credit in a short description of the city, as follows: "There are few striking buildings, the houses are small, the the streets crooked and narrow, the even course of the streets changes from age to age, and there is no main thoroughfare through the city."

Dr. E. W. G. Masterman, a member of the excavating party, is the contributor of the article. In part he writes as follows:

"The earliest inhabitants lived in caves and made all their weapons and instruments of flint. In the middle period bronze is the only metal known, while at a time roughly synchronous with the coming of Israel, iron appears and appears and gradually replaces bronze."

Work of excavating is temporarily suspended, as the three years' Turkish firman has expired. It is hoped to secure a new firman, when the researches again will be resumed.

Professor Hart's New History of Slaves.

ume

The important "American Nation" series of historical studies, now in process of publication, has reached the volon "Slavery and Abolition," by Professor A. B. Hart of Harvard University. The book, judicious and studiedly imparital, is not likely to contribute toward the revival of a dying controversy. In accordance with modern ideas, it finds the ultimate causes of the trouble in conditions of soil and climate and not in the reasoned purposes of the people themselves.

At the time the Declaration of Independence was proclaiming human equality, slavery was permitted by law in every English colony. Massachusetts and Rhode Island, indeed, had early enacted prohibitive statutes. But these were a dead letter-as were those of early Georgia. The conditions of the northern and middle colonies, however, never made slavery profitable. In the diversified industries and in the intensive agriculture of New England, slave labor could not compete with free. To hold

slaves in Massachusetts, therefore, was a mark of dignity rather than of business enterprise.

The large estates of the tobacco and cotton planters of the South furnished the conditions adapted to the development of the "peculiar institution." As usual what was economically profitable was regarded as right. The system that was condemned by the great Southerners of the period before the cotton gin came to be defended by their successsor, who fancied that their prosperity was founded on it. Meanwhile, the North, developing free from the influence of slavery, reached a stage where the missionary impulse became overpowering and it started out to impose its ideas and standards on the rest of the country.

Thus, from one point of view the conIflict that followed was as inevitable as the natural forces of protracted heat and moderate temperature that produced it. Puppets, men seem to be as Tennyson. suggested, "moved by an unseen hand at a game that pushes us off the board." Yet after all it is impossible to avoid speculating whether the whole of truth is embodied in this view. If men on both sides had kept their temper, if Douglas had not revived the issue of the Missouri Compromise, the crisis might, perhaps, have been postponed and slavery might finally have succumbed before the To assume that it forces of progress. was not within human power to avert such a calamity as the war is a lame and impotent conclusion.

sions into two periods of six months, and horizontally for the names of the officials on the payroll."

Against the names of the officials are marked their records, some as absent with pay, some without pay and one as "absconded." The roll has a woman on it, who is explained as the daughter of some one, and "whole families are carried on it" at public expense.

This seems curiously modern. Another set of Cassite books brings them completely up to date. It is the record. of the statistics of their prosperity. It It shows them teaching the people whose country they had expanded into, their religion and their civilization, debiting them with the expense of this and crediting them with receipts of produce enough to pay the salaries of everyone on the official payrolls and leave a handsome balance.

The records leave no doubt that nearly 3.500 years ago the Cassites were familiar with grafting, had systematized exploitation and had begun reducing high finance to an exact science. They kept it up for five hundred years, yet most of us who think ourselves modern have never heard of the Cassites until this present.

President Wheeler

Opposes Reformed Spelling.

Commencement exercises of Leland Stanford University, which were postponed from last June, were held last month. The address was delivered by Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California, on the subject of "Phiology." In the course of his address he said:

"The establishment for the United States of a standard of written English different from that recognized elsewhere in the English-speaking territory is an isolating and decisive movement promising loss and waste to intercourse and culture, introducing consciousness of contrariety where the opposite is desired.

"The English language is not the property of the people of the United States, still less of its government: it is a pre

cious possession of the English-speaking world, and the moral authority to interfere in its regulation must arise out of the entire body and not from a segment of the roof.

"Any radical change such as this, for instance, would be involved in phonetic writing, would have the effect of cutting us off from the language of Shakespeare and the English Bible, making this a semi-foreign idiom to be acquired by special study.

"The proposal gradually to introduce through the co-operation of volunteers a certain number of new spellings and then, when these are well under way, presumably certain others, seems to promise an era of ghastly confusion in printing offices and in private orthography and hetorography as well as much irritation to readers' eyes and spirits.

"The list of 300 words proposed by the simplified spelling board is a somewhat haphazard collection, following no very clear principle of selection. One hundred and fifty-seven of them, such as 'color' for 'colour,' are already in their docked form familiar to American usage. There is no excuse, however, for 'thru' for 'through' from any point of view."

In response to inquiries regarding the significance of his address, President Wheeler suggested that an international academy might be founded to have authority in matters of language changes. While discussing his Stanford address he said:

It

"My position is determined from the point of view of the science of language in its relations to human civilization. certainly is of the highest importance to the most sacred civilized interests that no changes be made such as have been proposed without more careful consideration and co-operation of all branches of the English-speaking world.

"My idea is that there should be created an international academy representative of England, America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and even India and South Africa, a parliment of the English-speaking world which should have oversight of reforms in the lan

guage just as the French Academy and Spanish Academy have done."

A significant token of progress in Oklahoma is the establishment of institu

The Modern Sectarian School.

tions of learning throughout that territory. At the convention of the

Christian church, which ended recently at El Reno, it was definitely decided to build a Christian college at some town in the new state. This church has decided that a college is needed in Oklahoma to meet the requirements of that denomination and to keep abreast of the advance made by other church organizations that are establishing schools in the territory.

The sectarian school has a rightful place among our modern institutions. As it is constituted to-day it represents the result of a slow process of evolution. Within the memory of many persons now living the religious college was a place where dogmatic doctrine was preferred to a thoroughly liberal education. The doctrines of Calvin or of Wesley or of Campbell represented the curriculum of the college and mathematics and literature held a secondary place so far as the essentials were concerned. There was formerly much criticism of these schools, especially the smaller ones.

The modern sectarian school is denominational in name alone. No attempt is made to teach religious doctrine to the exclusion and subordination of the modern college curriculum. Doctrine is incidental, and if taught at all, is hardly perceptible. The modern sectarian college is liberal to a degree. In fact, it is possible for the student to attend a Presbyterian college to-day, receive his sheepskin and know nothing of the doctrine of predestination or of total depravity. The aim and purpose of the modern sectarian school seem to be to inculcate the spirit of religion without forcing upon the students formal precepts and the dogmatic doctrine of any particular sect.

The modern sectarian college is the complement of the the purely secular schools, the college is the complement of

the Mount Lowe Observatory.

Professor Larkin begins by making the interesting and surprising statement that "an observatory receives mail from all parts of the world, on every subject that brain can think about," and he declares so many letters come from people suffering "unspeakable mental agony" that he set himself to looking up the causes of such widespread trouble.

In other words, it would seem that persons subject to mystical obsessions, religious vagaries and victims of cults appeal to astronomers and physicists, and Professor Larkin believes that we have no proper comprehension of the horrors of these mental disorders, and no proper realization of the extent of the ravages of such obsessions or mental irregularities.

Professor Larkin furthermore asserts that these evils are spreading. "There are actually now, here, in the United States, magazines and papers devoted to astrological myths. The silly oracles of Eleusis, Dodona and Samothrace are being made articulate again by priestesses in our modern cities. Vast sums of money flow into their clutches as in Jerusalem, Thebes, Memphis, Athens and Rome. Fires of necromancy, sorcery and invocation are blazing again;

and rivers of bitter waters from ages of superstition are pouring into our villages, towns and cities. Read the street signs. Black magic, or the art of casting malign spells over people at a distance, is here. It was one of the scourges of antiquity. Magicians, medicine men, nature workers, rainmakers, augurs, mesmerists and diviners by cups, sticks and straws and dice are round about, and fake healing at a distance. Talismans, hearts, rabbits' feet, magic belts, amulets and charms to ward off imaginary evils are worn yet.

"Magianism, rosicrucianism, gnosticism, occultism, together with Mosaic and Hermetic mysteries, are all flourishing in this country and Europe. Packets, locks of hair, wands, vagaries, fakes and morbid mental states due to these are on

all sides. How can mental physicians keep up with the new brain diseases? Superstition is now intensely alive, and all kinds of mind distortion, born in prehistoric and barbarous ages, when men did not know a single law of nature, are rife, even in the shadows of universities and colleges. Dreams, hallucinations, phantoms, prophecies, seership and mental lapses are still believed in as they were in Nineveh, Tyre and in palace and hovel alike in that vast center of debasing mythology-Rome."

There can be no doubt of the terrible significance of these facts, of which this priest of science, from his remote mountain top, turns from the study of the stars themselves to warn us.

Furthermore, the facts are notoriously true. To dwellers in great cities, indeed, they are so familiar as to be ignored. Yet there is no doubt that as a world evil these terrible illusions and delusions are worse than any plague against which the might of modern science arrays itself, worse than any curse of "habit" against which reformers and societies labor, more insidious, more uncontrollable, more disastrous, and infinitely more difficult to cure.

Frauds and cheats are a small part of this evil, and with comparative ease and effectuality may be dealt with. But the

criminal code is a crude engine, and the limits of intellectual freedom are and should be wide. So the worst evils of superstition can never be met save by one means. The spread of exact knowledge must tell in time. And though many like Professor Larkin are sometimes discouraged by the persistency of the ancient errors and follies, light penetrates farther every day, and shines upon more minds.

The Home College.

We are all familiar with the small college and its appeal to local pride; but a recent contribution to the publication called Science suggests that the small college does not monopolize the designation "home college," as we have been tempted to believe. The compiler of this article, Mr. R. Tombo, Jr., shows by research that nearly all the great universities are as largely provincial in their membership as the smaller institutions.

In New England, for example, out of 453 students at Amherst, 351 come from New England and New York, and these geographical limits also contain 865 of Dartmouth's 995 and 305 out of Williams' 445 students. Out of 3,268 students in the University of California, 3,093 live in that state. Illinois supplies 2,872 of the 3,667 students of its university, and 2,046 of 2,914 at the University of Pennsylvania are drawn from territory within state limits. Harvard, which counts 4,319 students, has 3,257 from New England and New York, and 2,383 from Massachusetts. Columbia, with 4,083 students, draws 2,774 from New York.

Eminent as comparative exceptions, Princeton and Yale are the most cosmopolitan. Princeton has 1,364 enrolled, including 277 from New Jersey, 272 from New York, 357 from Pennsylvania, 45 from Maryland, 59 from Illinois, 45 from Ohio, and under 30 each from Massachusetts, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri. Yale counts 3,063 students, of whom 1,057 are from Connecticut, 608 from New York, 188 each from

Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, 147 from Illinois, 135 from Ohio, 112 from New Jersey, and 187 from the south at large.

Meanwhile the old controversy between the university and the small college seems as far from settlement as ever. In general, the great university has more facilities for comprehensive and exhaustive culture in scientific or humanistic attainment, while the small college surpasses in giving to the student the close personal touch of master minds and the means for formation of strong character. As time goes on, character will be more highly prized than culture, favoring the small college. On the other hand, the undergraduate ought to have his character formed at home, so that he can enjoy facilities of the great university without surrender to its temptations.

Dr. Joseph S. Kennard, who recently returned from Italy, reports that arrangements for the American and Italian exchange of uniProfessors to versity professors Interchange. between that country and the United States on the same lines as the system now in force between America and Germany, but on a larger scale, had been completed.

Through the efforts of Dr. Kennard, who represented the interests of several of the principal American universitiesnotably the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania---the king of Italy became interested in the movement. He issued a decree calling attention to the importance of the movement from a national standpoint. The decree called upon the people of Italy to work with Dr. Kennard toward the desired end. As a result the ItalianAmerican Educational alliance is now established on a firm basis.

"The whole country exhibited the keenest appreciation of the value of the alliance," said Dr. Kennard. "Under the system for exchanging professors Italian professors will come to the American colleges to lecture and American professors will go to Italian colleges. Circles for

"I count to-day a fitting time to call attention to the principal planks of the small college platform. I have been standing on this platform for a quarter of a century and can claim to speak with authority.

"The average undergraduate should continue in college from eighteen years of age to twenty-two. This formative training between school and life occupation should be preserved. There should be no cheap chromo diploma for a twoyears' bachelor of arts course offered by any university as a premium for graduating in law or in medicine. The college course should have at least half of its subjects prescribed and prescribed work should include a good measure of logic and psychology, of language and of mathematics.

"The undergraduate who does not want logic or mathematics is usually the man who needs them more than anything else. The same is true of the one who does not want a thorough training in language or in science. He ought to have them in a fair measure. The last plank of the platform is that there should be close contact of the mind of the professor with the mind of the student for the highest moral results. New York University expects each professor to care for the moral as well as the intellectual well-being of the student. It assigns to every under-graduate student a professor to be his adviser, who is required to know how the student passes his time as well as how he passes his examinations.