Such an object brings the University into full sympathy with the present tendencies of education in our own country. With us, scientific pursuits and the study of Nature are receiving greater and greater attention and engrossing a continually larger share of the interest, the time, and the talent of students. There already exists, and there is danger of its increase, in many of our best institutions of learning, and many of our most educated men, an intellectual onesidedness of a contrary, but not less unfortunate character, to that which long existed at Oxford. The temper of our people, the wide field for their energies, the development of the so-called practical traits of character under the stimulus of our political and social institutions, the solitary dissociation of America from the history and the achievements of the Old World, the melancholy absence of monuments of past greatness and worth,--these and many other circumstances peculiar to our position all serve to weaken the general interest in what are called classical studies, and to direct the attention of the most ambitious and active minds far too exclusively to the pursuits of science. And when to these circumstances peculiar to ourselves is added the influence of those general causes which have had the effect of leading men throughout the civilized world to give of late years more and more of thought and study to the investigation of Nature and to the pursuits resulting therefrom, it is not strange that learning, so-called, should, for the present at least, find itself but poorly off in America, and that the essential value of learned studies for an even and fair development of the intellectual faculties should be far too little regarded. The danger that arises from a too exclusive devotion to scientific pursuits is pointed out by Dr. Acland in a passage which deserves thoughtful consideration, coming as it does from a man distinguished not more for scientific eminence than for his wide and cultivated intellect. "The further my observation has extended," he says, "the more satisfied I am that no _knowledge of things_ will supply the place of the early study of letters,--_literae humaniores_. I do not doubt the value of any honest mental labor. Indeed, since the _material_ working of the Creator has been so far displayed to our gaze, it is both dangerous and full of impiety to resist its ennobling influence, even on the ground that His _moral_ work is greater. But notwithstanding this, the study of language, of history, and of the thoughts of great men which they exhibit, seems to be almost necessary (as far as learning is necessary at all) for disciplining the heart, for elevating the soul, and for preparing the way for the growth in the young of their personal spiritual life; while, on the other hand, the best corrective to pedantry in scholarship, and to conceit in mental philosophy, is the study of the facts and laws exhibited by Natural Science."