heard no more on earth sound in his ears, and the forms of faithful fellow-workers sur round the holy altar, as he recalls that convention of the Diocese when the faithful few came together to celebrate the Eucharistic feast, and receive from their new Bishop, whose years of apostolic toil lay all before him, the benediction they so long had craved. And now for many years has the seed been sown, and the sheaves are being gathered in. Far down the long vistas of the future the work will go on, long after the last of the pioneer clergy has fallen asleep, after the toil accomplished, the labor well ACCOMPLISHED GENTLEMEN. POINTS AS TO CALIFORNIA EDUCATION. I. Who should be an accomplished gentleman? Every man. The President of the United States, or any hired laborer, should as nearly as he can be an accomplished gen tleman. Nobody will deny this of the highest positions, lay or clerical, professional, political, commercial or mechanical. Since a laboring man in America is liable to be called up to the highest positions, it is true of him. Where a laboring man can never become a ruler, he might with less obvious unsuitableness be a brute. Whether this standard of attainment is reached at all, and the degree in which it is reached, must depend chiefly upon the training of each individual before he becomes responsible for himself. The age for learning good habits in everything-the age for learning everything-is youth. 2. But California has peculiar needs in respect to this training. A cosmopolitan community, cast together under the extraordinary circumstances which formed California, and still retaining so much that is exceptional in its character, as California society does, has special need of a cosmopolitan quality of training for the young. Now a cosmopolitan who is such in any complete sense, is an accomplished gentleman. Moreover, California causes have produced strong character in its people. The young men of such a people require a training not merely cosmopolitan in its scope, but peculiarly strenuous and efficient in its spirit and methods. Strong-even wildyoung men, appropriately trained, make the noblest adults. A whole university-full of "Mad Bismarcks" would make a splendid lot of leaders for the next political generation. 3. Education for the Rich. Some useful object in life is much more requisite now for "higher classes" of any sort than for a long time back. In Europe, for instance, this need is felt. The youth of royal or noble or wealthy families are on system trained to be infinitely more useful citizens than in the eighteenth century. In fact, Europe is ahead of the United States in this matter. No want is more distinctly visible in this country than the almost total want of an Education for the Rich. The poor are, in this matter, in comparison magnificently provided for; but "the rich are sent empty away." As fast as great fortunes become numerous, very much faster does the folly of the sons live and exercise out-doors, work at farming or gardening, walk and run and ride and camp out, and shoot and fish and sail and swim. of the fortune-makers stare out upon society. A fool or lout is displayed with horrid prominence in the lurid light of spendthrift wealth. The point where self-control and responsibility begin is where the young man's life 5. Classical or Scientific? The best educeases to be under daily and constant super- cation is, to learn all you can, both of knowvision. This point is where a youth goes ing and doing. To this end, all the mastery away from home for business or study. No should be gained that is possible, both of clearer demarcation line can be drawn be- language and of fact. It is needless to add tween school and college or university than in habit and in thought; for good training that arising at this point, and conditioned by in languages and in facts must develop right this assumption of self control. School is a habits and thinking power. A usual descrip. continuation of home; college is a preface tion of these two departments is to call them to life. Supervision at school is quasi-par- classical and scientific. There is a strong ental; at college it is (or should be) quasi- tendency at present to advocate a supposed public. scientific training as distinct from a classical one, and to substitute modern languages for Latin and Greek. But Latin and Greek, while they have sometimes been over-valued and over-taught, are indispensable parts of an accomplished gentleman's education, and so they are of a sound scientific education. 4. The Earth. An important element for the best home and school training, far too often neglected, especially for town and city youth, is the earth element. Man is of his mother, the Earth. In cities, an armor of pavements shuts him off from her bosom, and stairs and elevators lift him away from it. Accordingly, families run out in a generation or two of city life, unless there is a constant, regular recourse to the country for more vitality. The city is a sink-hole, a bottomless pit, into which the stream of rural health and strength steadily pours and disappears. The story of Antæus and Hercules is (for the present purpose) an allegory of the struggle of man with city civilization. As this civilization lifts man off the earth, he weakens. In proportion as he comes back to her, he strengthens. When kept quite off her, he is quickly destroyed. Therefore, all youth, and city youth most of all, should be kept as much and as long as possible in constant and intimate relations with the old mother Earth. Thus will the independent period of life be begun with a maximum capital of vitality, sure to be exhausted quite soon enough in the fervent and often furious competitions of our present social condition. This does not mean (as a scoffer or tramp might argue) that one should (so to speak) locate a farm upon his person. The doc trine does not imply anything other than the most delicate cleanliness. It means that a boy and a youth should as much as may be Their usefulness in learning general grammar, the philosophy of language, the logic of thought and speech, cannot be equalled by any other language whatever. English cannot be understood without Latin. No scientific nomenclature can be extended, or mastered, or used, without Latin and Greek. Neither history, literature nor philology can be competently studied in any full and complete sense without them. Even a wholesale grocer or a mining engineer would all his life be a shrewder, and wiser practical man for having a good knowledge of Latin and Greek. So would a hired laborer. For if he have the abilities and attainments which one must have who has got so far forward as to know Latin and Greek, it is morally certain that he can soon lift himself above the undesirable position of a hired laborer. 6. Preparatory Schools. High grade preparatory schools are a necessary introduction to high grade collegiate institutions. There is no reason in the nature of things, why the University of California and our other colleges may not afford an education in every particular at least as good as any other institution on the continent. But whatever facilities these institutions may have within them selves, that equality cannot be maintained without preparatory schools as good as any on the continent. Some situations are good for an academical school, and some are not. No school can render the best service in a city except to pupils who live in their own homes. Such a school, in fact, should be as far away from everything except the country as it can be without being too far. There The whole atmosphere, discipline, life, of such an institution as California requires, should not only teach morality, but should be morality. American life needs training in honor more peremptorily than is the case in any other community, for the obvious reason that individual freedom is greater. Call the total of influences to keep a man pure and noble, one hundred. If ninety parts of this safeguarding total are laws enacted from outside of him, he needs only ten of personal honor and self-control. But in America not more than ten parts are enacted law; in California not more than one part. fore, an American needs to be governed ninetenths by his own self-control and by considerations of personal honor; and a Californian, ninety-nine hundredths. Let this doctrine be practiced for the next twenty-five years, and we shall see clean politics in California. Religion should be taught in such a school so as not to destroy the religious teachings of any home, and so as to strengthen the foundations of every home belief. This rule implies not indoctrination, but training in right life; not theology, but morality; not sectarianism, but respect for all sincere belief; not so much precise drill in forms and precepts, as the influence of a pure moral atmosphere, and the result of constant guidance in well-doing; and it needs the regular and serious fulfillment of sufficient institutional observances. THESE reflections are suggested by an occurrence that marks a positive and real new departure in the educational history of California: the establishment of the first high grade preparatory school of that particular class which is so designed as to satisfy all the requirements above implied. There are excellent preparatory schools in the State, but they are not designed to fill exactly the same place as the strictly rural, select family school, which has hitherto been lacking here, and cannot, therefore, from the nature of the case, meet all the demands just outlined. Yet no State is properly provided with preparatory education, in which High Schools and large Academies are not supplemented by these select schools, that the needs of all classes of the community may be met. The Pacific Coast holds a strong and growing community. One such school will quickly be followed by more. It is the first of a class which marks the epoch of a class. It is because this is such that we have thus passed in review the onerous and difficult elements of the complex problem that any such institution must solve; it is as such that we record the establishment and features of the new institution at Belmont. Its site is probably not inferior in natural beauty to any in California, being in the bosom of a lovely little valley among the hills near Belmont. The estate would have been acquired by the late Mr. Ralston for a residence instead of that now known as Belmont, which he did buy, and which is now owned by Mr. Sharon; but it could not then be purchased. He did, however, subsequently buy it, and it has since his death been occupied by Mrs. Ralston. The property possesses a curious assemblage of city and country merits. It lies in the quiet, rustic solitude of its valley, with wooded hills all around, and one single picturesque view into the distance eastward between the hills across the southern part of San Francisco Bay. And the land is thoroughly underlaid with a system of irrigation pipes; a reservoir up among the hills secures a perennial water supply; and the gas-works on Mr. Sharon's property will furnish the second of the two chief privileges of city housekeeping. There is not another house in sight except the Belmont mansion across the valley. There is hardly even a village at the railroad station, and even this is a mile away and out of sight. The house and offices are roomy, elegant, and modern, and have that peculiar solidity and thoroughness of construction which seems to have belonged to all the buildings erected by Ralston. In short, the estate is a lonely country farm, with a fine city house on it, and city conveniences all over it—a singular aggregation of contradictory attractions. It meets the het erogeneous requirements which have been set forth in this paper after a fashion which could hardly have been more prophetic had Mr. Ralston consulted the writer with the intention of preparing the place for a boys' school. The reputation of Mr. W. T. Reid, the head of the new institution, is even a better guarantee for the practical merit of the institution than are locations and fittings for its mere lodging. Mr. Reid, as everybody in California knows, has for the last four years been President of the University of California. As such, he has had both friends and opponents; but the attitude of the Belmont School towards the University is entirely friendly, and vice versa, so far as the writer knows; and both friends and opponents would argue that Mr. Reid is certainly no worse fitted to prepare students for the University in consequence of having been its President. His previous professional experience as assistant in the famous Boston Latin School and as principal of the Boys' High School of San Francisco, is ample evidence of his technical fitness; and it would be at least superfluous to indorse him personally, or to enumerate the offers which he has declined of high educational positions elsewhere, from a laudable ambition to identify himself with an important forward step in the educational improvement of this coast. Our Academical Problem. Let the new Belmont School succeed, and let a competent number of schools of like high aims and abundant and appropriate equipment arise after it, and one of the most important problems for California's future will have been solved. The gambling era of California is closed. The increase of small farms and growing variety of legitimate industries will, in due time, answer the hoodlum question, and the tramp question, and the Chinese question. This industrial movement is already solidifying perceptibly the very foundations of genuine and healthy sociological conditions in California. It is in higher grades of improvement, preeminently in educational improvement, that we must trust for the symmetrical completion of the social edifice. When we shall possess our full proportion of means for the higher training of youth, objects will have been secured which no industrial conditions could attain. To solid and legitimate industrial prosperity will be added the purity of politics, the reform of abuses, and the development of a genuinely and highly cultivated society. Such schools as the Belmont School will perform a work impracticable by any other agency, playing an important part in supplying to American society an element not less important than any other whatever, and in American society peculiarly necessary, yet hitherto comparatively lacking-accomplished gentlemen. THE RUSSIANS AT HOME AND ABROAD.1 FOR the last eighteen months we have heard little of the Nihilists. Attempts, even, at assassination, seem to have been few in 1 The Russians at the Gates of Herat. By Chas. Marvin, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1885. For sale in San Francisco by A. L. Bancroft & Co. 2 Russia Under the Tzars. By Stepniak. Rendered into English by Wm. Westall. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1885. For sale in San Francisco by A. L. Bancroft & Co. VOL. VI.-14. number, and in the rare cases of which we have had intelligence, not directed at either the Czar or any of the higher Russian offi8 The Russian Revolt. By Edmund Noble. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. I'or sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach. Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute. By Theo. F. Rodenburgh, Bvt. Brig. Gen. U. S. A. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1885. For sale in San Francisco by Strickland & Pearson. cials. At first glance it would appear that the leaders of the revolt, either exhausted by past efforts, or finally borne to earth by the repressive measures of the government, had abandoned their terrible enterprise. At a superficial view, such would seem to be the case; but to those acquainted with Russia beneath the surface it has long been apparent that Nihilism-or that revolutionary movement which is known to us of the West by the name of Nihilism, but which is far broader in reality than Nihilism alone -is chronic in the Russian body politic, and that whatever pause may come in the efforts of the revolutionists will prove to be but a breathing-time, after the expiration of which their fight against absolutism will be renewed with greater vigor than before. To make this clear to the American mind seems to have been the object of Mr. Edmund Noble in writing his monograph, "The Russian Revolt," and to his task he seems to have brought a knowledge of Russian history, a familiarity with Russian ideas and ways of thought, acquired on the ground, and hence of the greatest value both to author and readers For, far as we are removed from the great Slav Empire in material distance, we are much further separated in traditions, habits of thought and social, political and industrial ideas; indeed, the Slav has little more in common with the Anglo-Saxon (save his color) than has the latter with the Chinaman. Thus it is that a protracted residence in Russia, such as Mr. Noble seems to have had, has been of inestimable benefit in fitting him for the task which he has so successfully accomplished. He has been enabled to enter into Russian life, to study types and characteristics; and as a result has given to our public by far the clearest, most intelligent, and concise account and explanation of the Russian revolt so far written in English. It is interesting to speculate upon the future of Russia, social and governmental. No people has ever been placed under similar conditions. Growing with the growth of the Empire, and gaining strength with each of its extensions, an autocratic system has fastened itself upon the Russian people, which is op posed to every one of its traditions, to the whole genius of the race;-one which, in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, presents to the world a most astounding paradox -seventy-five million people looking back, while all the rest of the world is looking forward And singularly enough, the very forces which elsewhere have contributed to the growth of popular liberty, have in Russia proved the most efficient allies of despotism; the influence of Byzantine Christianity (as Mr. Noble shows) has steadily contributed toward the growth and perpetuation of the autocratic system, so that not the army, but the Church, is its strongest support. Could a vote today be taken, of the intelligence and education of Russia, upon the maintenance of Czarism, it is probable that not one-tenth of these would be found supporting it; but unfortunately, Russian intelligence and education are concentrated within a very small proportion of the whole people. Despotism finds its stronghold among the brutish millions who still look up, from the murk of ignorance which the Church and autocracy have caused, to the Czar as their "Little Father," and upon whom all effort at enlightenment seems lost. Aware of nothing better, they remain true to the present system. And what a system it is! The late Emperor is credited with the remark: "There is only one man in Russia who does not steal, and I am that man." But dishonest business and administrative methods are the least among the evils for which Czarism is responsible. There is absolute concurrence of opinion among all observers, that the repressive measures of the government are crushing out the intellect of Russia. Both "Stepniak" and the author of "The Russian Revolt" are united upon this. Says the former : "The despotism of Nicholas crushed full-grown men. Tho despotism of the two Alexanders did not give them time to grow up. They threw themselves on immature generations, on the grass hardly out of the ground, to devour it in all its tenderness. To what other cause can we look for the desperate sterility of modern Russia in every branch of intellectual work? Our contemporary literature, it is true, boasts |