college hall may receive corrobora- | college curriculum. The member tions, illustrations, new applications of his knowledge, and many useful hints from the every-day out-of-door life and experience of the man, who, knowing less of books, is acquainted with men, and who, although he has never studied geological or biological specimens-mounted, shelved, and classified-has kept open eyes, all his life long, among birds and flowers, rocks and reptiles. This, at least, I know, that in the early stages of this new association each will find in his own soul a larger respect for the other, and for the class he represents, and in this blessed brotherhood of Science, Literature, and Art they will mutually agree that man's real worth lies, not so much in antecedents, titles, or estates, as in dominant tastes, purposes, and other qualities of personal character. The first or general course of reading of the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle" is limited by a single thought, which adapts the scheme to all classes of people. There are forty or more special or additional courses, to be pursued at the option of the reader. He may take two or more of these simultaneously with the first or general course. Or he may pursue them after its completion. His work in the "Circle" may thus be superficial or thorough, an avocation or a vocation, employing forty minutes or four hours a day. The first course, already referred to as limited by a single thought, covers what I have called "the College Outlook." It aims to give a general survey of the world of literature in science, history, art, and belles-lettres; the world which comes within the purview of the student who prepares for and pursues the ordinary of the "Circle" takes up the outlines of history-ancient, medieval, and modern; in a general and meager way he studies the scope and spirit of the ancient and modern literature, and glances at the realms of physical, mental, and moral science. As when, visiting London for the first time, he climbs to the dome of St. Paul's to get a general view of the city, its various parts, their relation to each other, the principal places of interest-and all this in anticipation of and preparatory to a more detailed and thorough exploration-so by this outlook on the broad world of knowledge he is prepared for wise selection and careful investigation. The college student who enjoys the same outlook during the years of his undergraduate course receives immeasurably more. He sees broadly, but he studies critically. The wide survey is incidental. He seeks mainly mental discipline and development by linguistic and mathematical drill. He trains himself to habits of attention, concentration, and discrimination. He is not in quest of facts, but of force. In college he works that he may be able to know. Afterward he works in order to know. And he is glad to review this large world in which he wrought so diligently. It is a pleasure to him to stand on the dome of St. Paul's with the new-comer, and to see again in the general way what he has so long been familiar with in its details. And it is a good thing for the novice that the senior is there. It is this horizon of facts and principles, as far as they can be made available as subject-matter of knowledge, that the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle" transfers to a series of readable books, which it places in the hands of the scholar, that he may review the world through which he has just passed; in the hands of busy, out-of-school, society people, that they may know what the college world is; and in the hands of parents, that they may form a just estimate of the school world, keep their children as long a time as possible in it, be able to keep company with their children after they do enter it, and render them help by all home ministries of persuasion and incentive, by ample provision of periodicals, books, pictures, apparatus, society, conversation, example, and inspiration. The wide adoption of this scheme among the adult population must vield blessed results. Parents will look upon education and the schoolmaster with greater respect. More students will enter the advanced schools. In its small, voluntary, local meetings, the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle" will increase an interest in substantial reading and in rational conversation. It will save busy people from the petrifying influence of mercenary life. It will crowd out weak and dissipating literature. It will relieve the dreary monotony of routine lives; mitigate the sorrows of the smitten and bereaved; give to lowly and narrow homes hope, courage, and perspective; and put weight and worth into the houses of people, rich and poor, who are living in an aimless, self-indulgent, and useless way. It will find in lowly spheres heroes who never entered the army, poets who never framed a couplet, artists who never touched chisel or canvas, If and saints who never stood with folded hands before the eyes of men, but who have served their lives long in shops or kitchens. It will find a hard-working mechanic, who is a born reasoner, and encourage him to use his spare minutes, under wise direction, in the study of logic, mathematics, and philosophy. a working-man has a taste for science, it urges and assists him to observe facts, collect and classify data, and make and test generalizations. It will show how much may be made of the spare minutes of a busy life. One hour of close and systematic study a day means sixty school days a year. And if that be kept up from the time a man is twenty until he is forty, he will have enjoyed four years of the most beneficial education. An American, who is now a high authority in Sanscrit and Zend, without early educational advantages, began the study of these languages at a time when he wa employed for over seventeen hours. day collecting fares on a tram-ca. Thus will the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle" transfigure and ennoble common life, and illustrate the wise words of Epictetus: "You Athenians will confer the greatest benefit on your city, not by raising the roofs of your dwellings, but by exalting the souls of your fellow citizens; for it is better that great souls should live in small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses.' The first general course of reading of the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle" is accompanied by memoranda, which are to be filled out by the student. They serve as examination papers for those who wish to test the work they have done. Provisions are also made for all classes of out-of-school readers and students who need guidance. There are a "Society of Fine Arts," a "Town and Country Club"(designed to train young people in observing the phenomena of Nature, and in doing something in the line of rais ing plants and fruits), a “Teachers' Reading Union," for the benefit of teachers in the secular schools; a "Young Folks' Reading Union," for the encouragement of good reading among the young people who are in school, or who have left it. Sunday-school Normal Work is also done through the "Chautuaqua Assembly Normal Union," which has been in operation for fourteen years. Here, too, are the "Book-a-Month Reading Circle," the "Society of Christian Ethies," the "Look-up Legion," the "Children's Class," the Musical Reading Union"-all with term "Chautauqua" as a common prefix. They are sheets of record and report for those who simply read. Beyond the "Circle" are classes for work by "correspondence," with provision for the most rigid written examinations. Into these come readers who wish to be enrolled as students. College classes are organized, local studies, lectures, and examinations provided, and all thorough work is rewarded by promotion. Under a charter granted by the Legislature of the State of New York, the "Chautauqua College of Liberal Arts" and the "Chautauqua School of Theology" have been organized to make possible and to encourage the most thorough work by those who have the ambition and the will to "wrest success from adverse circumstance." They provide for the student at home the benefits of professional direction. Although the advantage of personal presence is not enjoyed, yet by written questions, answers, outlines, theses, and criticisms, the teacher is, by a mys- The word "Chautauqua," (protic law of the soul-life, present with nounced Shaw-tawk'-wah) is the Inhis pupils, following, quickening, dian name of one of the most lovely and inspiring them. Then in every of the smaller American lakes in the neighborhood are college graduates, State of New York, five hundred who constitute an unorganized miles west of New York City, seven brotherhood, glad to give help to miles south of and seven hundred those who, having been less favored, feet above Lake Erie, among the seek counsel in their search for cul- hills which form the watershed of ture. By conversations, criticisms, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. and direct assistance they put into It is on the borders of this lake that the isolated student's life some of the "Chautauqua Literary and Scithe advantages of the living teacher's entific Circle" finds its "local habivoice and magnetic power. "Uni- tation and a name." The lake is versity classes" are organized by about twenty miles long, and from students residing in the same neigh-one to three miles in width. It is borhood, and special teachers are employed. All members of this widely scattered fraternity may thus have their "college council," and many of them the "college class." fourteen hundred feet above the Atlantic. Here, in a great grove of maple, beech, oak, mountain-ash, and other native trees, are five or six hundred cottages, a large sum mer hotel, and, during the "season" of from six to eight weeks, about three hundred tents. Here the people gather-probably seventy-five thousand different persons during the summer, some for one day, some for a week, several thousands of them for from four to eight weeks. They come to hear courses of lectures on science, on history, on philosophy; to witness experiments in chemistry; to study the stars through telescopes; to take, if they so desire, courses of lessons for six weeks in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, the modern languages, physical science, chemistry, political economy, and all branches relating to the department of pedagogy. Instrumental and vocal concerts, to gether with all possible legitimate recreations, are provided to lighten the days of study and make Chautauqua a paradise for children, a place where parents will feel it safe to settle down for the summer without exposure to the dissipation of the usual "resorts." Here are boating, fishing, athletic games, archery, croquet, lawn-tennis, roller-coasting, military cadet drill for boys; classes for children in music, calisthenics, clay-modeling, and Bible study. A museum has been provided, with valuable treasures in casts, photographs, engravings, Oriental costumes, Syrian and Egyptian "finds," and fac-similes of many celebrated manuscripts. There is a beautiful model of the city of Jerusalem (in plaster of Paris), thirty feet in diameter. And by the shore of the lake, which is used to represent the Mediterranean Sea, is a model of Palestine, three hundred feet tong, where one may visit the lake of Galilee, the flowing Jordan, and the Dead Sea. Here, on the hills and in the valleys, are the cities of the land, well wrought in plaster or wood, and one may walk from Dan to Beersheba, Bible in hand, and be the better able to interpret that best guide-book of Palestine -the Word of God. To Chautauqua come the best lecturers and the best teachersclergymen of renown, statesmen, orators, college presidents and professors. The summer schools are taught by professors from Yale, Harvard, Middletown, Johns Hopkins, and other Universities, who spend six weeks with classes made up of teachers and students from all parts of the United States and Canada. Many a man, reviewing his summer life in the Chautauqua grove, may say, as Horace did of Athens: "Indulgent Athens taught me some of the higher arts, putting me in the way to distinguish a straight line from a curve, and to search after wisdom amid the groves of Academe." The Chautauqua meeting began in 1874. It opened as a summer school, devoted especially to the training of Bible teachers, emphasizing the "week-day forces" in religious culture. This movement, know as "The Assembly," was the suggestion and joint product of Mr. Lewis Miller, of Ohio, and the writer this article. Mr. Miller is a business man of wealth and enterprise, an extensive manufacturer, for many years interested in popular education, the father-in-law of the distinguished electrician Mr. T. A. Edison, and himself an ingenious inventor. The "Assembly" gave a splendid opportunity for the development of the scheme of popular education already described. It was duly or- | those who have begun to continue ganized in 1878, and made Chau- until the diploma shall be filled with tauqua its summer head-quarters. seals. There is a touch of pathos The "Circle" has contributed to the in that part of the Chautauqua permanency and power of the As-"Recognition" programine when sembly, in the midst of which it three score or more little girls in began and with which it soon became white, standing before the "Hall of organically connected. The Bible Philosophy," fling flowers in the is the basis of the "Literary and pathway of the thousand or more Scientific Circle," the first motto of men and women who have, in midwhich is, "We Study the Word and dle or later life, attempted and comthe Works of God." The leaders pleted a course of reading-a work of this educational movement are begun for the sake of their children believers in Revelation and lovers of and for the brightening of their own "whatsoever things are true" in art, lives. And one can hear the oldest in literature, and in science. Their of them say, with Dr. Oliver Wenfaith is so firm that they are confi- dell Holmes:dent of perfect harmony between the "Word" and the "Works" when both are rightly interpreted. Every year a day of Recognition" is observed, wheu those who have completed the four years' course of general reading receive certificates testifying that fact. Of all the Chautauqua days this is the brightest and best. In "St. Paul's Grove," among the green and ancient trees, stands the white-columned "Hall of Philosophy," an imitation in wood of the Parthenon at Athens. Here the ceremony of "recognition" takes place. A procession of old and young, of people representing all professions and all social classes, moves, with music, banners, and badges, to the great amphitheater. Here an audience of six thousand people joins in song, led by the great pipe organ and the "chorus," and listens to the "Recognition Address" by some distinguished speaker. Then the diplomas are distributed, some of them containing four or five or more seals, testifying to so much more than the "required" reading, and all of then, giving incentive to "What does Time leave, when life is wellnigh spent, To lap its evenings in a calm content? Art, Letters, Science, these at least befriend Our day's brief remnant to its peaceful end Peaceful for him who shows the setting sun A record worthy of his Lord's 'Well done!'"' Whether or not a similar movement may be begun in England I do not know. All that is best in its educational features is already carried on under the "University Extension Movement" and other noble enterprises of this great English people. The summer gathering like that at Chautauqua may be impracticable in the moist and uncertain climate of the British Isles; but in imagination I have already seen old Haddon Hall aglow with torches and hearth fires, its empty chambers for a time again occupied, its great dining-hall echoing with song and speech and prayer, its green lawns filled with people who have come from the busy scenes to rest and recreate, and the meanwhile to enjoy instruction and to receive inspiration |