PRESIDENT CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

of the present housing of the University. The truest son of Harvard makes no pretence that the outer aspects of his alma mater can be shown with pride. The buildings are numerous and large, and the "yard," or chain of yards, extends for fully half a mile, while the outlying botanic gardens, arboretum, observatories, boat-houses, and athletic fields are to be sought in remote parts of Cambridge, in other suburbs of Boston, and even as far as Peru. Individually the buildings are disappointing to the visitor, and collectively no plan has been followed that would give effectiveness to their ensemble. Any view could show but a portion of these college "workshops, "for such they are in the activity they shelter, numbering, as they do, fifty in the central yards and nearly a hundred in all. It thus seems preferable to present portraits of a few of those who have taken part in maintaining the good name of Harvard and directing her growth in recent years, with a vignette of the gateway and a full-page illustration of the

yard and a few of the surrounding buildings.

Of Oxford it has been said that the one duty which that university has never neglected is the assembling of young men from all over England, and giving them three years of liberty of life, of leisure, and of discussion, in scenes which are classical and peaceful. For those days, the "most fruitful of their lives," Oxonians have often expressed their gratitude. Landor, though he "wrote better Latin verses than any undergraduate, . . . could never be persuaded by tutor or friends to contend for any prizes," and found pleasantest and most profitable those hours which he passed with Walter Birch in the Magdalen Walks. For such gainful communion, to the neglect of the methods of mental improvement prescribed by the faculty, we find thanks recorded by our own James Russell Lowell.

The Harvard of the first half of the century; the Harvard whose educational merits her honored son, Joseph H. Choate, has so often urged; the Harvard that fostered James Russell Lowell, John Lothrop Motley, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Bancroft, and Charles Francis Adams, - was a community to which came young men who had gained at school the power of application in studying Greek, Latin, and mathematics by methods which gave to their tasks little that was alluring. In college these young men, thrown with others pursuing the same studies and having common interests, mastered that next element of success in life, the knowledge of men and how to meet them. Of such a college, of such an environment, Professor Norton gives the requisites as "inspiring traditions and historic associations, the memory and abiding influence of famous teachers, the heroic examples of past generations, an atmosphere of culture."

That the Harvard of fifty years ago was making men who have become leaders in greater numbers than it is to-day is claimed by some of the older graduates.

They remember that, from the cradle to Commencement, every task of study had in it little that was seductive; they had learned first their letters, and later the rules of Greek grammar, before they could appreciate the utility of either; they had gained the habit of application in work, and then, in their not over-burdened college days, they had added facility in attuning themselves to the keynotes of their associates, of harmonizing with their surroundings, -a capacity that avails more than erudition and logic when human nature is to be moved.

The time had come, however, when not so much leaders and clever all-round men were needed as an educated proletariat,- rather special tools for doing the specialized work in the rapidly differentiating activities of the world. Exception may be taken to the use of the word "tool" to designate the modern specialist. My justification is, that in so far as he is a specialist and not a man with human sympathies, he is for others to handle, not to handle others. The specialist has devoted all his best energies from childhood to acquiring a command of the accumulated knowledge in some limited field; he may have gained such facility in the methods of investigation in that field that he can push the bounds of knowledge yet a bit further. It is often true that there are not a dozen men in the world who, working on the same lines, will take interest in what he is doing. While he may for a moment catch the attention of the workers in other departments, it will be but for a moment; the mental attitude of each specialist becomes so warped that it adapts itself ill to other conceptions than those with which it is familiar. All the same, these crooked tools are just what are wanted in the world-modelling which is going on; but there is little harmony when they are brought together.

As long ago as 1826 it was appreciated at Harvard that the world's store of knowledge had grown too great for any one man to grasp,

and that some choice of what he should study must be made by a student intending to make himself a master in any department. The elective system was tried, but met with such opposition that by 1860 it had been suppressed as far as possible. The curriculum of the sixteenth century-the curriculum which most American college faculties supposed they were still following in 1860 -contained all that was then worthy of study. At the beginning of the present century not ten per cent of the studies now pursued at Harvard could have been taught; they are of knowledge then unknown.

By 1860, so considerable had become the domain of learning that it was forced upon the Harvard authorities to decide whether they would remain content with the old methods, and, as descendants of the Puritan fathers, be "thankful for the parched corn of learning," or whether they would adapt themselves to the developing intellectual environment, call in additional teachers, and give young men

PROF. CHARLES ELIOT NORTON

the opportunity to study the new subjects. There was practically no escape from the system of electives. By 1869, when Mr. Eliot was made president, a fair beginning had been made, and from that time on the aim has been to teach every liberal branch of study, above the level of the entrance requirements, for which there is due demand, and to teach it so well that the students may be carried to the confines of current knowledge and left there with such facility in the methods of investigation and thought in that branch that they may conduct original investigations. In 1860, while one man might not have been able in four years to master all

the studies offered, yet he could have done so in six;

this year it is

estimated that the programme is so varied and long that sixty years would be required. This programme of instruction of five hundred courses neces

sitates a corps of more than four hundred

ing but desks, and the materials used were a text, grammar, and dictionary, or a text-book of mathematics or philosophy. The study of science is not possible without laboratories stocked with apparatus for investigation, and museums for the storing of the accumulated results of investigations. So great is the cost of these science workshops and storehouses that it is a question whether the donations of private individuals will be sufficient to

maintain and develop them. Even the studies that find their materials in books have felt the influence of the scientific method. The library stands in much the same relation to history as a museum does to zoology. Twenty years ago the read

ers in the library at Harvard were accommodated at one table in an anteroom, and there sat as trembling interlopers: now 1250 readers enter the main building daily. To accommodate this throng; to furnish rooms where instruc

tors may discuss plates and other illustrative material with advanced students, and not annoy other workers; to allow of the return to the shelves of books now scattered in department libraries or piled up in cellars, the building should be enlarged to four times its present size. The collection now contains nearly 600,000 volumes and as many pamphlets, being numerically the third in America, and probably the most valuable, on account of the number of rare books gathered during the 263 years of Harvard's life.

The work-a-day spirit that prevails at Harvard is illustrated by the library, to which visitors naturally enough turn as likely to have one room in which they may feel that they are expected, and in which Harvard shall have placed such exhibits as will entertain them, inform them of her history and current interests, and give them pleasant impressions to carry away. As it is, there is not a foot of space within the library walls to which visitors are welcome, a placard on the outer door informing them that they are not wanted the coldest of cold Puritan hospitality.

Having the equipment for teaching, the next step is to make it available for the good of the public. There are boys who have access to, and time to attend, schools equal to fitting them for Harvard College, the nucleus and academic department of Harvard University. There are many other boys shut off from such early training who yet

are qualified to derive benefit from many of the courses. These may enter the Lawrence Scientific School on passing examinations calling for less classical knowledge than do those for the college proper. Special students, who do not enter for any degree, are allowed without examination to pursue any courses which they can show their ability to take with advantage. Finally, during the long vacation, this educational plant is not allowed to rust in idleness, but is opened for the Summer School.

In 1890 the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, replacing earlier distinct faculties, assumed the educational control of Harvard College, the Lawrence Scientific School, and the graduate department. The highThe highest courses under the supervision of this faculty are those in the graduate department, the realm of small classes of picked students, and lead to the degree of Ph. D., the sine qua non, in this day, of all who would secure positions as teachers in colleges. Some of the courses offered by the Scientific School are professional, but, in

PROF. JAMES MILLS PEIRCE

the main, the studies under the charge of this consolidated faculty are what are known as liberal. The plan referred to, of admitting three grades of students to the benefits of these studies, has been adopted as the best, for the present, by which the University may keep in touch with the preparatory schools. It is the belief of the college authorities that the education of a boy from the time he is ten or twelve till he is twenty-one or twentytwo should be considered as a unit, and that school studies may be shortened and brought into harmony with those of the University so as to save several years of schooling and allow the young man to enter on his professional work or business life at an earlier age than twenty-three, as at present. To this problem, so far as concerns the entrance examinations, the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences has given much attention for several years past.

The present policy of the University. may be described in President Eliot's own words: