Various - Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1.

V >> Various >> Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1.

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It was suggested that we should take a carriage the rest of the way, but
as our horses were hired to Athens, we decided not to incur the extra
expense. Soon after arriving, however, while Dhemetri was making us a
soup, and Diomedes was taking care of our horses, and Epaminondas was
roasting us a joint of lamb, while we were squatting half-asleep on
bolsters on the floor, hugging our knees, looking dreamily at the fire,
and longing for supper and bed, the driver of the carriage came in, and
addressed us in recommendation of his establishment in his choicest
Frank, "_Carrozza-very good-ye-e-e-s_!' then squatted down on the hearth
beside us, hugged his knees, and looked at the fire with infinite
self-satisfaction. Whether it was his eloquence that prevailed on our
attendants, I know not, but it was determined to provide us with a
carriage the next day, at no extra expense. The day was perfect, and the
luxury of an easy drive of four hours was very grateful to us after our
uncomfortable ride in the Peloponnesus. We dined at Eleusis, and reached
Athens early in the afternoon.

ADONIUM.

Far dimly back in distant days of eld,
There lived a pretty boy, as parchments tell,
As formed for love and life in lonely dell,
With mien as fair as never eyes beheld;
Because who saw, to love him was compelled
Straightway, so wizardly he wielded Beauty's spell.

His name Adonis--sad of memory!
Whose life, though fair, his death was fairer still,
In dying for a cause, or good or ill;
For he heart-crazed the daughter of the sea,
Who loved him well, though wisely loved not she:
True hearts are never wise, as worldlings selfish will.

Him Venus loved--Love's cherished creatures they!
And Venus wooed with perseverance sore,
Till weary was the lad, the wooing o'er;
And while he, hiding in the forest lay,
O'ershaded from the sun's unfriendly ray,
Ah me! there came to kill a maddened, foaming boar!

Oh! see! from limbs too fair for touch of earth,
As tusk and tusk is savage through them drove,
While rain their dainty power 'fending strove,
The pure red liquid life all wasting forth!
All wasted, lost? Nay! thence, thence took its birth
ADONIUM, eternal bloom of martyred Love!

Love's martyr is a-bleeding now again;
Sweet Liberty, beloved of earth, doth bleed:
The maddened, foaming boar hath come indeed,
And tears our life on many a gory plain;
But we--as bled the boy--bleed not in vain:
Our blood-drops--our sons--will be Adonium seed!

Who die for Liberty--they never die!
Adonis, dead for Love, doth live anew!
They bloom blood-flowers in the tearful dew,
Forever falling on their memory!
In veins that are and veins that are not to be,
They ever coursing live, the right, the good, the true!

Where sinks the martyr's blood within the sod,
A spirit-plant of universal root,
Divinely radiant, doth upward shoot,
Appealing from a wicked world to God!
And seen for once, down drops the tyrant's rod;
For men at last have tasted of a heavenly fruit.

All good and beautiful of soul thus sprung
From blood, e'en as the Adonium I sing;
And where the blood is purest, thence doth spring
Such flowers as by heavenly bards are sung;
For since from Christ the fierce blood-sweat was wrung,
Have growths of nobler fruit on earth been ripening!

POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTES.

There is positively no class of writers entitled to higher praise, or
actuated by nobler motives, than those who are now distinguishing
themselves by their labors for Education. They have laid their hands on
what is to be the great social motive power of the future--the great
subject of the politics of days to come--and are working bravely in the
sacred cause.

Yet it can hardly be denied that amid the vast mass of every practical
observation and suggestion contained in the educational works with which
we are familiar, or even among the really _scientific_ contributors to
it, there is very little founded on the great social wants and
tendencies of the age. Education is, at present, merely an _art_; it has
a right, in common with every conceivable department of knowledge, to be
raised to the rank of a _science_. This can only be done by putting it
on a progressive basis, and placing it in such a position as to aid in
supplying some great demand of the age.

The great fact of the time is, the advance from mere art upward to
science, from the blossom to the fruit. Practical wants, 'the greatest
good for the greatest number,' the fullest development of free labor,
the increase of capital, the diminution of suffering, the harmony of
interests between capital and labor--all of these are the children of
Science and Facts. During the feudal age, nearly all the resources of
genius--all the capital of the day--was devoted to mere Art, for the
sake of setting off social position and 'idealisms.' As with the
nobility and royalty of England at the present day, society enormously
overpaid what is, or was, really the police--whose mission it was to
keep it in order. But from Friar Bacon to Lord Bacon, a movement was
silently progressing, which the present century has just begun to
realize. This movement was that of the development of all human ability
and natural resources, guided by science. It was a tendency toward the
practical, the positive, which is destined in time to bring forth its
own new art and literature, is breaking away from the trammels of the
old literary or imaginative sway.

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
Mueller; 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.

The great want of the age is the Polytechnic School, or more correctly
speaking, of the Technological Institute, in which the labors of the
Society of Arts, aided by the Museum and Library, may serve the two-fold
object of informing the public on all matters of science and industry
and of aiding the School of Industrial Science. Developed on its largest
scale, such an institute should be devoted to the acquisition and
dissemination of all knowledge, but under strictly scientific guidance
and influences. Literature should there be taught historically, in close
connection with mental philosophy, a system which, it may be observed,
results in interesting the pupil more in details than the old plan
devoted to a few mere details ever did. Art should there be taught, not
in rhapsodies over Raphael, Turner, and the favorite fancies of an
individual, but according to its unfoldings in human culture, based on
architecture as an illustrative medium. 'The lines of connection'
between these and the exact sciences should be ever kept in sight, so
that the student may never forget 'the countless connecting threads
woven into one indissoluble texture, forming that ever-enlarging web
which is the blended product of the world's scientific and industrial
activity.'

The great aim of such an institute should be the aiding of industrial
progress, and the application of generous, intelligent culture to
practical pursuits--the whole to be based on exact science. When we look
into this community, and see the vast demand for talent in its
manufactures, and see how many thousands there are who would gladly be
'liberally educated' men, if the education could only be allied to
practically useful knowledge, we at once feel that the time has come for
the establishment of such institutes. The demand exists on every side;
the supply must come, and that speedily. England, France, and Germany
are rapidly improving their manufactures by scientifically educating
their master-workmen--the Conservatoire des Arts, and Ecole Centrale, of
Paris, the art-schools of the British capital and provinces, the many
museums devoted to scientic collection, are all keeping up their
factories--shall we be behind them? Let Capital consult its interests,
and answer.

We have been induced to put the query, from a perusal of two pamphlets,
both directly bearing on this subject. The first is the _Ninth Annual
Announcement of the Polytechnic College of the State of Pennsylvania,
Session_ 1861-1862, _and Catalogue of the Officers and Students_; while
the second sets forth the Objects and Plan of an Institute of
Technology, including a Society of Arts, a Museum of Arts, and a School
of Industrial Science, proposed to be established in Boston.'[C] This
latter, it may be added, was prepared by direction of the Committee of
Associated Institutions of Science and Arts, and is addressed to
'manufacturers, merchants, agriculturists, and other friends of
enlightened industry in the commonwealth.'

The Polytechnic College of Philadelphia, now in its ninth year, is a
truly excellent institution, the practical results of which are shown in
the fact that its students, immediately on graduating, have generally
received appointments as civil and mechanical engineers, or otherwise
stepped at once into active and remunerative employment. Its object, as
we are told, is to afford to the young civil, mining, or mechanical
engineer, chemist, architect, metallurgist, or student of applied
science, every facility whereby he may perfect himself in his destined
calling. It is, in fact, a collection of technical schools, or schools
of instruction in the several departments of learned industry. It
comprises the school of mines, for professional training in
mine-engineering, in the best methods of determining the value of
mineral lands and of analyzing and manufacturing mine products. Also the
schools of civil engineering, of practical chemistry, of mechanical
engineering, architecture, general science, and agriculture. To these is
added a military department, now under superintendence of a former
instructor in West-Point, with the use of the State armory near the
college, generously granted by the State, with a supply of arms. We are
glad to say that in all these schools the instruction is thorough, not
only in theory but in actual _practice_. The course of the school of
chemistry, for instance, comprehends the principles of the science and
their actual application to agriculture, to the arts, and to analysis;
to the examination and smelting of ores; to the alloying, refining, and
working of metals; to the arts of dyeing and pottery; to the starch,
lime, and glass manufacture; to the preparation and durability of
mortars and cements; to means of disinfecting, ventilating, heating, and
lighting. Its students are also practiced in manipulations, testing in
the arts qualitative and quantitative; in analysis of minerals and
soils, and in many other important practical matters.

The students of geology and mining, of machinery and metallurgy, make,
with their professors, frequent visits to the many interesting
localities in Pennsylvania or New-Jersey, to the many large
machine-shops with which Philadelphia abounds, visit mines and furnaces,
and are in every way practically familiarized with their future
callings. Instruction in languages and literature, in drawing and in the
elements of practical law is, we believe, given in common to all. It is
the first, we may say, _unavoidable_, characteristic of a _scientific_
school, that its work is always well done. Other schools may or may not
be specious contrivances, well or ill managed; but the very nature of
science is to _clear itself_ in whatever it touches, and be honest and
practical. Its tendency is to classify and select, to cast away the
obsolete and test and adopt the new and true. Such is by no means an
exaggerated statement of the real condition of the excellent college to
which we refer, which testifies, by its success, to the excellence of
its plan and the competency of its teachers, especially to the
administrative ability of its worthy President, Dr. Alfred L. Kennedy.

It can not be denied, that for many years, radicals have inveighed
against 'Greek and Universities,' but it has been in a narrow, vulgar,
and simply destructive manner, with no provision to substitute any
thing better in their place. The growth of science, of the knowledge of
history, of culture in every branch, has, however, of late, so vastly
increased, that the proposition to reform the old system of study is
really one not to tear it down, but to build it up, to extend it and
develop it on a grand scale. Since, for example, the influence of
science has been felt in philology, how inconsiderable do the Bruncks
and Porsons of the old school, appear before the Bopps, Schlegels,
Burnoufs, and Muellers of the new! For as yet, even where here and there
in colleges a liberal and enlightened method is partially attempted,
still the old monkish spirit appears, driving away with something like a
'mystery' or 'guild' feeling the merely practical man, and interposing a
mass of 'dead vocables,' which must be learned by years of labor,
between him and the realization of an education. The young man who is to
be a miner, a cotton-spinner, an architect, or a merchant, may possibly
find here and there, at this or that college, lectures and instruction
which may aid him directly in his future career, but he soon realizes
that the general tendency and tone of the college is entirely in favor
of abstract studies quite useless out in the world, and apart from
preparation for one of 'the three professions.' He himself is as a
'marine' among the regular sailors, a surgeon among 'regular doctors,'
or as a dentist among surgeons. And this in an age when we may say that
what is not to be studied scientifically is not _worth_ studying. As our
principal object in writing these remarks has been to assert that the
Polytechnic Institute, in its either partial or entire form, should
exist entirely independent of all other influences, we might be held
excused from any mention of such scientific schools as are attached to
our Universities. That of Cambridge, Massachusetts, would, however,
deserve special mention, from the celebrity of its teachers. In this
institute, which has between seventy and eighty students, we have a
single school divided into the following departments: that of Chemistry,
under supervision of Professor Horseford, in which instruction is both
theoretical and practical; that of Zooelogy and Geology, in which the
teaching consists alternately of a course of lectures by Professor
Agassiz, on Zoology, embracing the fundamental principles of the
classification of animals as founded upon structure and embryonic
development, and illustrating their natural affinities, habits,
distribution, and the relations which exist between the living and
extinct races, and a course of geology, both theoretical and practical.
To this are added the departments of Engineering under Professor Eustis,
that of Botany, under Professor Gray, that of Comparative Anatomy and
Physiology, under Professor J. Wyman, that of Mathematics, under
Professor Peirce, and that of Mineralogy, under Professor Cooke. It is
needless to speak in praise of a school boasting men of such world-wide
names as teachers, or to commend it as affording facilities for
bestowing a sound education. We do it no injustice, however, in
asserting that its tendency is to develop students of abstract science
and teachers, while the aim of the _Polytechnic_ school proper is, in
addition to this, to supply the manufactures of the country with
_working men_, and the country at large, including those already engaged
in labor, with technological information of every kind. It should be a
vast reservoir of practical knowledge, where the man of the
'print-works,' in search of a certain dye or of a new form of machinery,
may apply, certain that all the latest discoveries will be found
registered there. It should be a place where capitalists may go as to an
intelligence-office, confident of finding there the assistants which
they may need. It should be, in fact, in every respect, an institute
simply and solely for the people, and for the development of
_manufacturing industry_. If, as we have urged, it should embrace
eventually thorough instruction in _every_ branch of knowledge, this
should be because experience shows that the most commonplace branches
require the stimulus of genius, which can only be fairly developed by
universal facilities. No young man, however practical, could have his
_Thaetigkeit_ or 'available energy' other than stimulated by even an
extensive familiarity with every detail of philosophy, literature, and
art, provided that these were properly _scienced_, or taught strictly
according to their historical development.

It is, therefore, needless to say that we welcome with pleasure the plan
of An Institute of Technology, which it is proposed to establish in
Boston, and which, to judge from its excellently well prepared
prospectus, will fully meet, in every particular, all the requirements
which we have laid down as essential to a perfect Polytechnic Institute.
Indeed, the wide scope of this plan, its capacity for embracing every
subject in the range of science, and of communicating it to the public
either by publication, by free lectures, by a museum of reference, or by
collegiate instruction, leaves but little to be desired. That there is
great need of such an institution in this State is apparent from many
causes. In the words of the prospectus, we feel that in New-England, and
especially in our own Commonwealth, the time has arrived when, as we
believe, the interests of Commerce and Arts, as well as General
Education, call for the most earnest cooperation of intelligent culture
with industrial pursuits. It is no exaggeration to state that probably
no project was ever before presented to the wealthy men of Massachusetts
which appealed so earnestly to their aid or gave such fair promise of
doing good. The institute in question is one which will in every
respect, socially and mentally, elevate the business man or practical
man to a level with the college graduate or the practitioner in the
three learned professions. It will stimulate progress by still further
refining industry, and ally the action of capital to the advance of
intellect. It will perform a noble and distinguished part in the great
mission of the age and of future ages--that of vindicating the dignity
of free labor and showing that the humblest work may be rendered
high-toned and raised to a level with the calling of scholar or
diplomatist through the influence of science. If we were called on to
set forth the noble spirit of the _North_ with all its free labor and
all its glorious tendencies, we should, with whole heart and soul,
choose this magnificent conception of an institute whose aim is to
confer dignity on what the wretched and ignorant slaveocracy believe is
cursed into everlasting vulgarity. It is fitting that this practical and
eminently intelligent and progressive community should build up, on a
grand scale, an institution which will be not only eminently useful and
profitable, but serve as a culminating exponent of the great and liberal
ideas for which the North has already made in every form the most
remarkable sacrifices.

'While the vast and increasing magnitude of the industrial
interests of New-England furnishes a powerful incentive to the
establishment--within its borders of an institution devoted to
technological uses, it can not be doubted that the concentration of
these interests in so great a degree, in and around Boston, renders
the capital of the State an eligible site for such an undertaking.
Indeed, considering the peculiar genius of our busy population for
the Practical Arts, and marking their avidity in the study of
scientific facts and principles tending to explain or advance them,
we see a special and most striking fitness in the establishment of
such an Institution among them, and we gather a confident assurance
of its preeminent utility and success. Nor can we advert to the
intelligence which is so well known as guiding the large
munificence of our community, without taking encouragement in the
inception of the enterprise, and feeling the assurance, that
whatever is adapted to advance the industrial and educational
interests of the Commonwealth will receive from them the heartiest
sympathy and support.'

As we have stated, the plan proposed is to establish an Institution to
be devoted to the practical arts and sciences, to be called the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having the triple organization of
a Society of Arts, a Museum or Conservatory of Arts, and a School of
Industrial Science and Art. Under the first of these three
divisions--that of the Society of Arts--the Institute of Technology
would form itself into a department of investigation and
publication--devoting itself in every manner to collecting and rendering
readily available to the public all such information as can in any way
aid the interests of art and industry. If our manufacturers will reflect
an instant on the vast amount of knowledge relative to their specialties
extant in the world, which they have as individuals great difficulty in
procuring, and which would be useful, but which an Institute devoted to
the purpose could furnish without difficulty, they will at once
appreciate the good which may be done by it. For many years the only
comprehensive summaries of American Manufactures were a German work by
Fleischmann, _On the Branches of American Industry_, to which was
subsequently added Whitworth and Wallis's Report--drawn up for the
British government, and Freedley's Philadelphia Manufactures--to which
we should in justice add the invaluable series of Hunt's _Merchant's
Magazine_, and the Patent Office Reports. The community needs more,
however, than books can furnish. It requires the constant accumulation
and dissemination of technological knowledge of every kind. It is
proposed in the new Institute to effect this partly by publication and
in a great measure by the labor of committees, devoted to the following
subjects:

1. _Mineral Materials_--having charge of all relating to the mineral
substances used in building and sculpture, ores, metals, coal, and in
fact, all mineral substances employed in the useful arts, as well as
what pertains to mining, quarrying, and smelting.

2. _Organic Materials_--embracing whatever is practically interesting in
all vegetable and animal substances used in manufacturing, having in
view their sources, culture, collection, commercial importance and
qualities as connected with manufacturing. This department presents a
vast field of immense importance to every merchant and importer of raw
material.

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