been repressed in them.  The spirit of emulation, of aggressive competition, which marks our trade, our banking, our manufacturing interests, our railroads, and even our professions, stops at the threshold of our colleges.  There is rivalry, true, between Harvard and Yale, for instance.  If the former erects a handsome dormitory, the latter must have one larger and finer.  If the former establishes a new professorship, the latter must do likewise.  The colleges compete among themselves.  But we see no signs of competition among the professors of a college, or between the professors of different colleges—­competition, be it observed, in the sense that the individual professor regards his attainments and views as a proper subject for comparison with the attainments and views of another professor in the same branch.  Once established in his chair, his individuality is merged in the general character of the college.  His time, his knowledge and his energy are subordinated to the curriculum.  He can teach only so much as may be fitted into his share of the time and may be suited to the capacities of a mixed audience.  It matters little whether the curriculum be good or bad, whether it take in a wide or a narrow range of subjects, whether it be behind or up to the times:  so long as it is a real curriculum it tends to prevent the full assertion of his individual excellence.  He may study for himself, but he cannot teach more than the regulations permit.  However advanced he may be in his specialty, however sincere and earnest his wish to impart the choicest fruits of his research, he must admit to himself that there is a point beyond which he is unable to carry his students.  They are borne off to something else; they have no more time for him; they slip from his hold, perhaps at the very moment when he flatters himself that he has acquired some formative influence over them.

If this view of the necessary effect of a curriculum is correct, it will enable us to set a more accurate value upon the so-called improvements that have been introduced of late years in our colleges.  These improvements, stripped of the eclat with which they are invested, will be found to amount to little more than expansions and slight modifications of a system which remains unaltered in its fundamental features.  New studies have been introduced, such as physics, chemistry, geology, the share of attention assigned to modern languages has been increased, a higher standard of admission is enforced, and the salaries of professors have been raised.  But in all this there is no radical change of the method of instruction.  The establishment of a chair of physics, for instance, can scarcely be said to enable the professor of Greek to exhibit his attainments more fully.  The professor of Latin does not perceive that his pupils, because they are now instructed in physical geography, can be carried by him to a more advanced stage of Latin scholarship.  In fact, so far as the older studies