to a Frenchman or a German.  But in studying the aspect of higher education it behooves us not to lose sight of the fundamental principle that education is something spiritual in its nature, and that it cannot be gauged by buildings, by endowments, by the trappings of wealth—­in short, by anything material.  Endowments and buildings are only the means; unless the end to which these means are subservient be clearly perceived and persistently followed, the means themselves may prove a hindrance rather than a help.  Of this Oxford is a notable proof.

Have, then, the end and aim, the method and agencies, of college instruction changed essentially within the past fifteen years, or are they likely to change essentially within the coming twenty-five?  In the year 1770 the greatest genius of Germany entered the walls of the old university-town of Strasburg, there to complete his education.  He has bequeathed to us a faithful record of his studies, his amusements, his daily life.  Connecting this Strasburg experience with the previous experience at Leipsic, we know what it meant in the eighteenth century to be a German student.  We know that the professors in those days were pedagogues in the Anglo-American sense, and that university-life stood little if at all higher than our own present college-life.  But when Goethe died, in 1832, the universities of Germany had reached their prime.  Since then they have made no gain.  It may be doubted if the professors, on the whole, rank quite so high to-day for originality and vigor of research as did their predecessors forty years ago.  Wherein lies the secret, then, of this wonderful change wrought in the brief span of two generations, between 1770 and 1830, and amid the dire confusion of the great Revolution and the Napoleonic era?  The change was twofold.  It consisted, first, in allowing to the professor the free play of his individuality; second, in providing him with a properly trained body of students.  From the practical recognition of these two principles, which have nothing to do with wealth and buildings, proceed the power and glory of the German universities.  Viewed from the English, or even the American point, some of these universities might be pronounced poor, not to say starvelings.  The buildings are old and out of repair, the professors are scantily paid, the students are needy, there is a general atmosphere of want and discomfort.  But the work they do is noble, and its nobility consists in its freedom, its heartiness, its strict devotion to truth.

We are not concerned in this place with the study of the growth of the German school system that prepares the German student.  We have to do with the professor.  Although the gymnasium and the university are not to be dissevered in actual practice, the one being the necessary prelude to the other, still we can discuss either one of them separately with a view to ascertaining its salient features.