Let us be just to ourselves and just to our colleges. We, the public, clamored for new studies, and the colleges had to meet the demand, because, by force of circumstances, they were the only places where the changes could be effected. But in our praisworthy desire for progress we have not considered sufficiently whether the colleges were in truth the proper places for innovation; whether we were bringing in our innovations in the right way and at the right time; whether we were in a fair way of making our colleges what we seek to make them--namely, centres of learning. To discuss all these points would be equivalent to discussing the question of education in all its phases, from the primary school to the university. For the present we must limit ourselves to understanding and appreciating fairly the position of our professors. That position is not only a trying, but a discouraging one. The greater part of the professor's time is spent--from the point of view of pure science we might almost say wasted--in teaching the same things over and over again. After a few years' practice his round of hours becomes mechanical. Familiarity with the textbooks and with the uniformly-recurring blunders of each successive class begets a feeling of weariness that is not remote from aversion and contempt. So far as his prescribed official duties are concerned, he feels that he has nothing more to learn. There being, then, no stimulus from without, he is open to one of two temptations--either to rest on his past labors, or, which is far more likely, to keep on studying for himself, but to keep the results to himself. It is not only more soothing to our pride, it is juster to our professors, to regard them thus as men who have hid their lights under a bushel, and also to confess that we, our institutions and ways of thinking, have made the bushel for them and held it down over their heads. It is not every man who has the persistency and stamina of Professor Whitney, for instance, who can toil for years with beginning classes in French and German, never losing sight of his real aim, never neglecting an opportunity of bringing it forward, until at last he achieves the success he has especially desired, and is acknowledged to be one of the foremost comparative philologists and Sanskrit scholars in the world. Where a Professor Whitney may succeed in spite of untoward circumstances, a dozen will probably fail because 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