cramming or to deprive ourselves of students. Any industrious young man of sixteen or seventeen, of good capacity, and with such an amount of mathematical knowledge as will enable him to master our scientific course, and such a training in English studies as the schools are competent to afford, has a good right to claim access to the opportunity our school furnishes to qualify himself for a calling which requires technical preparation, without being held to the necessity of conforming to all the requisitions of an ideal scheme of Education, which it is impossible at present to realize.

Our scheme of general instruction must therefore be limited for the present, both by the limited attainments of the pupils, and by the very limited amount of time at their disposal after deducting that required by their professional studies. An attempt was made last year to remedy the difficulty of overwork by reducing the amount of time to be devoted to each separate study, while the original multiplicity of obligatory studies was retained. Experience soon showed that, though the evil of overwork was perhaps diminished, yet the reduction in the time assigned to many of the non-professional studies was so great as to leave it an open question whether the result produced in them was worth having. Compulsory attendance in non-professional work on the part of students already overtasked with professional study answers but little purpose, even when the will of the student is ever so good to profit by the instruction. It is far better, both for health and mental discipline, that the number of subjects should be diminished, and thus a reasonable amount of attention secured to those that remain. To make the English and historical instruction more efficient, I have therefore proposed-and the proposal has been adopted that for regular students an option shall be given between the English and History and certain other general studies, and that the student shall be held to an examination only in such general study, or studies, as he chooses, liberty of voluntary attendance on the other general courses being at the same time granted to all students who have the inclination and can

find the time. Thus the abler and better prepared students may avail themselves of the opportunity to pursue a wider range of general studies, while the slower and worse prepared, by being relieved from compulsory attendance on so many nonprofessional lessons, will gain sorely-needed time for their strictly professional work. The instruction in general subjects will also gain the advantage of being relieved of a dead-weight of overburdened or unwilling attendants. The arrangement need not be considered as more than temporary. As the quality of the preparation brought up to us by candidates for admission improves, a larger element of general study may again be required of professional students.

This change of arrangements will not preclude the attendance of any student on the literary and historical lectures who has time enough for that, but not time enough for more. And I think that in literary and historical instruction mere lectures may be made of great value in organizing the student's miscellaneous knowledge, and giving system and direction to his miscellaneous reading. But attendance on them should be purely voluntary, and no farther requisition should be made in the way of examination than, perhaps, the handing in of a brief set of notes at the close of the course. It is absurd to expect from them the same results as from regular and systematic study. On the other hand, as the change is likely to give me a smaller body of students who will have time for work, I desire to state briefly my view as to the proper nature of that work. The question becomes more important, in consequence of the increasing number of students in the department of Science and Literature, who, not being candidates for either of the technical degrees, are expected to devote a larger share of their time to general studies.

It is obviously impossible for a single instructor to embrace in his instruction the whole of fields so wide as those of Literature and History. The mere reading of manuals and compends is not the study of Literature and History, but a bad and barren way of studying Biography and Chronology. Literature is

really studied where authors are really read, and if History can be taught at all, it can only be by some method which will teach the student not so much History as how to read History. For a teacher whose time is limited that object can best be accomplished by selecting some definite period, and arranging a system of reading and study on the part of his pupils, which shall bear some resemblance to the system of physical research and experiment pursued in the laboratories below. A library is the working-laboratory of the student of Literature and History, and the chief aim of the instructor should be to teach the art of handling and using books. So far as the object of making the student into a writer is aimed at, that cannot be done by setting him merely to the study of rules in the rhetorics but by turning him into the literary laboratory, there, in the closest connection with all his study of the writing of others, to practise writing himself. And where, as in the present case, the instruction in Rhetoric, Literature and History falls to the charge of a single teacher, it is obviously better to combine these subjects together as closely as possible rather than to separate them widely from one another by too careful attention to formal divisions.

The question as to what portion of History and Literature is best suited to be the subject of research and investigation by students in such a school as ours, can hardly be open to doubt. However desirable, as a matter of general culture, it may be for the man of business to be familiar with the whole record of the past, it is essential that he should understand the world he is to live in, and security had better be taken in school that he study that. I would therefore begin my course of instruction with the study of the present condition of things, and thereby supplement, as far as possible, our students' insufficient knowledge of civil and political geography. And it seems to me eminently suitable in such a school as ours, that special attention should be given to the statistics of Commerce and Industry, and to the history of those Arts and Sciences whose principles are the subject of study in other departments of the school.

The study of the present political, social and economical condition of the nations would naturally lead back to that of the events of the immediate past out of which that condition has arisen. The period of history beginning with the middle of the last century, includes several series of events which are specially adapted to be the subjects of extended investigation by students like ours. On the economical and industrial side it includes the whole story of those remarkable labour-saving inventions and of the application to them, as well as to locomotion, of the motive power of steam on which has arisen the vast fabric of modern commerce and industry, as well as the history of the wonderful growth and expansion of modern physical science in all its departments, while on the political side it embraces the story of our revolt from the mother country and the building-up of the republican institutions under which we live, as well as the outbreak of that great European revolution which followed, and a knowledge of the early stages of which is so essential to a right understanding of the present political condition of Europe. And further, this period includes the advent of a new era in literature in the appearance of that generation of writers who immediately preceded our own.

If I am right in the principle that the best method of studying literature is to read books, and the best method of teaching History is not to waste time on wide surveys and barren generalizations, but, by confining the student's attention to the detailed study of a definite period, to teach him how to investigate for himself, no period could be better suited to such a purpose than the one I have described. There is also this great advantage in teaching modern History and Literature, that while, to excite interest in the remote past, time, leisure and the cultivation of a special taste are required, no difficulty is found in interesting young men who are about entering upon the duties of active life either in the serious interests of the present or in the events of the immediate past.

But the study of History, if it is to be productive of any practical results, must be accompanied by, or must lead up to

the study of Political Science on the one hand, and of Economic Science on the other. The lectures on History are followed by a course on Law and Government in the form of commentaries on the U. S. Constitution, and a course on Political Economy accompanying the reading of a manual. These, for students in Science and Literature and for all regular students who enter this course for work, are accompanied by the collateral reading and writing described above.

As it is obviously useless as well as impossible to frame distinct courses for different sets of pupils, it will be seen that in my instruction I have to keep in view three sets of students; 1st, the regular students who can only attend lectures without work; 2d, regular students who elect to do work in connexion with my lectures; and 3d, "Science and Literature" students who have time for a larger amount of work. To meet the wants of the last, I organize small special classes, meeting in my library for supplementary reading and study. This has proved so interesting both to teacher and pupils that I propose to increase their number as far as time allows, and I see no reason why, under proper restrictions, volunteers from the regular classes and special students from other departments should not be admitted to them, without regard to the years in which they are classed.

Specimens of written work are herewith presented; among them elaborate papers on France and Russia by Messrs. R. C. Ware and S. H. Wilder, graduates in the department of Science and Literature, and one on British India by Mr. F. C. Bowditch, a special student in the department.

I have to report a uniformly excellent spirit in my department. I have never lacked interested and attentive hearers, and the conduct of the students in lecture-room and readingroom has been unexceptionable.

All which is respectfully submitted,

W. P. ATKINSON.