would be men without the college degree. It behooves the colleges to ask themselves searchingly why this should be so. I may not pretend to speak with authority upon the matter, but two thoughts occur to me as possibly helping to account for the circumstance. A large proportion of the flower of the college-bred men who to-day would be in the prime of their powers, went to the war. Many perished, and others in great numbers had their attention permanently turned from the reposeful to the active side of life. In the years immediately succeeding the war many could not go to college, who in happier times would naturally be there, and these found in the stirring scenes with which they had become familiar the awakening of the spirit which has budded into flower and fruit in its season. But another cause, I think, is to be traced to the colleges themselves. The last twenty-five years have been marked by a great development of the scientific spirit. This is shown in the colleges not only in the greater importance given to scientific studies, but in the introduction into all studies of the scientific method. This has lent attraction to the already fascinating study of philology, and in all language courses has tended to develop the scholar rather than the literary man. Of course the two characters are not essentially hostile to each other. Lowell himself conspicuously was both. But there is such a thing, I conceive, as the loss of the literary sense in the scientific study, and the only way to preserve both is to emphasize both. My own observation is not extensive enough perhaps to justify an opinion, but I have an impression that in the colleges the last quarter of a century has been more friendly to the philologist than to the man of literary tastes and faculties whose parts did not lend themselves kindly to scientific methods. Doubtless the literary critic must always be a philologist as well as a man keenly sensible of literary beauties. But it is not clear that this is true of the producer, particularly in the domain of the imagination. The great service which a man like Lowell could render to the average student who came within his reach was to make him fond of reading, to cultivate within him a taste

for good reading which might last as long as he should live. Such a service is not to be rendered, except to the very few, along the lines of philology, invaluable as that science is, but it must come as the answer of heart to heart, while the master interprets to the student the thought and the power and the inspiration dwelling immortal in the leaves he turns.

Lowell's power to stir men by his writings is admitted. His virility appeals to young and old alike. In his poem called "Columbus," he puts into the mouth of the great discover, on the fateful day that was to determine whether or not his voyage should issue in disappointment, these striking words:

For I believed the poets; it is they

Who utter wisdom from the central deep,
And, listening to the inner flow of things,
Speak to the age out of eternity.

With this conception of the poet's function it is easy to see how he fulfilled it. Out of the momentary situation which drew forth "The Present Crisis," he developed in thrilling verse the message which is eternally true, that wrong decisions when the choice is between good and evil are full of misery, that no slavery is more harmful than the slavery of the present to the past. Instruction, inspiration, the present may properly look for in the past; but to be bound by the past, so that the present is not free to act according to its own lights, that is intolerable. Progress, not stagnation, is the law of life. For Harvard's Commemoration of her patriot dead, at the close of the war, he sang the country's song of praise and thanksgiving for her great deliverance. No American can read it and be unmoved. Forever it will have power to inspire to a loftier patriotism. Because he was in very truth a poet he could do these things. Whatever else he was, he had that nameless gift which makes a few men seers. He" spoke to the age out of eternity."

In his essay on Dryden, Lowell says: "Without earnest convictions, no great or sound literature is conceivable." Throughout his own writings the evidence of "earnest convictions" lies upon the surface, but it is clear that they are

wrought into the very fiber.

Even when he speaks truth with a jest as Hosea Biglow, you perceive that the humorist is an earnest man. He illuminates almost every theme with a touch of humor, but the humor is subservient to a serious purpose. He is never flippant though often gay.

In politics he was a true man to the last. No one smote the demon of slavery lustier blows than he. Always clear in his views of public duty he never feared to express them. It is said that when he was recalled from England by President Cleveland, he visited the White House, saying to the President, that he had called to pay his respects, like St. Denis, "with his head under his arm." So gracefully he accepted the chances of politics, illustrating again the virtues of that democracy of which he so often and so fondly wrote. Toward the close of his life International Copyright and Civil Service Reform commanded his heartiest services, as had the cause of human freedom in his earlier days. Eminent in letters, distinguished in public service, ringing true to every blow that tried his manhood's metal in a life of more than threescore years and ten, Lowell was an educator of the highest order. To quote a phrase from one of the utterances of the Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs, " Better than new Californias every year are such examples as these to a nation that would be noble."

COLUMBIA COLLEGE, NEW YORK.

SETH LOW.

II.

THE ACTION OF THE COLLEGES UPON THE
SCHOOLS.

It is said that we pass among foreign nations for a very self-complacent people, and perhaps our complacency is in nothing more conspicuous than in what concerns education. For what we have done in elementary education for the free instruction of all classes, we have reason for pride and selfgratulation; but it is always safer and more fruitful to fix our attention upon what remains unaccomplished than to hug ourselves for what we have achieved. Europe long ago solved some educational problems which we are only beginning to feel the need of studying, but which we can already see will soon press urgently for solution, if we would allay wellgrounded discontent and turn to account a prodigious waste of power.

Of these problems the most manifest and the first in importance is the coördination of education. Whatever criticisms we may make upon the substance, the aims, or the principles of education in European states, we must admit that abroad education is organized and that here it is not. There, even in the poorest states, like Greece, all grades of schools, from the university to the kindergarten, are brought into organic union; here is an almost utter want of organization, a chaos of relations. To see and acknowledge our defects is the first condition of improvement, but we recognize that Europe has had an immense advantage over us in three things: in an established social order, in concentrated civil authority, and in having educational development directed by able minds. Speaking generally, our educational system, or more properly,, lack of system, expresses in some measure the guesses and convictions of a great number of minds, some very able, and some not able at all. But we must add, what is of great

moment, that abroad education has been developed from the top, not, as with us, from the bottom. Europe had universities before it had secular schools. The youngest of the German universities is more than seventy years old, and the oldest will soon celebrate its six hundred and fiftieth anniversary. But the German school system, as we know it, is not quite a hundred years old, and that of France, which has had a university since the tenth century, scarcely counts a generation, though its beginnings mount up to the early years. of this century.

Our different historical situation obliged us to begin at the other end. We have had "grammar schools" for almost two hundred and fifty years; but we have hardly yet succeeded in creating a university, though many second-rate high schools flourish under that name.

There seems to be an impression that gradually the relations of the elementary, grammar, and high schools to each other are settling into intelligible and reasonable order. Thus I read in a report to the National Council of Education: "There is a close connection between elementary and secondary education." But this is rather a hope than a consummation.

Within ten days an agent of the Board of Education in Massachusetts has expressed to me his deep regret that there is so little connection between the lower schools and the high schools. It is not probable that in other States the relations of these classes of schools are better adjusted than they are in Massachusetts, but the gentleman to whom I have alluded states in a report of 1884 that, in a large number of high schools, the first year is given up to grammarschool studies, while many have only one, others only a few of the high-school branches proper, in the entire curriculum. "The high school furnishes a mixture, in many cases a muddle, of primary and secondary instruction."

There is a tendency in the country districts to imitate the systems of cities; but every city and every country town or

1 Report on the High Schools of Massachusetts, by George H. Martin, Agent of State Board of Education.