themselves. They have not believed in darkening counsel by multiplicity of words. They have made some allowance for the intelligence of their readers.

Our poets have been scored for failing to produce distinctively American poems. The critics had probably neglected to read Bret Harte, Eugene Field, and James Whitcomb Riley. Besides, there has been no considerable event within the years of our national life that has not been commemorated in song or epic. True, we have had no Shakespeare, but if another such genius should arise in England or in any part of Europe, he might be under the necessity of seeking recognition first of all in America. History has been known to repeat itself. Our literature is out of our soil, it is strong and original. Like our country, it lacks the smooth lawns and trim gardens of an older civilization, and bears no more resemblance to that of other countries than do our rugged mountains and wild prairies to the fenced-in parks of the Old World.

It is understood that art is art all the world over, and yet there are distinctions. The nationality will crop out. Everybody knows that of the famous Madonnas each one partakes of the nationality of the artist. A German artist was heard criticising a collection of American pictures: "This soft blur," he said, "that hangs from the sky over the foliage, in the foreground as much as in the perspective,— that must be the malaria that I hear about." In the name of all that human nature can appreciate of the beautiful! He had never, even with his artist eyes, beheld the wonderful charm of the landscapes of the Middle States, though he stood there in their midst. He failed to see the beauty of the subduing, almost tangible golden veil, not mist, not fog, not dust, more like materialized, detached sunshine hanging in mid-air and wrapping "hill, valley, grove, and town." It is a light that glorifies tree and shrub, gives the turf a more vivid yet softer green, and turns the running brooks to threads of silver in visions of golden haze. It has been said by an American artist who has set up his easel in all sorts of nooks and corners of the world that this peculiar atmosphere is the distinctive characteristic of the Middle States, and especially of those where the climate is moderate during the better part of the year, and where the lands verge upon the great prairies and plains of the

that is up knows that in due time he must in turn go down, and, no matter what may be his merit, there are some heights he may not aspire to for the third time.

The woman who objected to the use of the American prayer-book because she disliked praying for such a multitude of nobodies should have comforted herself by the reflection that she got a great quantity of religious exercise at the same time, and the nobodies were somebodies at the date of her prayers.

The American conception of war is unique. Generally the Christian nations have followed more or less closely the Jewish idea of divinity as portrayed in the Old Testament, and which developed the Jewish nation from the submissive slavery of Egypt into the fierce aggressiveness of Palestine. They have followed the "chosen people" idea, and the doctrine of right to possess the land. The Americans have drifted into New Testament lines, and have adjusted their ideas of war to the gospel of peace by putting foremost the purposes for which war is waged.

Possibly we flatter ourselves. But we put our warfare on high planes. Our Revolutionary War was to secure freedom for ourselves. Our War of 1812 was to complete the work and to teach the English government a lesson on the subject of impressing American seamen. The lesson was learned. Our Mexican War was to rescue the Texans from the oppression of Santa Anna. Our Civil War- to keep the Union intact - has come to be commonly regarded as a war to free the negroes; and that sentiment was no small factor in it in reality. That is why there was so much said about the cause of humanity upon going to war with Spain. This idea comes nearer being in harmony with the best thought of all ages, more in accord with "the loftier aspirations of the saint," than any other conception of war that has ever existed.

We may judge this idea of war as we

do other matters-by its success. In our wars men have crowded the road to death as to a festival." True, toward the latter part of our Civil War there was limited conscription; but in this war, where in many instances the nearest of relations were arrayed against each other, the wonder is that there were any volunteers.

That this conception of war appeals to the best in man's nature, the names and nationalities of Lieutenant Hobson's comrades on the "Merrimac" is an answer. These men were not all American-born. Probably in their own country each would have waited to be conscripted before joining the army. Here they were imbued with the American spirit of doing and daring.

In the supreme moments of battle the American soldier behaves like no other in the world. He is self-repressed, cool, confident. Though he accord due respect to his superior officer, he is not a martinet. There is the ever-present consciousness that, save for years and experience, they are equals. The officer may be a major-general or an admiral; the corporal or the ensign only smiles when reminded of it. "Wait," he says, "I'm not as old as he by thirty years."

This sentiment has no chance of growth, this attitude would not be tolerated for an instant, in any other country in the world. In America we do not dispute that "as a tree falls so it must lie:" but the whole plan of the country combats the idea that if a man happens to be born in a log cabin or in a city tenement house he can never rise above that condition. Is this talk all about the men? The women are not forgotten.

The American man could not and would not be what he is had he not a loftyminded, ambitious, conscientious woman for his mother. In this matter the father counts for but little. Great men in any line of life have seldom been fathers of great sons. It is the aspiring, vigorously discontented mothers who make the clearheaded, broad-shouldered, straight-limbed American men. It is the mothers who teach their children stories of heroism, of honesty, of duties nobly performed in all walks of life, long before the age for action.

Our schools, fine as they are, are but supplementary to the home of the American child, yet this home life, too, has been criticised by our neighbors across the sea. They say "the middle-class

woman is no better than a nursemaid. Her children are always tagging at her heels. Such constant companionship makes the child too familiar. It grows up lacking respect for the mother." But the woman thus censured thinks her children too precious for the constant companionship of the average imported nursemaid. She and her children are young together, and as they grow old together there is no lack of respect on either side, though never a word is said about it.

This

The American child is not taught reverence or respect by inflexible rules. He is accustomed to hearing the highest official in the Union criticised, censured, condemned. He sees caricatures of leading public men in the newspapers. The class mentioned by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who die with all their music in them, has become obsolete, at least in America. Everybody who has anything to say finds time and place in which to say it, no matter whom or what it may be about. freedom of speech, so distinctively American, is the safety-valve of the Republic. There is no chance for bottling up bitterness for fermentations and explosions. Discontent is talked away, or the unhappy talk themselves into better conditions. This desire for expression is the hallmark of civilization. Long ago Euripides said: "This belongs to a slave, not to give utterance to what he thinks.» Talk is the healthful breeze that clears the social atmosphere; it is the nipping frost that chills some of the germs of political corruption.

Above all the American is personal; he is responsible to himself. He is ready to declare at any time, "My deeds upon my head." Some of us go to church. We read in our service-books, "From all evil and mischief, from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil, good Lord, deliver us." We know that this is only a form of words. We rely upon nothing intangible. We have the words and the habit of repeating them by inheritance. We trip over them while we accept nothing Dei gratia, nor do we shirk our own responsibility in affairs by pleading a special order of Providence. The child is taught that if he walks into mischief and is caught at it, the excuse that he was unduly persuaded into evil-doing will not save him from the retributive slipper. The school and college boy and girl pay the piper personally for all unlawful dancing. The man behind the plough, the

man behind the counter, and the man behind the gun know that results depend upon himself. It has often been told that in Turkish wars the faithful turn their faces toward Mecca and die of slight wounds. The American soldier has no Mecca but the presidential chair, and to win that he must live. There is nothing he believes in quite so much as himself.

The young American is not lacking in respect to those above him in station, but usually there lives, down deep in his inner consciousness, the feeling that if he should leave the shop where he works, the bank where he counts, the store where he measures tape, or the army or navy,-whereever he is, that the whole business would go to the bow-wows. He doesn't say this, possibly he doesn't know that he thinks it; but nevertheless the feeling is there that it was a good thing for his employer or the country when he elected to do what he is doing. It is this trait of individualism, this idea of personal responsibility, that is the spinal column of the real American. We see it not so plainly in cities as in the country. There is no individualism on the Atlantic coast like that which flourishes in the inland States. On the seaboard Europe is so near,- just over there, not as far away, really, as San Francisco or Portland or Tacoma. The speech of the people along the coast is a mixture of many kinds of broken English,

a hodge-podge of many languages, because the high tide of immigration breaks here in waves that reach inland with only comparatively light fingers of foam.

The denizen of the Middle States tells the stranger that no other State in the Union is equal to his own in the intelligence of its people, the beauty of its scenery, or the wealth it holds in its soil. This is the embryo that has grown into States' rights. It is this individualism that, it is feared, would be destroyed by a realization of Bellamy's dream of a paternal form of government. It is this personal responsibility, this immeasureable egoism, that makes the American unique among the nations of the world.

Men come from other countries small of stature, low-browed, shuffling of gait, narrow of mind. In our institutions they learn to lift their chins out of their throats, to step quickly and firmly. They see, through the grand potentiality of the country, their own possibilities. The United States is the materialized mill of the gods, and it doesn't grind so exceedingly slow, either. Multitudes of scraps and patches and remnants of humanity are poured into this mill. The grinding goes on, and the fragments come out — men in the image of their creator, Freedom.

NEW YORK.

MARGRET HOLMES BATES.

ir Walter BesaNT, in an inaugural address delivered at Mansfield House in 1897, said that the main idea of the University Settlement was "not money, but yourselves." Personal service; not money; not a check; not a subscription written; not speeches on a platform; not tracts; not articles in quarterly reviews,- this is the note of the new philanthropy. The establishment of Settlements, in other words, is the work of those who believe that the gifts of modern times are good; that culture is gain, not loss; that cleanliness is better than dirt; beauty than ugliness, knowledge than ignorance. Settlements stand as an acknowledgment of the claims of all the citizens to a share in these good things, and as a protest against meeting those claims by the substitution of philanthropic machinery for human hands and

personal knowledge. Dr. Barnett, one of the principal workers in the east end of London, puts the whole subject in a nutshell, thus:

«A Settlement is simply a means by which men and women may share themselves with their neighbors; a club-house in an industrial district, where the condition of membership is the performance of a citizen's duty; a house among the poor, where the residents may make friends with the poor."

The first Settlement to be founded, and the "mother" of all University Settlements, was Toynbee Hall, situated at 28 Commercial Street, London. It was established in 1885 as a memorial of Arnold Toynbee and as a practical outcome of his teaching. The present warden is Rev. Canon S. A. Barnett, whose work among the poor of East London has won for him

a place of the first rank among social reformers. In the same year some Oxford University men, interested in the social question, and distrusting mere doctrinaire economics, banded themselves together for the purpose of taking part in the social work of the Church in East London; to learn something of the life of the poor, and to bring the culture, spirituality, and recreation of a great university into the neighborhood of those who do not enjoy these blessings. Hence Oxford House, in Bethnal Green, was founded; an institution which maintains its close affiliation to the established Church and her clergy and ritual to the present time.

Mansfield House, so called from Mansfield College, Oxford, followed in 1890. In origin and association it is, like Mansfield College, Congregational; but in practice, like Toynbee Hall, it is unsectarian. This Settlement, too, originated with college students, and the residents are university men and visitors. Like the Congregational Church it confines itself to no one line of work, but aims to reach social conditions at every point. The warden is Percy Alden, whose visits to America at the beginning of the movement in this country had much to do with the growth of the idea among our people. The next settlement to be started was the Bermondsey Settlement, founded by the Wesleyan Methodists. The Rev. J. Scott Lidgett is the warden. The Roman Catholics also have a lay order, founded, like the Wesleyan Settlement, in 1891. Browning Hall was founded in 1894, and Mr. F. Herbert Stead, brother of W. T. Stead, editor of the English "Review of Reviews," is the warden. Browning Hall stands for the labor movement in religion, and is Congregational and unsectarian.

Cambridge University, like Oxford, hast its Settlement called Cambridge House, founded in 1897, along the same lines as the Oxford Settlement. A university man, Mr. W. F. Bailey, is the warden. The so-called Passmore Edwards Settlement, founded in 1897, was originally known as University Hall (1891); but reorganization took place and now the editor of the daily evening "Echo," of London, has, for his liberality, been honored in the title of the institution. The large public schools and some colleges also have their Settlements in London. Thus Rugby House (1889) is under the auspices of Rugby School, and Charterhouse, Eton,

Gonville and Caius Colleges, Harrow, Trinity, and Wellington have their Settlements in London besides,—all well supported.

In the other parts of the British Islands the idea has grown wherever educated men are to be found. Lancashire College,

In

in Manchester, started a Settlement in 1895, and Owens College Settlement, in the same city, was inaugurated the same year. In Scotland, Chalmers University Settlement has existed since 1887, and the New College Settlement since 1889. 1887, too, Professor Patrick Geddes, assisted by others, privately inaugurated what is now known as University Hall, and the late Professor Henry Drummond suggested the present University Students Settlement, of Glasgow. Besides these Settlements there are similar organizations managed and controlled by women graduates of English universities; but into these we need not enter.

We now come to the history of the movement in the United States. The oldest settlement in America is the New York University Settlement in Delancy Street. It was established by Stanton Coit in 1887, and was called The Neighborhood Guild. Following it, in four months, came perhaps the most famous Settlement of all- Hull House, of South Halstead Street, Chicago. It was started by Miss Jane Addams and Miss Helen G. Starr, who by their energy, tact, and devotion have developed the Settlement with a rapidity almost phenomenal. In short, Hull House is the most living of the Settlements in this country. In Boston we have Andover House, now called South End House, of 6 Rollins Street. It is a progressive, coöperative organization, focussing all good movements in Boston. Denison House, in like manner, is, under able guidance, doing good work along social lines in close touch with the American Federation of Labor, Associated Charities, the Municipal League, the Better Dwelling societies and similar organizations.

Next in order come the College Settlement, Rivington Street, New York; the Philadelphia Settlement; Chicago Commons, 140 North Union Street, and Chicago University Settlement, Stock Yards, Chicago; Prospect Union, Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard University); Whittier House, Jersey City; East Side House, New York; and Westminster House, Buffalo.

Settlements also exist in Australia, Japan, and India, where the Settlement idea-"Not money, but yourselves "—has firmly established itself in all kinds of useful activity.

The foregoing brief mention of the chief Settlements shows that previous to 1885 this idea was only vaguely held, since Toynbee Hall (1885) is the "mother" of all Settlements; and that in fourteen years it has circled the earth and in one way and another infused interest in the social conditions surrounding the life of the poor in large cities. Before estimating the contribution made by these institutions toward the solution of the social question, we will briefly glance at their methods and work.

Relief work underlies all other efforts. It is one of the saddest facts connected with Settlement work that an institution is never established a week before scores of cases of destitution are brought to the attention of the warden or director. This has to be faced, and it is no small problem. In a city like London it is especially aggravated. One writer has said that this question of relief is in the background of every social endeavor put forth in large cities. It confronts one in the school, in the home, in the savings bank. It is difficult not only by reason of its prevalence, but also by reason of the absence of any fixed principles of administration in relief work. The Settlements as often withhold relief as grant it, because they have resolved to act up to the standard they have adopted; and this they seek to accomplish by coöperating with relieving officers in commission from the government. Indiscriminate charity is forbidden in every shape and is never practised.

Under the head of sanitary reform is included all that class of work which seeks the better housing of the poor. In this work the Settlement is exceedingly vigorous, not only in theory, but also in practice. Their members are elected to boards of trade and lift up their voices for the enforcement of law and for reform. It can readily be imagined that Miss Addams was not liked for making a bid to clean the streets of the Ninth Ward of Chicago, and, when defeated, for saying, "If I cannot do it myself, I will see that some one else does it." The history of this movement is full of such heroic utterances and effective coöperation which have resulted in securing the desired reforms in many cases.

A large part of every Settlement's work is education. The following list of subjects taught in Toynbee Hall, and taken from their plans, will give a fair idea of the work done: (1) Arithmetic, writing and composition, drawing, citizenship, chemistry, dressmaking, French, musical drill, cooking, and swimming; (2) ambulance drill, practical nursing, life-saving; (3) University Extension lectures on European and English history; lectures on Scott; Hebrew literature, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German (presupposing some previous knowledge of the subject); (4) Elizabethan literature, Shakespeare, Browning; eighteenth-century music; (5) principles of law; study of social questions; (6) human anatomy, physiology, botany, geology, chemistry, etc. The lectures on these various subjects are by university men, some of them of international fame. But all Settlements do not carry out such a programme as the above; though all do serious work on these lines.

There are three classes of persons likely to be directly aided by these educational advantages, those who have been unable to avail themselves of the present school system, those who desire to pursue their studies, and those who seek special instruction on particular lines. The economical basis on which the work is managed places it readily within reach of these classes. You could desire nothing cheaper than a course of lectures on European history by Professor S. R. Gardiner, for twenty-five cents!

The Settlement places great emphasis on recreation, and the reason will be obvious as soon as we reflect on the life of the poor in large cities. Hence we learn of boys' clubs, where boxing, cricket, baseball, football, harriers, etc., are strong features. Some Settlements have out-oftown establishments, like Court Farm, Surrey, where Browning Hall camps out

men, women, and children togetheronce a year. There are also men's clubs. Oxford House has a club of 8,000 men, with all kinds of different recreations, like cricket, football, cycling, running, swimming, and gymnastics. In the women's Settlements there are girls' clubs with sports (often similar to those of the boys) suitable to their needs.

Mansfield House and Browning Hall set apart one night every week to meet those who are in legal difficulties. A barrister and secretary attend to the work, and the