At the present day, up to the present hour, Education--especially the higher education, destined to fit men for leading positions--is still under the old literary regime. We laugh when we read of the two first years of medical study at the school of Salerno being devoted to dry logic, yet the four years' course at nearly all our modern Universities, or, in fact, the course of almost any 'high-school,' is as little adapted to the real wants of the practical leading men of this age as a study of the Schoolmen would be. The 'literature' of the past still rules the practical wants of the present. It is not that the study of the thought of the past is not noble, nay, essential, to the highly cultivated man; but it should be pursued on a large, scientific scale. The study of Greek and Latin, as languages, is not so disciplining nor so valuable as that of the science of language, as taught by Max Müller; and if these languages must be learned, (and we do not deny that they should,) they can better be studied in their relations to all languages than simply by themselves. And as if to make bad worse, the genial and strictly scientific use of literal translations, advocated by Milton and Locke, and generally employed at the Revival of Letters, and during the days when Europe boasted its greatest classic scholars, is prohibited. 'A college education' suggests the employment of the best years of life in studies of little practical use in themselves, and seldom revived, save for pleasure, after graduation. And even where such studies are exceptionally practical; nay, where science and a free choice of languages and literature are left to the somewhat advanced student, we still find the shadow of the past--of the old, formal, and rapidly growing obsolete literature--overawing the more enlightened effort. Deny it as we may, the University is still a feudal institution. Within the memory of man, there existed in England positively no school where the would-be engineer or manufacturer could be fitted for his career and at the same time be 'well educated.' George Stephenson was obliged to send his son to an 'University,' where some scraps of practical science--scanty scraps they were--most insufficiently repaid the expense of education.