Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 48]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

22

History University of Illinois

ecclesiastics should be mistaken by some for a species of knowledge. " Whether a distinct classical department should be added or not, would depend on expediency. I t might be deemed best to leave that department to existing colleges as their more appropriate work, and to form some practical and economical connection with them for that purpose: or it might be best to attach a classical department in due time to the institution itself. " T o facilitate the increase and practical application and diffusion of knowledge, the professors should conduct, each in his department, a continued series of annual experiments." "The APPARATUS required for such a work is obvious. There should be grounds devoted to a botanical and common garden, to orchards and fruit yards, to appropriate lawns and promenades, in which the beautiful art of landscape gardening could be appropriately applied and illustrated, to all varieties of pasture, meadow, and tillage needful for the successful prosecution of the needful annual experiments. And on these grounds should be collected and exhibited a sample of every; variety of domestic animal, and of every tree, plant, and vegetable that can minister to the health, wealth, or taste and comfort of the people of the State; their nature, habits, merits, production, improvement, culture, diseases, and accidents thoroughly scrutinized, tested, and made known to the students and to the people of the State." " I should have said, also, that a suitable industrial library should be at once procured, did not all the world know such a thing to be impossible, and that one of the first and most important duties of the professors of such institutions will be to begin to create, at this late hour, a proper practical literature, and series of text books for the industrial classes. "As regards the PROFESSORS, they should, of course, not only be men of the most eminent, practical ability in their several departments, but their connexion with the institution should be rendered so fixed and stable as to enable them to carry through such designs as they may form or all the peculiar benefits of the system would be lost. "Instruction, by lectures and otherwise, should be given mostly in the colder months of the year; leaving the professors to