or fancied wrongs, and still fiercer resolves in favor of cherished reforms or fancied reforms, will demand that these halls shall feed their hate or battle in their cause. Urged by such a variety of motives, and viewing the matter from such a diversity of standpoints, it will not be wonderful if an almost endless variety of plans shall be presented for our guidance.

Each theorizer will have some one or more favorite notions concerning education, and each will count his notion as of central value and importance, and will demand that the University shall be constructed on his idea as its chief corner stone. Unfortunately only one plan can be adopted, and its adoption will be the signal for a hundred men, of dogmatic turn, to shout that "a great mistake has been made." "The institution has failed of its great aim and purpose, and nothing but disaster can be expected till revolution shall come to right the wrong." The "mistake" is simply the failure to take their advice. The "purpose "lost sight of is their purpose, and the "disaster" is the loss of their approbation and patronage. They never seem to reflect that the adoption of their plans would have equally disappointed many others, perhaps, whose interest in the enterprise is equally great, and whose knowledge of its conditions may possibly be vastly greater. This difficulty of conflicting views is one which is confined mainly to the outset of the enterprise. The success of the plans adopted will soon justify the wisdom of the Trustees, if it does not convert all friends of the University to their opinion. Success is its own argument and ends all debate.

A brief notice of two or three of the popular fallacies concerning these industrial schools founded by Congress, may help to enlighten honest inquiry, and to remove more speedily, hurtful errors.

1st. It is assumed by some that these institutions are specially designed for the education of the children of the industrial classes-the sons of farmers, mechanics, etc. If these sons are designing to follow the business of their fathers, then this conception is true; but if the farmer's sons are fitting themselves for doctors or lawyers, as is often their choice, then the University is not especially designed for them. If, on the other hand, the son of the lawyer, merchant, or preacher aims to become a scientific farmer, fruit-grower or mechanician, he will find here the precise instruction he needs. The University looks not to the parentage but to the purposed pursuits of its students. Its doors are open, indeed, to all, and the education it offers will be valuable in any pursuit or profession; but its great purpose is to give educated men to the industries.

Some have added to this mistake the notion that, since the University is designed, as they assume, to provide education for the farmer's children from the rural districts, it should give them the mere high school instruction which their district schools fail to give at home. I have been astonished to learn that one of the ablest and most prominent advocates of industrial education takes this view, and severely criticises the proposed courses of instruction because they do not come down to the capacity of common school children. Does he not see that public high schools are already provided in every county and in every village, even, at which these boys from the rural districts can find instruc tion of this sort much more conveniently and at much cheaper rates than the University can afford it? And does he not reflect that if the University should exhaust its teaching force in the attempt to provide instruction of this sort, it would prove but as a drop in the bucket for the hosts of this class, and that, while doing this, it must almost utterly fail to do the higher work required of it? Instead of a University devoted to the broad industries of a great State, it would become a mere academy or high school for one or two of the nearest counties.

2d. The more common and more troublesome forms of false opinion are those which relate to "practical education." The age is intensely practical. Its great triumphs in the practical arts have filled all minds and fired all imaginations. It scouts all knowledge and every form of education which does not promise immediate practical results. With Carlyle, it shouts, "the truth which holds good in working, cleave thou to that! All nature says, 'Yea, to that.'" Men, accustomed to quick and striking results, have grown impatient of the long periods of seed sowing and culture necessary to bring great mental harvests to ripeness.

And, certainly, when we remember the ages of wild and unproductive theorizings-the centuries which the intellect spent in dreams without results-we may well excuse the earnestness of the demand for practical tests of utility, and practical fruits of science. Not one whit too soon has this cry arisen, and none too earnestly is it pressed. The science which sheds no light on human pursuits, and the education which fits man for none of the great duties of his life are scarcely worth the attention of earnest men. The world has seen enough of the mere book learning which left the mind without power and the hand without skill. The age is too earnest, and the work men have to do is too real for such education as that which the old schoolmen gave their disciples. But what is practical? By what test shall we try it? To what products must it minister? Let us look more narrowly at these questions.

There are three great spheres of human industry:

First. There is the work of the Discoverer. It is his to withdraw himself from active pursuits and to give himself to a close and patient study of the phenomena of nature. By powerful and searching analysis he penetrates to the bottom and roots of nature's facts; by high and sustained reflection he mounts to the summit and compass of her great kingdoms, and lays his grasp, at length, upon her statute books of universal and unchanging laws. He seizes upon the long coveted secret of her works and, like Prometheus of old, brings the stolen spark of celestial fire down to earth to warm and light the homes of men. Thus Newton discovered the law of gravitation; Galvani, the force we call galvanism; Harvey, the circulation of the blood; Cuvier, the types in the animal

kingdom; Franklin, the fact of aerial electricity; and Liebig, the chemical values of food. And thus many others are annually pressing into the great storehouses of nature's secrets, and bringing out its treasures to the aid of human arts.

The second sphere of industry is that of the Inventors. These workers take the great natural law, fact or force, revealed by the toil of the discoverer, and harness it into some labor saving machine, or deduce from it some new process of production. More numerous than the workers of the first class, these inventors are filling the world with their triumphs of art. The steamship, the sewing machine, the reaper and mower, and all the ten thousand implements and processes of useful art are the results of their toil. Often the discoverer is also an inventor, and not unfrequently the inventor has to take up the work of discovery, and develop or demonstrate the principle on which his machinery depends; but the twe spheres must still remain forever distinct industries.

After the discoverers and inventors come the third great class of workers, the millions who, with stout hands and brave hearts, fili all the fields of productive toil with their practical power and skill. It is under their touch the soil yields its harvests, cities grow, shop and manufactory teem with rich products, commerce freights its ships and loads its cars, and world-transforming art puts forth all its power.

Now, of these three, which is the practical? or, rather, which is not practical? Without the Discoverer's work the Inventor would grope in darkness. Annually, hundreds of ingenious contrivances prove useless, because the law or principle they involve is misunderstood; and so art stands baffled at many a point waiting for the progress of scientific discovery to reveal some new and needed principle or force. And labor, stripped of the aids that invention has given it, would lose all its grand and wealth-producing power. The laborer would sink back into the ill-paid, ill-fed drudge of the barbarian age. pronounce, then, that alone practical which lies next the last product, and which results in some material fruit, is to commit the blindest of follies. As well count the hand as the only practical member of the body, and cut off the head as a mere idle dreamer in the physical household.

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Let us advance to a still higher stand and take a yet broader view of human effort. Besides the workers in physical things, there are those who work in the great realms of social and spiritual life-who culture the soul to higher power and arm it with finer sentiments, nobler purposes or higher and stronger resolves; who add to life new joys, to society new blessedness, and new values to all the forms of material wealth. Are not these, also, practical? Are not ideas possessions, as well as corn fields? Is not beauty a marketable quality, even in a horse? Is not the power to enjoy property as essential as the power to produce it? And is not an increase of motive power an essential condition to the increase of industry?

We repeat, then, to those who are so earnestly demanding that education shall be made practical, What is practical? Let us answer. Brains are practical. The most practical thing on earth is brain power-the power to see, reason and understand. In shop and field, in day labor or driving oxen, brain is better than brute force. As some writer has said, "brains are the best manure ever put on land." In peace or war it is not the heaviest battalions but the heaviest brains that win. And so that education is most practical which most develops brain power-power to perceive, judge and act.

It is true that knowledge is useful, and some knowledge is much more useful than others. If one desires to fish, it is desirable to know how to bait a hook. The knowledge of navigation is of great value to him who wishes to sail the seas. If it were possible to confine our sons to some one place and employment for life, then it might be practicable to select for them a course of the most useful knowledge. But life is so free in its movements, the avenues to business are so open and attractive, that no one can predict the career of a single youth. Trained as a physician, he becomes a farmer, an editor, a schoolmaster, and a Congressman, by turns. Oscillating from wealth to poverty and from poverty to wealth, he leaves his smoking firesides in a dozen States to mark his migrations across the continent. Even if he adheres to agriculture, how wide the diver

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