administration least of democratic uniformity and most of the aristocracy of educational experts.

With all our enormous expenditure on higher education, we can never make a creative genius of one into whom God had not breathed the breath of life before he came to college. We can, however, provide a type of teachers, and a method of teaching, which shall help to discover talent where it is latent, and at least not stifle its development and expression. The elective system is a great step in that direction, the longest step mere organization can take. That is a step State and endowed institutions can take with equal pace. Other steps are equally important: teachers selected on a dozen, instead of one or two, considerations, supported generously, left comparatively free to accomplish results in their own way, and esteemed for the quality of their influence even more than for the quantity of their performance; concentration in single institutions of departments strong out of all proportion to the strength of other departments, so that students will select their institution for the department and the men they want to study under, instead of for its general name and fame; courses of study which reward special excellence by closer intimacy with the greatest teachers, and win the best men who are now drifting into law for the noble cause of creative and constructive scholarship. These steps are essential to the highest educational achievement; and they are more likely to be taken by endowed than by State universities.

These great endowed universities and colleges, though not called State institutions by name, are in reality vital parts of the public-school system. They were founded under State charters, fostered in early days by State aid, and by exemption from taxation continue to owe a third or more of the income from their productive funds to State support. The fact that in our older States we have learned to value permanent and exclusive expert control above partial and temporary official interference does not render institutions like Harvard and Yale less public in their character, but rather makes them the more noble and fitting crown of the entire public-school system.

In this dry and dreary discussion of details, I have tried to indicate the more important points on which this system must be judged. What the elements of failure and what the elements of triumph are, I have endeavored to make clear. In conclusion, it may be well to group these elements together into two contrasted pictures.

A system which sets children formal tasks before they have developed substantial interests; which treats them all as units in a mass to be put

through the same course in the same time, in the same way; which stretches a few formal subjects, taught exclusively from single text-books, over the whole elementary period; which makes the recitation chiefly an affair of memory, and the examination simply a larger recitation with more flurry and worry; which switches students on to one track or another for life before they have discovered their natural destination; which makes the cast-iron course the main thing, and subjects and children alike incidental thereto; which is subjected to no rigid requirements from above, but is content to accept whatever product is left over from athletic and social distractions; which selects teachers wholly on technical grounds, and measures their worth by quantitative standards only; which counts language synonymous with letters, acquisition the equivalent of insight, and science a satisfactory substitute for art; which drives the boys from the dulness of the elementary-school routine into premature work, the secondary-school scholars into offices to relieve the monotony of the course into which they have drifted, and the brightest college graduates into law or business as a welcome escape from the wholesale murder of literature in the name of philology of which they have long since grown weary-that system in each and every part is a dismal failure, which it is our duty to expose, condemn, and redeem.

On the other hand, a system which reveals to the kindergarten child the beauty and joy of the world's treasure-house before it puts the cold, iron keys in his hand; which, when it must train him to acquire and handle these keys, still lets him use them to unlock the myths, legends, and stories of man's great visions and deeds, the marvels and mysteries of rock and soil, plant and animal, sea and star; which is ever on the watch for the bent of each individual mind, and eager to give it free play; which, nevertheless, rigidly requires the task freely chosen to be done as the individual's best, and to be measured by absolute standards; which secures strong men and highly trained women as teachers, and brings them close to all students, and intimately near to the chosen few who are able to appreciate them; which goes behind the forms of words to the meaning of great works of art, and grasps details in their larger signification; and which wins to the lifelong service of pure truth, beauty, and goodness the choice youth in each undergraduate class that system is a magnificent triumph, a triumph the first fruits of which we even now can enjoy, for the sake of which we are all called to labor, and the assurance of which is the best heritage we can hope to hand down to our children. WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE.

THE AMERICANIZATION OF ENGLAND.

A DECADE ago much concern was displayed by numerous worthy persons in this country over what was then designated Anglomania. The complaint, however, together with its cause, has largely disappeared. The force of British example as affecting American manners and customs is far less noticeable than it was even half a dozen years since; but Britons are becoming exercised over a manifestation among themselves which might be designated Yankomania. The Yankees, as our British cousins like to call us, have turned the tables completely, and are to-day exerting a greater influence on English life than ever the English did on American ideals and habits.

Throughout Great Britain one hears "the American question" discussed as a topic of never-ending interest. Sometimes it is referred to as the American invasion." But whatever the terms employed, the essential fact, and one that is every day more and more widely recognized, is that the United States is coming to exert the most profound influence on the commercial, social, and political life of the mother country. In a word, Great Britain is becoming Americanized.

This movement, which is becoming so widespread in its effects, had its inception about five years ago, and has had its principal growth within the last three years, i.e., since the beginning of the Spanish-American war. It began as a trade invasion which rapidly grew into a trade conquest, until to-day the youngest manufacturing nation of the world in many lines of production dominates the markets of the oldest and strongest of all commercial powers. The transformation has been so surprising, such a sudden reversal of the state of affairs hitherto prevailing, that on neither side of the Atlantic is its extent fully appreciated.

The newspaper-reading public of the United States has been informed from time to time within the last three years of the sales of American locomotives to British railways and of the awarding of contracts for electrical construction work to American firms. These commercial successes are merely straws which indicate how strongly the trade wind sets across the Atlantic from west to east at the present time. Of the great ma

jority of incidents that go to make up the sum total of our industrial successes abroad, the record is known to those only who study the Government trade reports.

One consequence of our inroads upon the British market, however, is that thousands of Americans, representing hundreds of lines of commercial production, are doing a thriving business in London and the other principal cities of John Bull's domain. When one adds to these the thousands some two hundred thousand altogether who yearly throng across the Atlantic on pleasure quests, and fill the London hotels to overflowing, it is not surprising that the inevitable contact between the two nationalities is resulting in the acquirement by the Englishman of some of the characteristics of his Yankee cousin.

Nevertheless, the extent to which this process has advanced, as it reveals itself to observation in every part of Great Britain, is surprising. The reversal of opinion has been so sudden that it has carried the British public to much greater lengths than it would have done had it proceeded more slowly. After holding for generations to the belief that no mechanical good could come from America, the solid British householder is insistent in his demand for American machine-made products. After regarding for years with contemptuous tolerance, not unmixed with dislike, the manifestations of American character as revealed by the ubiquitous tourist, he has discovered that Jonathan is a thoroughly likable fellow after all, and that the oddities of conduct in which he occasionally indulges are due in great measure to his peculiar ideas of humor, which are very difficult to understand. Moreover, he has found that some of the devices originated in America for the purpose of promoting the comfort and convenience of life are well worth looking into, and in many cases even worth adopting. Thus, by letting down the barriers of frigid indifference which have hitherto kept him from being influenced by any of the many peoples with whom he has been brought in touch, the Briton has laid himself open to the moulding influence of his kinsman across seas. And while the batch of British dough will stand a considerable amount of leaven, there is no doubt that it is being materially modified by this all-pervading American influence.

The change in the attitude of Englishmen as a whole toward Americans is well portrayed by the familiar lines from Pope's "Essay on Man." From hatred, or at least hearty dislike, they have passed through the stages of endurance and pity, and are quite ready to embrace their cousin. from the States.

To convince himself of this, the American has only to drive from the

Bank to Piccadilly Circus through the Strand and Pall Mall atop a London 'bus. He will view "American" tailor shops, "American" tobacconists, "American" shoe stores, "American" bars and restaurants by the score, and even "American" patent medicines and soda-fountains. In many places he will find a more specific welcome extended to him in the signs before the shops, such as "Outfitters to American tourists" and "American patronage solicited." If he looks through a newspaper he will not only observe the effect that American typesetting and stereotyping machinery have exerted on its appearance, but he will find also that a great deal of American news in addition to accounts of lynchings, swindles, and atrocious crimes - formerly the only trans-Atlantic events chronicled by the London prints is being published. In the restaurants he will find American dishes; on the book-stalls he will see American books; and everywhere he will hear characteristic American expressions.

Now if all this were done merely to please their Yankee visitors or to catch Yankee dollars it might be regarded as a polite or a crafty manifestation on the part of the British. It becomes significant when one reflects that it is intended to appeal not only to the transient visitor but also to the permanent native. One does not find many citizens of the Republic in the shops that vaunt their new-found Americanism and advertise American wares so prominently. One may find plenty of Britons there, however; and the shopkeepers themselves testify that they have been able to find no more effective advertisement to appeal to their British customers than that afforded by American goods. Having tasted the fruit that he had been warned was evil, and having found it pleasing, the English consumer, apparently, is eager for more. So much is this the case that, in instances where they know that their deception is not likely to be detected, dealers do not hesitate to pass off as of American make goods that were actually turned out within sight of St. Paul's.

Some amusing incidents have occurred of this preference for American manufactures. Sewing machines of American patent are in use all over the United Kingdom, and every large company has its representatives in the different cities. In order to supply the British trade more readily, and also, as they thought, to score a point in their favor by appealing to British national pride, the representatives of one of the companies erected shops in Scotland and made arrangements to produce machines on a large scale with British workmen and under a British. To their surprise, however, they found that prospective buyers

name.