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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Petition to the Legislature Oil retioal knowledge), but who has the ability and will use the opportunity to great profit if within his reach.' * But if all other authorities were wanting upon this point of combining theory with practice, that of Governor Smith, of Rhode Island, who speaks from a high stand point, and from long and intimate business experience, would suffice. In his letter to the undersigned, he says: " I do not know how I can better answer your questions than by stating generally the result of my observation and experience, which is this: that no course of instruction can be devised which shall make scientific practical mechanics. You may make scientific practical mechanics of simple practical mechanics, by affording them proper educational facilities. The habits of labor and the mechanical genius you. must find to educate, and you can only find them in the workshop; stimulate them, encourage them, and, by enlarging their sphere of thought, elevate the profession, and you accomplish the result you justly deem of the highest importance." The undersigned do not propose to waste words in reviewing the authorities already given. Let it suffice to say, that they abundantly confirm the opinion the undersigned have expressed, in favor of the establishment of a separate institution for imparting instruction in the mechanic arts. But the undersigned, in prosecuting their inquiries, received two letters, both from men of great eminence in the literary and scientific world, which advocate an opposite view, and prefer the union of the agricultural and mechanical departments in one institution. The first is from President Hill, of Harvard University. Something of his ideas of the institution he would recommend to be established, may be gained by the following extract from his letter to them. He says: "Do not be anxious to have a school with many pupils, and whose practical benefits shall be at once apparent, but rather found a school which shall combine the best and highest features of the Massachusetts Institution of Technology, the Pennsylvania Agricultural College, and of all European institutions in one, and from which shall presently flow the highest results of science, such as we now expect only from the universities of Europe/'
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