4H 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



plied. A good and well-equipped high- 

 school can not, as things now are, be 

 maintained in every village and town- 

 ship. We may have the name of the 

 thing, but the reality we can not have. 

 If the system could be worked at all it 

 could probably be worked as success- 

 fully in Massachusetts as in any State 

 of the Union ; but President Eliot tells 

 us that it does not work well there at 

 all, and that, owing to the poverty of 

 the great majority of the schools, a gap 

 which ought not to exist, and which is 

 inconsistent with the theory of the pub- 

 lic-school system, has established itself 

 between the so-called high-schools and 

 the colleges. The schools ought to pre- 

 pare their students for matriculation at 

 the colleges ; but the most of them 

 neither do nor can do anything of the 

 kind. 



What applies to the high-schools ap- 

 plies also, generally speaking, to the 

 colleges themselves. They are not what 

 they ought to be, simply because there 

 are too many of them. The conse- 

 quence is, that there is a great deal of 

 false and shallow culture abroad in the 

 land. A college ought to be a place 

 where a youth would be certain to come 

 into contact with men of an altogether 

 superior order of thought and attain- 

 ment. It ought to be the center of a 

 true intellectual life. Of all our col- 

 leges, how many answer this descrip- 

 tion? It is needless to say that the 

 country does not possess a sufficient 

 number of men of real intellectual mark 

 to fill all the chairs in our innumerable 

 " colleges." If it did, we should in- 

 deed be exceptionally favored. Now, 

 the effect of shallow learning tricking 

 itself out in the garb of real erudition 

 is to confuse all intellectual perceptions 

 and standards. We do not say that a 

 little learning is a dangerous thing, but 

 we say that a little learning that mis- 

 takes itself for great learning is apt to 

 make more or less of a fool or a char- 

 latan of its possessor. We do not know 

 whether there is much to be gained by 



struggling against what seems to bo 

 one of the main currents of the time ; 

 but we are profoundly convinced that 

 the cause of American culture calls for 

 concentration not dispersion of effort, 

 for centralization as opposed to local- 

 ization, for the sinking of petty rival- 

 ries in the endeavor to found strong, 

 permanent, and widely beneficial insti- 

 tutions. Let our common schools which 

 penetrate everywhere be placed on as 

 sound a basis as possible ; let high- 

 schools be established in centers where 

 they can be vigorously and generously 

 sustained ; let our colleges and univer- 

 sities be proportioned in number to the 

 need actually existing for the highest 

 culture, and let them have such sup- 

 port as national and individual interest 

 in such culture prompts and we shall 

 then have all the necessary means for 

 making the American people the equals 

 in education of any other nation in the 

 world. At present we have a vast but 

 somewhat disjointed apparatus, and the 

 results, however soothing they may be 

 in some respects to democratic pride, 

 are, from the point of view of national 

 culture, far from satisfactory. 



We call particular attention to the 

 weighty testimony of Dr.Edward Frank- 

 land, the eminent English chemist and 

 sanitarian, to the claims of the Yellow- 

 stone National Park as a great Ameri- 

 can health resort in winter for invalids 

 with chest and pulmonary difficulties. 

 Dr. Frankland has investigated this sub- 

 ject long and carefully, and is especially 

 familiar with the conditions and effects 

 of the celebrated Engadine Swiss sani- 

 tarium in the valley of Davos. Dr. 

 Frankland came to this country last 

 summer, attended the British Associa- 

 tion atMontreal,and, having heard much 

 of the Yellowstone Park, he went there 

 and spent considerable time in examin- 

 ing its claims as a great winter sanita- 

 rium for the American people. He con- 

 tributes to the " Monthly " a valuable 



