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NUMBER 2. ESTABLISHED 1852.

are kept in suspense. There are country schools that change teachers every four months, and there are other schools that change every year, without any reasonable cause. Our country schools have the advantage of pure air, plenty of physical exercise, and manual training with ax and wood-pile. There is, however, that lack of systematic development that comes from a definite purpose on the part of the teacher.

Patriotism

THERE is such an undercurrent of disin the trust among the middle classes, that the Public Schools. boys and girls are compelled to listen almost daily to unrestricted denouncements of our Government. This is not in the school, but in the homes. It is not the labor element alone that has the socialistic and anarchistic tendencies. The sentiment for a change of the entire system of government exists. largely among the people who are known as the great. middle class. Competition in forging the chains of a trust has shown the necessity of co-operation. The brotherhood of man is becoming the watchword of the thinking people; and a government that will protect the strong against the weak is demanded. The survival of the fittest is the doctrine of nature, and of a monopolistic form of government. It is not the doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount.

Raising flags over the schoolhouses, observing Washington's Birthday, and getting oratorical, or drunk, or wearing flags and blue uniforms with golden trimmings, will not be sufficient to teach lofty sentiments of patriotism. The parents who denounce the Government before the children do a wrong that the schools cannot remedy. A child who is taught that his parents and himself are deprived of the good things of this life that their neighbor possesses from causes due to the system of government, is sure to become a mature rebel. The work of patriotism in the public schools must be not so much a eulogy of the Government as it exists, but of the ideal to which a republic may attain. The teacher should instill a desire in a student to work for the highest ideals in the administration of human affairs. Teach not the government that the

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Dr. Stebbins DR. HORATIO STEBBINS has written an and a open letter to Judge C. W. Slack on the Tuition Fee. question of charging students fees to attend the State University. The article shows a careful use of the English language and close thought upon the subject. Dr. Stebbins' logic, however, is prescribed by his environment. He argues that it would be better for the State and better for the students if a tuition fee were charged. The advocates of charging a fee heretofore saw in the system only an expedient to avoid a deficit in the revenues of the University. Dr. Stebbins takes a high, philosophical view of the question. He asserts that the students of the University are a privileged class, made so by legislation and the exclusiveness of location. In fact, his assertions carried to positive conclusions would result in the belief that the State should not give university training to its sons and daughters at all. "The functions of the State," he declares, "is to execute justice among men."

Dr. Stebbins in every statement shows that he is a strict adherent of the "Kilkenny cat" theory of competition in State and education. It is too true. that the students of the University are a privileged class. Why make the University pupils a more privileged class by charging a tuition fee. The social conditions of the universities of America have almost ostracized the student of poor but respectable parents. The simple habits of student life have given way to "functions" that force the poorer students into other avenues, and they are left without the equipment in mental culture of the "privileged class" at Berkeley. Tuition should be free at Berkeley. The State should also establish scholarships. The least approach to shutting out the very poor should be met with a determined opposition. Is it infantile to make a great university free? Dr. Stebbins advises that if a student is too poor to pay the tuition, the University loan him the money. This is bad policy, for the reason that the young men are taught the habit of going into debt. Again, it will start them in life handicapped with obligations, while their more fortunate classmates have no debts, and money to start with. Give the poor student a free education. The Regents can find other ways than in a tuition fee, if not to increase the revenues, then, at least, to decrease the expenditures. is hard to believe that public opinion is in accord ith Dr. Stebbins' open letter.

acters, and even the notice of a great sentence, brings enjoyment that is unequaled. Criticism is the whetstone of the mind. The brilliant salon of Madame de Stael was enjoyable because there was a friction of intelligence. Reading without criticism may have a fascination. It is, however, a low form of intellectual enjoyment. Teachers should study the art of criticism. The pupil should be taught it. Criticism in the field of letters and art is what the laboratory method is to science. Blair's "Lectures on Rhetoric" is probably the most interesting book on criticism published. It is not a fad, like Matthew Arnold's. It is not so cold, so bloodless, as his art of criticism. Blair always has the warm sunshine in his pictures. A critic to be great must have heart as well as intellect in his work.

Christian

THE REV. DR. E. B. SPALDING, of Trinity Education. School (a full account of which appears in this issue), as chairman of the Committee on Christian Education of the Episcopal Diocesan Convention, held last month, made so many excellent points, that it is thought best to reproduce a few of them:

While there is the manly young life all about us—while much that is manly and strong obtains by a kind of hereditary force, yet two types of a new young man are becoming pain

fully apparent. One has for its essential characteristic a kind

of dudishness so effeminate as to be absolutely exasperating. The other is too often marked by a boasted knowledge of evil, a viciousness veneered, it may be, by society manners and society ways, but which at once excites fear and disgust. However indifferent the general public may be to these signs, ominous for the future, parents and guardians who have to face a a responsibility for the young are being roused to the dangers that beset those bound to them by ties of affection and kindred.

There should be in every great university of our land a hall erected, the home for those who need the influence of the Christian family. It should be a building suited in all its appointments for a young man's life, with its bedroom and adjoining studies; with its reading-room, provided with the best periodicals of the day; with its library, stored with choicest reference books. It should have its well-ordered dining-room, its gymnasium, its billiard-room, its smokingroom, if you will,-for it is sometimes wise to avoid side issues. Above all, in its center should be a chapel, where morning and evening prayer and praise should go up, as the fitting beginning and ending of the day.

tributions and suggestions for school-work. It does not claim, however, to be a journal of methods. The aim is to print the educational news, with such articles and editorials as will make the teachers think. The highest pedagogical training is not in facts, but in the friction of intelligence.

THE CLASSICS IN OUR SCHOOLS.

ROFESSOR GAYLEY, in an address to the Berkeley High School graduates, excited considerable criticism in advocating the study of the classics. Only six out of forty-nine were classical students, and Professor Gayley's remarks were not in accord with the studies pursued by the large majority. He said the great men of America were versed in the history and original literature of ancient times.

"They seized the opportunities before them and made themselves great because of their superior cultivation. In this one thing they are not imitated by young Americans, a large proportion of whom graduate from school and college without having even seen, to say nothing of grasping, the opportunities which lie open before them.

"This is because they have taken the wrong course, which deplorable fact is due either to unwise judgment on the part of their advisers or to inborn ignorance. This is too true of us Californians. We are puffed up with the glory of our Californianism in an egotistical, ignorant, and barbarous way, and are in many cases satisfied with our station in life.

"Not fifteen per cent of the people in this hall are thoroughly acquainted with our national literature, and not thirty per cent have even any proper sympathy

with its historical foundation.

"During the six years I have taught at the University I have had only three or four students whom I could advise to specialize in English literature, simply for the reason that all the rest were not sufficiently well trained in Latin and Greek, the very foundation of modern literature.

"Our young Californians have been turned away from the classics toward utilitarianism, and it will take us twenty years to get rid of the stigma."

A Study in Nature.

School Literature.

TEACHING AS A PROFESSION.

AN ADDRESS BY CHARLES A. MURDOCK, DELIVERED AT THE GRADUATING EXERCISES OF THE SAN FRANCISCO NORMAL SCHOOL.

S CIVILIZATION advances, the circle of the occupations of man that are dignified by the name of professions constantly enlarges. Not long ago the learned professions were confined to medicine, law, and theology. Unless a man were a lawyer, a doctor, or a minister, he was not credited with a profession-that is, something that, by reason of his preparation, he professed himself to be competent to practice.

It is my purpose to consider briefly one of these newly initiated professions. Teaching is no longer one of the bread-winning occupations. It is not simply a vocation-it is something much higher; and there is no reason that in the circle of the learned professions it has entered it should bow its head in any consciousness of inferiority. William Ellery Channing once said: "The noblest work on earth is to act with an elevating power on a human spirit." No argument is necessary to convince one of this; we feel it to be true. For this no profession offers better opportunity than teaching. The minister must rouse and inspire adults whose characters are formed, and whose inertia is a settled condition. The teacher works with plastic material, and, though the primary influence is intellectual, it is so mixed with the moral and spiritual, and the unconscious influence of character is so great, that it may be doubted if all the churches and Sundayschools in the land accomplish as much in the elevation of mankind as the public schools might do if they were equal to their opportunity and privilege. The doctor is concerned with the health and strength of our bodies a matter of great importance, but man is more than an animal, and the mind and soul that inhabits his frame-destined, I firmly believe, to survive it-are of even greater importance. These the teacher develops and influences. The true lawyer promotes justice, defends the right, upholds authority,-a noble calling if nobly followed; but if man can be led to know the true, to love the fair, to do the right, his occupation will be gone. This is the end and aim of true education.

Education is in its early childhood. It has made great strides within the memory of living men. Its future is incalculable. It is the hope of civilization, the seed-plot of all progress, the most important interest committed to humanity. Its true office is to bring the natural endowments of every human soul into free, full, and harmonious play. Every soul born into the world is a bundle of possibilities. The range between the capacities of different individuals is very great. One little cranium has infolded in it the possibility of a Froebel or a Lincoln; another will reach its limit in becoming a humble, honest plumber. The interest.