in such wise that both are parts of one subject, which cannot be
understood unless both parts are studied. Whether in the course of our
country's future development we shall ever arrive at a stage in which
this is not the case, must be left for future events to determine.
But, if we ever do arrive at such a stage, "American institutions"
will present a very different aspect from those with which we are now
familiar, and which we have always been accustomed (even, perhaps,
without always understanding them) to admire.

[Footnote 1: Young's _Government Class Book_, p. iv.]

The study of local government properly includes town, county, and
city. To this part of the subject I have devoted about half of my
limited space, quite unheedful of the warning which I find in the
preface of a certain popular text-book, that "to learn the duties of
town, city, and county officers, has nothing whatever to do with the
grand and noble subject of Civil Government," and that "to attempt
class drill on petty town and county offices, would be simply
burlesque of the whole subject." But, suppose one were to say, with
an air of ineffable scorn, that petty experiments on terrestrial
gravitation and radiant heat, such as can be made with commonplace
pendulums and tea-kettles, have nothing whatever to do with the grand
and noble subject of Physical Astronomy! Science would not have got
very far on that plan, I fancy. The truth is, that science, while it
is perpetually dealing with questions of magnitude, and knows very
well what is large and what is small, knows nothing whatever of any
such distinction as that between things that are "grand" and things
that are "petty." When we try to study things in a scientific spirit,
to learn their modes of genesis and their present aspects, in order
that we may foresee their tendencies, and make our volitions count