There is, however, another and a more serious objection to confining a student, in most branches at least, to a text book:--the professor is not stimulated to keep pace with the rapidly improving condition of science. If indolent and devoid of enthusiasm, he confines the youth closely to the text,--takes no pains to advance him farther,--and the student leaves the institution with the most insufficient instruction on the subject. The text books which are used at this time, in some of our colleges, and have been so for the last fifty years, are melancholy evidences of the imperfect mode in which particular studies are taught there, and of the absence of all progress on the part of the teachers. We believe the very best system of instruction, where it can be adopted, is:--to recapitulate the subject of the preceding lecture, and, after the lecture of the day, to examine the class thoroughly on the last lecture but one. In this manner, the facts and theories of a science are impressed three times, upon the memory of the pupil; and if, after this, he is unable to retain them, he must be pronounced incorrigible. This plan we conceive to be the superlative; and to this conclusion we are led, not from theory simply, but from practice. The nature of certain subjects, and the shortness of time appropriated, in some institutions, to lecture, may, occasionally, preclude its fulfilment: the nearer it can be accomplished, the better. Under this plan, the text book becomes a matter of comparatively trifling moment,--as the student will, of course, be understood to come prepared for examination on the subject of the lecture, as delivered _ex cathedrâ_. With regard to _public examinations_, we need not dwell on the question of their policy. All well-regulated universities in this country and Great Britain, at least, have a system of rewards, as well as of punishments; and this uniformity may be esteemed a fair criterion of the opinions of the wise and reflecting of those countries on this topic. However desirable it may be, that mankind should do their duty without fear or expectation, every day's experience testifies that the hope of reward, or the dread of punishment, powerfully influences their exertions, not only for temporal, but eternal purposes.