The Charleston Daily News

FROUDE ON EDUCATION.

Mr. Froude, the English historian, has been appointed Rector of the University of St. Andrew's; and on the day of his inauguration he delivered an address to the students, which, in many of its passages, has a universal application, and especially in those which relate to education as a means of independence.

He said there were two ways of being independent. If a man required much, he must produce much; and if he produced little, he must require little. He set the austere life of the old scholars before his audience-the men whose studies added nothing to the material wealth of the world, and who were content to be poor. The thirty thousand students who assembled at Paris from all parts of Europe to hear Abelard had the use of their own legs in going there, and were satisfied. They did not grumble because they had no money wherewith to ride. They respected alike the compensations of the intellect and of manual labor. They had taken their stand, having made their own choice, and did not look for wealth in the sphere which they had deliberately accepted, knowing that wealth did not grow there, nor anywhere, out of the material conditions. This was the most important thing for a man to make up his mind to in the outset of life. He then knows what he is doing, and walks intelligently through the world, without quarrelling with the facts.

But the old system of education was all wrong. A man of to-day must be trained to live in to-day-to grapple with the energies, difficulties and obstructions of the times which make his life. To cram a lad's mind with infinite names of things which he never handled, places he never saw or will see, and statements of facts which he could not possibly understand, was like loading his stomach with marbles-for bread; giving him a stone. A man must earn his living; that was the primal necessity. He must maintain himself in honest independence. No education was worth a rush that did not aid a man to do this, for the millions must toil with their hands or the race will soon cease to exist. But there would come an amelioration of labor. The beneficent light when it descended would be a light which would make labor more productive by being more scientific, which would make the humblest drudgery not unworthy a human being, by making it at the same time an exercise to the mind.

Indeed from first to last, it was a practical address. Educate to the business of life; that was the burden of it. Learn the modern in preference to the dead languages, and learn many of them. Do not forget to establish your mind in the physical sciences either. They will be sure to prove of inestimable value at some time or other of one's life. And above all things, be honest. As John Knox said, "Know God, and stand by the good cause, and use your time well." This is the whole duty of man.