The

for the most part, bury system and perspective in topics beneath a mass of details-pupils "can't see the woods for the trees;" and most potent of all, custom demands this order of things. teacher's overburdened program is a consequence not so much of the number of subjects as the mass of useless material required in each. A good sharp scissors would improve many a text-book, in value if not in looks. Many things are taught which, it is conceded, will be forgotten. Serinagur is the name of a town on the text-book map of Asia now before

The advance in education during the last several years has been no less than amazing. France has revolutionized her system of lower schools since 1874 and increased her educational budget at a rate with no parallel in history, building thousands of new schoolhouses of all

grades, a single lycee that cost $2,500,ooo, the new sorbonne costing several millions, an enormous medical school with clinics, hospitals, etc. About 100,ooo children in the French possessions of North Africa are now at school. Egypt has an elaborate school system, the annual reports of which are full of interest. Japan has been reconstructed and occidentalized since 1868-its year 1-by an admirable and very complete educational system. A London superintendent lately pronounced the schools of New Zealand

among the best in the world, and the reports from the schools of that till lately barbarous country, show phenomenal changes. India has a system of both indigenous and English schools and three Universities, which are as full of interest as they are unique. Australia has just developed a new University; a new one, too, has just been opened at Tomsk in Siberia; Athens has lately completed a magnificent academy building of Pentelecon marble, costing a million dollars given by a wealthy Greek merchant, Sina by name, and has a well-equipped University, with a complete school system besides. Sweden has developed the most modern system of intermediate education in the world by a recent revolutionary law. By the radical new law of 1884 the Russian Universities were reconstructed with a design on the part of the government to make them more effective. The United States now spends over $170,000,000 a year on its schools not including over $10,000,000 annually spent in its colleges and universities. This is a larger sum than is spent in any other branch of the public service and is surpassed only by pensions. The new Catholic University at Washington; the new advances and changes at Yale and Harvard Universities; of the Regents of the University of the State of New York; the upward movement at Columbia; the grounding of Clark University, the only one in the country devoted solely to graduate work; of the Pratt and now the Drexel Institute; the efficient work of Judge Draper, State Superintendent of the Schools of New York; the founding of new journals (The Pedagogical Seminary, The Educational Review, School and College, The Academy and Education) all of higher tone than existed in this country before; the Johns Hopkins University; the rapidly growing possibilities of education and scientific advance among the govern

ment institutions at Washington-including the new National Museum, the Surgeon General's Library building, and now the new Observatory:-These show that our own country is not inclined to be behind in this marvelous growth.

What does all this mean? It means, at least, three things:

(1.) Chemistry, Physics, Electricity, Geology and other physical sciences are rapidly coming to underlie and condition all the arts of peace and war. Chemistry, for instance, has given Germany almost a monopoly of nearly all of the chemical industries like dyeing and the manufacture of many drugs and other commercial products. Some chemists

there believe that even the past achievements of chemistry are to be exceeded by the production of food products. The science of war too depends largely upon the processes of treating metals, the chemistry of explosives, the exact construction of topographical maps, condensed foods, etc. Science is becoming thus the arbiter in the increasing national rivalry for the markets of the world, and even agriculture is slowly taking on a scientific character hitherto unknown. If a nation walls itself out from this struggle for the "survival of the fittest" processes and products of manufacture by too high a protective tariff, it is advanced science that suffers by losing one of its chief incentives. The new Reichs Amstalt in Berlin which is devoted equally to pure science and to its application, which attempts to co ordinate the investigations of all the University departments of physics and chemistry, marks a distinct step in advance for the highest University work in Germany. Thus specialization seems the watchword of the day. The deeper the expert goes into any subject the more organic he finds its connection with every other.

(2.) It has often been said of late that the present would be known in the future as the age of Biology, Psychology and Anthropology. The Darwinian evolution has set fashions and established new departures in every field of knowledge, which gives us new conceptions of life, its origin, its growth, its end. It is our moral and religious conceptions which are most profoundly modified by the Biological movement, and seem noless dependent on it than the industries upon the physical sciences. What is birth, death, reproduction, disease? How are they conditioned? How is the life of the individual brought to its highest portents? These are the questions that thoughtful men everywhere are now asking. These are the questions which have inspired the remarkable movement in contemporary France, sometimes called Neo-Idealism but more fitly and more often called Neo-Christianism. I believe it is the function of the new psy

chology to transfuse the conceptions of nature and life, by which science is giving us a new cosmos, with the old religious Christian sense of order, unity,

love beneath all, to re-reveal the Bible as the world's great text-book of moral regimen, and to flood and transfuse the souls of men with the feeling that the world is rational and beneficent to its very core.

(3.) So, too, the question whether a republic can be a permanent form of government is at bottom a question of education; more than a monarchy a republic must struggle against ignorance and the evils that attend it. If Europe must educate leaders, we must educate the masses, but for both education is indispensable. Children must be forced to go to school and trepanned, if necessary, to get knowledge into their brains. After the battle of Jena in 1806 Germany

Taz Era San APATE THE VX2-Taose rose ruling has the best efect on an intence are they who are able to look the bearers in the eye at least a part of the time. To be able to do ths, the reader must be trained to look ahead, taking in act only a few advanced words, but sometimes a whole sentence ataglance. Only long and patient training will enable a reader to become thus proficient and the training cannot begin too early.

READING ALOUD AT HOME.-As a step

Loward securing intelligible reading, and As a help in creating a taste for fireside eading, children should be encouraged to ead aloud at home frequently, even hough their reading be imperfect. It will lo them good, and be an incentive to improvement.

REPRODUCTION ON SLATE.-An exercise of great value is that of the teachers' selecting some interesting story or description and having the pupils listen to him while he reads it to them, they to reproduce it afterward on their slates or on paper. These exercises give valuable culture to the power of attention, and the subsequent writing of it is an excellent language-lesson.

HOLDING THE ATTENTION.-If the class seem inclined to be inattentive, an exercise somewhat as follows may be given: Begin with a pupil and let him read until the name of some other pupil is called. Suddenly call upon another, who takes up the sentence or the paragraph precisely where it was dropped by his predecessor and proceeds to read until he in turn is interrupted by the teacher calling upon another. Should any of those called npon be not ready to proceed, the teacher should lose no time, but call at once upon some one else, and thus keep close attention and constant interest.

READING PARAGRAPHS.—In reading paragraphs, the exercise may be varied. by having several pupils in succession read the same paragraph, each giving expression to his own mental apprehension of it, and then again having each of his pupils read a different paragraph. This will give variety to the reading exercise and add to the interest of the recitation.

INACCURACIES TO BE CORRECTED.— The teacher should give careful attention to the pupil's speech at all times, and by

an occasional hint or suggestion set him aright where his pronunciation is incorrect or his articulation faulty. It is not enough to correct the words as mispronounced in the reading class. Many more words are likely to be mispronounced in conversation or in the recitations in other branches. It would not be wise, of course, for the teacher to break into a conversation in order to make a correction. There are many other times and occasions when he may reach the error and correct it without necessarily wounding the child's feelings. Thus, a list of mispronounced words heard during the day may be placed on the blackboard and the attention of the whole class be directed to them for a few moments, and the necessary corrections be made.

LOCAL ERRORS.-There are probably few communities where some provincialisms do not mar the elegance and beauty of oral speech. It may be the sound of w for , or ch for j, or j for ch, or the dropping of the r in horse, or the addition of r in idea, or the dropping of h in heat, or the adding of the h to such words as in, or, on, or the pronunciation of to as if spelled two, or the pronunciation of such words as calf with the short sound of a, or other equally flagrant errors.

What shall the teacher do? In general, he should try to make his own speech conform to the best standards, and as far as possible train his pupils to imitate him; and yet he should not be over-nice in his distinctness of articulation or over-rigid in insisting upon the pupil giving the exact vowel sounds where custom differs so widely among educated and cultured scholars as it does on the sound of a as found in the words ask, glass, and similar words.-Henry Raub in Normal Instructor.

LITERARY NOTES.

"Man and Materials" is the title of Number 3 of the Information Readers-a series now being published by the Boston School Supply Company. These books are the embodiment of the best educational ideas governing the compilation of text-books. They do not make pathetic appeals to the deeper literary spirit of children which, fortunately or unfortunately, is always and conspicuously absent. Instead, the Readers treat of every-day occupation, every-day topics, and every-day men. They introduce the child to the living present and, if in places the past is referred to, it is vivified in plain language while being resurrected. Our State readers should not be supplemented; they should be superseded, and books possessing the virtues of these Information Readers would bring freshness and interest into what-despite all efforts is now too often dull work.

We are in receipt of "A German Science Reader," the latest addition to the popular Heath's Modern Language Series. Short extracts are taken from the writings of prominent German, American, and English scientists. These are followed by a good array of notes and a vocabulary of scientific and technical terms. The book is suited to a class having an elementary knowledge of German. Price 8oc. (D. C. HEATH & Co., Boston.)

The April number [No. 54] of the Riverside Literature Series (published quarterly during the present school year, at 15 cents a single number, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York) contains more than a score of the poems of William Cullen Bryant that are most celebrated and best adapted for use in schools. Among these may be men

tioned Sella, Thanatopsis, The WhiteFooted Deer, The Little People of the Snow, To the Fringed Gentian, and Abraham Lincoln. The poems selected, with a biographical sketch and explanatory notes, make this number one of the best that have been lately issued in the Riverside Literature Series.

Of this Series Mr. Brander Matthews of Columbia College, the celebrated New York critic, has lately written in the Educational Review: "Any one who examines the Riverside Literature Series cannot but remark how very effective this Series is in the effort to cultivate the taste, educate the sympathies, and enlarge the mind.

Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., announce that they have in preparation a History of the United States, by Mr. John Fiske, for the special use of schools.

Mr. Fisk's world-wide reputation as a writer and scholar leads us to expect from him a School History unequaled in the purity of its English, in the fascination of its style, and in the accuracy of its statements. His hearty sympathy with the needs and possibilities of the school-room--as shown by the success of his historical lectures to school children, and by the popularity of his Civil Government for schools--assures us that he will employ his art to the great satisfaction of the practical teacher.

All school officials and teachers who think of adopting a new text-book in history will do well to wait until Mr. Fisk's book is ready.

An article of especial value to teachers in the May number of the Atlantic Monthly is by James J. Greenough of Cambridge, a most successful teacher in one of the most famous of the secondary schools in New England which fit boys