rate classification have not been generally successful. It is, however, possible to roughly divide. the subject into certain fields-for example, the field of Contract, the field of Tort, the field of Property, the field of Persons and Personal Relations, and, though the boundaries of these fields necessarily overlap each other more or less, a crude analysis is better than no analysis at all, and fortunately a crude analysis suffices for most practical purposes.

Guided by the best lights which he can find, however, and exercising the best judgment which he can bring to bear upon it, the first duty of the student must be, to classify and analyze.

II. Having parcelled out the mass into such fields as may be determined upon, the next requisite is to endeavor to ascertain the fundamental principles which underlie each field. Here again the secret is analysis. Take the field of contract, for example. One cannot commit to memory all the law of contract, but he can fix in his mind the few principles which underlie it and determine the order of its growth and development. In any contract, certain elements must be present. There must be competent parties; a lawful and possible subject-matter; mutual acts of agreement and, manifestation of this agreement in some prescribed form. So in the field of Tort; whatever the specific wrong in a given case may be, certain essentials must be present. There must be a duty, imposed by law; that duty must be owing by the one party to the other; that duty must be violated, and from that violation there must naturally and proximately flow injury to the other. WhatWhatever the form of the contract,

whatever the nature of the tort, these fundamental ideas must present themselves; and the student who has thoroughly grasped the characteristics of contract and of tort in general, has gone far toward solving the problems which may arise with reference to contracts and torts in particular.

III. In the next place one must constantly bear in mind that law is pre-eminently a practical matter. It exists, not for its own sake, but only for the purpose of accomplishing a specific object, namely, the guidance and regulation of human conduct. The purpose is not chiefly to know the law, but to apply it. We must see it, therefore, in action. For this purpose we study "cases," which are simply the records of the application of principles of law to given states of fact. If a law is a general principle of conduct, it must work substantially similar results whenever applied to states of fact substantially alike. One cannot learn all the cases, but he can so closely observe some, that he may discover how, in actual operation, the abstract principle is applied to the concrete facts, and thence learn how it is likely to be applied in others. For this purpose he must learn to closely study facts, their relevancy, their chronological and logical order. He must learn to separate the wheat from the chaff, to distinguish between the real and the merely apparent resemblances.

The lawyer is a prophet, working upon an historical foundation. His problem is: From what has been done in other like cases, what is likely to be done in this? His success as a prophet must obviously increase with the range of his information, his power to dis

tinguish the important facts from the unimportant, and his capacity to deduce the right results when his relevant facts are illumined by the principles of law.

In saying this I speak not at all concerning methods of instruction, but simply concerning methods of study. It does not seem to me essential that the student should attempt to remember large numbers of cases, but it does seem to me helpful that he should find the principle of law associated in his mind with some concrete instance of its application to existing facts. By this process the principle not only takes on more vital form, but it furnishes a starting point from which investigation may be pushed into the field suggested by the new facts.

To recapitulate, I would ven

ture to suggest that the student endeavor

I. To so analyze and classify his work that he may see, as

far as possible, the true relation of each subject to the others.

II. To ascertain and make his own, not the mere language of the rules laid down, but the reason of the rule-the fundamental idea or principle which gave it birth. III. To so associate each princi

ple with some leading case in which it was applied that the principle itself shall be to him not a mere abstraction but a living force operating upon actual facts in such wise as to at once suggest the manner and the limit of its application.

That American architecture is in a lamentable state, and in spite of occasional good examples is perhaps growing worse, at least in some directions, needs no proof; the fact glares upon anyone who has given the art any study, feels toward it any interest and is not blind. To say nothing of ancient and mediæval, even of Renascence architecture, it is safe, I think, to say that we are far below even modern Europe. With the increase of wealth, and, it is supposed, of culture, our inferiority becomes less excusable and more conspicuous.

Our architecture is insincere. We hope to cheat the beholder of his admiration, trusting, with confi

dence only too well founded, that his hurry and superficiality will prevent him from detecting the imposture. If few will examine, why should there be anything to repay examination? Why should dollars which might buy such keener pleasures as horses, wines and upholstery be wasted on solid walls and fine mouldings? Hence the cheapness and showiness of much of our building: hence the veneered wall; hence the shallow carving or the absence of carving; above all, that unspeakable atrocity, the embossed zinc trimming painted to look like stone. The mediæval designer and builder could not be insincere, because he really cared and worked

in a religious spirit. If it ever occurred to him to be any otherwise, he was childish enough to fancy that it made as much difference to his manhood and to his soul whether or no he lied in stone as whether he lied with his tongue. The second great defect of our architecture is its want of harmony, with the principles and development of the art, and with itself. We are a great people, we can teach the world this and that if not everything; why should we submit to the precepts of nameless men who knew nothing much, for did they not live in the middle ages? So we sit down at our study tables to invent an "American architecture," with more assurance than a housewife to invent a new pudding. We succeed in being queer. We have no noble submissiveness, only triviality and pride; we will not see that, as a prominent New England architect once said, in the art of architecture we have absolutely nothing to teach the middle ages. And even if, when we design a group of buildings, we get each building tolerable, in the fear of monotony, in prying restlessness, we mingle Rhenish Romanesque and English fifteenth century Gothic, Byzantine and New England colonial. No matter about beauty, utility, appropriateness-be new.

Our college buildings are perhaps somewhat better than most others, for usually abundant money is contributed by liberal and loyal alumni, and the men most concerned are among the most cultivated in the country. One or two Western, possibly one or two Eastern colleges, are said to have built on a worthy scale and in a fitting style. Yet there is not a campus, so far as the writer has observed, which is not blemished by one or more of the faults mentioned above.

At Yale the state of things is among the best. The students there carry on their grotesque revellings out of stone-mullioned windows and around stately corners. The discord between the new stone Gothic and the old brick colonial is excusable and will vanish with the inevitable destruction of the fragile antiquity. But even there the nondescript Romanesque style, the name of which not long ago was so much blasphemed and used so much for a vain covering to a multitude of sins, has grown up into vagaries; the new gymnasium is of the yellow brick so much affected now and so unsuitable to Northern conditions, and is of a design which one might expect in an Odd Fellow's Hall. Harvard is worse. The preciousness of material and workmanship is less; the senseless variety of style and the triviality of finish greater. The present movement there to put up all new buildings in the colonial style, which beyond a doubt has more meaning in Cambridge than in most other places, though in some respects commendable, is open to an objection which I shall mention later, and certainly has come too late. The slate on the too expansive roof of Memorial Hall forms oil-cloth patterns, the nave and transept of earlier Gothic and the east end of— what style is it?-form as singular a spectacle as an ocean liner with the stern of a canalboat. Of the strange little Art Museum, which squats on the other side of the road and huddles on the brink of the gutter, I need not speak. Sadder yet is Gore Hall, the library, built in the twenties at the beginning of the Gothic revival, in healthy if somewhat clumsy emulation of King's College Chapel in the older Cambridge, and then deemed such a glory of art as to be put on the seal of the

city; it has lately been fitted with kitchen windows, and under a needless glass ceiling concealed by what looks like cheesecloth, the interior swelters in crude plastering and buff kalsomining.

The buildings at Bryn Mawr are modest and in themselves not so bad; but a garish granite recitation building, with an uninteresting Romanesque tower, jars on the perpendicular Gothic about it. The unpretentious old buildings of many of the smaller Eastern colleges are insulted by newer ones which rave in all styles. But when one who cares for architecture sees Columbia he almost moves to wipe his eyes. Not only is a glorious opportunity lost the opportunity of a noble series of buildings in a commanding situation, those of Columbia, Barnard, St. Luke's Hospital and the new cathedral of St. John, all of which are connected with the Episcopal Church, and hence might in some measure have been adapted to one another; but the college buildings themselves are in at least three discordant styles, of at least as many kinds of material and are placed casually.

The sights on our own campus we all know, and we know their faults; though I find that many of the undergraduates, happily for them and unhappily for the world, are blind to them. We all know, too, the narrow affairs of home which make building here a quest not for beauty and for a means of silent education, but for imperatively needed shelter. It would not be disloyal, but it would be too obvious and unjust, to blame universally. But perhaps it would not be presumptuous, it certainly would. not be untrue, to suggest that the Law building claims more beauty and richness than it has, that small yellow brick is not very dignified,

that what went into glaring plate glass and the structure which looks like a swimming tank between the entrances, might more profitably have been spent for better finished eaves and a little carving. As to the painted lump which stands blunderingly at the southwest corner of the campus-but about some things it is more fitting to keep silent than to speak.

Among the representative college buildings which we have been examining, we find, then, pretty much the universal faults with which we began the insincerity which is a mean and overreaching wish to get as much as possible for as little as possible, especially for as little labor, an ambitious parsimony that would have zinc cheat sandstone and plaster marble; the restlessness which is real indifference, and would rather glance over many varieties of things than study and know one. These are the faults, and they are as easily remedied as are most faults which spring from superficialty.

A suitable and beautiful general type may be adopted, interpreted, if possible, by a single architect who is an artist as well as a mechanic, and faithfully developed in all its varieties and possibilities as can best be done where there is general uniformity. Why may not a genuine work of art be made of a whole university,not so much by regularity of grouping as by harmony of material and spirit? Almost anywhere this may be done. In most colleges, now, when the old buildings must soon be superseded, now is the time to build for new centuries; Yale realizes this, but not too wisely. What this style should be, considering the fact that we have now no one style of pre-eminent or great vitality, must depend largely on varying conditions. Local appro

priateness of style (as of the old Spanish in California, or of the colonial in some parts of the East), or the general character of the institution may determine. Yet one style there is which in general perhaps combines more appropriateness, beauty and flexibility than any other. The colonial style is domestic and petty, on a large scale looks swollen and does not admit much richness of material; the Romanesque, if it tries to adapt itself, is apt to become frantic, and has comparatively little beauty and historical connection with this country and people; the Renascence is tolerable only when chastened and built in the richest materials. But

the later Gothic of England belongs to us, is always beautiful and may fit any purpose. For dormitories it will quiet itself, for dining halls it will expand and rise; for recitation buildings and laboratories it will offer space of all shapes and abundant light; for chapels, if such things should ever be built again, it will joyfully turn to its original purpose. It will admit, as no other style will, decoration the most exquisite and naturalistic, if we can once learn that there are better things than stiff volutes and other conventional shapes which some one centuries ago thought he saw, and every one since has been unintelligently copying. The mediæval sculptor always carved the plants and beasts and men that he saw near him; how startling, yet at second thought how quaint and interesting and then beautiful to see in Ann Arbor doorways foliated with oak, tamarack and dandelion, squirrels whisking their tails in corbels, perhaps heads and costumes-yet it is time to check such Ruskinian dreams.

If strait poverty forbids luxuriance, there is at least one other style which is honest, is not without

dignity and permits modest ornament. This style is happily hinted at in a building on our campus which is, perhaps, one of the most wholesome and satisfactory on it, the physical laboratory. With no attempt at such smooth gloss as is given by vulgar pressed brick of any color, which is to stone and to simple rough brick as plush is to sealskin and plain wool, with sandstone trimmings which allow ornamentation in waterspouts and Byzantine capitals, with an attempt at an Italian tower which might easily have been graceful and is not bad, among such neighbors as the blunt and crude library and the garish and altogether shocking engineering laboratory, it is self-respecting and almost beautiful.

Let not the character of college architecture be thought unimportant. The art of the nation, for one thing, may fairly be judged by it, for where may one expect more taste? If the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness! Moreover, we cannot calculate the subtly refining and educating influence which good buildings would exert on the students.

No

one, except with dead sense of beauty, can daily see high art without being profoundly affected by it, unconsciously perhaps, but the more truly for that; and though professed aestheticians may brand architecture as confined and utilitarian, its glory is that it teaches while it shelters man, that it need not be sought in a gallery or a music hall or even a library, but demands only a seeing eye and an open mind. That such education is needed among the students no one will doubt. The present writer has made some investigations and could a tale unfold. But above all, a university is a missionary training school, from which influences, we