The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1879-03-08

always In later tunes kept by cultivated
teacher, are advanced from class TO class
/ reach the gymnasium, are trained in the
national universities, become at last pro
I fessors or private teachers, students, au.
/ thors. The state throws open its fines,
institutions TO the energetic scholar, and
the university Of Berlin has made Prussia
the mental centre of the German race.
Through this course of training passed
/ Niebuhr, Tischendorf, Rankc, Mommseu.
Schwogier, and an Infinite list of active
scholars and authors whose works ill the
catalogues of the Leips!c Fair, and furnish
the material for the often less thorough stu
dies of France and England. From the
public schools Of Germany comes that
has long been the envy of less laborious
authors. Dictionaries, grammars, histories,
scientific treatises, all find their origin in
the same source. Even Shakespeare owes
his most careful calculation to the scholar
ship of Germany, and Anglo-S Saxon litera-
ture its best treatises to a German and 4
Dane. The public education established
Stein and humboldt has made the German
race the powerful centre of scholastic liter
allure.
ThOroughness can only be attained by
careful organization; it is chiefly attained
by rigid study of the elements of knowI-
edge. But in the widely dihused school
houses of our extensive system, reaching
from the widest districts of Maine, the
most impoverished sections of the Middle
States, to the new counties of Oregon and
California, it would be useless to look for
perfection in teaching, or that completeness
of organization that makes the German
and sometimes the French scholars adj
mirable in their results. We must wait
until the country is older, its lands thickly
settled, its distant towns the seats of liter
airy taste, before we can look for this liter
AIRY progress. But we can at last lay down
the principle that ,horoughuesS shall be
the leading aim of all our teaching; that it
is better to read, write and cipher well than
to be impeElectly trained in algebra or care
lessly educated in the language; that it is
better to know thoroughly the history Of
our own country than superifcially that OF
many countries; wiser to leave the young
intellect 10 read and draw in KNOWLEDGE
naturally than overburden it with cum
brous load of studies from which it Turns
away TO iileness and dreams. \ mind well
grounded in the elements of knowledge
necessarily desires more.
II would be easy To suggest many i'm
provemonts in our mode of instruction:
many OF them will follow necessarily the
growth and advance OF the whole country.
\ period Of prosperity awaits it that will
leave ample room for literary progress.
Yet 1t is worthy of careful study TO notice
how much q! this prosperity rest upon its
general Intelligence and its public schools.
Already as a people the Americans are
outSt;ipplng ali other races in the industrial
and inventive arts. 4 recent writer in one
of the English papers attributes this pro
gress Ia the superior cultivation of the
American. He is i hardware man. and
finds that in locks, tools, guns, watches.
and varity of works in brass and iron,
the American citizen excels the English
because he is more intelligent. ~ was
surprised, he says. - At the ingenuity and
Intelligence 81 the men - q! a gun factory
at Providence. This is the results Of the
common school education. 1t is the com
bined influence Of intellect and republican
culture. II Is thoroughness.
EUGENE LAWRENCE