A large per cent. of the leaders in the American Congress, during the trying period of our country's history from 1860 to 1870, were either college graduates or had taken a partial course in college and gained its inspiration. The college graduates have furnished 33 per cent. of the Congressmen, 46 per cent. of the Senators, 50 per cent. of the Vice Presidents, 65 per cent. of the Presidents, 73 per cent. of the Associate Judges, and 83 per cent. of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Again, we are especially indebted to the colleges for encouraging private and public schools, through which we have become an enlightened people. It is impossible to estimate the indebtedness of popular to collegiate education. There is an intimate and vital relation between the college and the public schools, which differ not in kind, but only in the degree of instruction. "The success and usefulness of common schools," says Professor W. S. Tyler, "is exactly proportioned to the popularity and prosperity of the colleges, and whatever is done for or against the one is sure to react, with equal force and similar results, upon the other." The colleges have been foremost in advocating that the education of the youth should not be left to those of meager attainments and narrow sympathies. They have maintained that, in order to reap the best advantages of our public schools, it is important to have wise, competent, Christian men and women to give instruction, as well as to prepare text-books, and to increase the appliances employed in teaching. It has been a difficult task to bring our public school system to the present condition of progress. The work has proceeded slowly and steadily under the example and inspiration of great educational centers. The excellence and usefulness of our school system has advanced just in proportion to the culture and ability of the teachers. A collegiate education has always tended to foster and encourage higher standards of scholarship among teachers, and this influence has been diffused into the public school system. President Charles W. Super truthfully says: "That which leads up to the highest must always be supervised and directed by that which is at the top. A system of elementary and secondary education which does not culminate in the university, and make that the goal towards which its efforts are directed, is an absurdity. There must be good teachers before there can be good schools, and good teachers can only be formed in institutions that are chiefly concerned with knowledge at first hand. This has been a recognized principle in Germany for half a century, or longer; is now almost universally admitted in France, and is the goal toward which the whole civilized world is rapidly moving."