impress upon all the ages that have followed. The lessons taught by the Greeks have not been forgotten. The examples of beauty and the vestiges of truth they have bequeathed to us, still exist to ameliorate the condition and improve the moral character of a thousand times greater number of individuals than was effected by them in the palmy days of Hellenic development. But we should not unduly exalt the past, or claim for it a superiority over the present. There never was a time in which the realms of actual thought were so extended as at present, nor when so many individuals were occupied in the contemplation of abstract truths.
Such being the results proceeding from science as we have stated, it appears strange that so little encouragement is given to its prosecution, and that it should not be more liberally fostered by governments and wealthy individuals. In a new country like this, where a whole continent is to be subdued, and there is so great a demand for the practical application of science to art, it is not surprising that the great principles which underlie these applications while they can be borrowed from Europe should not at first receive much attention; but, since our country has become so much advanced in wealth and in intelligence, this state of things should no longer exist, and it is therefore proper on an occasion like this to call public attention to the importance and wants of abstract science.
In this country, science is almost exclusively prosecuted by those engaged in the laborious and exhaustive employment of imparting instruction. Science among us brings comparatively little emolument, and is accompanied with but little honor. High talents are therefore driven into other pursuits more remunerative and more favored with popular applause. Those who from a love of truth would pursue it for its own sake are so overworked with the drudgery of elementary teaching, and so poorly supplied with the implements of investigation, that it is not surprising that science has made comparatively little advance among us, but that, under existing conditions, it should have made so much. What is especially wanted at present is an improvement in our higher institutions of learning, and on this point permit me to dwell a few moments.
Three things are essential to a well-constituted college or university: 1. An unencumbered, free endowment, which shall liberally provide for the support of the faculty, and defray all the expenses of the operations of the establishment; 2. A faculty consisting of men of profound learning and powers of original thought and fluent expression; and—3. A full supply of all the objects and implements of instruction and research. I say a "free endowment," in contradistinction to one invested in buildings intended for external display more than for internal use, as is unhappily too often the case in this country.
The faculty should be men of intrinsic worth, chosen, not on account of influential connections, social position, denominational pre-
