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house forms the common ground" where the people meet for this work. This would seem to offer an exceptional opportunity for the school to utilize the great resources of the university in the solution of its problems, the one grave danger being that, through lack of proper organization and mutual appreciation, the work of the two great forces which lie at the two extremes of an educational system may not find a "common ground" of coöperation in the great work of human development.

The extension work of the University of Wisconsin is not free, as a fee of fifty cents is charged for each assignment or lesson, including the correction of papers and lectures by the field instructor if there be one. But in case of most employees an entire course does not cost over $20, and it often enables them to fill more important positions and to secure gratifying increases of salary. These fees do not nearly cover the expense of the service rendered, and the State has been obliged to make liberal appropriations to carry on the work. This it is doing willingly, showing that the work is appreciated and that it is meeting with the Commonwealth's approval. An interesting article on this extension work is to be found in the Review of Reviews for April.

A University Exposition.

The University of Wisconsin recently held an exposition which probably did more toward bringing about a better understanding and appreciation of each other's work on the part of its various departments than any previous efforts in this direction. It also set before the public in a concrete and appreciable form some of the important work of this great university. Altogether the exposition-a miniature world's fair of learning "-the idea of which was conceived by one of its graduate students, Mr. Carl Beck, has undoubtedly put this institution in the position of becoming an even more efficient servant of the public, great as its service in the past has been.

The exposition, as described in the World's Work for August, was pronounced "An enthusiastic success." Thousands of people attended and learned much of the wonders

of modern science from the undergraduates who demonstrated and explained the 55 exhibits they had prepared. In the booth of hydraulic engineers a miniature pump took water from a reservoir and forced it through pipes, metres, and mill-wheels. The structural engineering department and the railroad engineering department each had maps and plans and blue-print tracings, as well as profiles and models. In the mechanical engineering exhibit was a model of the battleship "Maine," illustrating the method by which it was raised. Materials used in roads and pavements were also on display. At the electrical engineering exhibit a complete wireless station sent messages for the crowd. Powerful microscopes revealed the otherwise unseen workings of plant and animal cells. In the medical school one might see his pulse actually draw a wavy line on a lamp-blacked cylinder or models illustrating the marvellous construction of the eye and ear. In the bacteriological department were cultures and plates illustrating the bacteria responsible for various diseases. A booth was devoted to zoology; another to forest products and forest preservation; others to agricultural products, from farm animals and their diseases to whole corn-stalks and sprouting seeds. Soils and fertilizer tests were exhibited, and a model farm-house, with complete modern plumbing and a power plant to run both the washing-machine and the churns, demonstrated that farming need not be all drudgery for either men or women. Hebrew, the classics, and German were represented by books, charts, and manuscripts that were explained by boys dressed in Oriental and girls dressed in German, costume. As the editor says, “Here is a hint to those colleges that lack a hold on the large public about them, to make their case so plain and so picturesque that no one can be indifferent or doubtful of their benefits."

The Study of the Classics.

There is such a strong demand for the kind of education that best fits for vocational activity that it is well, once in a while, to raise the question whether there will not be a serious loss to human development if we entirely lose the intellectual satisfactions, the temper and quality of mind,

fostered by the culture of the older civilizations. The eminent Greek scholar, Doctor Gilbert Murray, who has come to this country from Oxford University, where he is Regius Professor of Greek, to present the advantages of the study of that language, does this so admirably that some of his words on the subject are here repeated. "I am not in favor," says Doctor Murray, "of the old method of compulsory classical education. It seems to me that when formerly everybody had to take Greek and Latin the instructors did not try to give the courses any real value or to stimulate any desire for further study on the part of the student. But now that they are no longer compulsory in most institutions, the pressure of other studies upon the classics has resulted slowly but surely in a vast improvement in the methods of teaching them. More effort is now being made to make them interesting and vital, and for this improved state of affairs they are indebted to this change from compulsory to optional study.

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On the other hand, I feel confident that classical culture is a very valuable and most important part of the curriculum, and one that must not be allowed to die out, and I quite expect a reaction in favor of it; indeed, I think it should be made a broader and more humane study than heretofore-that emphasis should be laid upon the literature, history, and philosophy of Greek and Latin. I feel, for example, that the special value of a study of classical Greek is this: that one gets, in small compass, the beginnings of almost every important human activity. Really to understand Greek, one has to study not only the language-which happens to be a remarkably fine one-but also the beginnings of democracy and political theory, of astronomy, science, mathematics, the fundamentals of philosophy, and the first elements of poetry and art as they are generally understood by our Western civilization. world has differentiated and split up in a hundred ways in modern times, while in Greek one gets all the main spiritual forces working together; so that if one begins by understanding classical Greek one has, as it were, a clue to almost every great movement of thought that has taken place since. Of course there is also a clue to the bad movements as well as to the good."

The

The "Amherst Idea."

The class of 1885 of Amherst College recently drew up an address to the trustees of that institution in which they advocated the abandonment of the scientific course, the abolition of the B. S. degree, and the relinquishing of all efforts to set young men forward toward particular avocations, except as liberal culture may lay the broad foundations for public leadership, and especially that their alma mater should lay all possible stress upon the classics. The advocacy of a complete return to the days of classic culture has since then come to be known as the "Amherst Idea."

In commenting upon it in his annual report, President Thomas, of Middlebury College, says, "The Amherst petitioners are correct in their anticipation of a smaller college as the result of the enactment of their plan. They propose to attract a few select men from a wide region. They forfeit all claim to serve a particular community, like a State, or a region of country. The proposition is most undemocratic. The great literatures of the past are of incomparable value in the training of those who have the soul for them, and under the free elective system they are exerting their enlarging influence upon as many American youths to-day as at any time in the past. But to force the entire student body of a New England college, many of whom seek its halls for geographical, or personal, or economic reasons, to submit to its discipline, and to deny them the opportunities for education according to their bent, is to ruin many a promising boy, and to remove the institution which adheres to such a policy by gradual and certain steps from the sympathy and affection of its environment. The only safe guide in the determination of policy for an educational institution is the principle of service to a community constituency. That principle does not mean that every study must serve an immediately practical end. The community needs men of breadth, of wide information, of mastery of the treasures of the past. It is the virtue of the American college that it has refused to yield to the clamor for short cuts to professions which require leaders of personal power as well as technical skill. But the goal must

not be forgotten, and that goal is not the profession of a gentleman, as President Butler once suggested, but the service of the State."

Literary Field-trips.

The University of Chicago has been conducting a series of literary visits to foreign lands with a view of studying literature on the site of its geographical and historical background. The next class is to visit the important literary districts of England and Scotland. Certain preparation for the work is required. In this case it consists of a study of the topography of the land and of the literary history of England, as well as the problems of literary technic involved in this particular field of literature. Literary fieldtrips have already been conducted to Greece, Rome, and Palestine.

The Rhodes Scholarships.

Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who died in 1902, left the sum of £2,000,000 to a board of trustees, with directions that they should use the income for scholarships at Oxford University, England. Each scholarship is for a term of three years, and has an annual value of £300, excepting in the case of German students where it amounts to £250 annually. His general purposes were: (1) To promote through this education in common a more perfect unity between the various parts of the British Empire; (2) to cultivate a bond of union between the nationalities represented in the scholarships. These scholars are appointed, under certain stipulated conditions, from Great Britain and its dependencies, from the United States (2 from each State), and 15 from Germany or who are of German birth and who have been nominated by the German Emperor. The first American Rhodes scholars were appointed in 1904.

Doctor Parkin says, in an article in the North American Review for June, 1909: "Starting with a profound belief in the high destiny and beneficent influence of the British Empire, and eagerly desirous to promote the permanent unity of its various parts, while increasing their strength and usefulness, his first intention as a means to this end was