for its proper study one must go to Germany, nothing else as to English higher education need cause surprise.

As to every other department of knowledge the story is now the same. Take medicine, surgery, chemistry, or any other branch of science; law, philosophy, history, or art in any of its forms, and although Englishmen have achieved exceptional greatness in almost every department, no one ever thinks of going to England, as in times past, to pursue his studies. Americans go there to visit the homes of their ancestors, to look at stately castles and superb cathedrals, to travel through a land full of historic interest; but when they wish to study they go to France, Germany, Italy, or Austria.*

So long as America simply followed English prece

*That the English themselves are waking up to an appreciation of the fact that something is wrong about their colleges appears from the protest against their educational system, signed by several hundred leading scholars, which was published in the Nineteenth Century for Nov., 1888. See also article on "Oxford and its Professors," Edinburgh Review, Oct., 1889. No instruction in English literature, rhetoric, modern European languages or literature, while the attendance at lectures on science, philosophy, law, etc., is little more than nominal. Max Müller says: "To enable young men to pass their examinations seems now to have become the chief, if not the only, object of the universities."-"India, What Can It Teach Us?" Amer. ed. p. 19. The examinations are for admission to the civil service. Every reader, of course, will understand that my remarks apply only to the general system of English education, which is of the last century, and out of touch with modern thought. Individual Englishmen are, through home-training, foreign study, the influence of national societies, and a general intellectual atmosphere in the universities and elsewhere, among the most cultured and scholarly of men. This has come about despite the defects in their system. How much more would be accomplished under a less narrow and insular system is a different question.

AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION

41

dents, her colleges were defective and her scientific schools hardly worthy of the name. Now, under Continental influences which every scholar appreciates, that reproach is passing away. The American system is in process of speedy development. It begins at the bottom with the widest base of general education. Deep scholarship, high intellectual culture, broad scientific knowledge, finished artistic skill, are fruits of slow growth. Why this new country has, in the past, been so deficient in these respects needs no explanation. But now, even in the upper departments, although she has no cause to be boastful, she is making gratifying progress. Already, in wood-engraving for book-illustration, and in artistic silverware, she has no superior, and in stained glass she has no equal. In astronomy and in some branches of mathematics she takes a fair place. In surgery and in all surgical appliances she probably leads the world. Her medical, chemical, and engineering schools are so excellent that for mere purposes of instruction one scarcely needs to go abroad. Her universities are establishing post-graduate courses, which bid fair in time to supersede the necessity of foreign study, in literature and historical science. Harvard, it must be remembered, received and welcomed the new learning from Germany, at the hands of Everett, Bancroft, and Ticknor, before it was accepted at the English universities. Everett's translation of Buttmann's Greek Grammar was reprinted in England, with the "Massachusetts" omitted after the word "Cambridge" at the end of the preface. Mr. Bancroft's translation of Heeren was the first of its kind, and the earliest version from Henry Heine into English was made by a graduate of Harvard.*

* James Russell Lowell, “250th Anniversary of Harvard."

America is to-day the richest and the first manufacturing, as she is the first agricultural, country of the world. If, with her wealth, free institutions, and universal education, she also in the future becomes the first in learning and in art, she will evidently not be following the example of England, where higher education is restricted to the few.

The third peculiar institution of America is that of local self-government.

The contrast in this particular between America and England is as marked as anything that can be well imagined; but it was little noticed in the latter country until the agitation of the question of home rule for Ireland brought it to the front. Even now, after all that has been written upon the subject, unless one has examined the subject with care, it is difficult for a person on this side of the Atlantic to appreciate the condition of local government in Great Britain. The difficulty arises from the fact that there is nothing which can be called a system, and the consequent helter-skelter confusion is something the very existence of which seems to an American almost incredible. Ask the average

Englishman to explain how local affairs are managed in England, and he will look at you with wonder. He can perhaps tell you something about his own parish, or something very vague about his own county, but beyond that he knows nothing. Some matters are regulated by the clergyman and his vestry, others by the poor wardens; the sheriffs and county officials are appointed by the Crown, which means the Cabinet; but of local self-government by the people themselves almost nothing exists except in the cities and larger towns.*

*The reader who wishes to study the character of English local

LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND

43

When the Englishman turns to America, he sees a system, and it is one that fills him with surprise, at least, if with no other feeling. Generally he looks only at its more salient features, the relations between the states and the federal government. In England Parliament legislates for the whole kingdom. That body takes upon itself the management of the domestic, the local, the parochial, the municipal affairs of all the communities

institutions can consult "Local Government," by M. D. Chalmers, in the "English Citizen Series," Macmillan & Co., 1883. This book tells a tale almost incredible of confusion, inefficiency, and waste. "Local government in this country," it says, "may be fitly described as consisting of a chaos of areas, a chaos of authorities, and a chaos of rates," p. 17. "Confusion and extravagance are the characteristic features of the whole system," p. 21. "Local boards are innumerable, many of them are useless, but are kept up merely to supply places and salaries for the officials."—Idem. "The total property in England liable to taxation is estimated to produce a gross rental of £157,000,000. Local expenditures for 1880 amounted to £50,000,000, nearly one third of the rental," pp. 26, 28. "English local affairs are regulated by some 650 acts of Parliament of general application, and several thousand of a special character for particular towns or districts. The latter accumulate at the rate of about sixty a year. In England and Wales are 52 counties, 239 municipal boroughs, 70 Improvement Act districts, 1006 urban sanitary districts, 41 port sanitary authorities, 577 rural sanitary districts, 2051 school-board districts, 424 highway districts, 843 burial-board districts, 649 unions, 194 lighting and watching districts, 14,916 poor-law parishes, 5064 highway parishes, and about 13,000 ecclesiastical parishes. These all overlap and intersect each other, so as to make a perfect tangle of jurisdictions. One farm of 200 acres was, some few years ago, in twelve different parishes, and subject to about fifty different rates," pp. 18, 21. Some districts are governed by twelve, fifteen, or twenty different local authorities, selected at different times, and with dif ferent qualifications for the voters. No wonder that every Englishman gives the subject up in despair, as incapable of comprehension.

of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. It arranges for every local gas bill, water bill, sewerage bill, and railway bill for the two islands. In America, the Federal Congress legislates only on matters of national concern, everything else is left to the separate states.

But the difference between the two countries goes much deeper than this. The American system is a complete one, reaching down to the foundations, and the foundations are its most important portions. At the bottom lies the township, which divides the whole North and West into an infinity of little republics, each managing its own local affairs. In the old states they differ in area and in their machinery. In the new states of the West they are more regular in size, being generally six miles square. But in all the system is substantially alike. Each township elects its own local officers and manages its own local affairs. Annually, a town meeting is held of all the voters, and suffrage is limited only by citizenship. At these meetings, not only are the local officers elected, such as supervisors, town-clerks, justices of the peace, road-masters, and the like, but money is appropriated for bridges, schools, libraries, and other purposes of a local nature.

Next above the township stands the county, an aggregate of a dozen or so of towns. Its officials, sheriffs, judges, clerks, registers, and other officers to manage county affairs are chosen at the general state election. It also has a local assembly, formed of the town supervisors. They audit accounts, supervise the county institutions, and legislate as to various county matters.

Above the counties again stands the state government, with its legislature, which passes laws relating to state affairs; and finally the federal government, which deals only with national concerns. The whole forms a con