tional rights because the seedy curate cannot brook the idea that his son should be associated with the smell of the shop. . . . If snobbish parents desire snobbish schools, and are willing to pay for them, they have a perfect right to them. They have, however, no right to stand in the way of public schools open to all doing higher work. The Putney schoolmaster is as much a tradesman as the grocer. With a very inadequate intellectual capital, and not too much ready cash, he hires a genteel house, stocks it with cheap forms and desks, hires a scholastic hack, and advertises his " Academy" or "College," " for the education of young gentlemen,"-" tradesmen's sons rigidly excluded." No one disputes his right to do all that. But when he assumes the rôle of martyrdom because a public school open to the sons of tradesmen as well as to the sons of snobs is set up in his vicinity, he is entitled to no consideration, and should receive none.

THE

HE past summer has not only been signalized by the usual expansion and betterment of the institute and summer school work throughout the country, especially in connection with the more important universities, but has developed several features of uncommon interest. One of these has been the disturbance in several of the larger cities, caused by the interference of partisan politics with the educational affairs of the city; and in several cases a wide-spread popular dissatisfaction with the general management, taking the form of a demand for a change in the superintendency. Of course, whenever an opportunity occurs, all the enemies of the public school interest put in their appearance, and in several of our great municipalities, especially in the city of Washington, the ghost of the supposed buriedout-of-sight notion that the State has no right to educate beyond a limited elementary course of study has risen and stalked through the daily pages of the leading press, as lively as the latest newborn fad of the highest higher" or extra "scientific" crochet of the "newest new" education. In several of these great educational centres there has been a change in the personnel of the superintendent of schools. And just here the country seems to be experimenting, somewhat in the dark, or darkness visible," in regard to the proper qualifications of this official. The city superintendent of common schools, as we know him, is really one of the most original and important functionaries in our present scheme of republican government. Practically he has no superior in office, for in a majority of the States he is only responsible to the city government, with a somewhat loosely defined obligation of "reporting progress" to the State authorities. In fact, he is, in more than one respect, the most important public character in the city; the commander-in-chief of an army of children more numerous than ever served under Washington at one time in the War of

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Independence; with hundreds of teachers of various grades legally and, if of a strong executive habit, personally dependent on his will. A really great city superintendent of common schools in an American city is nearer a despot than any other public character can be. Legally, for a fourth of every school day, he stands to his army of children in loco parentis; often a better parent in all the higher things of life than the children ever find at home. Within the past few years the people have been roundly lectured by a portion of the Great Educators on the extreme folly of presuming to have any opinions of their own on school-keeping, and their duty to select the most expert of experts, and practically leave in the hands of the superintendent about everything within the charmed circle of education. But it makes all the difference in the world what the type of this expertism may be. If the aforesaid Great Educator is kept awake nights by a rage for "original investigation in the twilight realm of physiological psychology," or is in any stage of the semi-insanity into which the disciple of "child study" so easily collapses, he cannot be blamed for rejoicing over his new opportunity, as the agricultural specialist exults when promoted to an experiment station in the canebrakes of Alabama or the everglades of Florida. If the expert is simply an eminent pedagogue gone daft with the notion of trying on every new and attractive method or device of instruction, discipline or organization, or an experienced fossil, a pedant, a tyrant or a "little god on wheels," it is easy to predict the result. More than one of our great cities which has called and installed a superintendent of schools of great reputation in high scientific quarters, with almost unlimited "power to act," has found itself involved in one of the most disagreeable of public muddles, where every parent claims the right to stir up the waters on his own account. The real test of a competent superintendent of schools, male or female, is the power, first, to put self and theory in the background, condescend to study the community, learn its actual condition, its real needs and especially its local prejudices. Then and only then can any reform system of schooling be safely adopted, and only then in the way and manner best calculated to reach a desirable end, with the least disturbance of the children and the best co-operation of the wisest portion of the people. It is often found that this man or woman need not be brought from afar, escorted by a flourish of trumpets or the blare of a brass band, but may be found at home, in the person of a teacher who, through the experience of years of consecrated service, has gained the capacity to govern and direct with every new promotion. Such a person will step into his new place as naturally as one takes the last step in a

mountain climb, with the confidence of the best teachers and the love of the children, amid the congratulations of thousands who have been won to his regard by a growing public opinion, perhaps the most decisive test of genuine merit. The educational public will look with interest on the result of such a promotion in the cities of Washington and Chicago, which are, perhaps, just now more in need of the higher form of expertism, which includes expert manhood and common. sense in the management of their school affairs, than any of our great American hives of population.

P

EOPLE who are honestly concerned over the possibility of any colonial policy by our government may take heart at the development of the educational side of our new American Administration in "foreign parts," so far as it has proceeded. The old-time European way of dealing with a people outside of the area of Christian civilization was to govern it with a sole view to the aggrandizement in political, commercial or ecclesiastical respects of the home government. Even the effort to Christianize and civilize the new populations has been so mingled with the most despotic forms of ecclesiastical, sectarian and social home organization that they have left their subjects in the condition of the man in the parable, into whom a new troop of devils has come to possess the "empty, swept and garnished" territory vacated by the old. But the most characteristic feature that has yet appeared in our new American venture at a colonial policy is also the establishment of the most characteristic feature of our republican life, the establishment of the people's common school. As fast as we have come in possession of these islands we have sent to them the men in whom the best Americans have the most confidence, bearing as a gift the most precious heritage of American citizenship, universal education. John Eaton in Puerto Rico, Frye in Cuba, Atkinson in the Philippines, have gone, bearing with them the best wishes of the noblest side of American life, to lay the foundations of future self-government in that training of the children and youth, without which everything called freedom is only a new freak of despotism. Can any fair-minded American contemplate such a spectacle as the country has witnessed during the past weeks of summer: an army of school-teachers, brought from their far-away homes in vessels furnished by the government without expense; entertained for six weeks at the oldest and most celebrated university in the republic" without money and without price"; instructed by the most accomplished teachers; honored with a social attention, public entertainment and welcome only given to the most

eminent representatives from foreign lands; received with enthusiasm in the four chief cities of the Eastern slope of the nation; introduced to the President of the United States, and sent home to teach and preach of the wonderful new land to which they had been translated, without a new confidence in the American people and a belief that in this, as in every new departure, this republic can be trusted to work on the lines and in the spirit of the fathers? We must remember that it is not the administration that may be in power to-day or to-morrow that is to decide the attitude of the American people to the millions that have recently been brought within its influence; for whatever public policy prevails it can never henceforth be separated from it. The army, the navy, the military, governor, president, congress and court are only the temporary representatives of the American people, that never yet did wrong to any other people which it did not undo even to the extreme of peril and sacrifice; and which to-day more than ever will see to it that wherever the flag goes the school-master and the school-mistress will follow as the representatives of the American type of universal education, the latest and noblest outcome of the gospel of love to God and man, sacrifice and service, preached by the Great Teacher eighteen centuries ago.

I

A STUDY IN STYLE.

M. D. KELLOGG, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

N these days when universities for young men and women are so numerous, and openings for them are so scarce, many who are not of the Brahmin or scholar caste drift into the colleges. Having no particular intellectual bent a large percentage of such students select the literary course "to polish the mind." (A metaphor marvelously mixed!) They wade unfeelingly through the impassioned works of genius, and sometimes realizing that they do not exactly enjoy them. they console themselves with the phrase, "It forms the style." So does a fashion plate, but what kind of style?

This performance of sitting under a professor of literature and allowing him to stuff conclusions into the mind without its having received the premises (in belles-lettres the premises are appreciation) is a violation of mental hygiene. It develops a pate-de-fois-gras quality of brain easier to recognize than to define.

Education and also mis-education certainly do show themselves in language. Every habit of mind shows itself more or less in speech. A scientific man unconsciously seeks accurate expression. Artists are continually called on to furnish articles introducing their illustrations, and although so much is said about writing being a trade the observation and sentiment that make a good sketch will generally make a good description. Artists are seldom wordy. Simplicity is the first lesson taught by the brush.

In the heyday of Dickens' popularity many imitative people clutched at his mantle which turned all eccentricity into mirth, all homely virtue into poetry. They attained to verbosity. Dickens' mantle has never descended.

The epistolary styles of some of the victims of the "literary course" are as independent, though less amusing than that of my old servant who commenced her letter "I take my pen in hand to write a line, it's my nephew that's writing for me."

Mr. George Meredith is perhaps the most successful author who is guilty of a borrowed style. He out-Carlyles Carlyle, much to his own disadvantage. Pope gratefully declares that he learned his meters from Dryden. Dryden may have been the nurse of his young muse, but Pope developed, he did not imitate.

It is easy to feel style and hard to explain it. remarked that "the style is the man," enough in it to carry it around the world. thought.

The Frenchman

and his bon mot had truth But the style is really the

Parts of Don Quixote, for instance, are immortal models of expression, but the dramas of Cervantes, on which he labored with all the force of his ambition, are as a rule as execrable in style as they are weak in substance. They were put forward by Cervantes in good faith and full confidence of their merits, but Blas de Nasare who published a second edition of them (1749) advanced the theory that they were written as burlesques (Ormsby's Introduction to Don Quixote), a practical criticism from which at this late day there is no appeal. Spanish literature is peculiarly rich in plays. The attention of a Spaniard taking up the profession of letters in Cervantes' time would naturally be turned to the drama. Don Quixote on the contrary was a spontaneous burst of humor. It seems to have been written to relieve the author's mind, not with any idea of carrying him down to posterity. There are evidences of literary carelessness all through it. The idea was there, and as for the style, it was left to take care of itself-which it has done.

Theory of expression has very little to do with style. "The Confessions of St. Augustine" are literary masterpieces, yet their author did not know a good style when he saw it. Augustine (born 354 A.D., died 430) was a professional rhetorician of the Byzantine school, a school whose affectations have been a subject of derision or pity to all succeeding ages. When Augustine and some of his fellow converts first began the study of the Bible its simplicity of expression shocked. them, and reasoning truly that style and thought are allied they distrusted the wisdom of the book. But the Bible taught Augustine honesty, earnestness and self-effacement, and these qualities of the soul hallowed his style. For the sinner who would gain literary profit from the saint there is an intellectual suggestion in his early education. Augustine commenced life as a logician. To trace the course of thought had become his mental habit. The easy transition of ideas in writing is like action in art. It is the first thing to be sought by the artist and the last thing to be lost by the mutations of time. The Confessions of St. Augustine are now read only in translation, mental