jections against it is Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson emphasizes especially one point: "Realism aims to reproduce life in all its detail. It tries to compete with a photograph and this it cannot do." Indeed, art is selective. The true artist is he who can pick out the essential and typical in what he sees and weaving them together in a gracious and beautiful style, bring forth a production that is truly literature. To examine human life microscopically and then reproduce with "dry-as-dust" fidelity is fatal to the artistic in literature. "Moreover," say the critics, "Realism makes a deliberate choice of the purely commonplace, and are we not sufficiently afflicted with the commonplace in our own daily lives that we should not seek for it in literature? But the great objection, as the Romanticists would have it, to the whole realistic philosophy of fiction is that it chooses for its themes that which is unpleasant and evil. Now this criticism is certainly true, and the reason for it is not far to seek. The commonplace which the Realist chooses is to the most of us exceedingly dry and uninteresting, hence, in order to lend an interest to his work apart from the beauty of style, the novelist of this school is very likely to choose for his material that which is wicked and evil. The realistic novelist, says a reviewer in the New York Evening Post, aims to recall a menagerie at feeding time. And to a large extent it is true. We have thus briefly passed in review the current criticisms of realism, and it must be admitted that there is in every one of them an element of truth. But it is easy to exaggerate, and it is doubly easy to get a one-sided and near sighted view. Realism has many and great merits even if it does not, to quote Professor Bliss Perry's definition of it, "shrink from the commonplace or the unpleasant in its endeavor to depict things as they are, life as it is." What are a few of these merits? First, it calls attention to the immense importance of seemingly trivial things and the absorbing interest of human character apart from showy achievements or romantic background. This is in accordance with democracy, which makes every man stand on his own merits. It is in accordance, also, with Christianity which deals with man as a man and not as a creature of fortune or of favor. And, secondly, Realism prevents undue sentimentality, false ideas, or perverted or morbid ideals by constantly recalling to us what we are. It keeps us down to earth when we would fly without wings and it checks disastrous ventures into fields whereof we know nothing. These are great merits truly, and they certainly balance if they do not outweigh the criticism against it. I have endeavored to present the meaning of this word Realism. I have endeavored to bring out the current criticism against it and some of the unpleasant features. On the one hand we have its vain attempt to portray life in all its infinite detail, its deliberate choice of the commonplace, and its tendency to prefer the wicked and vicious to the pure and noble; on the other hand we have its invaluable service in emphasizing the importance of the little things of life and its work as a bulwark against a flood of mawkish sentimentality. GENERAL COLLEGE NEWS The magnificent new buildings of the Harvard Medical School were dedicated last month. The exercises were held on the terrace in front of the aministration building, on Longwood avenue, in the Fenway. This group of beautiful white marble buildings is the largest single addition to the resources of Harvard in the history of the university. Nearly $4,000,000 has been expended on the various new buildings. The new medical school at present consists of a central administration building, with four subordinate buildings surrounding three. sides of a large court. Each of the four subordinate buildings is devoted to a large branch of medical science, and each consists of two wings joined by an auditorium, thus surrounding three sides of a small court. A power plant, 100 yards away from the main group of buildings, is the only other building at present erected. From this power plant comes all the light, all the heating and the refrigerating, which latter is an important aid in some portions of a medical curriculum, and all the ventilating machinery, which has been very carefully arranged. Each of the buildings has four stories, with two spacious elevators in each building, the construction being of the best type of the modern fireproof building. Arrangements have been made for ready access to all pipes, conduits, etc., of which there are many, in which are the wires, tubes, etc., of the latest laborsaving appliances in office practice, connecting each unit in the school more or less intimately with every other. The will of the late Edward H. Dunn, former president of the Boston University corporation, left $120,000 of his estate to the University. The books and bookcase of the testator are given to the trustees of Boston University with the provision that they are to be kept in the reception room of the school of theology. The first bequest of $60,000 to the trustees of Boston University is to provide for the establishment of a professorship in the institution in memory of the testator's son, Danforth Richardson Dunn. The will provides that the second bequest of $60,000 to the trustees of Boston University for the general uses of the institution shall include $10,000 which has already been given by the testator toward an endowment for the university so that this bequest in reality amounts to $50,000. The Columbia Conference of the Swedish Lutheran Augustana Synod has decided to locate its proposed college at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. That city made an offer of ten acres of land and a bonus of $25,000, provided the conference would raise $75,000 more. A wealthy member of the church, whose name is withheld for the present, offered to subscribe $100,000 on condition that the college should bear his name and his offer was accepted. It is intended to have the college buildings erected the coming year and actual work will begin next September. Rev. J. Jesperson, of Spokane, was elected president of the college for the coming year. The main building of the State University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo., was recently broken into and robbed of goods valued at $1,000 or $1,200. A resolution was adopted unanimously at the Congregational ministers' meeting in Chicago asking the authorities of Andover Theological Seminary, Andover, Mass., to call a national conference of Congregational officers and educators to consider the advisability of moving the seminary to Chicago. It was said that while the seminary has an endowment of $1,000,000, it has but thirty students, showing that it has outlived its usefulness in New England. the necessary funds and will lay the matter before the next synod of the church. The will of former Governor Aaron T. Bliss, of Michigan, which has been made. public, makes bequests bequests aggregating $65,000 to education and other institutions, as follows: Albion College, $30,000; Alma College, $10,000; Old Ladies' Home of Oneida, N. Y., $5,000, and the City of Saginaw $20,000 for the beautification of Bliss Park. The Catholic University of America at Washington has received $29,326.07 public, received $29,326.07 from the estate of Charles A. Hoyt, being the bequest left by Mr. Hoyt in his will. The university also acknowledges the receipt, through Cardinal Gibbons, of $5,000 from T. H. Schriver, of Union Mills, Md. During the last year the fund known as the cardinals' collection for the Catholic University was increased by $56,443.13. This fund was raised by Cardinal Gibbons. It has now reached a total of $139,386.93, all raised since the failure of Thomas E. Waggaman. The university has also received from the authorities of the St. Louis Exposition the large gold medal awarded to the school of the social sciences for its exhibit of the charitable work of the Catholic Church in the United States. This unique exhibit was the work of two of the professors of the university, the Rev. Dr. William J. Kerby, professor of sociology, and Charles P. Neill, then professor of political economy, now United States Commissioner of Labor. Dr. H. C. Evans, president of Texas Presbyterian College for Girls, has let the contract for a new twelve-room dormitory. This building will have all modern conveniences and will accommo date twenty-four students. This college is the property of the Presbyterian Church and is controlled by the synod of Texas. At a meeting of the trustees of the Presbyterian Bible chair at the University of Kansas, plans were made for the erection of a $42,000 building as a home for the work the Presbyterians are carrying on among the students of the university. A man, who did not want his name made public, has offered to give $12,000 for this purpose if the trustees will raise an additional $30,000. The trustees appointed a committee to raise The new annex of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, a splendid granite structure erected at a cost of $1,250,000, was opened by King Edward last month in the presence of hundreds of learned men from America and elsewhere who are participating in the commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of the university. Thousands of visitors from all parts of the kingdom attended the ceremonies. The city was lavishly decorated. The king, who was accompanied by Queen Alexandria, expressed his pleasure over the fact that so many distinguished foreigners were taking part in the celebration. The degree of doctor of laws was bestowed upon Professor M. B. Anderson of Leland Stanford University; Professor F. W. Clarke of Washington, D. C.; Professor Arnold Hague of Washington, D. C.; Professor H. A. Kelly of Johns Hopkins University, Professor Charles R. Lanman of Harvard University, Professor Thomas R. Lounsbury of Yale University and Dr. James W. White of Philadelphia. Francis T. White, of New York, who in the past few years has given $75,000 to Earlham College, Richmond, Ind., the amount constituting the Francis T. White endowment fund, has further increased his donation by giving $25,000 additional. It is reported that Carroll College, Waukesha, Wis., is to have a new chapel, to be erected by a citizen of Wisconsin, the details of which President Carrier is not ready to make public. A music department has been added to the curriculum at St. Louis University. Instructions on the violin, 'cello, mandolin, guitar and piano will be given to those who desire a knowledge of the fine art as well as a collegiate course. The annual report of Treasurer Lee McCluny of Yale University, recently issued shows that the university is out of debt for the first time in decades, having a surplus of $62,000. It is announced that Anthony H. Wahlburg, of Cincinnati, has sent the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C., another donation of $15,000 toward the establishment of a German chair in the college. Within the past two years Father Wahlburg has given the university $30,000, and it is expected that within a similar period he will complete the $50,000 necessary to establish the chair. The will of W. Moses Willner, which has just been filed for probate, bequeathing $100,000 to the Chicago Academy of Sciences, recalls the fact that the academy is one of the oldest of the so-called "learned societies" of the city. The Academy Building is located in Lincoln Park, and its rooms are well filled with an excellent collection of the natural history of the North American continent. Classes from the public schools, under the leadership of teachers, resort to the academy for the study of natural objects, and the officers of the institution accompany them and give all the help desired. During the school year, weekly popular lectures are given in the assembly-room, open to all who wish to attend, and especially addressed to the capacities and requirements of the young. All the work of the academy has to be done by a small working force, because of the fact that the income of the institution is only about $500 a year. Heretofore wealthy persons have not appeared to be aware of the existence of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and its various merits, but possibly the bequest of Mr. Willner will serve to call the attention of devisors to the institution. The academy was organized in 1857, leading citizens becoming its supporters by subscribing for life memberships at $500 each. The building first was located in Wabash avenue, near Van Buren street, but the great fire swept away its property. In 1900 the late Matthew Laflin offered the trustees of the academy $75,000, conditioned on the erection of a fire-proof museum in Lincoln Park that should bear his name. The park commissioners gave an additional $25,000, museum with the provision that the should contain rooms suitable for their With these funds the Chicago offices. Academy of Sciences was established in its present location, and it has become. one of the notable institutions of the city. The corner stone of Tennessee College, Mufreesboro, Tenn., was laid on September 11th, with imposing ceremonies. The new school is being erected as a college for young ladies. The building will cost $45,000, and when completed upon the sixteen-acre campus, upon which it is located, will be one of the handsomest institutions of its kind in the South. Elmer L. Corthell, of New York City, has notified President Faunce of Brown University that he has made provision in his will that his entire sicentific library of several thousand volumes is to become the property of the university. Mr. Corthell is a well known engineer. He was graduated at Brown University in 1867. He has one of the most valuable private scientific libraries in America. Mrs. Fox, of Muscatine, Iowa, has presented the National Memorial University, Mason City, Iowa, with $25,000 for the daughters of veterans' building, which is costing $50,000. Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio, and Bethany College receive $500 each by the will of Mrs. Drucilla Minser, of Ohio, I who died recently. The library of Atlanta Theological Seminary now contains about 6,000 volumes. It is the largest collection of theological books in the southeast, and additions are being received weekly. The Library is also the designated depository for all data marking the development of Congregational churches in the South. The Seminary has no endowment or funds with which to buy books. It is the only Theological College in the entire South maintained by the Congregational churches, and the only one of any denomination in Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi-a vast area, containing over seven millions of people. It is aided by the American Missionary Association, and is training ministers for the whites of the South. ON STEVENSON Somebody has said that "Stevenson was Stevenson and there one is inclined to leave it in despair of saying more." And surely it is baffling to attempt to deal with a creature seemingly so full of contradictions, an invalid filled to the brim with life and vitality; a Scotchman, with a Scotchman's tenacity, clinging to ideals anything but Scotch; a man with few personal acquaintances, but with many friends whose faces he had never seen. Yet if there be reasons for these contradictions, and reasons there certainly must be, the student of Stevenson is peculiarly fortunate in possessing an abundance of pleasant autobiographical material from which to draw. Few men have written so freely and so unreservedly of themselves and their emotions and experiences as has Robert Louis Stevenson; fewer still have succeeded in so doing without making the reader painfully aware of the proximity of an oppressive egotism. But Stevenson can chatter away about himself for hours with the most nonchalant air, apparently taking it for granted that everyone is interested in his affairs and doings; and, as it falls out, he is not often mistaken. Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on the thirteenth of November, 1850. His father and grandfather, of whom he was deservedly proud, were famous engineers known particularly as light-house builders. In the volume of Or whether fogs arise and far and wide In "A Child's Garden of Verses" Stevenson has given us a touching picture of his sickly childhood with its feverish dreams. "My childhood," he wrote to a friend shortly after the publication of this little volume, "was in realty a very mixed experience, full of fever, nightmare, and insomnia, painful days and interminable nights; and I can speak with less authority of 'Gardens' than of that other 'Land of Counterpane.' But to what end should we renew these sorrows?" This is the question that. Stevenson asked throughout his whole life; "To what end should we renew these sorrows?" It explains his frank, cheerful optimism, the optimism that does not shut its eyes to the sorrowful, but looks through the cloud to the silver lining. The world is so full of a number of things, That I think we should all be as happy as kings, exclaims the "mad little poet." And this, I think, is Stevenson's chief excuse for his optimism. The hosts of things in the world and the hosts of pictures sug |