ties for the work of education which shall keep them constantly adapted to the advanced state of science, and the increasing wants of the age. The Institutions under the patronage of this Society are yet too young to enjoy extensively the combined influence of Alumni. These are few in number, and their wealth, as well as that influence which controls wealth, is yet to be acquired. They are however making successful beginnings. For example, the Alumni of Illinois College (of whom less than eighty are in the land of the living), at their last meeting, resolved on an effort to raise $10,000 in the course of five years to found an Alumni Professorship in that Institution. 5. Another ground of encouragement to which we would allude is the increased demand for mind, in all departments of human effort. Much of our last Report was devoted to the demands of the church for cultivated intellect. It is to be expected that this demand will be constantly on the increase, as nations rush onward in the career of improvement. Each succeeding age distances the preceding. New sciences are bursting into life, and new applications of the principles of science to the practical purposes of life, are every where revolutionizing society. The mind will at once recur for illustrations to the steamer, plunging along its ocean pathway, propelled by a mysterious agent under the control of mind--to the railroad-train, rushing, like the rolling thunder, over mountain and valley-to the press, multiplying indefinitely, and almost with the quickness of thought, the products of mind-and to the telegraph, transmitting intelligence from country to country as the electric chain flashes from cloud to cloud! We may almost say "the former things are passed away," and that in one sense, at least, we have a "new earth," if not a "new heaven." One important feature marks all these movements, viz., that they give a constantly increased ascendency to mind and skill over mere muscular force. Hence there is every where a demand for mind-mind in the inventor, the manufacturer, and the operator. This demand is indeed becoming world-wide. But the higher institutions of learning, such as are aided by this Society, are great nurseries of mind, and with an increasing urgency they are called on to supply the intellectual wants of the world. By reason of the application of the principles of science to the common purposes of life, they are constantly multiplying their points of contact with society, and thus becoming more and more identified with the great and complicated movements of the age. New departments, devoted to practical science, have been recently created at Harvard and Yale; and a Professorship having the same end in view has been established in Western Reserve College. The inference from all this is, that the community will more and more see the importance of these Institutions in their varied relations to the best interests of society, and consequently be more and more ready to aid in founding and sustaining them. And never was there a more glorious opportunity offered, than is furnished by this Society to the merchant princes and great-hearted men of the East, to identify their names and influence with the very structure of Western society-an influence that shall be as deathless as that society itself. How many individuals are able to adopt some one of the Institutions under our patronage, and furnish it with facilities for accomplishing an amount of good, in view of which they might greatly and eternally rejoice!. RAILROADS AND COLLEGES. The inquiry, however, will doubtless arise in many minds-Why not delay their establishment at the West till that country can provide for its own intellectual wants; or, at least, till after it has been supplied with common schools and academies? But who would delay the construction of railroads at the West, till the unaided resources of the country can produce them; or till after the universal construction of common roads and bridges? Long before any such period arrives, the capital of the older States lays the iron-track in the far-off wilderness. But the laying of that track imparts instant motion to stagnant society-gives vigor to all the sinews of industry-developes the hidden stores of wealth, and gives to an awakened and renovated people the means of filling their land with a thousand minor improvements. Now the higher Institutions of education are to intellectual and moral development at the West, what the railroad is to agriculture and commerce; and they are needed long before the unaided resources of the country can produce them. They are the great generators of educational power, and produce the elevating and propelling forces of society. A recent writer calls them "the wholesale warehouses from which intelligence and thought are distributed all over the land." POPULAR INSTRUCTION, AND THE HIGHER INSTITUTIONS. The relations of popular instruction to the higher Institutions of learning are believed to be entirely misapprehended by multitudes. It is supposed that, in the order of existence, the lower schools must precede the higher, and that the latter are to be regarded merely as the offspring of the former. We cannot here do better than to quote from a recent energetic writer: "What the mind has not received it cannot be expected to impart. The reservoir must not be made to depend on fountains that are lower than itself. The springs which are to supply the thirst of the people after knowledge are to be sought in higher altitudes than those which the mass of the people occupy. Common schools, without Colleges to sustain them, must inevitably run themselves out, yea, and run the age out with them, if the age continues to depend on them. Common schools, together with those of an intermediate rank, can be regarded in no other light than as offshoots from Colleges. Such schools never did, and probably they never can, independently and spontaneously vegetate in any form of human society. They must be preceded by Institutions of a higher order. This is a well ascertained law in regard to the rise and progress of all systems of education. The inception is with a few individual minds; and the first public development is in founding a College. The first dollar appropriated by law in New England for the purposes of educa tion was to endow a College, and the next step was to create by law her noble system of common schools-a system which for two hundred years, like the springs of our mountains, has been diffusing health and freshness over the whole aspect of society." The above quotations, in our view, present the true phi losophy of systems of education. And this consideration imparts great force to the appeals of this Society. All over the West these systems now exist in their forming state, and they need just such men as Colleges throw into the new States to give them the proper shape. They need the infusion of that vital power which can alone emanate from the higher institutions of learning. The statute-books of many of the Western States are filled with the lifeless framework of institutions and educational systems. Here, then, is a point where the FORMING West can be reached with a blessed and wide-spreading power. NOW IS THE TIME TO APPLY THAT POwer. But who shall apply it? "All that I have wondered at," said an earnest and intelligent advocate of this Society, "is, that the Puritan churches have not seen that their GREAT VOCATION is to use this power. God calls them to it-their whole history enforces it. What we want then is a deeper conviction on this subject-a conviction that shall call out freely, joyfully, exult * Rev. Worthington Smith, D. D. |