ecause of circumstances. We naturally look
to our colleges for the evidences of learning, of enlightenment and
culture. We think of the capital invested in them, of the part they
play in moulding the character of our young men, and we deem it a
matter of course that they should be continually producing something
original and independent. But when we compare them with the German
universities--and the comparison is forced upon us whenever one of our
graduates goes abroad to complete his studies or whenever we look into
a recent German publication--we are forced to exclaim, "What are our
colleges about? Are they incompetent, or asleep?" Neither one nor
the other. Most of our professors do the best they can. But they are
fettered by routine: they are not stimulated and sustained by
the consciousness that their private studies may be made directly
available in the classroom. They lead two lives, as it were--one
as professor, the other as thinker and reader--and there is not the
proper action and reaction between the two.

The remedy is as easy to propose as it would be difficult to apply.
We have only to convert our colleges into universities, our college
instructors into professors after the German model. Let us relegate
all teaching, so called, to the schools, and let us give our
professors permission to expand into veritable scholars discoursing to
young men of kindred spirit. Any one can see at a glance that from
the wish to the accomplishment is a long way. Upon some of us the
consciousness is beginning to dawn that perhaps we have not even taken
the first decisive step. The best that can be said of our colleges is
that they are in a state of transition. We have increased the number
of studies, as well as the number of colleges; we have established
schools of law and schools of science, sometimes independent of,
sometimes co-ordinate with or subordinate to, the college. We have
also established post-graduate courses, in the hope of inducing our
young men to complete their studies at home. Yet every year we see a
larger number going abroad. In those days of golden memory, both for
Germany and for America, when Longfellow was gliding down the
Rhine with Freiligrath, and Bancroft and Bismarck were comrades at
Goettingen, an American in Germany was something of a rarity. In most
instances he was a man of wealth and high social standing, who
looked upon his semester or two as a romantic episode. But now every
outward-bound