question is one which will in every respect, socially and mentally, elevate the business man or practical man to a level with the college graduate or the practitioner in the three learned professions.  It will stimulate progress by still further refining industry, and ally the action of capital to the advance of intellect.  It will perform a noble and distinguished part in the great mission of the age and of future ages—­that of vindicating the dignity of free labor and showing that the humblest work may be rendered high-toned and raised to a level with the calling of scholar or diplomatist through the influence of science.  If we were called on to set forth the noble spirit of the North with all its free labor and all its glorious tendencies, we should, with whole heart and soul, choose this magnificent conception of an institute whose aim is to confer dignity on what the wretched and ignorant slaveocracy believe is cursed into everlasting vulgarity.  It is fitting that this practical and eminently intelligent and progressive community should build up, on a grand scale, an institution which will be not only eminently useful and profitable, but serve as a culminating exponent of the great and liberal ideas for which the North has already made in every form the most remarkable sacrifices.

’While the vast and increasing magnitude of the industrial interests of New-England furnishes a powerful incentive to the establishment—­within its borders of an institution devoted to technological uses, it can not be doubted that the concentration of these interests in so great a degree, in and around Boston, renders the capital of the State an eligible site for such an undertaking.  Indeed, considering the peculiar genius of our busy population for the Practical Arts, and marking their avidity in the study of scientific facts and principles tending to explain or advance them, we see a special and most striking fitness in the establishment of such an Institution among them, and we gather a confident assurance of its preeminent utility and success.  Nor can we advert to the intelligence which is so well known as guiding the large munificence of our community, without taking encouragement in the inception of the enterprise, and feeling the assurance, that whatever is adapted to advance the industrial and educational interests of the Commonwealth will receive from them the heartiest sympathy and support.’

As we have stated, the plan proposed is to establish an Institution to be devoted to the practical arts and sciences, to be called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having the triple organization of a Society of Arts, a Museum or Conservatory of Arts, and a School of Industrial Science and Art.  Under the first of these three divisions—­that of the Society of Arts—­the Institute of Technology would form itself into a department of investigation and publication—­devoting itself in every manner to collecting and rendering