But has the number of our distinguished men increased as the facilities of instruction have increased? They certainly have not. Of the number of young men who have been educated at this University, how few have risen to eminence in any branch of literature! Their number bears no proportion to the increased means of instruction which they have had. To what causes is this to be attributed? The causes are numerous, but we will notice only a few of the most operative. In the first place the plan of education in all our schools, particularly in our preparatory schools, is radically defective; too much time is spent upon syntax and etymology; the time of the student is wasted, and his genius frittered away upon words instead of being developed and polished by the spirit of the writer. Instead of directing the study of the Greek and Latin classics to the development of his faculties and the improvement of his taste, his time is taken up in nice attention to words, arrangement of clauses and construction of periods. With his mind thus injured, he enters upon the study of the physical and moral sciences, and long accustomed to frivolous investigation, he never rises to the dignity of those sciences nor understands the methods by which their truths are illustrated. In the next place, too many studies are crowded upon the student at once; studies which have no analogy or connection. In the third place, the time allotted for completing a course of scientific study is too short; the student's mind flags under the severe labors imposed upon it. The elasticity of the mind ought never to be weakened; if it be, the student thenceforward hobbles through his course, and is often broken down before he gets to the end of it. In the fourth place, too many studies are pursued, and none are pursued well; the student acquires a smattering of languages and sciences, and understands none of them. This encyclopedical kind of learning is destructive of the powers of the mind, and unfits it for deep and severe investigation. In the last place, the multitude of books is a serious injury to most students. They despair of reading many of them, and content themselves with reading reviews of the most celebrated. At length the valuable books are placed away carefully in a library, and newspapers, pamphlets and other fugitive productions take up all their time for reading. There is nothing in this course which teaches youth how to think and investigate. The great object of education is to give to the mind activity and energy: this object can never be attained by a course of studies which distracts its attention and impairs its elasticity.