in our particular stage of civilization, is the | from Rome, and the sole relic of the Roman most urgent need of society? Or, again, is there organism in an epoch of utter disorganization either one of them which is inclusive of the and decay; and secondly, the accident of havothers, and by its attainment would accomplishing in its clergy the only profession or occupatheir ultimate aim also? One must admit, in the first place, that it would be a good use for wealth if in any way it could be employed to make the generality of men more comfortable. Whatever opinion one may hold as to the ill effects of too luxurious or easy a life, he cannot but see that a certain degree of even merely physical comfort is a necessary condition of progress in civilization. Only a superstitious asceticism could fail to desire that the mass of men might be relieved of some part of their benumbing miseries. The world of ordinary human beings is a hard, hostile world. So that there is no question that if man is to "live upward, working out the brute," he must escape from brutish misery. For this end, however, the first need is that we should understand the fundamental causes of his troubles. Mere short-sighted charity is useless. To feed the pauper is to produce the pauper. It is of little use to treat the symptom; we must try to cure the disease. But how? Many persons, especially those who are themselves engaged in church work, would answer, "The cause of human suffering is human sin." They would say, "Decrease vice, and you decrease misery. Moral amelioration is the great want of the race. Let the money be given to that great organization which has all these centuries been fighting against human wickednessthe church." No doubt there is a truth in this answer, but not the whole truth. No doubt the church has done much good, and will continue to do good. Wickedness is, no doubt, the cause of much human misery, but we have come in these modern times to see that ignorance is the cause of more. It is human ignorance that has kept man down and kept civilization back. It is progress in intelligence that has lifted him up, and that will urge civilization onward. Besides, to go to the bottom of it, what is the cause of wickedness itself? In the deepest and broadest sense, ignorance. "We needs must love the highest when we see it." It is truer sight that is needed, and the truer choice must follow. Who can doubt that to make men wiser is to make them better? Moreover, the greatest service of the church itself has been in those times and countries where it has been most conspicuously an educating force. There was a time in history when the church was the center of intellectual, as well as of religious life. And this depended on two causes: first, its perfect organization inherited tion that necessitated the mastery of literature. The church, as the sole repository of organization and of letters, did nobly a two-fold service, religious and intellectual. But the time came when there was other organized intellectual activity and other literature than that of the church. The universities established secular learning: the old literature of classic paganism was rediscovered, and the new literature of modern thought appeared. And from that time the church, as an organization, took up its permanent position in two camps; the one as an ally, more or less hearty, of intellectual progress, the other absolutely against it. When Wiclif put the English Bible in every English household, he builded better than he knew, for the English mind learned to read and to think, each mind as a separate individual force, and the era of intellectual liberty commenced-commenced, as it has gone on increasing, through literature; that is to say, through the free appropriation by the individual mind of free human thought, feeling, aspiration, and every spiritual power. So far as the church has increased human intelligence, it has done a great service for humanity. But so far as it leaves out of view the need of higher intelligence, it ignores the chief source of human misery, for that is mental degradation, brutish stupidity, ignorance. If, therefore, one great need of society is to be relieved from its miseries, the only sure path to that relief is through higher intelligence. If one of its great needs is to be converted from its wickedness, the only way is through higher intelligence. If, in fine, the urgent need of all humanity is for every reason just this higher intelligence, for better living as to material comfort, for higher living as to morality, and for its own sake, that men may be thinking men instead of mere dumb animals, then can any one doubt that the best use of a princely fortune is to provide with it for the education of the race? But if the whole world is too wide to be considered easily, let us but look at any small segment of it immediately about us. In California, for instance, what is the great, pressing need of our time? Material prosperity, no doubt, for one thing, and greater public and private virtue, for another; but most pressing of all, partly because its attainment would surely bring these others in its train, is the need of higher intelligence in the mass of the people. The process of evolution in society is precisely a progress in intelligence; not the mere "smartness" or sharpness of mind, which is but little more than the keen sense of the brute applied to slightly more complex surroundings, but that broad power of sight and insight into both material and spiritual things, such as education alone can bring. There is the brute stage and the human stage of development, with all grades between; and the human is higher than the brute by nothing else than higher intelligence. In our society, as elsewhere in the world, there are types of every grade. What it needs is to have the highest carried higher, and the lowest brought up to the grade already reached by the highest. At least, the average must be lifted higher, or our civilization must come to a standstill or go backward. The great danger to California is that her new population, her own native-born youth (for on them, after all, must depend her future), will fail to keep abreast of the times. All the wisdom that is in the world at any given epoch is needed to save society, or any segment of it, at that epoch. The resources of the eighteenth century are not sufficient for the nineteenth; for with its enlightenment—not the results of it, but the results of the same myriad causeshave come dangers. With the taste of divine liberty has come the craving for devilish license. With the sense of personal freedom has come the impatience of all restraint, even of that of one's own reason and will. With the gain of personal power has come the claim of equal right to power by the brutish mob. The nineteenth century must save itself, if at all, by the full possession of all the resources of the past not only, but of all its own resources, and by their possession by all men. And these resources can be given to the ordinary mind only by the best and most liberal education. Are there, then, any existing organizations among us ready to receive from wealth the contribution of its accumulated power, that are devoted to this most needed service of society? The world over, the institutions that most nearly approach this character are the colleges and universities. It is now some four hundred years since they began their work among Englishspeaking people, and it is not too much to say that whatever is valuable in modern civilization is owing to them more than to all other organized efforts put together. They have alternately furnished the radical element when radicalism was needed, and the conservative element when conservatism was needed. They have been the rallying point for all the forces of enlightenment and progress. From them has come, directly or indirectly, nearly all that the world counts precious in thought and investigation. It is through them, and almost through them alone, that each successive generation has been made possessor of the intellectual accumulations of all preceding generations. There have been in all times, no doubt, an exceptional few who, by dint of remarkable natural endowment, have risen to the full stature of intellectual men without their aid. But civilization never could have been preserved, much less kept on its upward career, by those few anomalous exceptions. The great service of the colleges has been that they have enabled the many ordinary minds to attain what otherwise could have been attained only by the few extraordinary minds. Leaving out of account the scattered prodigies, the self-made men whose enormous vigor of mind and character has enabled them to make the world their college, it is plain enough that it is the colleges that have bred the men who have guided civilization forward through the latter centuries. And the reason, too, is plain. It is because in the complex modern life, in the midst of the rush and swirl of its forces, no untrained, halfdeveloped man is anything-no trained and developed man, even, by himself, is anything. The only mind that can cope with modern life is the one that has taken advantage of whatever has yet been learned as to means of high development, and that stands not by the feeble strength of what one life-time can teach a single individual, but by the whole force of whatever wisdom has been gained through all the ages, a heritage whose possession it is the untiring effort of the colleges to bestow. Plainly enough, then, he who would do the greatest possible service to society, if he is to do it through any existing institution, can do nothing better than to bestow his fortune on a college or university. And the same principle which dictates that he should use his wealth as a total sum, instead of wasting its force by scattering it, dictates also that he should choose for his endowment an institution that is already a power, and that has already received, and is likely to receive in future, other such endowments. In this way will his means, reinforced by that of others, continually gain in power of service. The force which would keep in motion or accelerate a body already moving, might be utterly powerless to initiate its motion. Many a handsome sum has been thrown away on some small and helpless institution, which would have been of immense value if joined with the momentum of a vigorous university. In any such university, where there is a solid foundation and active energy of growth, one may find abundant opportunities for rich investments. There are new buildings that need to be erected for the service of science or art. When men build granite monuments on which to inscribe their names, culties may be involved in the connection of morals with creeds, it is certainly deplorable that any great institution should go on from year to year sending out men to be leaders in them instruction from commanding intellects on the great subjects of ethics, of rights and wrongs and duties, of the history of the human intellect in its wrestlings with the great underlying problems of existence. Certainly a grander college could be conceived than has ever yet been builded. The best possible use of a vast fortune, if vast enough, would be to build such a one, or even, perhaps, to lay fitly its prophetic why do they not build them in such wise as this, that so their memories, instead of being left to the forgotten solitudes of the graveyard, may be treasured by successive generations of grateful students and scholars? There are costly labora-modern thought and society without offering to tories to be founded; there are libraries to be collected, bringing to our young men and women, isolated in our remote regions, the intellectual harvest of the whole world; there are scholarships and fellowships to be established, giving to poor and talented youth the opportunities for which they hunger and thirst. Every county in the State has wealth that might easily maintain at the University a score of its brightest youth. And every county has private fortunes that might endow a free academy or high school within its borders, so that its youth should go to college finely prepared. Above all, there are chairs in the University to be endowed—a hundred fields of science and art and philosophy that should be filled by the foremost men in the world, and that now are silent and empty. corner-stones. But, practically, the chances are enormously against the attainment of any such perfect institution as might be conceived or dreamed of, if it were attempted. Unless a man were at the same time the wealthiest and the wisest man in the world, and should begin to build his college in his own middle life, at furthest, so that he himself might attend to every detail of its establishment, the chances of success would be doubtful. If the money were left to a single individual to control, we should probably have a tottering edifice built on the back of his particular educational or religious hobby. If it were put into the hands of a body of many-minded trustees, their dissensions might easily frustrate any judicious plan. After all, is it not true that valuable organisms must be the result of grad Is there not more hope in helping on toward perfection a well established organization, the slow product of countless converging forces, by needed additions and by gradual modifications, than in trying to replace it by some brand-new experiment? But, one may ask, would it not be better to build up a new college altogether? Are there not grave defects in all those existing at present-defects which we can see well enough, but which can hardly be corrected except by leaving them behind and beginning anew? This, indeed, is a serious question. Great as is the power for good in our best colleges, it is visible to some of us that they are far from being the ideal. Some of them are too closely bound to the past, by tradition, by precedent, by inher-ual growth rather than of sudden construction? ited tendency, for the needs of this present time. They seem, indeed, to move, as the waves of modern forces go by them, but they are anchored in the past, and only rock upon the waves. Others, on the contrary, are adrift at the mercy of the unstable gusts of politics, and the shifting notions of the time. They are afloat, it is true, but they are all afloat, having no bold policy, no settled plan, no steady onward progress. Some, in their courses of study, are slow to recognize that there is anything more to be learned in this present century than there was three hundred years ago. They would still make Latin, Greek, and mathematics (the college "three R's") almost the sole mental furnishing of the youth preparing for modern life. Others, carried away by the reaction from this extreme, would count hardly anything as valuable knowledge except what the present generation has discovered. "Science" is to them like a new toy, engrossing and delighting the child's every waking moment; or, like the dyspeptic's latest medicine, certain to prove the universal panacea. Again, the church is partly right in its complaint that moral teaching is neglected in some of the existing colleges. Whatever diffi And if, finally, one is to select some existing institution on which to bestow his wealth, where could it better be found than here in our own community? At first thought it might seem more profitable to cast in one's help with the great universities of the Old World-of Germany or England-or, short of that, of the Atlantic border. But that is the old civilization, with growth in it, doubtless, but not the unfettered, vigorous growth of the new. The branching vine of civilization has gone spreading from its ancient roots in Asia, on through Greece and Rome and England and the New England, and now the first green shoots are budding into leaf, if not yet into blossom and fruitage, on our farther shore. It is here that the latest hopes of men are centered, and reaching forward toward a possible fulfillment. But, be it remembered, we are far from the root-sources of growth and power. It would be easy for this budding promise to be destroyed, and for the new civilization to be retarded for a century or forever. Just now, while the air seems full of the electric tension of free thoughts and brave impulses, seems the time to insure the happy result. And to one who believes in his age, who sees that here, and soon, there might be clearer inspirations than ever before, the question comes with all the deeper significance: Shall our people be a people of high intelligence, in a more and more prosperous country, or a crude, ignorant, mob-ridden population, in an out of the way, neglected corner of civilization, visited, like some barbarous island, for its natural scenery, and fled from as soon as possible? If there be any way to determine this question, except by insuring beyond a peradventure the broadest opportunities for education, it must be by some new way undiscovered as yet by any nation. Not that there is any mystic virtue in towering buildings, or apparatus, or imposing forms; but there is a virtue in the gathering together of trained and vigorous intellects, together with the written representatives of such in every age, in all the world's literature, and bringing within the charmed circle of their influence a multitude of youth, drawing them by the gentle persuasions of science and culture into the good old compact of high service to humanity. There never was a time when a fortune might do so much for society. Nor is it any visionary dream that points out its possibilities. The fut ure years are surely coming, and their days will be as plain, common-sense, practical facts as the Mondays and Tuesdays of the present. Their suns will rise and set, and the air will still sweep back and forth in its rhythmical tides the breath of the mountains and the answering breath of the sea; and the earth will bear the footprints of multitudes of men. What shall those multitudes be? A sordid, half-barbarous horde, wrangling over the contemptible prizes of their animal existence? A scattered handful of cleanlived and thinking men, dragging a vexed lifetime in a population they cannot help? Or a prosperous, vigorous, intelligent community, such as already the globe has borne on a few of its most favored garden spots of civilization? One seems to see the question trembling in the balance of the fates, and, poised above the scale that bears all our hopes, the golden weight of some splendid fortune ready to decide the issue. But, if we are to judge by the past, it is hardly reasonable to expect that wise public use will be made of our great fortunes in this country. It is rather the mere dust of the balance, the slow accumulations of small influences, mote by mote and grain by grain, that turns the scale of the fates. And, after all, the best things of the future will probably come, as the best things of the past have come, through the sturdy and patient work, little by little, of many coöperating brains and hands, each quietly adding to the common store whatever small help it can. E. R. SILL. TO ETHEL. Who has not seen the scarlet columbine, Gath'ring its brightness, will I think of thee, S. E. ANDERSON. OLD CALIFORNIANS. "In those days there were giants in the land: mighty men of power and renown."- BIBLE. car that smokes along the plain far below. The cowards did not start to the Pacific | is one of the distinguished party in the palace Coast in the old days; all the weak died on the way. And so it was that we had then not only a race of giants, but of gods. It is to be allowed that they were not at all careful of the laws, either ancient or modern, ecclesiastical or lay. They would curse. They would fight like dogs-aye, like Christians in battle. But there was more solid honor among those men than the world will ever see again in any body of men, I fear, till it approaches the millennium. Is it dying out with them? I hear that the new Californians are rather common cattle. Do you know where the real old Californian is? the giant, the world-builder? He is sitting by the trail high up on the mountain. His eyes are dim, and his head is white. His sleeves are lowered. His pick and shovel are at his side. His feet are weary and sore. He is still prospecting. Pretty soon he will sink his last prospect-hole in the Sierra. Some younger men will come along, and lengthen it out a little, and lay him in his grave. The old miner will have passed on to prospect the outcroppings that star the floors of heaven. He is not numerous now; but I saw him last summer high up on the head-waters of the Sacramento. His face is set forever away from that civilization which has passed him by. He is called a tramp now. And the new, nice people who have slid over the plains in a palace car, and settled down there, set dogs on him sometimes when he comes that way. I charge you treat the old Californian well wherever you find him. He has seen more, suffered more, practiced more self-denial, than can now fall to the lot of any man. I never see one of these old prospectors without thinking of Ulysses, and wondering if any Penelope still weaves and unweaves, and waits the end of his wanderings. Will any old blind dog stagger forth at the sound of his voice, lick his hand, and fall down at his feet? Nothing of the sort. He has not heard from home for twenty years. He would not find even the hearthstone of his cabin by the Ohio, should he return. Perhaps his own son, a merchant prince or the president of a railroad, And though he may die there in the pines on the mighty mountain, while still feebly searching for the golden fleece, do not forget that his life is an epic, noble as any handed down from out the dusty eld. I implore you treat him kindly. Some day a fitting poet will come, and then he will take his place among the heroes and the gods. But there is another old Californian, a wearier man, the successful one. He, too, is getting gray. But he is a power in the land. He is a prince in fact and in act. What strange fate was it that threw dust in the eyes of that old Californian, sitting by the trail high up on the mountain, and blinded him so that he could not see the gold just within his grasp a quarter of a century ago? And what good fairy was it that led this other old Californian, now the banker, the railroad king, or senator, to where the mountain gnomes had hidden their gold of old? What accidental beggars and princes we have in the world to-day? But whether beggar or prince, the old Californian stands a head and shoulder taller than his fellows wherever you may find him. This is a solid, granite truth. A few years ago a steamer drew into the Bay of Naples with a lot of passengers, among whom were a small party of Americans. The night had been rough and the ship was behind time. It was ten o'clock already, and no breakfast. The stingy Captain had resolved to econ omize. A stout, quiet man, with a stout hickory stick, went to the Captain and begged for a little coffee, at least, for his ladies. The Captain turned his back, fluttered his coat-tails in the face of the stout, quiet man, and walked up his deck. The stout, quiet man followed, and still respectfully begged for something for the ladies, who were faint with hunger. Then the Captain turned and threatened to put him in irons, at the same time calling his officers around him. The stout man with the stout stick very quietly proceeded to thrash the Captain. He thrashed him till he could not stand; and then thrashed every officer that dared to show his |