the century. Mr. Gladstone, for good or for evil, is entrusted with supreme authority in the matter of Liberal party politics. What Mr. Gladstone has, therefore, to do is, in the language of whist, to "play to the score." His main preoccupation at this moment ought to be, not brooding over the details of the measure to which he and Mr. Morley have already devoted six years' hard thinking, but contriving how to utilize the brief span of this Parliament's existence in order to have the chance next year of really driving his Bill through the resistance of the House of Lords.

To be able to pass Home Rule, Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues must win the next General Election. If they have genuinely found salvation in this respect, they are not prevented by any lack of Parliamentary time from giving the necessary outward and visible signs of their inward and spiritual grace. They can put the entire Newcastle Programme into the Queen's Speech; they can pass a "big" Budget; they can include payment of members and the Labour Department in the Civil Service Estimates; they can decree an eighthour day and a moral minimum wage for all public servants; they can pay the jurymen, elevate the school-teacher, protect the seaman and the docker, humanize the workhouse and prison, and comfort the declining years of the aged working man and working woman—all without taking up a fragment of the legislative time of the House of Commons.

There remains the other hypothesis, namely, that Mr. Gladstone and his Cabinet do not share the aspirations of the great mass of wage-earners. If the present Liberal leaders are not in earnest about social reforms on Collectivist principles, it is high time that the working man took the matter into his own hand.

D

DISCUSSIONS IN THE REICHSTAG.

PROTEUS.

Die Nation, Berlin. February 11.

URING the past week the time of the Reichstag was occupied by a very peculiar interlude. When the Social-Democrats entered on the discussion of the state of privation in which the working classes were plunged, Deputy Bachern challenged them to formulate the conditions of social life in the future Socialistic state as they pictured them to themselves. The result might have been foreseen. Directly one begins to dream of a possible condition in which the gratification of his desires is to be secured by a "systematic organization of productive effort" he is very near the realization of the truth, that the independence of the individual must be thoroughly subordinated to the demands of the organization. The individual must perform whatever is required of him, and if he decline to perform the allotted task he will at once acquire painful experience of the application of the fundamental principle of the new social order,-" He who will not work neither shall he eat." Hitherto the tendency of social evolution has been toward the greater freedom of the individual to make the most of his own powers. Now this individual freedom is to be suppressed for the collective weal. The recklessness of this conception was as mercilessly exposed in the discussion as were the claims of the Social-Democrats to be the only scientific interpreters of history. Every attempt to ascribe the evolution of humanity to scientific laws, leads directly to the conviction that all progress is reached by slow, steady gradations. In the familiar proverb, that "Rome was not built in a day,” there is more practical wisdom than in the collective writings of the Social-Democrats; and if Börne once complained that the world-spirit had so much time and we so little, he gave expression to a sentiment that will hold good for all time. Even if the goal of Social-Democracy were as desirable as it is in truth objectionable it would be childish to suppose that the existing structure of society could be pulled down on Thursday and the temple of the new social order reared in its place on Fri

day. The highest principle of practical political activity consists in grappling only with such problems as admit of an immediate solution.

Still the Social-Democratic party is not the only one deserving of sharp criticism. The agrarian party is animated by equally visionary ideas. The Christian-Socialist party is open to the same charge. In vain we ask the bimetallists what, in their view, are the measures for immediate adoption. Attainable ends in politics are lost sight of while Utopian fantasies are zealously pursued.

Cheating, usury, unchastity, the exploitation of man by man, shall be entirely extirpated. Local provision shall be made for all those incapable of work; administrative methods are laid down glibly in the general assembly, and their practical application entrusted to a commission. Here first the difficulties are experienced. It is found hardly possible to prescribe a single rule of action which is not liable to abuse, and when at length a few rules are formulated in furtherance of such humane designs, it is soon seen that they are of little practical benefit. All the commissions appointed by the Reichstag for the accomplishment of prescribed aims, have found themselves involved in a hopeless struggle with excrescences which debarred them from getting at the sound flesh. The diminution in the appointment of such commissions of late is practical evidence of the growing recognition of their inutility.

SOCIOLOGICAL.

SANITATION IN RELATION TO THE POOR. WILLIAM H. WELCH, M.D.

THE

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in
Charities Review, New York, February.

HE sanitary condition of the poor is a matter which concerns, not the poor alone, but the whole community. There is abundant evidence to show that the health of a city is influenced in a large measure by the condition of the abodes, the habits, and surroundings of the poor.

The two circumstances which have had the most potent influence in the development of modern sanitary science, have been the occurrence of great epidemic diseases, especially of cholera, and also, in this country, of yellow fever, and the belief in the dependence of those diseases, usually called zymotic or infectious, upon filth.

If the public cannot be awakened in any other way to the correction of glaring sanitary defects than by an outbreak of cholera, then such a visitation is not an unmixed evil, for in a few years more lives will probably be saved by the removal of well-known causes of preventable disease than are destroyed by the cholera, and the chances of a renewal of the epidemic will be lessened if not wholly abolished.

It is fortunate that public sanitary measures have been controlled so largely by the belief that most infectious diseases depend upon filth. In this belief the main purpose of public sanitary efforts has been to render pure the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the soil on which we live. We now know that these diseases are not generated by filth in so direct a manner as was once supposed. We may drink contaminated water, breathe impure air, and live on ‘a polluted soil, without getting typhoid or typhus fever, or diphtheria, or scarlet fever, or other infectious disease. These influences may be, and doubtless are, prejudicial to health, but unless the specific germs of disease have been introduced, they do not produce well-defined diseases.

Many of these disease-germs, however, are widely distributed, and there is good reason to believe that such unhygienic conditions as those mentioned, afford the opportunity for multiplication and for conveyance to the human body. It

is the impure condition of the air, water, food, or soil, which renders them liable to contamination by disease-germs.

There may, therefore, be serious sanitary defects without any notable influence upon health. Nevertheless these defects are a common, standing menace. The demonstration of sewagecontamination in the sources of supply of drinking-water is significant, not because the admixture with sewage is in itself dangerous, but because it indicates that the gates are open for the entrance into the water of the germs of typhoid fever or of cholera if these exist in the sewage. Ordinary prudence demands that these gates be closed. One of the most distinctive lessons of the visitations of Asiatic cholera since 1884, has been the failure of this disease to gain a foothold when introduced into cities with irreproachable water-supply and sewagedisposal.

But I do not consider it necessary to base the argument for sanitary improvements upon their demonstrable influence on public health; pure water, pure air, and clean streets are in themselves promotive of comfort and well-being.

This matter of public sanitation is one purely of municipal administration. The municipal system of American cities is admittedly vicious. Our health officers are often well aware of the vices of the system under which they are obliged to work, and I believe they will welcome any coöperation and assistance which public-spirited citizens and organizations are able to render them.

The question is not merely one as to the influence of unsanitary conditions upon the health, but upon the whole physical, moral, and mental constitution of those subjected to them. It is, of course, self-evident that insufficient and wretched food, filthy surroundings, close and impure air, and overcrowding must affect, not only the health, but also the habits and morals of those subjected to such an environment. Is any moral regeneration possible under such circumstances?

PRESENT PROSPERITY OF THE SOUTH. RICHARD H. EDMONDS.

THE

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in Manufacturers' Record Magazine, Baltimore, February. HE solid basis of Southern development evidenced by the enormous expanse of its agricultural, and coal, and manufacturing industries since the war, enabled it to pass through the Baring failure and the consequent universal stagnation in finances, and low prices for cotton and iron, better than any other section of the country, when it was confronted by a new danger. Fanaticism run mad had fathered a measure which the non-conservative members of the party in which it originated denounced as a menace to the peace of the whole country. The Force Bill became an issue in politics; and while there was a possibility of such a measure being enacted, and inevitably precipitating a perpetual race war throughout the South, a revival in business and in the investment of outside money in that section was almost hopeless. The Force Bill is now forever dead, and the South has the assurance of friendly national legislation.

The solid basis on which the agricultural, the coal, and the iron interests now rests, and the promising outlook before them are duplicated in all other branches of business in the South. Everything is on a good foundation. The whole South, enthused with the certainty of freedom from political troubles, strengthened in all its business operations by the experience of the past, with more powerful financial influences working in its favor than ever before, starts the new year with the assurance that it is entering upon a career of greater progress and prosperity than it has enjoyed for thirty years. Ten years ago the South's agricultural, manufacturing, and mining products aggregated in value about $1,200,000,000; now they are about $2,100,000,000. The increase in population during that period was only 18 to 20 per cent. Practically the same

people have doubled their railroad mileage and trebled and quádrupled the traffic; they have more than quadrupled their iron and coal production, trebled their cotton mills, added $2,000,000,000 to the assessed value of their property, doubled their banking capital, and more than doubled their manufacturing interests. This is what they have done in ten years. Those who live to see another ten-year period ended, and compare the growth of the South during that time with what has been done in the past ten years, will be astonished at the difference, so great will be the progress of the future.

With abiding faith in the truth of the statement, which the writer has so often made, that the South, taken as a whole, is the best country in the world, with the greatest possibilities of wealth, I have never doubted that the time would come when that section would be the centre of the most active industrial movements of this or any other country. That time is coming.

SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE IN AFRICA. HENRY M. STANLEY.

IN

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in
Harper's Magazine, New York, March.

N 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions, and the Government paid £20,000,000 for the liberation of one million slaves. On the 1st of August, 1834, the famous Act of Emancipation came into operation. Ten years later the abolition of the legal status of slavery in India freed 9,000,000 slaves. Then, little by little, the nations implicated in slavery gravitated to the side of the emancipators. In 1846 the Bey of Tunis, through British influence, decreed that all slaves touching his territory should become free. The French Republic in 1848 decreed by a brief Act that no more slaves should be admitted into French territory. In 1861 the Autocrat of Russia decreed the emancipation of 20,000,000 serfs. On January 1st, 1863, the Proclamation of Emancipation in the United States admitted 6,000,000 slaves to the rights of freemen. Finally, only four years ago, Brazil passed the law of abolition, and the cruel system was extinguished on the American continent.

Meantime Africa was not being neglected. Under British influence and pressure, the Zanzibar prince was enlisted on the side of the anti-slavery cause, but the objects of the treaty were evaded by the enterprising and merciless Arab slavehunters, who threatened the utter devastation of the whole Congo region.

On February 25, 1885, the Powers of Europe and America gave their cordial recognition to the Congo Free State, and sanctioned the employment of all civilized means for the preservation of order, the introduction of civilization and lawful commerce, for the guarantees of the safety of its people and efficient administration. It was markedly stipulated that the new State should watch over the preservation of the native races, suppress slavery and the slave-trade, and punish those engaged in it.

In time to come the regenerated peoples of Central Africa will point to the acts of the Berlin Conference as their charters of freedom from the civilized world, for the principles formulated during the sitting of the Congress, suggested to ambitious Powers the possibilities of immediate expansion of territory after the example of King Leopold II. The exigencies of diplomacy, even during the conference, had forced the Powers to recognize immense concessions of territory to France and Portugal.

Attention has been given of late to Morocco. This near neighbor of England is just twenty years behind Zanzibar, and it will require something more than diplomatic missions to the Court of the Sultan to suppress the Moorish slave-trade. A demonstration by England alone, without the cordial consent of the other Powers, would doubtless be regarded as a step towards annexation rather than as an expression of

British hostility to the slave-trade. But meantime the importation of Negroes from the Nigritian basin and Southwestern Soudan into the public slave-markets of Morocco will continue until, for very shame, it will irritate Europe into taking more decided steps, in the name of humanity, to force the ever-maundering authorities to decree the abolition of the slave-trade, and to carry the decree into immediate effect. The remaining portion of Africa which still fosters slavery is Tripoli.

The partition of Southwest Africa between France, Portugal, and Belgium, inspired the Germans to seek territorial posesssions in the Dark Continent, and the movement of Germany incited Great Britain to action. The vast area covering about 1,500,000 square miles between Abyssinia and the Portuguese possessions, was divided into three spheres of influence. The Germans fixed upon the southernmost, the Italians upon the most northern, the British chose the central. There was no intention to launch out into any enterprise of conquest, but each power proposed to make its title good by renting or leasing tracts within its sphere from the native chiefs, by making treaties with them for the sovereignty of their lands, in return for annual subsidies and protection from violence.

The Germans were the earliest to commence work, but the imperious and peremptory manner of their officers impelled the Arabs to drive them from the coast, and their first attempt at colonization ended disastrously. Naturally the German Government retorted with strong measures, the Arabs were crushed, and the coast-land, which the Germans proposed to lease, they now claimed as their own. This led, in 1890, to the Anglo-German Convention, by which the German frontier was drawn south of 1° S. across the Victoria Nyanza, thence east to the Indian Ocean, skirting the northern base of Kilima Njaro to Wanga, a few miles south of the port of Mombasa. The British territory extended north from Wanga on the sea as far as the mouth of the Juba river-a distance of 450 miles, thence inland as far as the Congo State. These two great divisions of Africa now converted into English and German territory, included the major part of the area wherein the slave-trade of the east-central part of the continent so long flourished. The countries ceded to the great South-African Company absorbed the rest of the slavery area.

Since the Anglo-German Convention the Germans have taken very thorough measures for the suppression of the slavetrade within their sphere of influence; and, aided by the efforts of the Congo Free State, have limited the operations of the slave-traders to that narrowing and untraveled area lying between Stanley Falls and Lake Tanganyika; this will have the effect of determining the Arabs to seek outlets eastward through British East Africa which, in its present state, is most backward in fulfilling the object of united Europe. Were it not for the condition that British East Africa is in to-day we would say, that the slave-trade in Eastern Africa was completely extinguished. The one remedy for this present disgraceful condition is to connect the Victoria Lake by railway with the Indian Ocean. That narrow iron track will command effectively 150,000 square miles of British territory.

G

GAMBLING.

THE REVEREND J. W. RIDDle.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in

The American Journal of Politics, New York, February. AMBLING-HOUSES exist in large numbers in every city and important community, and, although proscribed, by law, do a thriving business, often under protection of the very civil officials who are sworn to see that the laws for the suppression of vice and crime are properly executed.

But it is not only in such places that gambling is carried on and that fortunes and characters are wrecked. A vast amount of such disgraceful business is carried on every day in open

daylight under the honorable guise of commerce and trade. Take, for example, the Oil-Exchange in this city (Pittsburgh). Ostensibly this is a commercial institution with civil charter, organized for the purpose of furnishing a ready and exclusive market for the buying and selling of petroleum; and if you go there any day during business hours you will see an excited and boisterous company of men shouting and gesticulating as if the oil interest were the only important commercial interest in the country, and as if nearly all the oil to be had was located in the Pittsburgh market. The daily record of sales and exchanges on the Secretary's books amounts to hundreds or thousands of barrels ; and yet, in all probability, literally not a gallon of oil has been bought or sold. Nearly all that the men have been doing was simply gambling or betting on the fluctuation of prices in the oil-market; though of course couching their bets in commercial terms, and by this means giving their operations a business guise. The bulls and bears in this disgraceful proceeding are the members of the exchange. Besides these there is a class called "lambs," outsiders, who generally allow themselves to be fleeced.

We have a class of men in the community calling themselves "brokers" who are nothing more than gamblers and gamblingden proprietors. Their places of business are called "bucketshops."

All such places, we have no hesitation in saying, ought to be suppressed by law. A Bill is now pending before Congress,* which we hope may be carried, making illegal so-called "speculation" in stocks, grain, oil, etc., or buying on "futures" or "options," which is calculated, not only to unsettle trade and interfere with commerce, but to injure personal and business honesty, and corrupt the public morals.

Could all the fortunes wrecked in a single year through this one means of gambling alone be accurately calculated, the figures no doubt would reach far into hundreds of millions of dollars. Appalling, however, as is this evil result, the wrecking of fortunes is only as a drop in the bucket compared with the tremendous wrecking of honor and demoralization of manhood which follows.

EDUCATION, LITERATURE, ART.

PHASES OF EDUCATION.

THE NEED OF UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES.

THE

HE first Convocation of the University of Chicago was held on the second of January, on which occasion an oration was delivered by Professor von Holst, of that institution.

This oration appears in the February Educational Review. In order to prevent disaster falling upon the people of the United States from the portentous clouds hovering over the future, it is necessary, according to the Professor, that the intellectual and moral life of our people should attain the very highest standard-the very highest attainable. In regard to one of the principal agencies, however, for the raising of the intellectual and moral standard, the United States, declares Mr. von Holst, "is still lagging behind several of the leading nations of Europe."

"There is in the United States, as yet, not a single university in the sense attached to this word by Europeans. All the American institutions bearing this name are either compounds of college and university-the university, as an aftergrowth, figuring still to some extent as a kind of annex or excrescence of the college,or hybrids of college and university, or, finally, a torso of a university. An institution wholly detached from the school-work done by colleges, and containing all the four faculties connected to a Universitas literarum, does not exist."

The idea that the United States cannot afford to have such

*This Bill has been "killed" in the House of Representatives.— EDITOR THE LITERARY DIGEST.

institutions is regarded as an absurdity. Equally absurd, it is claimed, is the position that there is no need of universities in this "plain, democratic" country. To the question, What constitutes a university? we have this answer:

The imparting of certain professional knowledge is by no means the only task of a university. In university teaching the How is of as much importance as the What, and in some essential respects much more important than the How Much. A university which merely turns out efficient professionals has only done onethird of its task. If, besides, a fair percentage of them has been made fit to become good, independent scholars, half of its legitimate work has been done, but no more. Only if the whole intellectual and moral constitution of all has received for life the imprint of a true university education has it accomplished what it must conscientiously and with set purpose strive for."

On this oration the Review makes some editorial comments. It thinks that the frank statement of the Professor will serve as a useful offset to the tabulated statements of many score "universities" that appear from time to time in official reports and in the press.

"Yet it may truly be said that we have universities. Harvard has all the four traditional faculties. Columbia has three of them and three others-too many perhaps. Johns Hopkins has one, and the beginnings of a second. Chicago itself has two.

Perhaps Professor von Holst, would call Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Chicago 'torsos of universities,' and Harvard's university department an 'aftergrowth, figuring still to some extent as a kind of annex or excrescence of the college.' From a German point of view he may be right. But it must not be too hastily assumed that the German point of view is the only correct one. Theorists of a certain impracticable sort insist upon calling the American college, even in its higher type, a gymnasium, but there is absolutely no ground for the assertion. Plenty of work that in Germany is relegated to the university is done in the American college. The truth is that the German educational organization is radically different from ours, and, while we have learned, and are learning, much from European experience, our own system is a highly efficient and rapidly improving one. With us the elementary school, the high school, and the college divide among them the work of the gymnasium; the college and the university, again, divide the work of the German university. Our system is the more mobile, the more diversified, and the better adapted to our civilization. The conclusion is, then, that we are doing genuine university work in America, even though the form of its organization may not be familiar to the European eye."

Entirely opposite views of the need of universities, and of the ideal university, are held by Mr. John A. Hobson, who, in the February Contemporary Review, discusses

THE ACADEMIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION.

Without attempting to define closely the word "academic," Mr. Hobson gives these indications of what he means by "the academic spirit."

Excess of solitude is one merit of the academic life. One who draws largely upon books or leads a life of contemplation, must be much alone, with the result that what he gains in direct selfcultivation he loses in social experience. It is an endeavor to live too much alone, and to substitute an artificial society of books for the society of live men and women. I believe the time will come when we shall have advanced far enough in clear notions of education to admit that, taking knowledge as a whole, more can be learned from the smallest person alive than from the greatest dead; that, save within a certain confined region of arts, books do not possess a life which can, for real importance in education, compare with that of the men and women who live around us. The same vulgar protestantism which narrowed religion into the worship of one book, has narrowed education into the worship of many books. Academic authority in colleges and schools alike is often loud with its mouth in repudiation of this ritualistic view of knowledge and education; in its heart, and in its practice, it clings tenaciously to the superstition. A saner, healthier age than ours will value books more lightly, and, so doing, will get more worth out of them than we do.

"If we turn to books themselves we find that the best and greatest have not come from those who have been great readers, but rather from those who have lived and loved and fought. Such works as those of Homer, Shakespeare, Fielding, Scott, Goethe, Hugo, were not written in the atmosphere of the study."

This academic spirit, according to Mr. Hobson, makes men timid and pusillanimous and superstitious.

Studies liable to yield practical applications are eschewed. Prig, pedant, and specialist have erected an orthodox system of education based on a false and untested scale of values. English literature receives no recognition in Oxford and Cambridge. It is this preference for devitalized theories which has led to the saying that German philosophers when they die go to Oxford."

Mr. Hobson then gives in conclusion his ideal of a university:

"The ideal which the true democratic university must set before it is not so much the labor of research, the selection and preparation of students who shall devote their lives to some special branch of learning, though these functions have their importance. It is the citizen-student, man and woman, that must be the chief care of the democratic university-men and women who, in becoming students, shall not relinquish the workshop, the duties of the home, the duties of citizenship, but shall continue to be at one time student, citizen, worker, and man. The academic mind does not conceive this to be possible; the student, it imagines, must devote the whole or some carefully fenced-off years of his life to study alone. It is the fallacy, the danger, the futility of this view which I am anxious here to enforce. The academic mind can never be brought to bend to methods of education available to the workman and the citizen. The elasticity, the spirit of thoughtful yet bold experiment, required for educating heterogeneous masses of workers, is repugnant to the prim conception of academic order.

On the other hand, the true democratic education conceives the best intellectual life to be impossible apart from the working human life. It is one function of the human life bearing a vital relation to the other functions, and not to be separated from them. The fallacy of supposing that the rights and duties of studentship can be left to a few-the academic aristocracy-is precisely analogous to the fallacy that the rights and duties of citizenship can be left to the few-the political aristocracy. History has shown the one to be false; it will show the other to be false.

The true ideal university shall make it possible and easy for every man and woman in this metropolis to be a student without ceasing to be a worker and a private citizen. The attainment of this ideal one cannot entrust to an intellectual oligarchy uncontrolled and irresponsible."

It would seem as though Mr. Hobson's notion of a democratic university is gaining ground in France, to judge from a Paris letter to The Nation, of New York, in its issue of February 9.

The correspondent remarks that there has lately been published in New York and London a book which, under the title A French Eton,” is a reprint of Matthew Arnold's studies on education in France during the Second Empire. It is noted that there have been marked changes in secondary education in France since Arnold wrote. The changes which have been made, and the result of these changes, are thus stated:

"The dead languages, having no longer any practical interest, the time devoted to them is comparatively diminished, and such branches of the study as cannot be shown to be helpful to immediate educational results have been pruned away. In the

It

case of modern languages, the study of them is, no doubt, an excellent thing, whatever point of view be taken; but the vogue they have obtained is in large part an after effect of the war of 1870. If any proof is needed of this statement, it will be found in the fact that German is the modern language most studied. The same utilitarian tendency appears in the gradual introduction of scientific studies of all kinds into the curriculum of letters. would seem as if the constant aim were to give the pupils notions and smatterings of everything which may be useful to them in life, and to enable them to leave the public schools furnished with an encyclopædic baggage, and lacking nothing except the possession of the special knowledge needful to their individual professions and trades. It is for this reason that lectures on the history of language, philology, comparative grammar, and physiology are given to them-in fine, lectures on all subjeets which in reality belong far more to university than to school education."

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOLS.

Italy is trying to solve education problems, as appears by an article in the January number of the Rassegna Nazionale, of Florence. The peninsula, we are told, has too many so-called universities, and instruction in them is of an imperfect kind. One of these problems, however, is the same as that which has caused much discussion in the United States.

In these schools, it is stated, the law obliges the master to

give religious instruction to those pupils whose parents or guardians desire it. The law also provides in what way this instruction shall be given. "On a fixed day in each week the master must read to the scholars the catechism of the diocese, without comment or explanation." The absurdity of this method of imparting religious instruction is thus set forth by Mr. Edoardo Arbib, a Deputy in the Italian Parliament:

In general, the religious instruction required by the law is given by a layman who, in ninety cases out of a hundred is a freethinker and boasts of it. To pretend that such a man can inspire a faith which he has not himself, that he can speak with conviction of a God in Whom he does not believe, that he can persuade his pupils of the truth of a future life which, in his opinion, is a fable, surely such a pretense is senseless folly. There is no way, then, to bring religious instruction into the schools, save by bringing in the priest, and the priests, as every one knows, do not love the kingdom of Italy."

In the most advanced of the South American republics, Chili, various problems of education are studied with care, as appears by the Anales de la Universidad for 1892, published at Santiago, The University which superintends the entire educational system of the country, has fixed a high standard for its work, which is thus stated:

"The science of education is the study of all those external 'influences, whether natural or social, industrial or collective, which, either spontaneously or systematically, form the conduct, the habits, the judgment, the taste, the aptitudes of any person whatever."

It was first after all these ideas had come into organic union in Ibsen's brain, that he invented 'la trame '-'the story'-which gave them dramatic form.'

A closer analysis of the work brings the reviewer to make the following observations:

"Solness is the main person in the drama, and is forcibly drawn. His personality impresses itself at once. In the first act we see him robust, his curly hair is cut short, his mustache is dark and so are his heavy eyebrows. His voice sounds with authority, and he speaks with decision. His greatness is of a brutal order, and his language is at times vulgar.'

But Solness cannot be understood except in the light of Hilde, says Vald. Vedel.

"She is the young girl from Lysanger, who fantastically worships him, and whom he takes into his life. He does that because he is tired and feels himself growing old, needing some new life for support. He fears the younger generation, which demands of him Give room! Give room! That fear makes him nervous, irritable, suspicious, and mean. He fears to grow insane. It is under such a spell of hardness of heart that he keeps the young talent of Ragnar Brovik down by acting upon his sweetheart through 'Suggestion.' 'I can do nothing else,' he says; 'if the young ones get up there is an end to Solness.'

Vald. Vedel says of Hilde: "She is one of Ibsen's most beau

'Very stirring is the conversation in the beginning of the second act between Solness and his wife. The two old people have never been united; their life is empty and childless. Never a ray of sunshine; not even a stray light. Here is no house, Solness says, and both stare hopelessly into the future. It is under such conditions that Hilde appears and 'carries him off.' 'You are the one I have wanted,' Solness says. She is the youth which will give to him gladness and joy, and quiet the sickly conscience.' She saw him ten years before when he put the finishing touch to the church tower in Lysanger, standing uppermost upon the scaffold, her building-master.' Since that time the remembrance of him has ruled her, and finally driven her to seek him. Her power over him he expresses by saying, 'I do not think there is a corner anywhere in me safe from you.'

In Danskeren, Vejen, February, Frederick Jungersen gives a review of this work largely from a religious point of view. He begins thus:

"Who is this Building-Master? What does he build? One will at once recognize the spirit which rules this man by his own words to God, uttered, when he stood uppermost on the finished tower of the church in Lysanger: Hear now, Thou mighty One! henceforth I will be a free master on my field, as Thou art on Thine. I will build Thee no more churches, I will build houses for men alone!' Now, what is this but the Spirit of the Times? Solness is the builder of freethinking,' and he is in league with all the 'free spirits' of the day."

This is the significance of this new work: it shows us what such a spirit leads to. The drama shows to what degree of unfreedom' such a man comes; how tyrannical, how cruel he turns. He is in constant dread to lose his powerful position; he fears retaliation from fate, because he has broken with the Almighty. And after all he ends not by build

ing houses for men only,' he ends by building castles forlust."

From this review we may learn something about Ibsen's extraordinary popularity, when we are told that

Simultaneously with the Norwegian original, this new work of Ibsen is issued in English, German, and French translations, authorized by the author, and that translations are being prepared in Russian, Dutch, Hungarian, Czecic, and Polish.”

Svansk Tidskrift, Upsala, Tjugonde Häftet, has two articles on Ibsen and his latest works.

The article on "Hedda Gabler," the editor of the Magazine has placed before the one on Building-Master Solness," because, as he says,—