Established by Edward L. Youmans

APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LVI
NOVEMBER, 1899 TO APRIL, 1900

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1900

Copyright, 1900,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

FREDERICK C. SELOUS.

APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1899.

EXACT METHODS IN SOCIOLOGY.

By FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, Ph. D.,

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

Those who do pioneer work in science encounter not only the inherent difficulties of research and interpretation, but also the misapprehension of certain educated men whose distinctive gift is a fatal genius for applying false standards of measurement to the progress of thought. Seizing upon some branch of knowledge that is in a state of vigorous development, when its newer results are out of harmony with its earlier hypotheses, such critics love to point out these contradictions, and try to prove that the branch in question is no science at all, and that its teachers are hardly worthy of respectful consideration.

The history of science contains many interesting chapters pertaining to this kind of criticism and the fate that has invariably overtaken it. When Copernicus and Galileo showed the absurdity of the Ptolemaic astronomy, the theologians enjoyed themselves for a time, as they demonstrated—to their own entire satisfaction—the folly of all rationalistic attempts to explain what revelation only could make clear. When Darwin explained the origin of species through variation and natural selection, the pretensions of biology were completely exploded by its lay and clerical critics (they thought and said so) by the extremely simple device of the "deadly parallel column." Was not Cuvier a great anatomist, and had he ever taught this nonsense about the mutability of species? Was not Agassiz the most learned naturalist alive, and what had he to say about Darwinian vagaries? Had he not proved, over and over again, that the very concept of the species was the notion of a group of characteristics that could not possibly change or be changed from generation to generation? In more recent years we have again seen the same method of reducing science to a variety show for the entertainment of the tired general reader applied to both biology and psychology. Weismann has tried to prove that acquired characteristics are not transmitted in heredity, and that the germ plasm is distinct from the somatic cells. The neo-Lamarckians, Spencer, Cope, and some of the botanists have contended for the older interpretation. Is biology, then, a science? Forbid the thought! Heaven preserve our minds from such confusion!

If the sociologists have hoped that they alone might not be overtaken by easy annihilation, they deserve to be humiliated. But it is safe to say that they have cherished no such illusions. If the men who have devoted much time to the scientific explanation of society have had no other qualification for their task, they have at least shown some acquaintance with the history of thought. And so it is not likely that they have suffered deeply from disenchantment when they have been confronted with the regulation exposure of "the present position" of their science.

There is no need of wasting space to prove that the kind of criticism here referred to is without scientific value. The present position of any science can not be determined by arraying its contradictions and inconsistencies, irrespective of a serious attempt to ascertain which of its concepts and hypotheses have inherent vitality. It is precisely when a science is at its best, surely advancing year by year and full of promise for the future, that contradictions most abound in its monographs and text-books.

A true scientific criticism, then, must proceed by a different method. The present position of a science can be ascertained only by instituting three specific inquiries, namely: First, among the more or less contradictory conceptions and hypotheses which constitute its groundwork, what ones are surely displacing all others and gaining the wider acceptance among active students? Second, what progress is being made in the application of exact methods to research? Third, is there a practical or working harmony between the concepts that are gaining ground and the more exact methods of research that are being perfected? Do the concepts and hypotheses lend themselves to exact methods, and do they, on the whole, help to perfect methods? Do improving methods, on the whole, confirm or strengthen the concepts that are gaining wider acceptance?

If these inquiries are applied in the domain of sociology they bring to light unmistakable evidence of a steady and gratifying progress toward scientific consistency and rigor of method. Much babble about social ills and possible reforms still masquerades as social science. A great deal of loose thinking and slipshod investigation is paraded as expert opinion on questions of social welfare. But no one who has seriously followed the efforts of scientifically trained minds to discover the natural laws of social evolution is in any danger of confounding the results thus far obtained with the chatter over every passing fad. In the more serious work itself there is found a vigorous and hopeful disagreement of opinion upon all unsettled questions. But the fact of real significance is that the disputation has become intensive. The debate no longer ranges over a wide field. A selective process has eliminated one after another the more loose and vague conceptions of the science, the irrelevant issues, and the superficial analogies. There has been a progressive concentration of attention upon a group of closely related and fundamental problems.

The sociology of August Comte was little more than a highly intelligent and quickening talk about social order and progress. It convinced thoughtful men that there is a social order to be studied in a scientific spirit and by scientific methods, and that social progress conforms to laws that may be discovered. Mr. Spencer narrowed the field of sociological inquiry and gave precision of statement to all social problems by bringing them within the formulas of universal evolution. He still further narrowed the field by demonstrating the close relationship of social phenomena to the phenomena of organic evolution and by seizing upon certain psychological facts as chief factors in social causation. All fruitful later work in social interpretation has been a further concentration of investigation upon the psychic factors. While admitting that social as well as mental phenomena are subsumed under biological phenomena, and that the parallelism of social organization to biotic organization is real, the younger students of sociology have developed the science as an offshoot of psychology, and have dropped the biological analogy as unfruitful for purposes of research. The pioneer in this movement was Dr. Lester F. Ward, whose masterly analysis of the psychic factors of social phenomena gave the right direction for all time to sociological inquiry, and whose emphasis of the importance of reason and volition in the social process, although it has not yet received the attention that it merits, is destined to be fruitful in coming years.

To the further study of the psychological foundations of society practically all the valuable work on fundamental social problems has been given during the past ten years. Tarde has given us profound studies of imitation and invention; Gumplowicz and Le Bon, of the psychology of races and culture groups; Novicow, of the psychology of conflict and toleration; Le Bon and Durkheim, of the psychology of crowds, of co-operation, and of the division of labor; Baldwin, of the psychology of the social unit—the socius.

Thus it appears that while sharp disagreements of opinion still exist relative to the priority or the generality of one or another of these psychic factors in the social process, discussion has focused about the psychological phenomena themselves. There has been a progressive limitation of the field and an increasing definiteness of conception and hypothesis.

My own effort, if now I may be pardoned for referring to it, has been to restrict the field yet further, and to make the problems of sociology yet more specific. I have contended that these psychological phenomena which have been seized upon for purposes of sociological interpretation are still too vaguely conceived. They are often disclosed to the inquirer in purely individual as well as in social aspects. The lines of inquiry between the study of mind in general, of mind as individual, and of mind as manifesting itself socially in the concert or co-operation of a number of individual minds, have not been drawn with sufficient precision. I have tried to show that the psychological phenomena that Ward, Tarde, Gumplowicz, Novicow, Le Bon, Durkheim, Baldwin, and others have so admirably analyzed as psychic factors of society are social when, and only when, they have certain coefficients, namely: (1) The coefficient of resemblance—that is, a fundamental similarity of individuals to one another underlying and, on the whole, dominating their innumerable differences; (2) the coefficient of awareness or consciousness of resemblance—that is to say, certain feelings, perceptions, or thoughts of resemblance, which give rise to varied prejudices and preferences that facilitate or prevent effective co-operation. Whether this contention of mine will prevail, whether there will ultimately be a general agreement among sociologists that these coefficients of resemblance and consciousness of kind are the true differentia of social phenomena, time and further research must determine.

The second inquiry through which we may learn somewhat of the present position of sociology relates to the development of method. Exact method in social research is statistical. Wherever we can obtain numerical data within the domain of social phenomena, there we arrive at exact or quantitative knowledge. The development and application of statistical methods to social problems has been one of the most striking scientific achievements of the present century. When Quételet, in 1835, published his great work, Sur l'Homme et le Développement de ses Facultés, he laid the foundation for a thorough statistical investigation of psychological and sociological no less than of anatomical phenomena. And after the publication, in 1846, of his work, Sur la Théorie des Probabilités appliquées aux Sciences morales et politiques, followed, in 1848, by Du Système social et des Lois qui le régissent, there was a rapid development of statistical methods in precision, and of attempts to extend the statistical method to groups of facts which had until then been studied only from a purely qualitative or, at best, a vaguely comparative point of view. At the present time every subdivision of descriptive sociology draws data from rich collections of statistical materials, and employs statistical methods for the further extension of knowledge.

Thus, in the study of the social population, statistical methods are employed not only to give the total number of inhabitants dwelling within a given territory and the degree of density of population per square mile, but also to show to what extent population increases by births in excess of deaths, to what extent by immigration in excess of emigration, and to what extent the composition of the population is rendered complex by the intermingling of many nationalities. The character of a population, also, and its social capacities are in a large measure statistically investigated. General intelligence is studied by means of statistics of literacy and illiteracy; industrial preferences by statistics of occupation; habits of industry by statistics of the number in every thousand of the total population who regularly follow gainful occupations; frugality by statistics of savings, insurance, and home ownership; and the amount of communication, whereby assimilation and co-operation are rendered possible, by statistics of travel, mail, and telegraphic service.

Passing to that study of concerted feeling, thought, and purpose which may be called a study of the social mind, and which constitutes the second great division of descriptive sociology, we find that it can be carried on, and that to a great extent it is prosecuted, by means of statistical research. We have statistics incomplete, but admitting of perfection, of those impulsive, emotional disturbances of masses of men which take the form of strikes, insurrections, lynchings, and revivals. The report of the United States Department of Labor on strikes, published in 1894, and a recently published monograph by Dr. Frederick S. Hall on Sympathetic Strikes, show the possibilities of this method whenever it shall be exhaustively applied. It could be successfully applied to the other phenomena mentioned. By painstaking effort and a sufficient expenditure of money the data could be obtained. Lombroso and Laschi, in their work, Le Crime politique et les Révolutions, have made a beginning toward the collection of statistics of insurrections and revolutions. More exact, at present, are our statistics of the rational working of the minds of large numbers of men in communication and co-operation. These we have in the familiar form of election returns, which show us the decisions that communities make on questions of public policy and administration. This information could be increased by the application of statistical analyses to the vast body of statute law and judicial decisions. A beginning of such work has been made in the valuable Bulletin of State Legislation, published by the New York State Library.

In the third division of descriptive sociology—that, namely, which treats of social organization—the application of statistical method is proceeding with great rapidity. We have not only statistics (yearly improving in quality) of marriage and divorce, of the organization of all governmental departments, military and civil, of chartered corporations, of religious and educational societies, but also of the thousands of associations formed for the promotion of special interests, recreation, scientific research, art and literature, and philanthropy. Every year the statistical information on these matters, included in such compilations as The World Almanac, becomes not only more extensive but more precise.

Yet more abundant are the statistical accumulations pertaining to that fourth and last division of descriptive sociology which treats of the social welfare—of the functioning of society, of the ends for which it exists. We have statistics of prosperity, of the accumulation and distribution of wealth, of the expansion and contraction of credit, and of business failures. We have statistics of longevity. We ascertain improving sanitary conditions by changes in the death rate. We learn by statistical methods of the increase or decrease of accident and death due to public disorder or maladministration. We ascertain through educational statistics the decrease of illiteracy and superstition. And by the same means we ascertain the dimensions of pauperism and of crime. Not only so, but, by a certain refinement of statistical method, applied by competent men like Sir Francis Galton, we ascertain the increase or decrease and the distribution of the higher manifestations of intellectual ability and moral character.

Thus the whole field of descriptive sociology is being more and more exhaustively studied by statistical methods that are yearly improving in precision. So far, then, as may be judged from the development of its methods, no science at the present time is making surer and better progress than sociology, and none is offering to the general public conclusions based upon more exact methods of induction.

Let us now look at the relations which the development of statistical method bears to that development of fundamental conceptions, which has already been described. Do we here discover increasing harmony, a tendency toward co-ordination, or have analyses of concepts, on the one hand, and developments of statistical method, on the other hand, followed diverging lines?

There can be no possible doubt of the answer that must be made to these questions. Conceptions and methods are in as perfect accord as can be discovered in any branch of science. The merest glance over the field of social statistics shows that, for the most part, they record and classify phenomena that are essentially psychological. In working from the general theory of evolution through the biological parallelism down to psychological premises, analytical sociology has been doing in one way precisely what statistics have been doing in another. The moment we pass from statistics of density and distribution of population we find ourselves dealing next with groups of facts that are biological (the facts, namely, of distribution according to sex and age periods), through facts that are partly biological and partly psychological in character (the facts, namely, of nationality), and then, leaving these behind, we deal henceforth entirely with facts that belong to the mental and moral categories. To name them would be only to repeat the categories already enumerated: the statistics of intelligence, industry, and moral character, of emotional or rational social action, of various forms of organization for the achievement of as many different purposes, and of the development of the conscious personality of man as a result of his social relations and activities.

Not only is this true, but the further interesting fact may be discovered that social statistics of every category employed or known are based upon a frank recognition of that coefficient of resemblance, physical or mental, which I have contended is a mark of social phenomena. The first step in statistical tabulation is classification, and classification invariably starts from an assumption of real or supposed resemblance. Not to dwell on such fundamental distinctions as those of color, race, and nationality, we encounter the more special resemblances of agreement in religious belief, agreement in industrial preference, agreement in political conviction (as shown in election returns), similar susceptibility to emotionalism, similar capacities for rational comprehension, similar imperfections of nature, which result in lives of crime or pauperism. Remove from social statistics this postulate that blood kinship or mental resemblance between one social unit and another is the basis of social phenomena, and the statistics themselves would cease to exist.

Statistics reveal also the consciousness which men have of their resemblances and their differences. It is statistically known that the geographical distribution of nationalities is not accidental or capricious. Immigrant Italians, Germans, and Scandinavians find their way to those parts of the country where men of their own blood and speech are already established. Intermarriages of men and women of different nationalities are statistically known to be frequent where no differences of religion exist, and infrequent where different nationalities profess different faiths. The statistics of political elections are quite as much statistics of the consciousness of kind as of differences of mental type itself.

The most significant fact of all, however, has still to be named. It is this: From the first known beginnings of statistical research to the present time every extension of statistical inquiry has been in a large measure due to the consciousness of kind. The first statistical surveys of communities of which we have any record were such tribal enumerations as those recorded in the book of Numbers, the avowed object of which was to ascertain the strength and resources of the various tribes by clans, lesser gentile groups, and households, not more for utilitarian reasons than for the gratification of gentile and tribal pride. The census taken in Greece in 594 B. C. was for the purpose of dividing the people into four classes and levying taxes according to wealth. The constitution of Servius Tullius, 550 B. C., distinguished six property classes, and the attempt to determine these statistically was one of the earliest experiments in census-making at Rome. The Domesday Book of William I (1086) is the first great statistical document in English history, and its origin was due to a desire to know not only the military and fiscal strength of the nation, but also its class distinctions and feudal relationships. The great stimulus given to statistical investigation by the French Revolution was an obvious product of class feeling. Most of the refinements of statistical inquiry in later years have had a like origin. Such, for example, was the cause of the discrimination in our own census of the foreign born from the native born, and of the native born of foreign parents from both native and foreign born. Such has been the cause of the attempt to get more exact statistics of religious denominations, of labor organizations, and of the distribution of wealth. Had there been no reason for including these costly inquiries in statistical investigations, except that of their general utility and scientific interest, the appropriation for them would have been denied in Congress without an instant's hesitation. They have been included because of the political deference given to class feeling and to various forms of religious and educational prejudice.

Thus there is seen to be a remarkable interdependence of statistical method and psychological analysis in the development of sociological research. Analysis and method have converged upon the same postulates, and it is apparently by the development of methods frankly founded upon these postulates that our sociological knowledge is to be further increased.

It would be a great mistake, however, to assume that sociological knowledge is to be increased only by the further collection and interpretation of numerical data. Careful monographic description and historical research must continue to be important sources of both information and hypothesis. The great defects of monographic work, both descriptive and historical, are, first, a certain lack of precision, attributable to the large part played in investigation by the individual judgment of the student (the lack of objective tests by which his subjective impressions may be critically examined); second, a certain incompleteness, attributable to a failure to separate each inquiry into all its scientific subdivisions and to attempt to obtain desired data under each subdivision, as is done in statistical investigation where, in every table, as many topics as there are scientific subdivisions of the general subject are represented by columns, and an entry of some kind is made in every column.

I wish now to point out the possibility of giving greater precision to monographic work in sociology by the introduction of quasi-statistical methods—methods that are essentially quantitative in an algebraic sense, though they are not numerical.

Social phenomena have the interesting characteristic that small forces, while never lost in that composition of forces which determines the ultimate equilibrium of the social system, often count for absolutely nothing in the practical affairs of a given generation. If, for example, Mr. Bryan and a Democratic Congress had been elected in 1896, the practical consequences for the United States would have been much the same whether the Democratic plurality had been one hundred thousand, half a million, or two or three millions. This is but one example of a large class of facts. Social phenomena are more often than not determined by a mere matter of more or less, rather than by the exact amount or degree of more or less. The determination is algebraic rather than arithmetical. Is the element under investigation a positive or a negative quantity? Is its sign plus or minus? That is usually the important question for the sociological student.

Now it happens that a great many investigations in descriptive sociology do not as yet admit of the introduction of exact statistical—that is, arithmetical—inquiries which, nevertheless, do admit the use of algebraically quantitative methods. In the monographic description of a community many questions arise which can not be answered by the entry of figures in a column, but which could be answered by entering in a column a symbol indicating that a certain trait, habit, or choice could be predicated of a large majority, or of a small majority, or of only a large minority, or of only a small minority of the entire population. That is to say, it often happens that an observer who can not take a perfect census (getting answers to all his questions from every individual in the community), and who therefore can not fill out his columns with arithmetical values, can, by such interviewing as is possible to him and by such an examination of the objective products of social activity as are open to the inspection of any one who chooses to observe them critically, determine with absolute certainty whether certain things are true of majorities or only of minorities.

Suppose, for example, that a traveler is studying an out-of-the-way settlement, or a tribe, which presents many points of interest that are comparatively novel. All who are familiar with the narratives of travel and exploration which Mr. Spencer has used as data for his Descriptive Sociology are aware that they are almost totally devoid of system. The reader is told that such marriage customs, such clan relationships, such political institutions, such industrial operations, have been observed. The all-important coefficient is left out. What the student of sociology would most of all like to know is how many individuals in the community manifest such or such a trait; how many have such or such a habit; how many profess such or such a belief; how many adhere to this organization, how many to that. But since this exact arithmetical knowledge usually can not be obtained within the limited time and under the circumstances of a traveler's researches, he should try to get at least partially quantitative results by noting in every instance whether the phenomenon observed is true of a majority or only of a minority of the people under investigation.

This simple method admits of a high degree of refinement by the obvious device of subdividing the total human mass under observation into enumeration units. If, for example, we are studying the social character and activities of the people of the United States, we may take the fifty Commonwealths and Territories as enumeration units. Making out a tabular form, we may enter in the left-hand column the names of the several States and Territories. At the top of successive columns, counting from left to right, we may enter words designating the social phenomena to be observed. Then, taking the States and Territories in order, we may enter opposite the name of each a symbol indicating that a majority large or small, or a minority large or small, of the inhabitants of the State or Territory in question manifests the trait or follows the activity, or belongs to the social organization designated at the top of the column. The symbols that I have found most convenient in use are these: For a large majority, a double plus sign thus, ⧺; for a small majority, a single plus sign thus, +; for a large minority, a double plus sign in a circle thus,

; for a small minority, a single plus sign in a circle thus, ⨁.

The great possibilities in this method of giving precision to observations and records of the facts of social psychology and activity become daily more obvious to students who practice it with reasonable care. Almost any desired degree of accuracy can be attained by taking smaller and smaller enumeration units. Thus, if I wish to form and to record my judgment as to whether the people of the United States as a whole manifest a high, a medium, or a low degree of general intelligence, I seem to be raising a question that admits of little better answer than a statement of vague impressions. But let me take a concrete measure of high general intelligence—for example, the general intelligence of a town noted for its large proportion of scientific and professional men, its graded schools, its satisfactory school attendance, and its low percentage of illiteracy. Let me then subdivide the United States into fifty parts—namely, the Commonwealths and Territories—and let me enter in a column opposite the name of each a symbol indicating that, as compared with the general intelligence of the town which I have taken as a standard, a large majority or a small majority, or a large minority or only a small minority, of the people in that Commonwealth are of the high general intelligence; that a large majority or a small majority, or a large minority or only a small minority, are of medium intelligence; and that a large majority or a small majority, or a large minority or a small minority, are of low intelligence. Obviously, when I have completed this process I have subjected my vague general impression that the people of the United States as a whole are of high, medium, or low general intelligence to a certain correction and measure. I count up the entries in my columns. I discover that I have made, let us say, nine entries indicating that a large majority of the people in each of nine States are of high intelligence. I find that I have made, let us say, eighteen entries indicating that in each of eighteen States a small majority of the people are of low general intelligence; and this mere counting of the entries may show me that, when taking the States one by one, I have made a somewhat different estimate of the general intelligence of the people of the entire country from that which I made when looking at all the people of the country as an undivided mass.

If still unsatisfied with my judgment, I may proceed to subdivide each State into its counties, and take the counties as enumeration units. I may go through the process of recording my judgments by entering symbols in the several columns of my table, and at the end I may again count up my totals of high, medium, and low intelligence. Obviously, I can do this work only if I am able to travel through every county in the United States, and, by interviews with people, by forming general impressions and by visiting schools, get a fairly definite idea of the relative intelligence of each civil division; or if, being unable to make this personal inquiry, I resort to printed information—namely, educational reports, miscellaneous public documents, historical records, newspapers, and other objective data throwing light upon the intellectual status of these various divisions. This, I find, is an enormous labor; but if I conscientiously perform it I correct my subjective impressions, and there is a fair presumption that my final result is a judgment vastly nearer the truth than was my first general impression of the intelligence of the whole undivided mass of the American population.

Thus the conscientious use of the method which I have suggested insures, in the interest of precision, two important modifications of ordinary sociological description: First, it subjects the purely subjective processes of judgment to a certain correction and measurement; secondly, it leads the observer step by step, and almost unconsciously, to resort more and more to definite objective data in place of first impressions.

Essentially the same method, by slight modifications of detail, may be extended to historical inquiries. How often do we encounter in historical monographs the statement that, since a certain date, there has been a marked increase of this or that activity, or that such a trait or such a habit, occasionally observed half a century ago, is now characteristic of whole sections or populations! To the credit of the historians, it must be said that careful men seldom make such statements without offering in substantiation of them a certain amount of objective evidence. But the method is loose, and it has the radical defect of permitting such terms as "increase" and "decrease," "great increase" and "great decrease" to stand for different quantities when applied to different phenomena under examination in the same treatise. There is no uniformity of measurement. Now, it is easy to introduce uniformity, even where arithmetical values are not known. It is possible to know that we are applying the same method of measurement when we say that, since 1850, there has been a "great" multiplication of lynchings in the United States that we apply when we say that there has been a "great" increase of population, although, in the case of the lynchings, we have not arithmetical values, while in the case of the increase of population we have.

This can be done in the following way: Distinguish and designate degrees of increase or decrease by symbols thus: No change, = 0; absolute increase but relative decrease, = +1; absolute increase with no relative decrease, = +2; great absolute increase without relative decrease, = +3; absolute and relative increase, = +4; absolute decrease but relative increase, = -1; absolute decrease without relative increase, = -2; great absolute decrease without relative increase, = -3; absolute and relative decrease, = -4.

Now let the historian who wishes to pass in review the quantitative changes that have occurred since a given time—for example, 1850—before he puts on paper his impressions, based upon such evidence as he has been able to collate, put down all these symbols against the name of each of the social phenomena which he is studying. He will instantly see that he is trying to apply to each of the phenomena whose changes he wishes to record a certain scale of measurement, and he at once asks himself: What do I really mean by such a term as "relative" increase or decrease when contrasted with "absolute" increase or decrease; and what do I mean by such a term as "great" increase or decrease when contrasted with such a term as "increase" or "decrease" without a modifying word? The moment he puts these questions before his mind he will feel a sinking of heart as he reviews the pages in which he has confidently told his readers that such "absolute" and "relative" changes have from time to time occurred, and reflects that he has seldom been consistent in his use of these terms.

How, then, shall he attain consistency and precision? To be consistent and precise in the use of the word "relative" it is necessary to make at the outset an arbitrary choice of a term of comparison, just as in making comparative judgments of such a phenomenon as general intelligence it is necessary to take as a standard the phenomenon as observed in a particular community. The most suitable term of comparison for all judgments of increase or decrease in social phenomena is the increase or decrease of population per square mile within the area and during the period studied. The increase of population is arithmetically measured, and it stands in relations of direct causation to every social change. The historian, therefore, in forming his judgments of relative increase or decrease should always take the increase or decrease of population per square mile as his term of comparison.

What meaning, finally, shall be attached to the word "great" when the historian wishes to distinguish "great" increase or "great" decrease from "increase" or "decrease" in general, and absolute statistics are not available? There is one, and, as far as I can see, only one, perfectly satisfactory procedure.

Let the investigator subdivide the community which he is studying into enumeration units according to the method suggested above for the descriptive monograph. Let him then make as many tables as there are ten-year periods in the general historical period that he is investigating. That is to say, let him make a table for 1850, for 1860, for 1870, for 1880, and for 1890. Let him then proceed according to the method laid down for the descriptive monograph, entering opposite each Commonwealth the symbol for majority or minority, thus showing by States, for each of the ten-year periods, the prevalence of the trait or activity under investigation. Suppose, for example, that the phenomenon studied is the growth of popular interest in prize fighting since 1850. The historian should begin by asking, In what States, if any, in 1850 were large majorities of the people interested in prize fights to the extent of countenancing them and eagerly following their progress? In what States were only small majorities so interested, in what States only large minorities, and in what ones only small minorities? The best answers that the historian can make to these questions, after examining all the evidence that he can command, he should record by entering the proper symbol against each State, after which he should repeat the procedure for the date 1860, for the date 1870, and so on. When his tables are thus completed, he should count up the number of entries of each symbol in each table. If then he finds that in less than half of his enumeration units—i. e., in less than half of all the States and Territories—small minorities have become large minorities, large minorities have become small majorities, or small majorities have become large, he will be justified in concluding that there has been an increase, but not a "great" increase, in popular interest in prize fighting. If, however, he discovers that these changes have occurred in more than half of his enumeration units, he can say with reason that the increase of interest in prize fighting has been "great."

Cases may arise in which a correction of the judgment thus formed may be necessary. It might be erroneous to say that there had been no great increase of interest in prize fighting if it were discovered that the increase had occurred in two or three Commonwealths only, but that in them it had been phenomenal. The method itself, however, reveals the necessity for correction in such cases and measures the error; for, obviously, a phenomenal increase or decrease in any one enumeration unit would be disclosed by a dropping of the intermediate symbols between ⨁ and ⧺. That is to say, small minorities would become majorities, or great majorities would become small minorities, within an interval during which lesser changes were occurring elsewhere.

Thus, by taking a little trouble, the historian can apply one constant measure to his judgments of increase and decrease, as he reviews social changes. He must subdivide his community into enumeration units, and against each unit, at each convenient date, he must enter a record of his judgment that the trait, activity, interest, or relation under investigation can be predicated of a large or of only a small majority, of a large or of only a small minority, of the individuals composing the enumeration unit. He must then count up the changes from minority to greater minority or to majority, or from majority to minority. Conscientiously following this method, the historian may often make comparisons of great precision, when otherwise his comparisons, made without reference to a common measure, would be little more than suppositions.

Following such methods as these, the writers of descriptive and historical monographs can increase our approximately exact sociological knowledge. Constructing and filling out such tables as have been described, they can bring to light serious gaps in our numerical statistics, and they can thereby suggest and stimulate new statistical inquiries. Thus co-operating, the descriptive writers, the historians, and the statisticians can in time perfect our descriptive sociology, and, co-operating with those students who are completing the analysis of fundamental concepts, they can gradually give precision to our formulations of sociological law.

Bishop Creighton, of London, has characterized the present English idea of education as embodying the supposition that "all the child had to do was to sit still like a pitcher under a pump while an expert hand poured in the proper amount of material for it to hold." His own view was that the only education anybody really obtained was that which he gave himself. "The idea prevailing at the beginning of the century was that men should read a good book, master its contents, and pursue for themselves the lines of thought it suggested, and talk it over and make its ideas the subject of discussion among themselves. No system could surely be better."

VINLAND AND ITS RUINS.

SOME OF THE EVIDENCES THAT NORTHMEN WERE IN MASSACHUSETTS IN PRE-COLUMBIAN DAYS.[1]

By CORNELIA HORSFORD.

The evidences that Northmen were in Massachusetts in pre-Columbian days are drawn from two sources, geography and archæology. The archæological evidence is found by comparing certain ruins in Massachusetts with ruins of the Saga-time in Iceland, and also with the native and early European ruins on the coast of North America. The geographical evidence is found by comparing the descriptions of the country called Vinland in Icelandic literature with the coast of North America.

The geographical data for this paper are taken from each and all of the three oldest manuscript versions of the story of Vinland, because they complement each other where the descriptions vary in detail. These are called the Flat Island Book, Eric the Red's Saga, and Thorfinn Karlsefni's Saga.

If the coast of North America should repeat the same geographical features, it would obviously be impossible to determine the site of Vinland by geography alone. Let us see if this is so. It is stated in Eric the Red's Saga that Karlsefni's party, which consisted of one hundred and sixty men and their live stock in three vessels, after sailing southwest from Greenland for a number of days and seeing two new countries, came to a certain cape. "They cruised along the land and the land lay on the starboard.... There were there an open, harborless coast and long strands and sand banks. And they went in boats to the land and found there the keel of a ship, and they named it Keel Cape. And they gave a name to the strands and called them Wonder Strands, because they were long to sail by. Then the land became scored with bays, and they steered the ships to the bays."[2] They remained here for some time, but they had not yet seen the Vinland which Leif Erikson had found a few years before.

Thorhall started to seek for it "northward round Wonder-strand and westward off Keel Cape." Therefore we must first look for a cape, the trend of whose shore is north and south, with open water west of it, and beyond that again land. This cape must have a long, sandy, harborless coast, with sand banks on the east, and it must be broken up into bays farther to the south, and one of these bays must be large enough and deep enough for three vessels, one of which could carry at least fifty men across the Atlantic. The icelandic word "örœfi" which is used in this text means "harborless," and is the descriptive local name of the convex, sandy, unsheltered coast of southern Iceland (Orœfa), the present Skaptafells district, from Stokksnes to Dyrhólaey. This gives a clear idea of what we ought to look for along the coast of North America.

The eastern coast of North America[3] shows us that, south of rock-bound Labrador, the only places north of New York where capes are to be found jutting northward from the land are northern Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, the southern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Cape Ann, and Cape Cod.

There is no stretch of open, harborless, sandy coast from Cape Bauld to Cape Spear, with its steep, sterile, rocky shores.[4] There are two or three stretches of unbroken coast from three to five miles long, north and south of Canada Bay, northwest of Conception Bay, and northeast of Bonavista Bay, but these are not the shores of capes jutting to the north, with long strands and sand banks.

If we begin with Cape Breton and follow the coast northward we find no extensive stretch of harborless coast until we reach Island Point. From this point to Cape Smoke there is a comparatively unbroken coast about thirty miles in extent whose "headlands are composed of primary and metamorphic rocks, principally granite, with clay slate in nearly vertical strata, while sandstone, conglomerate, shale, limestone, and occasionally beds of gypsum and red and yellow marl occur on the intervening shores."[5] Here, then, there are not long strands and sand banks. Cape North is a headland of slate one thousand feet high.[6] Dr. Gustav Storm, of the University of Christiania, in his well-known book, Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, etc., page 42, points out a resemblance between Cape Breton and Keel Cape, and states that the eastern shores of Cape Breton Island are "specially described as low-lying and sandy." According to the United States Hydrographic Office Report, No. 99, page 289, the southeast coast of Cape Breton Island from Michaux Point to Cape Gabarus "is low and has a barren and rocky appearance, and the shore is broken into numerous lakes and ponds, protected from the sea by beaches of gravel and some small rocky islands and ledges.... From Cape Gabarus to Cape Breton, a distance of fifteen miles, the land is of moderate height and the shore broken into coves and small harbors." Between Louisburg and Cape Breton, eight miles beyond, "there are three small harbors, too intricate and rocky in their entrances to admit vessels of any burden," and Cape Breton itself is "low and rocky and covered with grassy moors." This is unlike the open, harborless coast with long strands and sand banks of the Sagas. Within the Gulf of St. Lawrence the capes which jut to the north are Cape St. George,[7] with rocky, precipitous cliffs six hundred feet above the sea; North Point,[8] on Prince Edward Island, which is broken about five miles down the coast by Tignish River, and beyond that by the red sandstone cliff of Cape Kildare; Escuminiac Point,[9] at the entrance to Miramichi Bay, a broken coast with low sandstone cliffs; and Birch Point,[10] on Miscou Island, with a steep cliff of sandstone ten feet high.

Campobello is a rocky island, and Cape Ann is rocky and has no long, harborless coast.

Cape Cod[11] juts to the north with open water west of it, and beyond that again land. It has also a long, harborless coast on the east, with strands and sand banks, and is scored with bays toward the south.

Cape Cod, then, is the only cape north of Sandy Hook which corresponds to the description in the Saga, and near here we should look for Vinland, leaving the southern shores until later.

Vinland, which was discovered by Leif Erikson, is only described as Vinland in the Flat Island Book. This account states that Leif Erikson's party "came to a certain island which lay north of the land." That Leif Erikson should have thought that Cape Cod was an island is obvious, because it is impossible from the cape to see the southern shore of Massachusetts Bay twenty miles away. There is no need to explain why he also believed it to lie north of the land, as no one and final answer can be given, although several can be easily suggested; that water and land again lay to the west is clearly stated in all three accounts.

Afterward "they sailed into that sound which lay between the island and the promontory which jutted northward from the land; they steered in westward past the promontory. There was much shallow water at ebb tide, and then their ship stood up and then it was far to look to the sea from their ship." Across the water which lies between Cape Cod and the mainland is Rocky Point, a high and therefore noticeable promontory jutting northward from the land. Past this one can only continue westering to the north, and thence we must now look along the land to find the place where, in the words of the Flat Island Book, "a certain river flowed out of a certain lake," having, as was said before, great shallows at its mouth at ebb tide, whence it was far to look to the ocean.

Following round the inner coast of Cape Cod, we pass Plymouth and on to Boston before we find in the Charles River and Boston Back Bay a river flowing through a lake into the sea, where great shallows at its mouth are a conspicuous feature and it is far to look to the ocean.

At this point we may add one more feature to the description of Keel Cape—that it appears to be an island when approached from the north. Now we can continue our search down the North Atlantic coast, noting that Sandy Hook is not scored with bays at the south, and that Cape Henlopen and Cape Henry could not have been mistaken for islands.[12]

There is one event described in all three versions of the Vinland story—the battle with the natives. According to the Flat Island Book, this battle took place in Vinland; according to the other two Sagas, Vinland was supposed to be north of Keel Cape. But in these Sagas it is said that this battle took place south of Keel Cape, where Karlsefni had found a river flowing through a lake into the sea.

It was this word south which led the Danish archæologist Carl Christian Rafn to think that Vinland was in Rhode Island. Although there is no land south of Cape Cod (with the exception of Nantucket Island) between Cape Cod and Santo Domingo, it is only fair to look once more at Mount Hope Bay[13] (Rafn's Vinland) to see whether it really corresponds to the description before us. The Taunton River flows through Mount Hope Bay to the sea, but there are no shallows here, and the mouth of the river looks directly out, southward and not eastward, to the open ocean. In Boston Harbor, moreover, are great tongues of land and islands such as are described in Eric the Red's Saga. There is perhaps cause for comment in the use of the word "fjöll," fells or mountains (according to Vigfusson[14]), applied to the hills about Boston, of which the highest, "Blue Hill," is seven hundred and ten feet high. If "fells" is a correct translation, it would be unobjectionable.

One morning Karlsefni saw the natives in their skin boats rowing toward his house, from the south, past a promontory. It is not difficult to find the only promontory past which canoes could have come from the south between the mouth of the river and Watertown, the head of navigation. Here, then, Leif Erikson and Thorfinn Karlsefni should have built their houses, if this history be true, because this place corresponds with the description of Vinland, and also because we can find no other place on the coast like it.

Having found what appears to be the site of Thorfinn Karlsefni's houses, it is well to inquire next what the characteristic features of the Norse houses of the Saga-time were, and what traces one might hope to find after nearly nine hundred years.

Icelandic homesteads of that period usually consisted of a main house, composed of three or four apartments and one or two outhouses, built on the surface of the ground.

The walls were one and a half metres thick, and from one to one and a half metres high, built of alternate layers of turf and stones on the inside and on the outside, the space between being filled in with earth. Often, however, the walls were built entirely of turf and earth, or with only disconnected rows of stones at the base. Wood also was sometimes used. It is stated in Thorfinn Karlsefni's Saga that some of the trees in Vinland were "so large they were laid in a house."

Plan of the House of Eric the Red in Iceland.

A long, narrow fireplace usually extended through the middle of the principal room, and an essential feature was the cooking fireplace, which was about one metre square. These were either paved or surrounded by upright stones. The plan is of the ruin of the house of Eric the Red in Haukadalr, Iceland. It shows the different forms of fireplace, and that the walls, which were built of turf, were one and a half metres thick. Outhouses were often dug into the hillside, and were sometimes walled up on the inside with stone and turf. Ruins of such old settlements in Iceland are usually low, grass-grown ridges and hollows.

When Professor Horsford first visited the site which his study of maps and literature had led him to believe was Vinland, he found a few hollows in the hillside and also some broad, low ridges on the level ground, indicating that a building about twenty metres long by five metres broad had once stood there. There was also a mound some distance away which has since proved to be of modern construction.

Plan of supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts.

No digging was done here until after Professor Horsford's death, with the exception of a few trenches across the supposed site of Leif Erikson's house on the other side of the creek. In 1896, during a visit of Dr. Valtyr Gudmundsson and Mr. Thorsteinn Erlingsson, of Copenhagen and Iceland, extensive excavations were made, leaving practically nothing unexamined at this site.

Three kinds of earth were revealed. The upper layer was of black loam from thirty to forty centimetres deep; below this was a yellow soil of sand and clay thirty centimetres deep; and below that again the sand and gravel which had remained undisturbed since the close of the Glacial epoch.

The ruins were at the junction of the black and yellow earth. Throughout the black loam to the bottom, wherever we dug, within or away from the ruins, were scattered fragments of china, glass, glazed pottery, nails, pipestems, broken bricks, etc., all belonging to the period of the occupation of this region by the English. None of these were found in places where their presence would show that they belonged to or preceded these ruins. In the paved pathway, which will be described later, a few pieces of brick lie between the stones, but not deeper than similar fragments of brick were found in the undisturbed earth near by, apparently trodden in by the cattle which have been pastured there for years. There were also objects of aboriginal manufacture, such as stone implements, pottery, pieces of flint, etc. Occasionally, at different levels, remains of fires were found, some of which were merely thin layers of charcoal and ashes. There were, however, two well-built fireplaces, in good condition, entirely unlike each other. One of these was an Indian clambake, neatly paved and piled with ashes and unopened clam shells. This lay sixty-three centimetres below the sod. The photograph is not of this fireplace, but is a good example of all Indian fireplaces or clambakes in Massachusetts.

An Indian Fireplace in Massachusetts.

The second fireplace, which was about one metre square, surrounded by upright stones at the four corners and filled with oak charcoal, but no ashes, was the distinctive feature of this ruin, and resembled the cooking fireplaces of the Icelanders. The absence of ashes has been accounted for by absorption in the soft clay soil. Ashes often disappear in this way, but can be detected with acids.

Icelandic Fireplace in supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts.

Although the outline of the walls of the long house can only be suggested, the few stones which were found at the base of the old walls were placed about a metre and a half apart, as in the walls of the Saga-time. This, so far as is known, is peculiar to that period and race. Iroquois long houses were constructed for communal use, and were usually from one hundred to three hundred feet long. The chief traces left are fire rows and kitchen middens. They are not known to have used stone foundations, nor to have made any attempt at regularity of outline. The drawing shows the method of construction of these long houses, which were built only by the Indians of the Iroquois tribe.

Depressions which appeared to be the sites of old huts were in the hillside back of the terrace on which the long house stood, but the roadway in front had apparently destroyed all but one of these, and had also carried away the front wall of this.

East Wall of a supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts, showing Layers of Turf between the stones.

West Wall of a supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts, showing Layers of Turf between the Stones.

This hut was four metres across the front, and may have been five metres deep. When the sod, stones, and the clearings, which had been thrown in from the cultivated field above, were all removed, the remains of two side walls were found, supported and protected by the upper portions of these same walls which had slipped down from above and lay close to them, forming a compact mass of earth and stones. None of the stones in this wall were in contact with each other, being separated by two or three inches of dark earth such as results from the decay of vegetable matter. There was no fireplace. The manner of constructing these walls was the counterpart of Icelandic work. I shall now show you how this differs from post-Columbian cellars.

Ancient Wall in Iceland, showing Layers of Turf between the Stones.

This is a photograph of a ruin in the Thjór's River Valley, in Iceland. It shows the sod between the stones closely packed but distinct. The stones in our early English and French cellars practically touch each other, as in the old cellar in Fort William Henry, in Maine. Sometimes broken stones fill the interstices, as in another example of stonework at Fort William Henry. Mortar has been used here more or less since the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Old Wall in a Cellar in Fort William Henry, Maine.

Old Wall at Fort William Henry, Maine.

Although European or post-Columbian walls and cellars differ considerably among themselves, it is within certain limits. Post-Columbian walls, or foundation walls when built on the surface of the ground, were practically homogeneous in character, the French only attaining to one metre in thickness, whereas Icelandic walls were disposed in three distinct parts, the inner and outer sides being constructed in layers and the space between being filled in with closely packed earth, while they were never less than a metre and a half thick.

Icelandic outhouses when dug into a hillside dispensed with the triple wall at the back and on the sides, and thus when stone-faced partially resemble our cellars. But even then they still retain one characteristic feature, in their alternate layers of turf and stone.

Supposed Norse Pathway in Massachusetts.

Southern Turn of supposed Norse Pathway.

While this hut was being dug out, our attention was called to stones protruding through the turf a short distance away and nearer to the water. When the earth was cleared away, it proved to be a rude stone-laid pathway leading along the margin of the old creek to the river. Here at the landing place a similar pathway branched away in another direction, stopping suddenly a few metres south of the supposed house of Thorfinn Karlsefni. This pathway is called in Iceland a sjávar-gata, or path to the sea. Ancient pavings have been found at Fort William Henry, near Pemaquid, Maine. They are, however, similar to many street pavements still to be found in our eastern cities. There is also a remarkable paved gutter at the Lewis Farm, in Maine, which has long interested historians. But none of these resemble the sjávar-gata in its peculiar construction, especially where it broadens and divides with a wide margin of pebbles on one side and small heaps of stones on the other.

A Pavement at Fort William Henry, Maine.

A Pavement at Pemaquid, Maine.

This map was made for Professor Horsford about ten years ago. It shows the site of the long house, in which the Icelandic fireplace was found, and the cot, in which Icelandic walls were found. The paved path ran along the shore in front. Professor Horsford fixed Thorfinn's landing place a short distance south of this, on solid ground. Geologists are unable to say how long ago the salt marshes were formed. They are on Winthrop's map of 1634, but the sjávar-gata could hardly have been accessible as a landing place after their formation.

Map of the supposed Norse Ruin in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In summary, it may be said that at the only point of land on the coast of North America which we have found to correspond with the description of the site of Thorfinn Karlsefni's houses, ruins have been dug out which bear peculiar features characteristic of the period in Iceland known as the Saga-time, and differing in certain essential features from the handiwork of all the native races of North America, and, as far as is known at present, from all other races in Europe or in America in post-Columbian days.

Extracts from the Reports of Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr. Erlingsson.

The following extracts, from reports by Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr. Erlingsson, refer to the ruins described in the preceding paper. The plan for these researches was first to compare the aforesaid ruins with the work of the native races supposed to have inhabited or visited these shores, next with that of the Norsemen of the eleventh century, and later, if necessary, with the earliest English, French, Spanish, and Dutch ruins on these shores. Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr. Erlingsson noted the points of resemblance between these and Icelandic ruins, and in their reports by request wrote everything they could think of in opposition to, as well as in favor of, their being of Norse origin.

When these gentlemen left Cambridge the characteristic features of the early post-Columbian ruins on this coast had not been ascertained, and these researches were not finished satisfactorily until a year and a half after the Icelanders returned to Europe.

From Dr. Gudmundsson's Report.

The next place into which we dug was a depression or hollow in the hillside in a northerly direction from the above-mentioned place. Here we found unquestionable remains of a house which had been dug into the hillside, with walls constructed of stones, and layers of earth between the single rows of stones. The foundation and the lower parts of the two side walls were solid and well preserved, but the whole back wall, with the exception of a single row (the foundation), had fallen down. The stones from this and the upper parts of the side walls covered the whole bottom, so that they at the first glance seemed to form a pavement. When carefully examined, it was evident, however, that most of the stones which covered the bottom belonged to the walls, though some might have rolled down from the hill above the house. Thus it could clearly be seen how some of the stones had fallen down from the walls and some were just sliding down, without having as yet reached to the bottom, as some stones underneath had hindered them from gliding farther. The front wall of the house was wanting, and must either have been of wood or—which seems most likely—have been spoiled when the road which runs close past the house was made. When the bottom was cleared of the stones which had fallen in it proved to consist of a level black floor.

The construction and situation of this house are quite Scandinavian, built in the same way as houses in Iceland and Greenland. I would therefore not have had the least hesitation to declare it to be a ruin of a house built by Scandinavians in the pre-Columbian period if between and under the stones which covered the bottom we had not found some pieces of glazed pottery and bricks, of which some small pieces were found trodden down even into the floor itself. This seems to indicate that the house must be post-Columbian, or at least have been occupied by the first English or French colonists. As in the meantime several American scholars, with whom I have had an opportunity to discuss this matter, positively declare that the post-Columbian colonists never would have built such walls of stones without mortar, and it must be regarded as quite certain that Indian people could not have built it, there seems to be no other explanation possible than that this ruin must be Scandinavian, and, having been found by some of the first post-Columbian colonists (e. g., some fishermen), had been repaired and occupied by them for a shorter or longer time. If it can be proved that such a building as this could not have been built by the post-Columbian colonists nor by Indians, it can hardly be anything else than Scandinavian. This, however, must be left to American scholars, who have sufficient knowledge in these matters. But so long as this is not proved, the pieces of pottery and bricks which were found in it rather seem to speak for its post-Columbian origin, as those pieces must have been there when the house fell down, and such a house as this built in the beginning of the eleventh century could not have stood five hundred years before its roof and the upper parts of the walls fell down.

On the other side of the road we found an end of an old path paved with small stones, running from the house in the hillside along the edge of the old river bank down to a kind of promontory which in olden time, when the water stood much higher than it now does, seems to have served as a landing place. In the middle of this path, which was from about six to ten inches under the surface, was a hollow as trodden down by the feet of men and (perhaps) horses. This path is very like Icelandic paths, such as may still be found in many places in Iceland. But as we in some places in this path found some bricks between the stones which formed its pavement, it must be regarded as doubtful whether it is Scandinavian. The bricks seem rather to speak for a post-Columbian origin, though the whole path is so primitive that it hardly can be suggested that so advanced a people as the first post-Columbian colonists should have made such a path. To settle the question whether it could belong to those colonists must be left to American scholars. This path seems, at any rate, to have been made by the same people who built the house in the hillside, so either both of them must be regarded as post-Columbian or they both are Scandinavian. Another path runs from this landing place in a westerly direction along the old river bank, where it stops very abruptly on a certain spot a very short distance east of the supposed "Thorfinn's house." As I could not find any other reason for its stopping on this spot than that near it stood a building, I examined the river bank beside it, and here I found the earth, about eight inches under the surface, mixed with charcoal, which could indicate that some refuse from a house had been thrown there. This seems to lead to the conclusion that there at the end of this path really has stood a building, of which we could not now expect to find any traces, or even a building constructed of turf only (turf walls), which also might have wholly disappeared, as earth walls on an elevated ground like this perhaps might have blown away.

The result of these researches is briefly, according to my opinion, this: As far as concerns the construction, both the house in the hillside and the two paths, or the two branches of the path, could be of Scandinavian origin, but I am not so well acquainted with the life and customs of the first post-Columbian colonists as to be able to decide whether they could not have been made by them. This, therefore, must be left to American scholars.

Very respectfully yours,
Valtyr Gudmundsson.

Cambridge, Mass., July 16, 1896.

From Mr. Erlingsson's Report.

It is not uncommon in Iceland that houses, especially small outhouses, are dug into small hills, hillsides, or sloping ground, just as this house is. It is, in fact, built very like what I have seen in outhouses in many places in Iceland, and what is left of the walls here nobody could distinguish from Icelandic walls. The size and the whole form is also very like an outhouse, but as most frequently in outhouses either all the four walls are made of stones or none of them, it would seem strange that one of the walls here is completely wanting. But those stones which were used in it could have been used in the road which has been made past the house, or, besides, it is possible that the front wall of the house has been a wooden one, and, although this is very rare in outhouses certainly, yet it must be taken into consideration that here it is much easier to procure wood than in Iceland. The whole form, the method, and the condition of the house itself seemed like nothing else than that it was built by Icelandic hands, although some of the stones seem to be rather small, but, as pieces of pottery and bricks have been found beneath the stones which had fallen down from the walls and on the floor itself, it seems to prove sufficiently that the house can not belong to the old Icelandic period; but as nobody has expected such a house here, the discovery is very remarkable.

This path is so like paths in Iceland, for which there have been gathered stones and which later on have been trodden down by the feet of horses and men, that I would not have hesitated to declare that it might be Scandinavian if in it there had not been found bricks beside the other stones, which seems to indicate that the path must belong to the same period as the house which was dug into the hill. This discovery must therefore, too, be regarded as very remarkable....

Respectfully,
Thorsteinn Erlingsson.

Cambridge, Mass., July 12, 1896.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEMINIST.

By DAVID STARR JORDAN,

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

The meeting of the Astral Club of Alcalde, on September 10, 1899, was rendered memorable by the return, from a month's absence in the East, of the secretary of the club, Miss Corintha Jones, D. N. N. N. Her presence had been sorely missed at the August meeting (though I say it who should not), for it is not often that one of our devoted band is absent from his post.

Miss Jones had left Alcalde to complete a course of study in medicine in one of the most famous colleges of the East. At the suggestion of the president of the club, Mr. Asa Marvin, F. T. S., the usual programme was suspended on her return, and Miss Doctress Jones, D. N. N. N. (for such indeed is the title she has now earned), told us of her studies at the Massachusetts University of Mentiphysics, in Boston, a noble institution, up to date in all respects, for it received its charter from the General Assembly of Massachusetts in the year 1881.

Miss Doctress Jones left her home in Alcalde on the 20th of July, designing to visit certain relatives residing at Homer and Virgil, Cortland County, N. Y., on the way. She reached Boston on the 5th day of August, and at once proceeded to the university. An ignorant hackman took her over to the suburban village of Cambridge, which is the seat of Harvard College. Making inquiry of the professors there, she found none who had ever heard of the University of Mentiphysics, having eyes and ears for nothing but Harvard, which in some respects is indeed a great institution, but on a material plane.

At last, after much inquiry, Doctress Jones was sent to the Neministic Headquarters, a small building on the corner of Milk and Transcendental Streets. Here she learned, from a little lady with a withered face and a serene smile, that the University of Mentiphysics was situated not in Boston, but in the neighboring town of Lynn, which lies some miles to the north. "But in Massachusetts," she said, "we call it all Boston."

"So I took the train for Lynn," Miss Doctress Jones continued, "and drove at once to the street and number named on the card. The little white house with green blinds, white columns on the veranda, and a few weedy roses in the front yard did not fill my conception of a university, for it did not look like our universities in California. But the fault was with my conception, not with the fact.

"The maid who answered the bell assured me that this was indeed the university, and ushered me at once into the office of the president. The wall was covered with pictures and photographs, showing elderly ladies with serene smiling faces. Under each one were the letters N. N. N., and a card giving an account of how each one had been made whole and happy through Neministic Science. The president was a middle-aged, matronly lady, with a high forehead and brown hair, streaked with gray, done in graceful frizzes over her brow. Above the corners of her mouth, which were always drawn up in an engaging smile, were three deep creases. Mr. Gridley, our schoolmaster, tells me that these correspond to the grave accent in Greek, and that there being three of them shows that the lady had been married three times. I do not know as to this, but somehow her face seemed startlingly familiar and at the same time strangely pleasant.

"I murmured something about having had the pleasure before. She said, taking the words from my mouth: 'I know what you are going to say. We are indeed very much alike, though she is on the material plane. Still, my friends call me the "Lydia Pinkham of the soul," and I do not resent it, for what dear Lydia tries to do, that I do.'

"I told the president," Doctress Jones continued, "that I wished to learn the wisdom of Boston, and especially the science of Neministic Healing, of which I had heard much in Alcalde. 'But perhaps I should call at the university, and not trouble you in your rest at home.' At this her eyes blazed, and she said, with a tragic air: 'Having eyes, ye see not! I read the Soul and the Stars through a higher than mortal sense. Has the Sun forgotten to shine and the Planets to revolve around it? Who was it discovered, demonstrated, and teaches the marvel of Neministic Healing? That one, whoever it be, does understand something of what can not be lost.'

"I looked dazed. She quieted down and explained to me that she was herself the university, because no one but herself could explain what was revealed to her alone. The whole Neministic Science was taught in twelve lessons, and I could begin then and there.

"I said something about preparatory work and the books I would need to read. She placed in my hands a slip which read:

"'N. N. N. Persons contemplating a course in the Massachusetts University of Mentiphysics can prepare for it through no books save Neministic Science and Astral Health, with a Key to the Stars. Man-made theories are narrow, else extravagant, and always materialistic. Nihil nemini nocet.' Then she added: 'I recommend students not to read so-called scientific works antagonistic to Neministic Healing, which advocate material systems, because such works and words becloud the right sense of Mentiphysical Science. A primary student richly imbued with the Neministic spirit is a better healer and teacher than a normal-class student, who partakes less of this power. Even an apt scholar who has dipped into my Neministic Science and Astral Health, with a Key to the Stars (the last revised edition), may enter this field of labor, without any personal instruction, beneficially to himself and the race.'

"Then she continued blandly: 'You must learn, my dear, to enter this great field in a manner beneficial to yourself and the race. You must teach others to render to Cæsar what is Cæsar's, and to do this you must first render unto Cæsar yourself. Do you understand?' I looked puzzled for a moment. Then she said: 'Twenty-five dollars, please, dear, and be sure to come promptly at ten o'clock to-morrow. You are now admitted to the Primary Plane, the first degree of Neministic Healing.' As I gave her the California gold, she bowed me out of the room with a tender and motherly smile, while she tested the unfamiliar coins by ringing them softly on the table.

"At the second lesson she gave me the fundamental principles of Neministic Healing. I received them eagerly, for I recognized in them a close harmony with the teachings of our dear old Mr. Dean:

"'God is the principle of Mentiphysics. As there is but one God, there can be but one Principle in this Science. As there are many stars, there must be many fixed rules for the demonstration of this Divine Principle.

"'The fundamental propositions among these rules are proved by inversion, for this is the basis of all true mathematics. Two times two is four, therefore four is two times two. As a star is the same whether seen from the north, south, east, or west, so a precept of Mentiphysics must be the same as seen from every side. To invert is not to change its meaning, and must prove its truth.' Then she gave me a printed card containing these words, over which I was to ponder until the next lesson:

"'N. N. N. There is no Pain in Truth, therefore there is no Truth in Pain. There is no Nerve in Mind, therefore there is no Mind in Nerve. There is no Matter in Mind, therefore there is no Mind in Matter. There is no Matter in Life, therefore there is no Life in Matter. There is no Matter in Good, therefore there is no Good in Matter. Nihil nocet nemini; nihil nemini nocet.'

"'Twenty-five dollars, please,' and I returned to my hotel filled with new thoughts, which I found later were very incomplete.

"The next day she said:

"'Man, my dear, is governed by Soul, not sense. Sense is the reflection of matter, and matter does not exist. Thus sense is but the shadow of a dream. In dreams the laws of health are valueless. There is but one Law of Health, and that is the one precept of Neministic Healing.

"'To the awakened mind the seasons will come and go, with changes of time and tide, cold and heat, latitude and longitude. The agriculturist finds that these changes can not affect his crops. The mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air. The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars. He will look out from them upon the universe, and the florist will find his flower before he beholds its seed. Thus matter will be finally proved to be nothing but a mortal belief, wholly inadequate to affect man through its supposed organic action or existence.'

"Then she gave me another mystic card, which read:

"'N. N. N. We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and Creation must collapse. Nihil nocet nemini.' And this time I did not need to be reminded of the final ceremony with which the lesson ended. Nor did she need to clink the coins on the table.

"In the fourth lesson the president discoursed more fully on 'the popular gods, Sin, Sorrow, and Sickness, the three S's of Satan; all three illusions of the Sinful Soul. The very word Illusion proves their nothingness. These are but troubled dreams of the darkened soul, and to rise above them is to wake from a cataleptic nightmare to see the stars shining on the hills.

"'When troubled by a horrible dream, my dear, one has only to say, "This is a Dream; I will awaken." Then the stars will shine through the open window and the hideous vision will disappear.

"'So in afflictions of disease and dread and death, one must say, "This is a Dream." Then it becomes a dream, and we rise above it into an atmosphere of Perfect Serenity.

"'To the material sense, dear,' continued the president, 'to cut the jugular vein takes away life. But in Neministic Science Life goes on unchanged, mounting ever and ever to higher reaches, because there is no jugular vein, and Matter can not make its mark on Mind.

"'The Barometer, that little prophet of storm and sunshine, can not be deceived by testimony of the senses. It points to fair weather in the midst of the unreal apparition of murky clouds and threatening rain. Thus does Neministic Science, the perfect culmination of Mentiphysics, point to the changeless Health and Happiness of the Enlightened Man whatever material science may have to say about the condition of his members. Man is made in the image of perfection, therefore failure and imperfection can never assail him. As well expect to gather peaches from a pine tree as to gather discord from the Concord of Being.'

"Then she gave me a card:

"'N. N. N. The Equipollence of the Stars above and of the Mind below shows the awful unreality of Evil. Nihil nemini nocet.'

"After the usual parting ceremony I returned to my room, well convinced of the unreality of Boston, and doubting whether I should ever again find my own Alcalde. I feared lest some further precept might arise by which Alcalde could not exist.

"In the fifth lesson the president informed me that I was now in the second degree, or Normal Plane. We were ready for the first glimpse into the full, rounded perfection of Neministic Healing.

"'To cure men of all ills whatsoever, we have only to show them the stars. When we waken in the night, only the sight of the stars can tell us we are awake. When we are awake all dreams must vanish, and all is dream which breaks the serenity of the mind or checks the perfect perspicacity of being. We need not deal with the body, for the body does not exist. It is dull, heavy, and aching, because it is the dead Residuum of Dream. When we forget it, it is no longer there. Then and not till then can you smile the serene smile of the Neministically Healed and Mentiphysically Perfect Soul.'

"The little card read:

"'N. N. N. The body says, "I am ill." The reports of Sickness may form a coalition with the reports of Sin and say, "I am Malice, Lust, Appetite, Envy, Hate." Treat a belief in sickness as you would sin—with sudden dismissal. If it were not for what the human mind says of the body, the body would not be weary any more than an inanimate wheel. Nihil nemini nocet.'

"On the sixth day the president greeted me with her serenest smile.

"'We have now reached the point, my dear,' she said, 'when we must abandon Pharmaceutics and take up Ontology, the science of Abstract Being. In this we have many rivals who echo the cry, "Why art thou, NEMINISM, come hither to torment us before our time?" Among the systems that thus cry out are many whom this world deems successful. Animal Magnetism, Atheism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Agnosticism, Pantheism, and Infidelity are antagonistic to Mentiphysics and fatal to the demonstration thereof, and of Neminism, its noblest culmination; and so,' she continued, 'are some other systems.'

"She warned me especially against Pantheism, 'the worship of the sylvan god Pan,' a cult reputed to be especially rife among the members of our club at Alcalde.

"I tried to explain to her the difference between Pantheism and Sciosophy, but I did not succeed very well, for she grew impatient. In her judgment, I discovered, Sciosophy was grossly impractical, and the views of Mr. Abner Dean would take the bread from the mouths of better men than he. 'I am told,' she said, 'that Mr. Dean actually signed that wicked paper[15] of those Washington soreheads, who call themselves the Reformed College of Neminism.' With this, she would not listen to another word about Sciosophy.

"Then I regretted that I had said anything, for this pleasant lesson came to an abrupt end, and left me without even the customary card to ponder over. I still wondered what could be the secret meaning of N. N. N., nihil nemini nocet.

"On the next day the storm had blown over, or rather, like all other storms, it had no real existence, and the smile of the president at the closing act of the lesson was the sweetest I had ever seen, the most perfect witness to the truth of her teachings.

"She took up the subject of Materia Medica. After reading from a printed book the names of a host of poisons, from Abacus to Swamproot and Sandalwood and Zygadene, she warned us against them all. All are alike evil. All alike have no real existence. Therefore the student will do well not to learn their names. It will only interfere with his serenity of mind, and perfect serenity is the sole symptom of success.

"'Surely this is better,' she said, 'than to support the popular systems of medicine, when the physician may be perchance an infidel and lose ninety-and-nine patients where Neminism cures its hundred. Is it because Osteopathy and Ostariopathy are more fashionable and less spiritual? Even business men have found that Neministic Science enhances their physical and mental powers, enlarges their perception of character, gives them acuteness and comprehensiveness, and an ability to exceed their ordinary business capacity.'

"Then she gave me this card:

"'N. N. N. In 1866 this discovery was made by me and by me alone: "The erring Mortal misnamed Mind produces all the organism and action of the mortal body." This led to the demonstration that Mind is All and matter is naught, and being nothing, nothing hurts nobody. Nobody hurts nothing, which proves it plainly by inversion. Nihil nocet nemini; nihil nemini nocet.'

"On the eighth day the president discoursed on Anatomy. Referring briefly to the pernicious notions of the 'ancients,' as with a broad sweep of her hand she designated the professors in Boston and Cambridge, concerning the structure of the human body, she called it the nightmare of undigested learning. 'Why should we care where the jugular vein goes, when we know that there is no jugular vein? What of bones and muscles, and teguments and integuments? "Toil fatigues me," you say; but what is this me? Is it muscle or Mind? Which is tired, and so speaks? Without Mind could the muscles be tired? Do the muscles talk, or do you talk for them? Science includes no rule of discord, but governs harmoniously.'

"On the card were these words:

"'N. N. N. Flesh is an error of physical belief; a supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter; an illusion; a belief that matter has sensations. Nihil nocet nemini.'

"On the ninth day I was admitted to the third degree, or the Introspective Plane. As the president entered, I noticed a touch of camellia powder on her face, for the subject of the day was Beauty. 'Beauty,' she said, 'is internal before it is perceived outwardly. To have perfect faith in the principle of Neminism is to regain the charms of Eternal Youth.' She told me of patients of hers who had become beautiful through faith. One good lady at ninety developed new teeth through belief in Neminism—incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and one molar. A gentleman at sixty had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth without a decaying cavity.

"On her card were these words:

"'N. N. N. The receipt for Beauty is to have less Illusion and more Soul. Nihil nemini nocet.'

"And, as the final ceremony was passed, the president looked almost beautiful herself.

"On the tenth day the president gave some account of her early studies and of the origin of Neministic Healing.

"'While from the human standpoint I inherited the refinement that goes with culture of family and moral rectitude, as usual here in Boston, yet there was a marked degree of spiritual Grace, Soulful Delicacy, and Esoteric Elegance that comes not from human ancestry, neither from communion with Nature. It was the exquisite coloring of the touch of the astral hand which opens the petals of thought as it does the opening rose. This ended in a soft glow of ineffable Joy, and out of its perfect serenity Neministic Science was born.

"'The discovery was so new, the basis laid down for physical and moral health so hopelessly original and men so unfamiliar with the subject, that not until later did I venture to proclaim it to the world.'

"On the card was—

"'N. N. N.
"'My world has sprung from Spirit
In Everlasting Day;
Whereof I've much to glory,
Wherefor have much to pay.'

"Under this was a picture of the egg of a vulture, in which, through his microscope, Agassiz once saw the sun, moon, stars, and the gathering of clouds. 'Nihil nemini nocet.'

"At the eleventh lesson I was directed to go out for clinical practice. In my hotel I found a dear little six-year-old boy who had been invited, with the rest of a kindergarten class, to attend a picnic.

"He did not feel that he wanted to go. He seemed dumpish, and, according to mortal belief, was not well. At noon he said that he wanted to go to sleep. I took him in my lap and began to read to him from Neministic Science and Astral Health with a Key to the Stars. Very soon he expressed a wish to go to the picnic, and did go. So I gave him a little card, with the words 'Nihil nemini nocet,' and all day he said nothing more about being sick.

"Next morning the president gave me an account of various wonderful cures in her experience. Among others, she showed me a letter from John B. Higgins, of Little Egg Harbor, N. J. This I copied down as follows:

"'I am glad to tell you how I was healed. Beliefs of consumption, dyspepsia, neuralgia, ulcers, tobacco, and bad language.... Doctors that were consulted did nothing to relieve me, and I constantly grew worse. Nearly two years ago you told me that if I would read a book called Neministic Science and Astral Health with a Key to the Stars, I would be healed. I told you I would go into it for all it was worth, and I found that it is worth all. I got the book and read day and night. I saw that it must be true, and believed that what I could not then understand would be made clear later. After some days' reading I was afflicted with drowsiness, followed by vomiting. This lasted several hours, when I fell into a sleep. I awoke healed.'

"The president assured me that if I would spend no time in intellectual drifting, adhering to the impersonal and scientific deductions of the one discoverer to whose clarified spiritual eye all truth of the mind had been revealed, with all the loyalty of a mathematician to the principles of mathematics, I would be sure of a comfortable fortune. Although money had no real existence, the shadow in its substance proved that there was after all substance in its shadow. The Neministic Healer is at no expense for books or instruments or medicine, providing always that the one perfect Key to the Stars (including Neministic Science and Astral Health) lies open before him. With that in sight he can not go wrong, and with perfect faith in the unreality of all external things it matters not in earthly affairs what he does or leaves undone.

"The card for this lesson was:

"'N. N. N. The population of our cities is ample to supply many practitioners, teachers, and preachers with work. To enter this field of labor beneficially to ourselves, it is necessary to demonstrate that the patient who is able to pay for being healed is more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equivalent for health! Nihil nemini nocet.'

"At the last lesson the president informed me that my course of instruction was complete, and that I must now go forth and bless the world. I must lean no longer on her personal leadership, but, trusting in the spirit, I should rest solely on the pure Mentiphysical principle at work. As a pioneer of Neministic Healing in the far uncultured West, I must stand alone in the conflict, smiting error with the falchion of Truth. The rare bequests of the spirit are costly, and they have won fields of battle from which the dainty borrower would have fled.'

"I spoke once or twice of my diploma, without which I could not practice my profession under the laws of Fresno County. At first she made as if she did not hear me, but at last she said:

"'The Massachusetts University of Mentiphysics draws its breath from me, but I yearn for retirement. No one else can sustain this institution amid the legislation aimed at its vital purpose. This has given me conscientious scruples about diplomas, and, with the growing conviction that every one should build on his own foundation, no more diplomas shall be issued from this flourishing school.

"'But do not worry, dear,' she said. 'Your power is just the same with or without diploma. You can make known the rare bequests of the Spirit quite as well as a martyr as you could as a physician. The faithful will stand by you. Those who believe will always pay. Take this locket, and hang it about your neck. It will contain the quintessence of all my teachings, and with this in your right hand and Neministic Science and Astral Health with a Key to the Stars in your left, you will drain the cup which I have drained to the dregs as the discoverer and teacher of Neminism, and without tasting this cup its inspiration can not be gained.'

"Then I took the little locket, and here it is. On one side are the letters D. N. N. N., 'which,' she said, 'makes its holder a doctress.' On the reverse is the face of Lydia Pinkham, while around the margin, in fine gilt letters, is a scroll with the motto, 'Nihil nemini nocet.' Mr. Gridley, the learned professor of our Alcalde school, says this means 'nothing hurts nobody.' But I am sure that there is more in it than that; besides, whatever it is we can prove it by inversion: Nihil nocet nemini; nihil nemini nocet—one is true like the other, and its symbolic significance is proved by its three N's, for N is the symbol of eternity. At least, this is what the president told me. But now that I am back in Alcalde, the whole thing seems like a dream, while all the things I had learned to call dreams seem more real than ever. Maybe I am still on the Material Plane after all, in spite of all I have done and all the rest of us in Alcalde are doing to try to rise above it."

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER.

By WALTER L. HAWLEY,

OF THE NEW YORK EVENING SUN.

At the beginning of the present century the newspapers published in the United States numbered 200—one for each 26,450 of population—while at the present time the total of regular publications slightly exceeds 20,000—one for each 350 inhabitants of the country; and in that growth and development of the business is represented more of science and art, more of physical ingenuity and mental activity, than in any other line of human endeavor. One hundred years ago the publication of a newspaper did not rank as a business, and the preparation of its contents was regarded as a pastime or the indulgence of a whim, rather than a profession. At the end of the century, journalism is the history of the world written day by day, the chief medium of enlightenment for the masses, the universal forum of scholar, sage, and scientist. As a business enterprise, the newspaper of to-day commands unlimited capital, and as a profession it ranks second to none.

From the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of Wednesday, January 1, 1800.

For three centuries and a half following Gutenberg's invention of type little progress was made in the art of printing, and the production of a newspaper in this country in 1800 was accomplished with crude machinery and involved much slow and difficult hand labor. The printing was done on wooden presses of primitive pattern, the type was large and ill formed, the paper used was in many cases inferior to the lowest grade made at the present time, and the production of a large number of copies of any issue was out of the question. No attempt was made in this country to publish a daily paper until 1784, and in 1800 daily editions were issued only in four or five of the larger cities.

From the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of January 1, 1800.

The publications of that period were not newspapers in the sense in which the word is now used, because no particular effort was made to present an account of the happenings of the day. Notices of the arrival and departure of ships, time tables of mail coaches, and brief announcements of matters of political interest filled the limited space devoted to domestic news. Foreign news consisted entirely of matter reprinted from the English journals received by sailing vessels, and therefore weeks or months old when it appeared. The wooden presses used a hundred years ago were operated entirely by hand. After the type had been set it was placed in a frame or "form," with little or no regard to artistic arrangement of headlines or displayed matter. To print the edition, the "form" was placed on the bed of the press and ink spread over the type by the use of hand rollers. The white paper was then dampened with water, sheet by sheet, laid over the stationary "form," and the impression was made by pulling down the upper part of the press with a lever. This work was so slow that a circulation of three or four hundred copies of a daily newspaper would severely tax the capacity of the press room. The weekly publications were as a rule limited to about the same figures, because the entire mechanical part of production devolved upon one man, who was often owner and editor as well as printer. Some iron presses were imported from England in 1810, and in 1817 George Clymer, of Philadelphia, invented a lever press that was a marked improvement over the crude machines then in general use, reducing the manual labor required and increasing the speed with which printed papers could be turned out. The first power press used in this country was invented by Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, in 1822, and operated by the American Bible Society, the power being furnished by a team of mules. These presses were not adapted to newspaper work, and the first considerable advance in the mechanical part of the business was made in 1829 and 1830, when a Washington hand press was invented. Seventeen years later a cylinder power press was perfected by Richard M. Hoe, and the mechanical ability to produce periodicals was more than doubled; but during the time when American ingenuity developed the steam engine, the cotton gin, the sewing machine, and the electric telegraph, the progress made in the mechanism of newspaper making was comparatively insignificant. The process of stereotyping was introduced into this country from England in 1813, and a year later the New Testament was printed from plates, but the discovery was not utilized in the publication of newspapers until 1861.

In the first half of the century journalism did not at any time rank as a profession requiring special training, and capacity, and the returns of the counting room were so meager, the cost of material so high, and the appliances in the mechanical department so imperfect, that the publication of newspapers rose only by slow degrees to recognition as a business enterprise in which capital might seek investment with fair prospect of a satisfactory return. Modeled after English publications, the early American newspapers depended, for whatever of reputation or success they achieved, upon the fame and ability of the editor. The reporting of current events without comment was a secondary feature of the daily papers, and in the weekly publications it was not attempted. Before the days of railroads and prompt and reliable mail service, communication between men in public life and, in fact, all persons of education, was chiefly by letter. The custom grew into a fixed habit, and to a large extent influenced the character of the newspapers published prior to 1850. The editor addressed himself directly to his readers through long editorials upon topics in which he was interested, and his publication was in reality a mere instrument for the expression of opinions. Public men and politicians were encouraged to write letters for publication upon public questions, and a long communication from a man of national reputation was regarded by the editor as matter of far more value to his journal than any amount of news of the events of the day.

A Municipal Notice from the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of January 1, 1800.

The organization and development of political parties in the early part of the second quarter of the century resulted in a rapid increase in the number of newspapers throughout the country. Party leaders found that they could reach a greater number of citizens by means of published letters and speeches than by the primitive process of campaigning by easy stages from one State or county to another. From writing personal letters to friends in their districts, senators and representatives in Congress found that they could keep their constituents better informed of the progress of legislation and politics by means of signed statements in the press of their respective States. The party organ and the personal journal were the immediate natural results of this condition of public life and politics. Every secular journal supported some political party or organization without qualification, and there was little or no independence of the press. The editor found his subscribers among the members of his own party, and often looked to the organization or the candidate for financial support. Papers were established and editors hired by parties, factions, and individual leaders to advocate some particular plan of finance or tariff, or some general policy for the nation or State. During this stage of American journalism the influence of a paper depended largely upon the reputation, individuality, and force of character of the editor. He needed not to possess any particular qualification for the work, except a general knowledge of the affairs on which he was to write and a command of vigorous language to compel attention to his utterances. For many years the majority of the periodicals of the country, daily and weekly, were critical reviews of the events of the time, rather than mediums for the spread of general information. News of important happenings at home spread through all the States ahead of the circulation of the papers, and the people looked to the latter for review and comment upon events, rather than for detailed accounts of the occurrences. Foreign affairs, as reported in the English publications received in this country, took precedence in the classification of news in the journals of the first half of the century, and local events, often matters that were subsequently recognized as of great historical value, were briefly and too often imperfectly recorded. It is a matter to be regretted that in the days when American statesmen and orators were making history for the world, when the new republic, having passed beyond the stage of experiment, was advancing with prodigious strides toward glorious achievements in material development, the journals of the country kept but an imperfect and often inaccurate record of events that should have been reported in full.

Advertisements from the New York Daily Advertiser of Wednesday, January 1, 1800.

During the first forty years of the present century there was no system of collecting the news for publication, and the capital invested in the newspaper business was insufficient to permit of any extra outlay to obtain reports of events occurring at a distance in advance of the regular mails. Such reports as were obtained were usually voluntary contributions written by a friend of the editor, and often colored or distorted according to the prejudice of the writer. These letters were, almost without exception, semi-editorial in character, the writers indulging freely in comment and expression of opinion upon the event they attempted to record, so that no political or public matter was reported entirely free from partisan coloring. The drivers of mail coaches, the captains of coastwise or river vessels, strolling peddlers, lawyers, surveyors, and wandering missionaries, who made long journeys into the interior and from town to town, were the news reporters of early days. When they arrived in a city or town they would tell the latest news from the places they had visited, and the next issue of the local paper would contain a story beginning, "The Rev. Mr. Bland, the traveling missionary, relates," etc., or, "Captain Smith, of the schooner——, reports having heard," etc. Information received in this way might relate to Indian uprisings, fires, floods, crimes, accidents, or political events; but in every case the published account would be interspersed with opinions of the narrator and the comments of the editor who prepared the story for publication. For news of events happening in the larger cities, the journals of the first half of the century depended almost entirely on reprinting from exchanges. They had no regular correspondents anywhere, and a paper published in New York would reprint from the papers of Boston and Philadelphia such of the news of those cities as impressed the editor as being of more than local interest. During the War of 1812, the subsequent Indian wars, and the conflict with Mexico, news of battles and movements of armies in the field was obtained by the slow process of waiting for official reports to the Government or private letters from officers and men at the front. The Mexican War stimulated the public demand for news, increased the circulation of newspapers, and did more than any other event up to that time to arouse the editors of the country to the fact that the people wanted early and complete information of what was going on in the world, rather than individual opinions on general problems. While that struggle was in progress the arrival of the weekly mail in a remote village was an event of importance. The inhabitants would gather in large numbers at the post office, and the meager war news contained in the newspapers would be read aloud. The postmaster or some subscriber to a paper would often post a copy of the latest journal in some conspicuous place in the town, and from that simple beginning there was developed the newspaper bulletin board, where the public may obtain brief information of great events before the full report can be put in type.

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After the division of the voters of the country into organized political parties, the tariff, banking and currency, the acquisition of additional territory, and States rights developed into great national questions, precipitating prolonged and heated discussion by the statesmen of that period. This condition stimulated the growth of a certain class of newspapers, and brought into prominence many writers of ability. The statesmen and politicians of that time turned to the press as an available and valuable medium through which to disseminate arguments. They sought to convince rather than to inform the public, and the journalism of that period made no substantial progress except as an instrument for the development and exploitation of writers of force and influence. Whatever power the press exerted in shaping events, whatever it accomplished in swaying the public mind in the days when nullification was scotched and territorial expansion was accepted as a fixed policy of the majority, should be credited to the genius and individuality of the leading writers of that time, rather than to a full presentation of facts. The years of agitation of the question of slavery still further developed individuality in journalism. The newspaper became an instrument for educating the people on certain public questions, and an influence upon public opinion by means of editorial writing. That was the period of so-called great editors, of whom Horace Greeley may be mentioned as a conspicuous example, who made and unmade politicians with their praise or criticism, who shaped the policy of political parties, controlled conventions and nominated candidates, changed the current of their country's history at critical points, and in many ways wielded an influence in public affairs greater than that of the leading statesmen. The editor of that time was greater than his newspaper, and the power of the press was in reality the force of character of the individual exerted through the instrument within his control.

From 1830 to 1860 the progress made in the mechanical department of the business was slow and unimportant in comparison with recent inventions. Cylinder presses came into general use for the printing of daily papers, but the weekly and monthly publications continued to use the primitive hand machines. The speed of press-work was still limited to a few hundred copies per hour, so that an extensive circulation could not be supplied even if there had been a demand for it. The white paper used was still made entirely of rags, and most of the material was imported from Austria and Italy. The cost of production was high, and few newspapers in the United States were published at a fair profit. The uncertainty of the financial returns from the business greatly retarded its development. Inventors found that their ingenuity would receive more substantial rewards in other fields, and editors and publishers were rarely practical men who could discover imperfections in mechanism and suggest improvements in their own shops. Throughout the first half of the century most of the improved methods of printing were developed in the establishments of book and job printers. There new presses and all new mechanical devices were first installed, and the newspaper followed, instead of leading, in the work of material progress in the art.

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To the New York Herald is generally credited the departure from old-time methods that resulted in the creation of newspapers devoted entirely to the publication of news, the reporting of the happenings of the world day by day. The innovation was not well received by the editors, who believed that the public cared more for opinions than a record of events. The new method proved popular, however, and the development of the newspaper from the personal journal and party organ dates from that time. The founder of the Herald and the new school of journalism spent money to obtain the news of the world ahead of the ordinary channels of communication. He established a system of special couriers, employed correspondents, and made the collection of reports of events of general interest a matter of first importance in the business of making a newspaper. Other editors followed the new movement slowly, and often with much doubt and hesitation, but those who stood still and refused to supply their readers with the news were in time compelled to go out of the business.

From the New York Evening Post of November 16, 1801.

When the civil war began the new order of journalism had progressed far enough to create a general demand for a full report of the progress of that great conflict. All the larger cities of the country were connected by railroads and telegraph lines, the political agitation for five years prior to the beginning of hostilities had aroused the people to a feeling of intense interest in the struggle, the circulation of the daily papers had increased almost to the limit of their mechanical capacity, and every condition favored a rapid development of the business with a certainty of profitable returns. The leading editors of the country still exerted a far-reaching influence in public affairs, and they were consulted by the highest officers of the Government; but the time had come when the people wanted the news, rather than individual opinions. American genius and ingenuity responded promptly and adequately to the demand, and from the time of the civil war the development of the newspaper has been a marvel of science and art. The telegraph came into general use for the transmission of news, correspondents and artists were sent to the front with all the armies, the men employed in Washington to write their own views of public questions were instructed to send to their papers only a record of the great events then transpiring around them, and in a month, or at most a year, American journalism was well advanced upon a new era of marvelous development. The time when the opinions, the power in phraseology, or the individuality of one man could alone make a daily newspaper a financial, literary, or political success had passed. The press had become an institution, journalism a profession, and the publication of newspapers a practical business requiring and rewarding enterprise and sagacity.

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With the sudden demand for more papers came rapid progress in the mechanical department of the business. Double cylinder presses capable of printing twenty thousand papers an hour were soon perfected, folding machines came into general use, stereotyping was employed to save time, labor, and wear of type, white paper was made from wood pulp at greatly reduced cost, and the progress in all departments of the business was by leaps and bounds until every demand was more than supplied and new expectations created. From that time forward invention kept pace with every increase of circulation. As soon as one press was found inadequate or imperfect, the manufacturers were ready to set up a faster and better one. As competition reduced the selling price of the newspaper, invention supplied every demand for the material of production at a reduced rate. The impetus to circulation imparted by the civil war created a new reading public, which rapidly grew to include every person who could read and a demand for all the news of the world once created would not be denied. The collection of news was quickly reduced to a system and perfected, until to-day no event of importance occurring in any part of the world is omitted from the daily record of current history.

A Bookseller's Advertisement from the New York Evening Post of Friday, December 11, 1801.

The great cost of collecting news at the front and transmitting by telegraph full reports of battles during the civil war caused certain newspapers in New York city to enter into an arrangement to receive reports in duplicate and share expenses. Then the cost was further reduced by selling the news to papers in other cities. That was the beginning of the Associated Press, a plan of newspaper combination that ultimately made the buying and selling of news a great commercial enterprise. Within a few years after the close of the war this system had been developed until practically all the daily newspapers of the country were interested in it or subscribers to the news collected and sold. This feature of the business continued to grow until agencies for the collection and transmission of news were established throughout the world. Similar associations were formed in England and on the continent of Europe, and news exchanged with the American organization. In the United States the business was developed until newspapers of particular sections of the country and even those of single States formed associations on the principle of mutual benefit for the collection of full reports of all important events within the territory where they circulated. At the present time the system has been perfected until the great news agencies of the country receive reports of important events from every quarter of the globe with a degree of promptness and accuracy rendered possible only by thoroughness of organization and the constant exercise of the keenest intelligence. The collection of all the news of the world would not be possible under any other plan, but the American newspapers, having created a demand for the news, were the first to devise a system of obtaining it promptly at a cost that made possible the publication of daily papers at a profit in almost every town in the country. Brief reports of all important events are transmitted by cable or telegraph to a central office in New York, Washington, or Chicago, where they are condensed or elaborated, as occasion may require, and then sent out over special telegraph wires to papers all over the country that are subscribers to the service. The larger papers of the country, however, do not rely upon this service alone. They are represented by special correspondents not only in all the chief cities of the United States, but in London. Paris, Berlin, and other news centers of the Old World.

An Eden Musée of 1801. From the New York Evening Post of December 23, 1801.

The development of the newspaper into a medium for recording day by day every event of human interest was so rapid during the civil war and the stirring times immediately thereafter that many faults of form and detail remained. The journalism of that period was a new departure, and the men who created it had no precedent to guide them, but all the time there was a steady and intelligent effort to improve in all directions. The efforts of the leading men in the profession, influenced by conditions and surroundings, resulted in the creation of what were for a time known as schools of journalism—that is, one man set up an ideal, and another man strived to create a journal of another character. The aim of all was to publish the general news of the day, but political influences were still strong enough to control editorial policy, and ultra-partisan and sectional views were incorporated in the record of events. There were still editors of great power and influence in politics and public affairs, and they tried to shape the current of the new condition by the force of editorial writing. A number of editors, of both the old and new order, for a time followed the policy of subordinating to partisan politics all other features of the newspaper. They sought to make the press the dominant influence in politics, and to do that they presented in their journals only one side of public and party questions. They undertook to think and to reason for their readers, and their partisan and sectional views were reflected in the news columns of their papers. So long as party feeling ran high this style of journalism was popular and successful, but the newspaper, being in the nature of an educator of the masses, soon set the people to thinking for themselves, and created a demand for the news of public and political events without the color of individual opinion. The change from intense partisanship to partial or complete independence of editorial utterance has come slowly, and is still under way. To-day there is no great daily newspaper in the United States so entirely subservient to a political party as to support any man or measure without question or protest. Politicians fear this spirit of independence, and therein lies the secret of the great power of the press in public affairs. The most powerful and successful journals are those that combine absolute fairness and honesty with independence.

So-called schools of journalism, in the rapid development of the profession during the past twenty years, have merged into one general system or plan, which is to get all the news and publish it. Journals may be graded or classified by their treatment of news and their judgment as to the intelligence and moral character of the reading public.

A detailed record of the development of the mechanical part of the newspaper business during the past thirty years would be almost a synopsis of all progress in science and art. The newspaper printing press of to-day, which prints, cuts, folds, and counts ninety-six thousand papers per hour, with one man to operate it, is the mechanical wonder of the age. It is justly regarded as the greatest piece of machinery that the ingenuity of man has yet devised. Type is no longer set by hand in the making of a newspaper, the letters being formed from the metal direct and cast in finished lines by machinery.

Octuple Stereotype Perfecting Press and Folders (printing on both sides of the paper). Capacity 96,000 4-, 6-, or 8-page papers per hour; down to 24,000 24-page papers per hour. A, paper rolls (Webb's), sometimes five miles long; B, printing cylinders, each one carrying sixteen plates (pages); C, blanket or impression cylinders; D, inking motion (fountain and inking rollers); F, folding mechanism or formers (four of these); G, deliveries (four of these); H, controlling lever; I, bar slitting, pasting, collating, and collecting devices (between press and folders).
(We are indebted to the courtesy of R. Hoe & Co. for permission to reproduce this photograph. This picture and the succeeding one represent the most powerful and complete printing presses which have been constructed up to date.)

Studying the perfection and magnitude of the newspaper printing press of to-day it is difficult to realize that little more than half a century of time and invention stand between this piece of mechanism, that seems to work with human intelligence, and the Washington hand press, upon which the production of printed sheets was a matter of slow and arduous labor. The great metropolitan newspapers of to-day are printed by monster machines weighing thirty tons, composed of four thousand separate pieces of steel, iron, brass, wood, and cloth. In the great printing-press factory of R. Hoe & Co. eighteen months' time is required to build one of the modern presses, and the cost of it would have more than paid for all the newspaper printing presses in use in the United States at the beginning of the century. These monster machines are known as quadruple presses, which means that four complete presses have been built into one. When in operation, white paper is fed to them automatically from rolls, and this paper, with a speed greater than the eye can follow, is converted into the finished newspaper, printed on both sides, cut into sheets, pasted together, folded, counted, and deposited in files of fifty or one hundred at one side of the press. White paper is fed to the press from two points, and finished newspapers are delivered at two places on the opposite side. An idea of the speed with which the work is done may be gained by watching the printed papers fall from the folder. They drop so fast that the eye, no matter how well trained, can not count them. These presses have a capacity of ninety-six thousand four-, six-, or eight-page papers per hour, and forty-eight thousand ten-, twelve-, or sixteen-page papers. Their mechanism is so perfect and so carefully adjusted that the breaking of a narrow band of tape in the folder, the loosening of a nut, the slightest bending of a rod, friction in a bearing, or any other derangement, no matter how slight, is instantly apparent to the skilled machinist in charge.

Sextuple Stereotype Perfecting Press and Folders (with color attachment for printing three additional colors on outside pages). It prints per hour 48,000 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, or 12-page papers, 36,000 16 page papers, or 24,000 14-, 16-, 20-, or 24-page papers—all delivered folded, pasted, and counted. Also magazines with pages half the size of the newspaper pages, one half the pages printed in four colors and the other half in one color, at the rate of 48,000 of 8, 12, 16, 20, or 24 pages, and 24,000 of 28, 32, 40, or 48 pages, delivered folded to page size, cut open at the heads, bound with wire staples, and counted.
(We are indebted to the courtesy of R. Hoe & Co. for permission to reproduce this photograph.)

The white paper used in making the newspapers of to-day is manufactured from wood pulp and is put up in long rolls, wound about an iron cylinder that can be adjusted in place at one end of the press. These rolls contain from two to four miles of paper, and weigh from eight hundred to twelve hundred pounds each. As soon as one roll is used up another is lifted into place, the loose ends of the two are pasted together, and, after a stop of less than two minutes, the great press is again belching forth finished newspapers at the rate of sixteen hundred a minute, or two hundred and sixty-six each second.

Almost every invention and device of recent years in connection with the use of electricity is in some way utilized in the production and distribution of the daily newspapers. The evolution of journalism having finally established the fact that the chief function of the daily newspaper is to publish the news of the world, the problem of the business is how to obtain the news surely, accurately, and promptly. The ocean cable has taken the place of the sailing vessel, the trained correspondent has succeeded the occasional contributor, the electric telegraph and telephone have entirely superseded the mail in the transmission of domestic news, and every event of human interest throughout the civilized world is placed before millions of readers within a few hours of its actual occurrence.

The collection of news is not restricted by any question of the cost of obtaining it. Fifty years ago it was considered a remarkable feat for one newspaper to obtain information of an important event in advance of competitors. To-day it is a matter of comment if any newspaper fails to publish all the news desired by its readers. If a war is fought on any part of the earth there are reporters on the firing line, and no expense is spared in collecting and transmitting by the quickest method available full reports of any event of world-wide importance. To-day the hiring of special trains, the stringing of a special line of telegraph wire, the charter of a ship, the fitting out of an exploring expedition, or any other great enterprise in the way of collecting information for the newspapers of the United States, is so much a part of the everyday business of journalism that such things are accepted as a matter of course, or cause no more than a passing comment.

Half a century ago the result of a national convention or election was not known all over the country for weeks afterward. In the case of a national convention to-day, telegraph wires lead from the convention hall into the offices of all the newspapers in the larger cities. An operator sits near the platform of the presiding officer, and with a muffled key he sends over the wire a full report of the proceedings, with a description of every incident of interest. At the other end of the line is an operator at a typecasting machine receiving the report and putting it into lines as fast as received. When a candidate for President has been nominated, extra editions of the daily papers are selling on the streets of cities a thousand miles away almost before the applause for the winning man has died out in the convention hall. The people of every city and town in the United States where a newspaper is published would feel themselves cheated of their rights if they failed to receive news of the result of an election by midnight of the day on which the ballots were cast.

In enterprise and originality the journalism of America leads the world at the end of the nineteenth century. As a profession, it commands, with alluring prospects of fame and fortune, the services of men of genius and learning. Those who enter it from choice succeed or fail quickly. It is a life of activity, a work where energy and intelligence are essential qualifications, and honor and honesty are certain of reward. There is no enduring place in the profession for hypocrisy, indolence, or mediocrity.

VALUE OF THE STUDY OF ART.

By GEORGES PERROT.

Georges Perrot is one of the leading art writers and teachers of France. Born in 1832, not far from Paris, he was graduated from the École Normale about 1855, and was then for three years at the French School at Athens. From his return to the present day he has occupied, with honor and distinction, many positions in the world of letters. At present he is a member of the Institut, an officer of the Légion d'Honneur, a professor à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, and the director of the École Normale Supérieure. He is best known to scholars outside of France by the magnificent work on the History of Art in Antiquity, which he is writing, assisted by Charles Chipiez, architecte du gouvernement, and of which seven superb quartos have already appeared. (Hachette et Cie.) In 1891, by a decree of the Minister of Public Instruction, the study of the history of the fine arts was introduced into a section of the studies pursued at the lycées. In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1899, Perrot pleads for an increase of the time assigned to the study and for its introduction into other parts of the curriculum.

I have translated those pages of the article which are of general interest as a contribution to a subject which is deservedly attracting the attention of American institutions of learning.

D. Cady Eaton.

Written and spoken language, the language of which the signs are words, is not the only language which man uses to convey his ideas. There is also the language of forms, which, with no less clearness and force, conveys the conceptions of the intellect and the sentiments of the heart. We study the history and the literature of bygone people for the purpose of acquiring a better knowledge of ourselves, and this knowledge is secured by becoming conscious of the different states of mind, to use a modern expression, through which our ancestors have passed. Even the most elementary and the most remote of these successive conditions are, unconsciously perhaps, represented in the depths of our being by beliefs and customs for which the present order and progress of civilization can not account.[16]

Not to go back to the Quaternary period or to the cave dwellers, there are many of these mental ideas or conditions which would remain hidden from the inquiry of the historian if he were limited to written testimony. One example may suffice: the discoveries of Schliemann, at Troy, Mycenæ, and Tiryns have rescued from oblivion a primitive Greece of which the Greeks themselves had preserved but a faint remembrance. Thus has been given to the Homeric epoch a background of many centuries. Now this Greece, contemporary of the Thutmoses and the Ramses of Egypt, anterior to not only Grecian history but even to Grecian tradition, could not write, but could work and use stone; could hew wood and fashion it for carpentry; could mold and bake clay; could melt and hammer lead, bronze, gold, and silver; and could carve ivory. Every bit of material fashioned by the instruments of this period has the value of an authentic document. How society was constituted, the life that was led, what notions were held of the hereafter—all these things are revealed by the marks the hands of man have left upon everything he touched. The colossal walls of Tiryns, the majestic funeral cupolas of Mycenæ, the divisions of the royal abodes of which the outlines can still be traced on the surface of the soil, and the arrangement of the sepulchres hidden beneath it all testify. So, too, the weapons, the instruments, the vases, and the jewels which have been found scattered about amid the ruins of the buildings or buried in the tombs. Thanks to all these monuments, we are beginning to recognize in a shadow which year by year glows with a brighter light the features which characterized the world of Achæan heroes of which the image, transformed by oral tradition and singularly enlarged by power of invention, is reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

From these obscure and remote ages let us transport ourselves to the Greece of Pisistratus, of Pericles, and of Alexander. Instructors of youth tell of the losses which have been made, and of how small a part of the literary work of Greek genius has escaped the great shipwreck of antiquity. Should they not also indicate where precious supplements of information may be found to fill the voids of written tradition? There are many variations of important myths, hardly mentioned in passing by obscure epitomizers of the lower centuries, which have furnished to ceramic artists subjects for pictures which make us acquainted with personages and with episodes of which writers have hardly left a trace. But even if we had the works of the cyclic poets, all of which have perished; if we had the lyric poets, of whom only Pindar has survived, and Bacchylides whose fragments are to-day the joy of Hellenists; if we had the whole of tragedy, of which we have but the remnants; if we had all of that comedy which is represented by Aristophanes alone; if we had all of the more ancient comedy, all of the middle period and all of the new, with Menander who since the Renaissance is the regret of all critics of fine apprehension—all this poetry could not exhaust the multiple fecundity and the prodigious richness of the imagination which created it. If malevolent Fortune had decreed the destruction of every bit of Greek plastic art we should have been condemned to perpetual ignorance of many aspects and methods of the Greek soul. Is there anything in literature worth the little clay figures of Tanagra in making clear how the Greeks apprehended and enjoyed female beauty: how they loved it not only in the noble and serious types of a Pallas or an Aphrodite, but even as presented by the humble inhabitants of little villages in the graceful abandon of their everyday life and in the liberty of their most ordinary attitudes? If we base an opinion of the religion of the Greeks only upon the epithets used by poets in defining the gods and upon actions they attributed to them, we run the risk of judging wrongly. In contemplating their images we obtain clearer notions of the ideas associated with each divine type. Alas! we do not possess the great works of Phidias which according to men of authority made men more religious—the Athene of the Parthenon and the Zeus of Olympia. But even in the reduced copies of these two masterpieces which have reached down to our time we can divine how the master expressed in the one the idea of calm and luminous intelligence and of supreme wisdom, and in the other the idea of that sovereign force in repose and of that omnipotence, tempered by goodness, which were conceived to exist in the sovereign of the universe, the father of gods and men.

In subsequent paragraphs Perrot imagines the Greek statues of the Louvre thus addressing a classical student:

"Young man, you who are studying Greece in Homer and Plato, in Sophocles and Herodotus, do not pass us by so quickly. We also belong to that Greece which you discern and which you seek in their writings, of which not without difficulty you decipher the prose and the verse. To understand and to love us, to read in our features the thoughts of which we are the expression, to seize in the modeling of our flesh and in the pure outline of our limbs the secret of the genius which created us, no grammar nor dictionary is needed; only apply yourself to the education of your eye. In this exercise, in this apprenticeship, you will find a pleasure which will become more and more keen as you become more capable of perceiving rapidly the finest gradations. If you aspire to become an authorized interpreter of Greek genius, do not fear that you may be losing time. When, by long and affectionate intercourse, you shall have sufficiently entered into our intimacy to be able at any given hour to evoke in your spirit, as clearly as if we stood before you, a vision of the forms which shall have become dear to you, then the images which shall be awakened in your memories when you read the poets will be akin to those which the same recitals and the same epithets suggested to the Greeks who saw us born. To them you will be drawn by similarity of impression. You will be nearer to them, nearer to thinking and feeling after their fashion, at least by moments, than the most subtle grammarian or the most learned Hellenist who never has seen us."

Turning from Greece to Italy, Perrot derives a no less striking lesson from the statues of Roman emperors:

"Is there a lesson, though given by the most learned professor, that could cause to live before us all the life of the Rome of the Cæsars as do these effigies? In the long succession of portraits which embrace three centuries of history the differences of times and of men are contrasted more keenly and more vividly than in the recitals of ancient authors or in the dissertations of modern erudites. Augustus and Tiberius, Constantine and Theodosius, all bore the same title—'imperator'; all were called consuls, Cæsars, Augusti, patres patriæ, etc. Nevertheless, from the first to the fourth centuries the supreme power was greatly modified. Volumes have been written to explain the change, but there is nothing that makes it so clear as the comparison of the images of these princes. Augustus, in perhaps the most beautiful of all his statues, called de Prima Porta, has his head, arms, legs, and feet bare. Over the soldier's short tunic he wears a cuirass, and over it is thrown the military mantle of command. He is represented as supreme chief haranguing his troops. Another statue may represent him as a simple citizen, clothed with the toga and holding in his hand the manuscript of the discourse he proposes reading to the senate. The statues still show forth the Roman Republic, at least the customs and the style of it. Most vividly is the spirit and also the deception of the system perceived which, while investing a single individual with a power almost limitless, affects for two centuries a preservation of ancient liberties. Turn from these to an image of one of the successors of Diocletian, one who preferred to reside in Constantinople, the new capital of the empire. Do not seek his image in one of the ceremonial statues where, by force of routine, the sculptor may perchance have preserved classic rules; but in monuments of another order, where the artist kept closer to reality, in miniatures adorning manuscripts, in mosaics, in ivory diptychs, etc. There you will find figures which have nothing left of the simplicity and nobility which Rome borrowed from Greece, but figures which in some particulars recall the old art of Asia, and in others already announce the art of the middle ages. The head is encircled with a diadem. The body and the limbs are entirely hidden by clinging draperies which are very long and very narrow. The materials which form this species of case are decorated from top to bottom with rich embroideries in the shape of medallions, flowers, animals, and even persons. There is no more deception; we are no longer in Rome; fictions so long preserved have finally disappeared; the empire has turned into an Oriental despotism.

"Between the two extremes of the series, how many degrees are there which furnish the very best commentaries of history? The heads of all the Cæsars, even those of Claudius, the accidental scholar, and of Caligula, the wicked and witty fool, are aristocratic. They show the nobility and the pride of race. You recognize in them the descendants of those grand patrician families which at first seemed to hold exclusively the right to give masters to the Romans. With Vespasian, scion of a middle-class family pushing its way into second-class public positions, the advent of a new order is evident. Vespasian has the round and smooth, double-chinned face of the chief clerk of a commercial or banking establishment. Trajan has the features of a soldier who has probably pushed his way to the front from the ranks. Hadrian, who turns his head to hear the better, whose bright eyes gleam even in the marble, whose half-opened mouth seems in the act of speech, shows the features of a learned and intelligent scholar. Marcus Aurelius, with his bristling hair and beard, would be taken for a Greek philosopher. In Caracalla's looks there is derangement. His eye betrays that murderous and fantastic frenzy which seized more than one emperor, especially of those who from early youth had been exposed to the temptations of absolute power.[17]

"Not to personages alone do pictured monuments give life. The same character of sensible reality is imparted to the frame and to the surroundings of the picture, to all the theater where these actors played their parts. Of this truth no one of our teachers, when I was a collegian, seemed to have a suspicion. There was not an illustration in the cold and dry compendiums which were placed in our hands. I can almost ask myself if, when I studied Greek and Roman history, I was really convinced that Sparta and Athens, Rome and Carthage had actually existed. I certainly did not know how or where to place them in space, what idea to have of their situation, or of the outlines made by the ridges of their walls, their houses, and their temples. All these cities were to me vague shadows, floating between heaven and earth. No one of them answered to a distinct and defined form.

"If this be the case with classical antiquity, in spite of the color and splendor of the narratives of its writers, how much more difficult is it to know and understand France of the middle ages when condemned to study it in its literary work alone! The literature of the period is partly in debased Latin, partly in early French. The French of the day was not the language of the thinkers. The deep thought of the age is not to be found in minstrelsy and ballads. It must be asked of the learned, of philosophers, of theologians, and of sacred writers. But to follow them in the subtle analyses and in the excessive complications of symbolism, in which they delight, requires mental efforts which are made all the more laborious by the artificial character of the church Latin, which no longer continued to renew itself at the source of popular speech. It is impossible to see how such works, in spite of their value to erudition, can be called to take part in the education of the young. It is for this reason that lately, by a judicious innovation, a discreet place has been made in the curriculum for histories and poems written in the common language, for the Chanson de Roland, and for the works of Villehardouin and Joinville. But the student can only read these in translations, or in those adaptations which so modernize the language as to leave but a little of its original flavor, and which therefore make but an imperfect contact between the original work and the mind of the reader. But supposing the scholar capable of mastering the original text: can its formless and superabundant prose, or the tiresome monotone of its flowing dissonances, give him emotions which have the vivacity of those which a page of Tacitus or a song of Virgil gives to those who know even a modicum of Latin? Can they have the power to excite the imagination in the same degree as any strong and concise sentence of the historian, any sonorous and glowing verse of the Roman poet?

"It is only exceptionally and as by flashes that the writings of the middle ages give the impression of true beauty. The conceptions are often grand, but the expression is always weak and dragging. On the other hand, Roman or Gothic churches are not less beautiful after their manner than Greek temples. Their beauty is of another fashion, but many souls are touched more deeply. They manifest no less clearly the power of the religious faith which constructed them. The particular character of Christian faith is shown with singular clearness in their majesty, in the elevation of their vaults, in the half lights which flood them, and in the thousands of figures which populate and animate every surface. As in Greece, the sculptor co-operates intelligently and docilely with the architect and has occupied no less happily the allotted fields. As Phidias and Alcamenes represented on the pediments and friezes of Doric temples the great gods of Greece and the local myths of Athens and Olympia, so anonymous masters, called to decorate the cathedrals of the middle ages, have placed impressive statues on the sides and in the voussoirs of the portals, in the open galleries which run along the façades, on the top of the pinnacles which throng the roof—in fact, everywhere where space is offered. These statues, distributed in an order regulated by doctrine and tradition, show forth the Saviour, the Virgin, saints and angels, prophets and apostles, and hosts of personages and scenes suggested by Holy Writ or by local and popular legends. Among these images there are many at Bourges, Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and Nôtre Dame de Paris, which are marvels of severe elegance, of chaste and haughty grace, and of lofty moral nobility. This wonderful statuary has but lately been investigated, exposed, and studied, but already it would be difficult to find a connoisseur unwilling to compare with the most boasted statues of antiquity that admirable image of the teaching Christ of the west portal of Amiens, to which the popular surname has been attached of le Beau Dieu d'Amiens.

"For evident reasons, French sculpture of the thirteenth century did not, as did Greek sculpture, devote itself to the study and reproduction of the nude. It denied itself this attraction. All figures are clad; but beneath the drapery, which is in fine masses with large folds, the outline and the movement of form are indicated with precision. The principal interest and the rare originality, however, of this sculpture is that it is perhaps the most expressive that has ever existed. This expressiveness appears in the general effect of the pose, in the disposition of the drapery, but especially in the character which the artist has succeeded in giving to the features of the face.

"The august mysteries of the Christian dogma, the poetry of the Old and of the New Testament, the triumphant deaths of martyrs, the miracles of saints and their infinite charity—these things which the middle ages failed to put into clear and intelligible words are fully rendered in sculpture. The work of the chisel is large and firm. Difficulties are not sought, nor are they feared. Whatever be the material, the form is sure. To understand how superior the plastic is to the literary work, and to measure the distance, compare the Amiens statue with the portraits the authors of the Mysteries endeavor to draw of the Son of God. 'What can be more flat than these poor verses, which are nevertheless of the sixteenth century? The authors had good intentions and an apprehension of what should be done, but they were betrayed by the language in which they wrote. The sculptors of the thirteenth century, on the contrary, who possessed fully the grammar of their art, expressed all they felt, and have left us the most divine images of Jesus Christ in existence.'[18]

"Italy of the Renaissance is quite unintelligible to any one who has not measured the place held by art in the preoccupations not only of artists who practice it, but of all men of all conditions—of princes, nobles, tradesmen, and of citizens of most humble occupations. No one in any rank is without a passionate love for plastic beauty. This love was Italy's life and Italy's death. She died of it, because all her sap was consumed in satisfying it. It made her indifferent to her dismemberment, to the hard yoke of her tyrants, to the loss of her political liberties, and of her independence. But, at the same time, it constituted the intensity of her life which was exhausted and renewed again in the ardor with which she pursued her ideal and in her endeavors to realize it under all its aspects. Let him who would wish to obtain an exact idea of this condition reside for a while in Mantua, in Parma, in Sienna, in Florence, or in any other less-known city which nevertheless had its local school of art, its architects, its sculptors, its painters, some of whom, though they only worked for their native city, were not far from manifesting genius.[19]

"The written history of the seventeenth century and its rich literature can not alone give an idea of the situation occupied by Louis XIV in Europe when he was admired, imitated, or rather servilely copied, as pre-eminently the type of the modern king even by those who hated him the most. After two centuries, have we not seen his wonderful prestige still potent in dominating the sickly mind of Louis II of Bavaria? In his desire to copy his chosen model Louis ruined himself in building palaces. In this folly he showed discrimination. Louis XIV, when dying, may have accused himself of having indulged too great a love for building; but his edifices, with their majestic grandeur and the opulence of their decoration, gave that royal life a frame which had much to do with the dazzling which all Europe experienced when in the presence of le Roi Soleil. In order to recognize and experience, though but for a moment, a little of the impression felt by all contemporaries, Versailles must be visited; the apartments of the palace, the terraces, and the alleys of the park must be traversed. Thus will be thrown upon this historic figure a light far more brilliant and true than could possibly be the result of learning by heart accounts of all the campaigns of Turenne or Condé, or all the clauses of the treaties of Nimègue and Ryswick.

"The same may be said of the eighteenth century, of which only an incomplete idea can be had without a knowledge of its art. This century, to which Voltaire gave the note, seems to have had no sentiment of poetry. Down to the time of André Chenier everything called poetry was no more than rhymed prose. The imagination, however, did not lose its rights. Like a stream which changes its bed, it withdrew from literature to flow into the arts of design. There it gives evidence of invention and of light and spontaneous grace. Architects adopt plans of happy arrangement. They employ forms of rare elegance both in the elements of construction and in the ornaments which decorate them. Such sculptors as Capperi and Houdon give to portraiture a marvelous intensity of life, while the terra cottas of Clodion, with their fantastic and voluptuous charm, recall the clay modelers of antiquity. Such painters as Greuze, Lancret, and Boucher spread before the eyes living idyls, while Watteau and Frangonard conjure dreams of ideal Cytheras, of a chimerical paradise where reign eternal youth and eternal desire. The politics of our kings and of our ministers of the period is but a succession of faults and weaknesses. The best concerted plans come to naught. The most brilliant victory produces no useful results. If France, in spite of so many reverses, still held her supremacy in Europe, she owed it to her writers and to her artists."

Perrot's arguments might be used with even greater force in reference to those notions which have had no Comines, no Joinville, no Froissart, no Villehardouin, but the history of whose civilization may be traced in monuments along the Rhine and the Danube, the Ems and the Elbe. In the last part of the article Perrot considers the best methods of giving the desired instruction. However interesting and valuable his suggestions may be in communities where the instruction has already been established, it is evident that there must first be a conviction of the value and necessity of such studies and the determination to have them started. Methods are not difficult to devise, and will vary with national and individual tastes. That American colleges of thirty, forty, or fifty years ago should have objected to the introduction of the history of the fine arts into their curricula is easily understood. Art in any form was regarded by the New England mind as an emanation of the devil, and the New England mind controlled American colleges. Why the repugnance continues to exist is harder to understand. It may subsist from ignorance, from prejudice, or from conservatism. Conservatism may still regard all information to be derived from art as objectionable. Prejudice may still be strongly fixed in the notion that written and spoken words are the only vehicles of instruction, and that the arts are useless and idle vanities, while ignorance may be awaiting demonstration which will have to be strong and conclusive to awake it from self-satisfied apathy. May the good words of Perrot help on the cause and accelerate the time when the best and the fullest education will be offered by the American university!

HOW STANDARD TIME IS OBTAINED.