servances, but they are a comparatively small class. For most boys there is a short choral daily service and two full services on Sunday, with the ceremony at Eton of cathedral worship. At most schools, however, the music is entirely performed by a choir of boys; at Eton the nucleus is a paid choir, but that is owing to the collegiate traditions of the place. There is weekly instruction in the Greek Testament, and on Sunday a set of scripture questions are answered on paper by every boy in the school and shown to the division masters on Monday. Tutors, too, have on Sunday a class of pupils, where the Bible is read or lectures of a simple religious kind in biography or history delivered; the subjects, however, are left absolutely to the tutor's discretion, and it is not at all uncommon for him to consult the boys as to what they would like to do. In religion it is unusual to find a public-school master of pronounced ecclesiastical tendency; the rule is to secure moderate men. A few public schools, such as Lansing, have a high-church bias, but the majority teach a plain biblical Protestantism, and the frequency with which headmasters of public schools are chosen to fill the highest ecclesiastical offices is a proof that they are, as a rule, men of moderate and practical orthodoxy. There is certainly no school in England where the teaching is avowedly evangelical; there is no school where the teaching is latitudinarian, and what may be called the moderate high-church section is certainly the most largely represented. With the great majority of masters a sedulous anxiety as to the moral character of their pupils is a continuous preoccupation, shown not by needless interference and inquisitive investigation, but rather by close observation and timely caution. Boys are carefully warned as to the special dangers which attend the morals of a boys' community, and the time of preparation for confirmation (which is annually administered by the Bishop of Oxford) is much valued by masters as an opportunity of giving friendly counsel and connecting religion with the difficulties of practical life. And of course such a society, in many ways an artificial one, is attended by special dangers which will at once occur to the mind of every one. The only hope, however, rests, not in the dealing severely with special offences, but in the united ambition of masters and boys to keep the tone high and pure. The tone of an institution is subject to obscure and mysterious variation, but by wise vigilance and by leading rather than attempting to drive feeling and action into the right direction, much may be done to keep the moral and social atmos phere wholesome; once secure a high general tone, and it acts as a corrective, raising the weak and making the irresolute ashamed, at all events, of his lapse; and thus many dangers slip insensibly which otherwise would entail both that espionage and suspicion. To revert to more ordinary deficiencies, the danger that all institutions have to face is the predominance of one single tendency, copied and exaggerated and distorted from the outside world. The two tendencies which we should select as chiefly to be guarded against at present in English public schools are athleticism and utilitarianism. Athletics are the fashion everywhere, and have gained ground in the last twenty years at a prodigious rate. Within certain limits the athletic spirit brings such a great accession of power to a schoolmaster that it is a particularly insidious opponent, for it is usu ally against the very temptations which he sees to be the most dangerous to which boyhood is exposed; moreover, the deprivation of games to a moderate degree is a most useful engine of punishmentone that is effectual and needs hardly any repetition. What the master has to fight against is the idolizing of the athlete. If a boy admires, he almost necessarily worships; and so, though it is on the one hand a great advantage to a schoolmaster to be able to command the respect paid to athletics, he has to show clearly that he does not accept the boyish idea or look upon athletic success as an end in itself. Athletic prominence is in English public schools almost synonymous with social prominence; many a boy whose capacity and character command both respect and liking at the universities and in after-life, is almost a nobody at a public school because he has no special athletic gifts. This, of course, has its advantage. A boy, heir we will say to great wealth, large territorial interests, family traditions, an ancestral name, will find at Eton or at other public schools that these go for positively nothing if he has not geniality and good nature and honesty; but even these qualities are hardly sufficient to insure anything like success unless he be athletically inclined. On the other hand, great athletic capacity may coexist with low moral and intellectual character, though it is fortunately exceptional; and the prominence that may devolve on such a character is likely to do infinite harm. But on the whole the schoolmaster must recognize that athleticism is the best of servants and be careful to keep it in hand. Utilitarianism is a more open foe, and perhaps it is more characteristic of Eton from the circumstances of the case than of other schools. At Eton, most boys come from an atmosphere of wealth and ease, and it is inevitable that they should naturally be tempted to measure everything by these standards, and to believe that money comes, as a sordid necessity perhaps, but still as a necessity, even before the kingdom of Heaven. Such a spirit requires to be fought with delicate weapons. At other schools it appears in perhaps even a more plausible guise-in the worship of success even more than wealth; and it can only be surely baffled by direct teaching, by such opportunities as have lately been given by the establishment of missions in connection with the larger public schools, where the school supports by voluntary contributions one or more of the clergy in some populous district of London, and partly by the example of strict devotion by those who have the charge of the youths of England. At present, public boarding-schools are very decidedly the fashion. The great principle that underlies them is the spirit of liberty and responsibility. The former is the inheritance of bygone generations; accompanied by license, it was unfortunately only too characteristic of the earlier English schools. Anything, it was thought, and rightly, was better than espionage; and so the boys were drilled and flogged and otherwise left to themselves. A certain rude freedom was the result for the majority, a magnificent sense of duty for the higher few, and, alas! too much shipwreck for the weak of the flock. Espionage is kept at bay as much as ever (happily), but indifference has in the rulers of these great institutions been succeeded by vigilance. The heart of boyhood does not require much assistance to beat true; it requires to be trusted and trustworthiness is the result. "Let us obey our rulers," says the "Carmen Etonense,” the favorite Eton ditty, "provided only that they season laws with liberty and wed liberty to law. So may our liberty, unshackled by law, love stable principles and stand in the security of obedience." "Obsequamur regibus, "Lege sic solutior Leges amet certas; A. C. BENSON. NEEDED REFORM IN NATURALIZATION. FOR the last twenty years the restriction of immigration to the United States has been a topic of constantly increasing interest. Since the act of March 3, 1875, which prohibited the admission of convicts and of women imported for purposes of prostitution, four Federal statutes have been adopted with a view to the exclusion of aliens other than Chinese, who have been shut out as a race. These four enactments, which have been made in the last decade, relate to the repulsion of idiots, persons diseased or insane, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, polygamists, convicts, and contract laborers. Nevertheless, the tide of immigration still rises. The annual number of immigrants is now about half a million. It was stated in the press that on Thursday, the 7th of April last, there were landed at Ellis Island five thousand four hundred and twenty-four immigrants the largest number, with one exception, when steamers were kept back for several days by a fog, ever received at the port of New York in a single day.' Nearly all the countries of continental Europe are said to have been represented, though the number of Italians, of whom there were upwards of fourteen hundred, was more than double that of any other nationality. Scandinavia contributed six hundred, Germany five hundred, while Poles, Slavs, Hungarians, French, and Dutch chiefly made up the remainder. Only sixty out of the grand aggregate possessed more than a hundred dollars; a somewhat larger number brought more than ten dollars, but the majority had five dollars or less. "Thursday's product," says the reporter, "it was explained to me, was unusually poverty-stricken, and was composed of wretched specimens of humanity." It is not my purpose to discuss the subject of immigration or to make suggestions as to its further restriction or regulation. I am inclined to think that we should endeavor to devise means for the just application and enforcement of the restrictions already existing, rather than try a radical departure from our traditional policy. But, however this may be, there is another and kindred problem that merits. This number was exceeded on April 21. our immediate and patriotic consideration. I refer to the problem of naturalization. It has been found by a committee of the House of Representatives that more than twenty per cent of our immigrants may be classed as undesirable. The only specific exclusion from citizenship of the United States is that of the Chinese. All other aliens who come to our shores are regarded as candidates for that high political privilege, and those who earliest acquire it are those in whose hands it becomes a mockery. The ignorant, debased, and vicious, lamentably destitute of political ideas and of moral perceptions, may be said to form the imminent political element among the immigrants. In order that they may deliver their purchased suffrages to corrupt political "workers," our courts are degraded, fraud and perjury are flagrantly practised, and the process of naturalization is turned into a farce. We now stand at the threshold of a national election, involving among its grave issues the succession to the presidential officean office in many respects more powerful than that of king or emperor. It is within the range of possibility that under our naturalization laws as they are now administered, some of the immigrants who landed at Ellis Island on the 7th of April may cast the deciding vote. may not be probable, yet it is demonstrably possible. This In twenty-seven of our States citizenship is a necessary prerequisite of the exercise of the elective franchise. Among the twenty-seven are California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island. These States are not classed together as all "doubtful" or as "pivotal," but they all contain a large foreign-born element, and they are specially interesting either because of the size or the uncertainty of their electoral vote. In all our States a term of residence ranging from three months to two years is prescribed as a condition of voting; but this requirement is constantly evaded in our large cities, and it offers little or no obstruction to the abuse of the process of naturalization. Of all the safeguards of the suffrage, that of citizenship of the United States should be the most efficient, just as it is, or ought to be, the most sacred. In reality there is no safeguard at the present moment more abused and discredited. In order that an alien may be admitted to citizenship of the United States, it is required: (1) That he shall, at least two years prior to his admission, declare on oath before a State or Federal court of competent jurisdiction that it is his bona-fide intention to become a citizen of the United States, and to renounce all foreign allegiance; (2) that he shall, |