but when fortune
removes them all and gives him the power of doing as he thinks best,
then comes the time of trial. There is but one right, and the
possibilities of wrong are infinite. I doubt not that the trustees of
the Johns Hopkins University felt the full force of this truth when they
entered on the administration of their trust a year and a half ago; and
I can but admire the activity and resolution which have enabled them,
aided by the able president whom they have selected, to lay down the
great outlines of their plan, and carry it thus far into execution. It
is impossible to study that plan without perceiving that great care,
forethought, and sagacity, have been bestowed upon it, and that it
demands the most respectful consideration. I have been endeavouring to
ascertain how far the principles which underlie it are in accordance
with those which have been established in my own mind by much and
long-continued thought upon educational questions. Permit me to place
before you the result of my reflections.

Under one aspect a university is a particular kind of educational
institution, and the views which we may take of the proper nature of a
university are corollaries from those which we hold respecting education
in general. I think it must be admitted that the school should prepare
for the university, and that the university should crown the edifice,
the foundations of which are laid in the school. University education
should not be something distinct from elementary education, but should
be the natural outgrowth and development of the latter. Now I have a
very clear conviction as to what elementary education ought to be; what
it really may be, when properly organised; and what I think it will be,
before many years have passed over our heads, in England and in America.
Such education should enable an average boy of fifteen or sixteen to
read and write his own language with ease and accuracy, and with a sense
of literary excellence derived from the study of our classic writers: to
have a general acquaintance with the history of his own country and with
the great laws of social existence; to have acquired the rudiments of
the physical and psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge of
elementary arithmetic and geometry. He should have obtained an
acquaintance with logic rather by example than by precept; while the
acquirement of the elements of music and drawing should have been
pleasure rather than work.

It may