the enrichment and the discipline of his own mind, may be well content if he secures these, and has no other external reward than the seal of membership and the approbation of his instructor.

Of the value of an institution such as I have described, and of its probable influence on the social and intellectual life of the nation, it were superfluous to speak in detail. One may say generally that it has been the means of illuminating hundreds of homes, that it has brought better books on to the shelves, better pictures to the walls, and better talk to the fireside. Its immediate influence has been more felt by adults than by the very young; but indirectly it has greatly helped forward the work of the public school, by awakening among parents a more intelligent interest in the studies pursued by their children. Young and old have been aided by it in the acquirement of self-knowledge, and in gaining wider views of life, higher aims, and purer tastes. I was told by an eminent merchant in one of the great cities of the west that he had among his business colleagues a man of mature age, who had long been conscious of the deficiencies in his early education, but had been perplexed in the effort to find the help and guidance he needed. Accident made him

acquainted with the Chautauqua reading circle. He joined it, read the books, availed himself of the directions he received, and employed his leisure in preparing the prescribed papers. Joining the class was, he said, one of the most memorable events in his life-it was a source of inspiration and enjoyment, it had made him more efficient in his business, more serious and self-respecting in his home. My reading,' says a student in Ohio, has hitherto been too careless and without sufficient thought. I realise an immense benefit from my present systematic course.' 'The Chautauqua reading,' writes one of the female members, has been a godsend to me, for, confined almost entirely to the house and often to my room, it has passed away many otherwise lonely hours.' 'I am engaged,' says a young man, from 8.15 A.M. to 6 P.M. in a store, and my chief time for reading the C.L.S.C. course is when I ride to and from the store twenty minutes each day, and during noon-hour. I think I never enjoyed reading so much in my life.' A member who afterwards became a minister of religion wrote to say, 'I cannot afford to give up the course of the C.L.S.C. It gives me a leverage upon the younger members of my congregation.' From a lady in the country comes the candid confession: 'It gives me courage to feel that, although I am forty-five years old, I am a scholar, and am in a school and really learning something. My chance for school education was but little. After I was twelve years old I stayed at home and worked in the summer, and had only three or four months of schooling in winter. I can now appreciate what it is to have a course of reading laid out. for me.' Testimony of this kind, with an unmistakable ring of genuineness in it, comes in great abundance to the secretary every year.

It leaves little room to doubt that many households have been cheered and ennobled by means of this institution; that it has supplied a want which no other agency was able to meet; and that it has given to many a lonely student not only knowledge, but a truer ideal of life and of duty. Among those who have watched the whole movement with sympathetic interest, and rendered it substantial service, is Dr. Phillips Brooks, the eminent Boston scholar and preacher, whose voice has been heard with delight by many Englishmen on the too rare occasions of his appearance in Westminster Abbey and London churches. There is no one less likely than he to be betrayed into rhetorical exaggeration, and the words of an address he gave to the assembled Chautauquans may be fitly quoted here, as embodying an accurate and yet a generous estimate of the influence exerted by the institution. 'I see,' he says,

busy households where the daily care has been lightened and inspired by the few moments caught every day for earnest study. I see chambers which a single open book fills with light like a burning candle. I see workshops where the toil is all the more faithful because of the higher ambition which fills the toiler's heart. I see parents and children drawn closer to one another in their common pursuit of the same truth, their common delight in the same ideas. I see hearts young and old kindling with deepened insights into life and broadening with enlarged outlooks over the richness of history and the beauty of the world. Happy fellowships in study, self-conquests, self-discoveries, brave resolutions, faithful devotions to ideals and hopes-all these I see as I look abroad upon this multitude of faces of the students of the great College of Chautauqua.

To an Englishman who takes any interest in the social and intellectual improvement of his own countrymen, the curious phenomena presented in so characteristic an American institution as Chautauqua are animating and significant. They suggest the obvious question, 'How far is such a movement imitable or worthy of imitation on this side of the Atlantic?' Considerations of climate and the difficulty of procuring ground render wellnigh impossible the camping out of large numbers in England. Moreover, the American loves conventions, and has a genius for organising them, and in this respect he differs materially from his English cousin. And it need not be said that a meeting of this peculiar type, strongly impressed with a religious character, yet recognising all Christian communities and their pastors as on a footing of perfect social equality, is very unlikely to secure the hearty co-operation of ministers of religion, especially those of the Established Church. For good or evil, the conditions of religious life and organisation in England have been so far shaped by our history and traditions as to render the establishment of a democratic institution of this kindi mpracticable. Nor does it seem to me that the innocent ritual and ceremonial-the badges, the seals, the processions and social gatherings, by which in America the spirit of camaraderie among the Chautauquans is encouraged and their loyalty to the institution is maintained-are wholly suited to Eng

lish soil or manners. Every nation must work out its own problems for itself, not by imitation, but by respectful study of valuable experiments abroad, and by adapting what is good in those experiments to the genius, circumstances, and needs of its own people. An admirable device was adopted at the suggestion of Mr. Barnett and the Toynbee Hall settlers three years ago, by means of which a company of elementary teachers was invited to reside in Oxford for a few days in the long vacation, and was helped to make the visit instructive as well as recreative. This year 900 young people, students in the various local classes of the University Extension Lecturers, were housed in Oxford for a fortnight in the long vacation, and received during that time from professors and others regular courses of lectures, besides the help and stimulus of companionship and access to libraries and to college buildings. We in England possess an advantage here which our Transatlantic brethren do not. share. We have in Oxford and Cambridge venerable halls, libraries, chapels, gardens, rich with the memories of famous men and with the traditions of a thousand years, and these are well-nigh empty and useless during nearly the half of every year. For the Summer School, for the Teachers' Retreat, for the solace and intellectual refreshment of hard-worked men, who would enjoy a short seclusion under the shelter of academic bowers, and would be the richer for breathing even for a time the atmosphere of an ancient seat of learning, Oxford and Cambridge are clearly more appropriate than any encampment in the woods. But the full use of these hitherto undeveloped resources is not to be found in the gathering of large miscellaneous crowds of pleasure-seekers in the vacation, but rather in the offer of guidance and inspiration to little bands of picked students from time to time, and by prudently and yet generously following up the precedent so happily set last August by the authorities of Oxford.

The University Extension Lecture system is an experiment of the highest promise, and there is little or nothing analogous to it in the United States. The sort of missionary enterprise which the ancient universities have of late so honourably undertaken, and by which skilled lecturers form classes to give courses of instruction in provincial towns, has already proved a powerful agency for the encouragement of study in places hitherto sadly lacking in intellectual activity. But the warmest supporters of this enterprise express disappointment at the fugitive and superficial character of the results attained. The lecturer concludes his course, reads the papers of those of his hearers who choose to write them, awards certificates, and the transaction is an end. What is wanted here is some permanent arrangement which shall survive the period of the lecturer's visit, and shall strengthen those habits of reading and inquiry which his visit has helped to form. And here the American experience becomes highly suggestive. Every single course of University Extension VOL. XXIV.-No. 140.

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lectures should become the parent of a reading circle which might at least be held together until its members had completed, either singly or in companies, the perusal of a prescribed number of the best books. Part of the needful organisation already exists wherever a local committee has been formed to guarantee the payment of expenses and to make the public announcements. A very slight extension of the province and influence of these committees would enable them to co-operate with the universities in the fulfilment of a still larger work. The Oxford meeting, recently held under the presidency of the Head Master of Rugby, and with the countenance of the Master of Balliol, Lord Ripon, Mr. Brook Lambert, Dr. J. B. Paton, and other influential persons, contemplated the formation of a 'Home Reading Society' which will, if successful, extend its influence to many persons and regions, at present untouched by university lectures, and become a great instrument for intellectual culture, and an aid to self-improvement, among secluded students all over the country.

The conditions necessary for the complete success of such an enterprise are easily set down on paper, but are not easy in their practical fulfilment. There is need of a strong central administration, and if possible still greater need for wise and energetic local co-operation. It is essential that the body which undertakes the delicate task of putting forth lists of books, counsels for private reading, references, memoranda, questions, and the like should be a body possessing the public confidence, and yet able to devote much time and thought, at least in the first instance, to the detailed organisation of the plan. Such a body, a syndicate or delegacy, could be formed in no better way than by the joint action of the Universities. But a constitution purely academic and clerical would be on too narrow a basis to secure the hearty sympathy of all the classes whose concurrence is to be desired. The more intelligent of the working men would like to recognise in the list of the governing body the names of some conspicuous men of science. And there is a very large class of persons who would from the first be alienated from a movement which was not countenanced and guided by at least one or two leading representatives of the Nonconformist press or pulpit.' It is scarcely less essential that the central body when constituted should be helped by efficient local secretaries and committees. Scattered all over England, in manors and in parsonages, as well as in the great towns, are many persons of leisure and of scholarly tastes, who would rejoice to render service, if only the way were made clear to them and definite directions were issued for their guidance.

Since this article was written I have seen the programme just issued from Oxford of the 'Home Reading circles.' For the reasons given above, the scheme appears to me deficient in breadth and comprehensiveness, and likely to reach a section only of the persons best worth reaching. But the experiment is an honourable and hopeful one, and will doubtless effect great good. The Secretary is M. E. Sadler, M.A., Examination Schools, Oxford.

It may be doubted whether any of us have ever yet realised the enormous change which has taken place in the conditions of national progress by the multiplication and diffusion of cheap books. To the end of time, oral teaching, actual contact with inspiring and accomplished instructors, will always be the most effective instrument of such progress. But the modern press and the modern facilities for written communication have made the personal influence of the living teacher, not absolutely, but relatively less essential than before. The student who cannot enter a college, who is poor and isolated, and anxious to improve his own mind, has now a better chance of obtaining systematic intellectual discipline than in any former period in history. The press teems with the help he wants. The enterprise of such publishers as Messrs. Cassell and Routledge has reproduced at a cheap rate much of our older and more permanent literature, which hitherto had only been accessible to rich men and professed scholars. Good public libraries, amply stored with the best authorities and books of reference, are now open in nearly all our large towns, and afford facilities either for quiet reading in the library itself, or for loan and home study. Readers are multiplying daily; but they want guidance, help, plan, some principle of selection, some purpose and method in study, some safeguard against the fatal habit of letting the mind drift about aimlessly, and permitting itself to be influenced by whatever books happen to come nearest, whether good or bad.

Mere school lessons are apt to be unsatisfying and their results evanescent. A good deal of nonsense is often uttered on this theme by those who for any reason wish to discredit our system of primary education. Even the Royal Commission recently charged with the duty of inquiring into the working of that system has thought it right to put on record a statement, which in one sense is a pointless truism, but which, as a critical comment upon the work done by our elementary teachers, is, to say the least, fallacious, if not unjust. The report says: "Many of the children (in the elementary schools) lose with extraordinary rapidity after leaving school the knowledge which has been so laboriously and expensively imparted to them.' Of course they do. So do the scholars in high schools and grammar schools, in lycées and gymnasien. So do the men who learn Greek and mathematics at the universities, and the congregations that hear sermons every Sunday. But this does not prove that the method of instruction was unskilful, or even that the instruction itself was not the best and most appropriate which could have been given at the time. It simply proves that, owing to some cause or other, the thing learned has not been pursued afterwards or rendered permanent by further reading and reflection. And this happens constantly among learners of all ranks and ages. There is not the smallest evidence to prove that it happens oftener among the children of elementary