the study of nature should have some notion of the humanities; he whose aptitudes carry him to the humanities should have some notion of the phenomena and laws of nature. Evidently, therefore, the beginnings of a liberal culture should be the same for both. The mother tongue, the elements of Latin and of the chief modern languages, the elements of history, of arithmetic and geometry, of geography, and of the knowledge of nature, should be the study of the lower classes in all secondary schools, and should be the same for all boys at this stage. So far, therefore, there is no reason for a division of schools. But then comes a

bifurcation, according to the boy's aptitudes and aims. Either the study of the humanities or the study of nature is henceforth to be the predominating part of his instruction.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

THE LIVING AND NOT THE DEAD.

AMONG men of my own generation I do both admire and envy those who I am told make it a daily rule to read a little of Homer or Thucydides, of Horace or Tacitus. I wish I could do the same; and yet I must frankly say I should not do it if I could. Life, after all, is limited, and I belong enough to the present to feel satisfied that I could employ that little time each day both more enjoyably and more profitably if I should devote it to keeping pace with modern thought, as it finds expression even in the ephemeral pages of the despised review. Do what he will, no man can keep pace with that wonderful modern thought; and if I

must choose, and choose I must, - I would rather learn something daily from the living who are to perish, than daily muse with the immortal dead. Yet for the purpose of my argument I do not for a moment dispute the superiority — I am ready to say the hopeless, the unattainable superiority of the classic masterpieces. They are sealed books to me, as they are to at least nineteen out of twenty of the graduates of our colleges; and we can neither affirm nor deny that in them, and in them alone, are to be found the choicest thoughts of the human mind and the most perfect forms of human speech.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.

It is clearly the law of our nature, that the triumphs of Intellect are to be gained only by laborious thought, and by the gains of one generation being made the starting-point for the acquisition of the next.

DUKE OF ARGYLL.

LEGISLATORS AND EDUCATION.

THAT the education of youth ought to form the principal part of the legislator's attention, cannot be a doubt, since education first moulds, and afterwards sustains the various modes of government. The better and more perfect the systems of education, the better and more perfect the plan of government it is intended to introduce and uphold. In this important object, fellow-citizens are all equally and deeply concerned; and as they are all united in one common work for one common

purpose, their education ought to be regulated by the general consent, and not abandoned to the blind decision. of chance or to idle caprice.

ARISTOTLE.

INSPIRATION BETTER THAN INSTRUCTION.

THE teacher of the future must have a comprehensive idea of the condition of modern thought in all departments and the power and learning of a master in that which he assumes to teach. He must be able to go behind all text-books and manuals, make his own analysis of his subject, and be capable of bringing out fresh and original conceptions of his field of study. The teacher who cons over a set of passages or formulas till he gets them by heart and then, abandoning vigorous investigation, plods on in the same tread-mill round for a score of years, is guilty of obtaining his salary by false pretences. He only can teach who looks down. upon the elements of his department, from the heights of broad and solid attainment. Moreover, whatever his knowledge may be, he cannot teach with vigor after he ceases to be a daily learner. He must keep the machinery of his own mind hot with action, if he would excite activity in the minds of his students. Example is better than precept, inspiration is better than instruction. When a class of students go out of the lecture room red in the face and wax eloquent over the subjectmatter of their studies, and delay their dinner hour in the absorbing heat of their intellectual combat, the teacher's work is more than half accomplished. Like all human institutions, the success of the college of the

future, in the best sense of the term, must be a question of men. That education is the best, as a general rule, which brings the student into face-to-face contact and relation with the greatest number of magnetic, controlling, and formative minds. It is not enough that a teacher be learned; he must be earnest, must love his work, and love young men; he must enter into an unfeigned sympathy with them in all their mental and moral life; he must pour out upon them the results of his reading, his thought, and experience, with unsparing prodigality, forgetful of himself and his own reputation; even willing, like a true mother, to give up his own mental being if he can only see the life of other souls springing into power under his hand.

MARTIN B. ANDERSON.

EDUCATION and instruction are, according to the use of language, two different things; the former including the whole of physical, moral, and intellectual development, but the latter applicable more properly to the training of the intellect.

ARETINUS.

OF TEACHING HISTORY.

THE main difficulty with existing methods of teaching history seems to be that the subject is treated as a record of dead facts, and not as a living science. Pupils fail to realize the vital connection between the past and the present; they do not understand that ancient history was the dawn of a light which is still shining

on; they do not grasp the essential idea of history, which is the growing self-knowledge of a living, progressive age. Etymologically and practically, the study of history is simply a learning by inquiry. According to Professor Droysen, who is one of the most eminent historians in Berlin, the historical method is merely to understand by means of research. Now it seems entirely practicable for every teacher and student of history to promote, in a limited way, the "know thyself' of the nineteenth century by original investigation of things not yet fully known, and by communicating to others the results of his individual study. The pursuit of history may thus become an active instead of a passive process; an increasing joy instead of a depressing burden. Students will thus learn that history is not entirely bound up in text-books; that it does not consist altogether in what this or that learned authority has to say about the world. What the world believes concerning itself, after all that men have written, and what the student thinks of the world, after viewing it with the aid of guide-books and with his own eyes, these are matters of some moment in the developmental process of that active self-knowledge and philosophic reflection which make history a living science instead of a museum of facts and of books "as dry as dust." Works of history, the so-called standard authorities, are likely to become dead specimens of humanity unless they continue in some way to quicken the living age. But written history seldom fails to accomplish this end, and even antiquated works often continue their influence if viewed as progressive phases of human self-knowledge. Monuments and inscriptions can never grow old so long