PRESENT FACULTY OF INSTRUCTION.

Of the entire staff of nine instructors three are full professors in Columbia College: (I) John W. Burgess, Ph. D., LL. D., professor of constitutional and international history and law; (2) Archibald Alexander, A. M, Ph. D., professor of philosophy; (3) Richmond Mayo Smith (A. B., Amherst 1875), A. M., professor of political economy and social science (he also teaches English history). There is one adjunct professor of history, namely, Edmund Munroe Smith (A. B., Amherst 1874), A. M., J. U. D., who teaches French history, but is principally engaged in lecturing on Roman law and comparative jurisprudence. There is one permanent lecturer on administrative law-Frank J. Goodnow (A. B., Amherst 1879), LL. B., the successor of the lamented Clifford Rush Bateman, who died shortly after his preparation for this lectureship. There are also three prize lectureships, held by meritorious graduates of the School of Political Science or of the Law School, and yielding $500 a year. The present incumbents are Daniel De Leon, LL. B., Ph. D., lecturer on Latin-American diplomacy (a unique feature of university instruction); Frederick W. Whitridge (A. B., Amherst 1874), A. M., LL.B., lecturer on the political history of New York; and Edwin R. A. Seligman, LL. B., Ph. D., lecturer on the history of political economy. These prize lecturers must give an annual series of at least twenty lectures. They hold for a three years' term, and may be reappointed. It is an admirable system for recruiting the faculty, or for encouraging scholarly tendencies on the part of the best graduates of the school.

LIBRARY OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE.

One of the most useful members of the faculty of instruction in the School of Political Science is the special librarian-Geo. H. Baker (A. B., Amherst 1874), A. M.-who has enjoyed the best of German university training in the subjects which he represents. Mr. Baker gives one lecture a week upon bibliography. As described in the cir cular of information (School of Political Science) for 1886-'87, "The purpose of this course of lectures is to give, for the practical use of students and investigators, an account of the original sources for the study of history and political science. It gives, in introduction, a brief encyclopædic statement of the domain of political science and the several allied sciences or branches of study, with their mutual interrelations. It then takes up, by countries, the material which forms the record of the political, legal, and economic activity of the leading modern states, giving a short sketch of the historiography of each country; the special bibliographical works relating to the subject; then a description of all important collections of early chronicles and histories; col lections of memoirs; collections and publications of historical and similar societies; general and special collections of treaties and diplomatic

papers; statistical collections and other economic publications; government and official publications, including public documents, parliamentary debates, statutes, law reports, and other collective works in the field of public and private law. It is intended to give the title, proper form of citation, history, character of these publications, and the way in which they are indexed and may be used. An account of the archives and public records of each state treated is also given, with a description of their calendars or indexes, printed and unprinted; their general character, arrangement, and regulations for use."

The importance and suggestiveness of this line of teaching can hardly be overestimated, in the present stage of academic instruction in the United States. Any student of history who has attended lectures in German universities knows well that the best information there acquired is of a bibliographical character. In the historical department at Heidelberg, one professor (Winkelmann) spends an entire semester, five hours a week, on the Methodologie und Enclykopädie der Geschichtswissenschaften, a course highly valued by the few who follow it. The great defect, however, in German exercises of this sort, is that the student rarely sees the books or collections that the lecturer describes. Such training should be carried on in the university library, in small classes, seated around a large table where all the works mentioned are actually displayed and may be handled by the student, during the lecture or after it. This method has been practiced by the writer in a lecture-room connected with the Peabody Library of 90,000 volumes, in Baltimore, and is perfectly feasible in any college library.

Columbia College has provided a special room for the library of his tory and political science, which now numbers about 15,000 volumes. This room adjoins the main library and is conveniently fitted with separate tables, desk chairs, electric student-lamps, etc., for independent, secluded work. The special librarian sits outside in the main library, near the door leading to the reading-room of his department. He admits those only who have scholarly business there; he aids and advises students in their quest of materials; he knows his special library like a book of ready reference. This is the proper way to administer a department collection. No amount of cataloguing and classification, no perfunctory lecturing on bibliography, will fully avail their purpose without a good librarian who can carry an administrative system in his head, and keep the whole library at his fingers' ends.

The new library administration of Melvil Dewey (A. B., Amherst 18741), which, like the School of Political Science, has been grafted from young Amherst College upon the sturdy trunk of old Columbia (it proves its sturdy vitality by invigorating the grafts), is certainly beginning to mediate most admirably between its once scattered, chaotic

1 Another graduate of Amherst in 1874, Mr. Walter Stanley Biscoe, has chargo of the catalogue department and the general classification of the Columbia College Library.

collections of books and its present active corps of students. It aims to organize so thoroughly its literary resources in any given field, like his. tory or political science, that they can be speedily massed upon any given point with the precision and certainty of a Prussian army corps, in the execution of a military manœuvre. At present, in many college libraries, the search for scattered books or pamphlets upon a given subject is like the hunt for a needle in a hay-stack; but with the Columbia system of library management, if perfectly carried out, every lost needle will become a needle-gun in the armory of science, ready with a thousand others for instant use. With such organization of knowledge, and with trained men to apply it, any department of science can go forth conquering and to conquer. Carlyle expressed only a half truth when he said, "the best modern university is a library of books," even if we concede him good books, a good librarian, and good readers. The best of libraries is not a modern university unless it becomes a laboratory of science, where fresh truth is demonstrated, under the influence of master minds, living or dead. This is the highest function of teachers and professors-to keep alive the scientific spirit, to breathe upon and kindle anew the sacred fire, as did the flamens of old. Columbia College has not been content with erecting a magnificent library building; that alone, even if crowded with books and with passive readers, would have been a mausoleum, and not a real university library. She has estab lished in that beautiful building a vigorous school of political science, which is rapidly transforming both the library and the college into a modern university.

DOCTORS' THESES AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

Among the first fruits of Columbia's School of Political Science are the various doctors' theses which have been privately printed by the candidates, although not yet published to the world. The work is so valuable and suggestive to students of history and political science in this country, that it should certainly have a wider distribution. A beginning must be made in the line of scholastic publication, otherwise general progress will be impossible. The school of political science in Columbia College and the department of history and politics in the Johns Hopkins University have taken the lead in requiring doctors' dissertations in printed form; but the practice is growing elsewhere, in various parts of the country, and it will become general if fostered by a liberal distribution of printed theses to college libraries. It would be very advantageous if some system of library exchange could be arranged by the faculties of our colleges and universities, whereby, as in Germany, the doctors' theses of one institution could be seen in every other.

Among the doctors' theses now to be found in the Columbia College library, from the school of political science, are the following: A Sketch of the Constitutional History of Canada, by Thomas D. Rambaut, 1884;