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happy conjunction to represent the character of the men who had given their names to the institution. With such a college in our midst, there is no need of any citizen of Pennsylvania going out of the State for an education.

The Alumni Association met on Monday at 10:30 a. m. and heard reports on the progress of the publication of a centennial volume and of a biography of Rev. Dr. John W. Nevin The alumni dinner was given at 12:30, and about 1000 people partook of it. George F. Baer, Esq., of Reading, presided. A huge tent had been erected near Harbaugh Hall, and in it long tables were spread. Immediately after the dinner a meeting was organized, when Rev. J. Spangler Kieffer, of Hagerstown Md., delivered an address "On the Claims of the

College on the Church." Addresses were
also made by Hon. John Cessna, of Bed-
ford; Traill Green, LL. D., of Lafayette
College; Rev. J. Robert Nevin, of St.
Paul's Church, Rome, Italy; Rev. Dr. Mc-
Cauley, of Dickinson College, Carlisle :
Rev. Dr. Seip, of Muhlenberg College,
Allentown; Rev. Dr. J. A. Muhlenberg,
Rev. D. Stanhope Orris, of Princeton, N.

ers. Ret J.; Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, of New York;

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Rev. Thos. G. Apple and Marriott Brosius, of Lancaster. Letters of congratulation were read from the faculties of Heidelberg College, Ursinus College, Lehigh University, Bucknell University, and many others.

The court house was again crowded on Wednesday evening. Hon. Louis H. Steiner delivered the centennial oration on "The Old College Curriculum," expressing his disapprobation of the elective system of studies in colleges, and defining sharply the difference that exists between the college and the university, in the latter of which full provision must be made for all desirable elective studies or courses. Rev. C. W. E. Siegle read the centennial and semicentennial ode, "Alma Mater.”

29

Passing to a consideration of the economic claims of the college, the speaker called attention to the fact that of the large endowment and valuable property employed in its work threefourths at least were contributed by outside patrons. Its noblest benefactions had come from strangers to our city and county; and surely if the removal hither or the establishment of a material concern providing employment and disbursing wages for nearly a hundred families would command the attention of the most sordid mercantile spirit, the attraction hither of students from distant regions and the opening of the city to new relations was a fit subject for attention. The influences that must flow from a seat of higher learning are felt in every channel of trade, and contribute to the material welfare of the city.

Mr. Hensel said he would make no apology for the "uses of the higher learning. It is met again and again with the taunt, “What has the college done for you to enable you to earn your bread and butter?" The answer is to be found in its higher ethical claims upon the community for allegiance and support. Nothing is of more immediate and vital concern to the community than that the leaders of its thought should be educated to right views of life. Our country has suffered grievously, and the ill results yet to follow are immeasurable, from false systems of education that aim at a selfish utilitarianism and ensue in a shallow and superficial view of public questions. Our material prosperity has been so dazzling that we measure everything by it. Yet the human mind and soul have not changed, that men should talk so blithely of the new education and the new religion, and so readily adjust them to the telephone, the electric light and the naval torpedo. The message of the nineteenth century, it has been well said, should be a warning against the spirit of mercantilism which has fastened upon our American life, invading our legislative halls, checking and chilling the spirit of our literature, measuring and weighing our art, clouding our religion, and in the end blighting the material interests themselves. Even these must suffer when a rank empiricism takes hold of our legislation and inspires our public representatives.

Until men are taught that there is a higher life than the success which succeeds, than building railroads, extending domain, heaping riches, or winning bread, the best interests of the community are not served, and the highest destiny of a nation never will be realized.

With the most extensive domain, the greatest affluence of resources and production, graphic and eloquent writers have startled even this exultant people with forceful depiction of the fact that the tramp goes with the locomotive and the malefactor lurks in the shadow of the church. For our social ills and disorders the college has no patent panacea. But it knows and teaches that if the American people deliberately set themselves to teaching their children that a good life is only to make "a good living;' to sharpening the mind to get advantage in acquiring property and wealth, they will be educated to be what Hobbes calls "fighting ani

Christian soul of the higher civilization that shall come back to adorn the cathedral of American culture with a radiance not born of earth, and to light it with a beauty that comes only down from heaven.

Thursday was graduation day, and the exercises of the week closed on Thursday evening with a reception, concert, and pyrotechnic display at the College. The scene on the campus-its buildings and its numerous and beautiful trees illuminated

with Chinese lanterns-with all the moving life of thousands of admiring visitors, was one not soon to be forgotten, and a fitting close to the memorable week of rejoicing.

THE NORMAL SCHOOLS.

HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN SECUREDTEACHING AS A PROFESSION, ETC.

HE advanced position of those intelligent and estimable people, the Friends, with regard to the co-education of the sexes and the higher education of women, is well understood; but they do not stand alone, and when President Magill proposed to the educational public of Pennsylvania a liberal education for female teachers and the elevation of the teaching art to the level of a profession, he did not seem to understand that he was but carrying coals to Newcastle.' He was just thirty years behind the times in this incipient missionary effort.

66

Under the provisions of our State Normal School law, approved May 20th, 1857, the students on the public account in those schools were required to be male and female alternately, and these Normal Schools opened up from the start a broader field and higher opportunities for the thorough and efficient education of young ladies than 'had ever before been offered to the mass of the gentler sex in the old Keystone outside of the select private seminaries that only the favorites of fortune could patronize; enhanced at the same time by the certainty of their being able to make that education contributory to their own support to an extent that had not generally been the case except in limited portions of the State. From the very first, under this double stimulus, our Normal Schools, as fast as officially recognized, swarmed with ambitious and talented female students who sought the liberal culture and thorough training of these high State institutions, and speedily proved their ability to fully cope with their brother students in the highest range of studies available for their benefit; and so it has con

Our Normal School law, and the practice | under it, has helped immensely to lift the vocation of common school teacher into the respect and confidence of the public at large, which it had never before enjoyed, and established a high professional standard to work up to, and reach; though of course the holders of provisional certificates, especially if of a low grade, do not, and ought not to rank as professional teachers. Yet there are thousands who have by arduous and self-sacrificing efforts rightfully attained this honorable rank. The law was judiciously and generously so framed as to in-, vite and help all who aspire to success and standing in the profession. That the Normal Schools did not realize at once, the full ultimate ideal of the law, is their misfortune, not their fault. The colossal requirements of the act, and the precarious sources of income, were prodigious difficulties to be overcome; and under all the adverse circumstances, the real wonder is that they have done so much and so well. They are entitled to vastly more credit than is conceded to them in some interested quarters. Their mission is a specific one, and they have not only had to train teachers for the common schools, but also the larger incidental but inevitable duty of helping to educate public sentiment to the high standpoint that the law contemplates; and this cannot be done by spasmodic or sensational efforts, nor in a single decade or generation; like everything else in our common school development, it is an arduous task and slow, and time is a factor of immense importance in the solution of the problem.

Our massive Normal School system was planned for the next five hundred years, rather than the mere period of its enactment; and under the most favorable circumstances, with the undeniable success of the past, and the best efforts of the present, we must continue to look to the future for its highest development, and largest measure of results. When Pennsylvania shall have quadrupled her present population and resources, some things can and will be done that are not practicable now, and the most exacting standard of excellence that its friends desire and its enemies demand will be fully realized. The physical requirements of the law will be found to be too restricted for the uses that will be found for these schools, and some of its dormant features not yet brought into play, will bloom into activity and fruitfulness. What this generation is doing under our laws for popular education would have been regarded

fifty years ago as the work of fanatics and cranks, that should be checkmated and suppressed at all hazards.

But between those who would block the wheels of progress and those who denounce the progress made as tardiness itself, Pennsylvania has steadfastly kept on the even tenor of her way, with tortoise deliberation, it is true, but with a steadfast and proverbial persistency of purpose that does not look back and never gives up; until at last the goal of her highest hopes is in plain sight, and in due time will undoubtedly be reached. In some important particulars she has been an exemplar and pioneer for other States, and she has no idea at this late day of "going back" on her record, or taking a secondary place in the great work she long ago set out to accomplish.

NOTES FOR HISTORY CLASS.-X.

A

MISTAKE, which historians are beginning to correct, but which still forms a grave defect in our school histories, is to regard history too exclusively from a governmental point of view. The great mass of the volumes which profess to give the stories of the rise and fortunes of nations are, in reality, little more than the histories of dynasties. The scene of the story is the court or the camp; the actors are kings and nobles, with occasionally a refractory commoner who has headed a rebellion. wish to learn anything of the progress of the arts, or of literature, or of the sciences, we must seek for it in works specially devoted to these subjects.

If we

A few centuries ago the historian found, indeed, little else to write about than these exciting themes. The lives of the common people were uneventful, except in times of war; their customs and habits-interesting as a survey of them would be to us seemed beneath the notice of the historian, and, indeed, altered but little from generaation to generation. But the past three centuries have brought about a great change in this respect. The common people, the governed class, has, in the enlightened nations, been struggling to the surface, and can no longer be left out of the account in considering the causes of a nation's prosperity. The advance of the arts and sciences, even of the art of government, has proceeded, as a rule, from the middle and lower classes, and the ruling class no longer has a claim to monopolize the attention of an historian.

A school text-book of history must necessarily be a small work. It can form but a mere introduction to a really inexhaustible subject. But there is no good reason why it should not cover the entire field which properly belongs to history. It should be something more than a political and military history; its prominent characters should not all be statesmen or generals, nor its dates mainly those of battles and treaties. A school history of the United States, written as we would like to see it written, would differ in many important particulars from those in common use. The story of our country from its settlement to the present time contains, like that of every other modern nation, an exceedingly varied and intricate plot. That which has made us the populous and flourishing nation that we are is not solely our form of government. This has been the shield under which we have worked, and we have been fortunate in having found wise and able men to erect and sustain it for us; those who formed our constitution, those who have held public office under it, and those who at a time of imminent peril led the armies that preserved it, are all deserving of the honorable place that has been accorded them in history. But we do wrong to teach our children by implication, that because these men were conspicuous from their position in public life, they are the only men who have done the country real and enduring service. While these men have been acting as a national police, having an oversight over the general welfare, private enterprise, enlisting in its service men of no less ability, has developed the resources of the country, has cleared away its forests, opened its mines, constructed canals, erected founderies, machine shops, and cotton mills, and has netted the land from end to end with thousands of miles of railroads and telegraphs.

1i

Matters of this sort are, it is true, not wholly ignored in the school-book; but they are given, as it were, in a corner-the light scarcely falls upon them. Thus, a book before us disposes of the steamboat with six lines and a picture, while three lines suffice to notice the completion of the Erie Canal and the introduction of the locomotive into the country. A child may study in school the history of the United States, and not know, unless he learns the fact by accident, that coal has not been used for fuel in Pennsylvania from the days of William Penn.

To obtain a due amount of space in the text-book for industrial history, the political history must be abridged; but this can