

[Entered at the Post-Offlce of New York, N.Y., as Second-Class Matter.J 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



Eighth Yeak. 

 Vol. XVI. No. 403. 



NEW YORK, October 17, 1890. 



Single Copies, Ten Cents. 

 $3.50 Pee Year, in Advance. 



PLA.NS AND WORK AT CLARK UNIVERSITY. 



The com men cement exercises of Clark University, which 

 marked the opening of its second academic year, were held 

 in tlie large hall of the university building, Oct. 4, 1890. 

 About one thousand persons were present. Stephen Salis- 

 bury, Esq., presided, and made an opening address. The 

 address of President G. Stanley Hall was as follows: — 



"When called upon to consider the invitation with which 

 the trustees of this university honored me, two and a half 

 years ago, I was in an institution which, in the less than 

 fifteen years of its existence, had done a work in stimulating 

 other institutions, and in advancing the highest standards, 

 which was, as I think all cheerfully admit, beyond compari- 

 son in the recent histoi'y of higher education in this country. 

 After studying Worcester and the New England situation, 

 I saw the opportunity here to be so great for a further and 

 no less epoch-making step, that I felt that assured career, 

 and even an impoi'tant department, new in this country and 

 full of fascinations, and in the mi)st critical stage of its de- 

 velopment, ought not to weigh against it. Permission was 

 at once given me to begin my preparation for this important 

 work by studying foreign institutions for a year. I visited 

 every European country but Portugal, and found everywhere 

 great and sui'prising advances since my own student life 

 abroad had ended. 



" In France the best and most original professors had been 

 selected from among the various higher institutions of Paris 

 ( the Sorbonue, the College of France, Ecole Normale, and 

 the great special institutes), and organized by the govern- 

 ment into a new and still higher institution devoted to the 

 most advanced work, and largely to research. This institu- 

 tion, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, has some features of the 

 French Academy, and adds to these lectures and the personal 

 guidance and inspiration of the most advanced and able 

 students from the other scientific institutions of the country. 

 The new conseil superieur, composed of statesmen and pro- 

 fessors of the highest standing, which has the ch'ef control 

 of the national system of education from primary school to 

 university, might almost be described as a new educational 

 academy, with vast administrative respoasibilities. 



" The remarkable new school for the post-graduate train- 

 ing in statesmanship, which, although a private institution, 

 is training the political leaders of all parties: the new law 

 of 1878, basing all clinical and practical medical studies upon 

 the sciences which underlie them (chemistry and the various 

 branches of biology) ; the Musee Guimnet, which two years 

 ago opened its extensive museums and libraries, and now 

 offers facilities for the study of comparative religion un- 



equalled in the world; the progressive decentralization and 

 local organization of primary education (the sagacious policy 

 of Minister Buisson); the development, by government and 

 otherwise, of what may be called the pedagogy of high edu- 

 cation; and the great fact that in fourteen years the total 

 amount devoted to education in that country has increased 

 sevenfold, — all this shows how far, in the words of a dis- 

 tinguished French statesman, ' education is fast becoming the 

 central question for France.' 



"In Italy a council of education, composed of sixteen 

 royal appointees and sixteen professors selected from the 

 universities, has grappled with the problem of subordinating 

 fourteen of its universities to the other seven, which latter 

 are being rebuilt with great and sometimes literally palatial 

 magnificence. As, with the policy of doubling for each 

 provincial university all the funds it can raise for itself, the 

 government has gradujilly acquired practical control of all 

 of them, scholarly and scientific activity has been awakened 

 to new life in nearly all directions, and ambitions of intel- 

 lectual leadership, as in the best days of the mediaeval uni- 

 versities of Italy, are often manifest. 



' ■ Holland has revised and co-ordinated her organizations of 

 higher education, and established one new university. Swe- 

 den has profoundly reconstructed her educational system on a 

 plan that might be called the most severely modern in the 

 world, and Denmark is taking steps in the same direction. 

 In 1884, Russia, after prolonged discussion, re-organized her 

 universities. In Great Britain, new provincial universities, 

 and important changes in the others, too many and great to be 

 briefly described here, have been inaugurated. In Germany, 

 thirteen magnificent university buildings make Strasburg, 

 in all departments, the best of all architectural embodiments 

 of the German university ideal. Halle and Kiel have been, 

 and Breslau is now being, almost entirely rebuilt. New and 

 often magnificent laboratories, libraries, special cliniques,, 

 and museums at every seat of learning, — great temples of 

 science, as they were called by one of its perfervid orators, 

 Du Bois-Reymond, — and two single buildings costing four 

 million dollars each, show where much of the French in- 

 demnity money has gone; and, what is far more important, 

 the internal has not lagged behind the external growth. At 

 Budapesth, Ghent, Aix-la-Chapelle, Helsingfor in Finland, 

 and even in remote Athens, magnificent new structures show 

 in what esteem science is now held, and what still greater 

 things she is yet expected to do. Several institutions of new 

 pattern, like the Naples School of Zoology, which now trains 

 the best professors for Germany; the London University, 

 which is solely an examining body, and does not teach, — 

 these and many more show not only how many and strong. 



