ions of
higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the
theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the
University, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the
Technical School fabricated _with their own hands_, and without the help
of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to
the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific
apparatus--all for the trade--and they received the highest awards for
the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were
scientifically educated skilled workers--workers with university
education--highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so
much distrust science.

Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were
these: In science, learning from memory was not in honor, while
independent research was favored by all means. Science was taught hand
in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom
was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest
abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and
research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite
different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University,
and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The
student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and
to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical
skill was prosecuted--according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of
the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago and Boston--in
the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the
universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first
step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the
carpenter's workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly
taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were
spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that
branch--the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to
the turner's workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns
of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following
workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those
parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after
he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to th