instructor guides this work and exercises a constant critical oversight of it. The topics taken up so far have been: The growth of Federal prerogative traceable in the decisions of the Supreme Court; the past and present colonial policy of Great Britain (studied from the contemporaneous sources of each period); Roman influences traceable in the institutions and laws of modern Europe; race elements of the modern European nations.

"The library facilities here are limited, so far as the college's own library is concerned, because that library is now only a year and a half from its first purchase of books; but the libraries of Philadelphia, which are easily available, are very full of excellent materials on most topics in English and American history, and very free use has been made of them for advanced work.”

CHAPTER VIII.

AMERICAN HISTORY IN SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES.1

BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE, PH. D.,

Fellow of the University of Pennsylvanic..`

When the people of the United States realized that they were a nation, they began to study their own history. Lincoln, speaking to a generation in arms for this nationality, said, "We are making history very fast." Before the war, our history was little studied in the West; in the East and the South attention was chiefly given to colonial and local history. But during the national and international changes incident to the events of 1865, our history assumed a character of its own; and the study of it was begun in a few higher institutions of learning. The nation had begun a new era, production was stimulated, interstate commerce was fostered, immigration was encouraged, States were founded, hostile institutions were swept away, inventions in the arts, in the sciences, in the means of enjoying life were perfected. The whole country became intensely active in the promotion of every interest, and material progress was phenomenal. The effect continues to this day; it is seen on every hand-in the life at the university, in the noisy life of the street. Our national life and our individual lives, show, both practically and sentimentally, the effects of that mighty convulsion in the state which, a quarter of a century ago, ended the old era and ushered in the

new.

The Nation is a moral person; its history is that of organic developmeut. We are not first nor last; we come in the moral order of the world. There is, in the process of history, "an organic unity of the Divine idea; and it holds a purpose in and through, and uniting the ages. * * * Thus it has been said, 'The history of the world cannot be understood apart from the government of the world.""

Bancroft and Hildredth are our historians, but our history is yet to be written. The revival of historical studies in our generation is a step toward that consummation-the production of a complete history of 1 An article on 66 Instruction in American History," by Professor William F. Allen, of the University of Wisconsin, is to be found in the Wisconsin Journal of Education, vol. 4, No. 10 (October 10, 1874). Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart's paper on "Methods of Teaching American History" also deserves attention. It is published in Vol. I of the Pedagogical Library, edited by G. Stanley Hall, and published by D. C. Heath, Boston, 1885.-H. B. A.

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America. Documentary history is tedious; statistics are not men in action; the record of the pulse is not the pulse. Politics, as commonly understood, forms only a part of our interests; we have neglected the study of our institutions. With what delight the history of the people of the United States by John McMaster has been read by his country. men, yet its original material was long neglected by historians. The study of American economics has changed our historical perspective, and material once considered useless has risen to great historical value. Our varied American life demands not merely some new thing, but things; like Bacon, we seek for "fruit." Economics is a general exprèssion, in the vocabulary of affairs, for the causes of the wealth of nations. As a science it treats of man as a political being, and considers him in his relations to men and to things; our economic history, commonly called "industrial," is as old as our political or our financial history, but it is not so well understood.

REVIVAL OF HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES.

Perhaps the best indication of the revival of economical and historical studies from the dead past of speculation and rumor is the found. ing, recently, of the American Economic Association, and the revival of the American Historical Association; the one, an association of the younger and many of the older economists of the country, purposing to base doctrine upon facts, and facts upon scientific investigation of economic elements; the other, similarly composed of men, young and old, whose object in association is "the promotion of historical studies," with a spirit active, creative, and national.

Economics and history are two friends who arm in arm walk in the same path, the highway of the nation. It may be said that these two studies, history and economics, are important ones in the education of every American youth; when they teach the whole truth they mirror the life of the nation. As the nation ages, its opinions concerning itself change. It desires to view itself from every point; it seeks to know its daily life, its institutions, their nature and their origin. To history and economics must be added biology as the third study of our day, and the methods of investigation in each of these are the same in principle-the study of life in action.

DEFECTS OF HISTORICAL INSTRUCTION IN OUR SCHOOLS.

In most public schools, and in more than two hundred and fifty of our colleges, the study of American history is confined to the study of a text-book. This has gone so far in our public schools that text-books, pushed into the schools by energetic publishers, have maintained their place, though later and better books are now obtainable. An examination of the ordinary book of American history shows that about onethird of the volume is devoted to pictures, about two-thirds of the text to American history before 1789, and the remainder to the history