ded as a part of the College. They are incidental
appendages, of which, indeed, one has its seat in another city. The
College proper is simply a more advanced school for boys, not differing
essentially in principle and theory from the public schools in all our
towns. In this, as in those, the principle is coercion. Hold your
subject fast with one hand, and pour knowledge into him with the other.
The professors are task-masters and police-officers, the President the
chief of the College police.

Now, considering the great advance of our higher town schools, which
carry their pupils as far as the College carried them fifty years ago,
and which might, if necessary, have classes still more advanced of such
as are destined for the university, I venture to suggest that the time
has come when this whole system of coercion might, with safety and
profit, be done away. Abolish, I would say, your whole system of marks,
and college rank, and compulsory tasks. I anticipate an objection drawn
from the real or supposed danger of abandoning to their own devices and
optional employment boys of the average age of college students. In
answer, I say, advance that average by fixing a limit of admissible age.
Advance the qualifications for admission; make them equal to the studies
of the Freshman year, and reduce the college career from four years to
three; or else make the Freshman year a year of probation, and its
closing examination the condition of full matriculation. Only give the
young men, when once a sufficient foundation has been laid, and the
rudiments acquired, the freedom of a true University,--freedom to select
their own studies and their own teachers from such material, and such
_personnel_, as the place supplies. It is to be expected that a portion
will abuse this liberty, and waste their years. They do it at their
peril. At the peril, among other disadvantages, of losing their degree,
which should be conditioned on satisfactory proof that the student has
not wholly misspent his time.

An indispensable condition of intellectual growth is liberty. That
liberty the present system denies. More and more it is straitened by
imposed tasks. And this I conceive to be the reason why, with increased
requirements, the College turns out a decreasing proportion of
first-class men. If the theory of college rank were correct, the highest
marks should indicate the men who are to be hereafter most conspicuous,
and leaders in the various walks