it not be a satisfaction if our labor is given to Art that endures, rather than to those things which perish in the using? Many of my readers may have seen at the Centennial that exquisite silver vase, known as the Bryant Memorial vase, made by Tiffany & Co., American silversmiths, and in itself an evidence of the excellence of American artists and artisans, and a beautiful witness to the love and reverence felt by his countrymen for the venerable poet. Listen to his modest words in reply to the speech of presentation; words pregnant with truth, words that may well be the requiem of the age of American talkers and writers, the prophecy of the coming age of American art: "My friends, we authors cultivate a short-lived reputation: one generation of us pushes another from the stage; the very language in which we write becomes a jargon, and we cease to be read; but a work like this is always beautiful, always admired. Age has no power over its charm. Hereafter some one may say, 'This beautiful vase was made in honor of a certain American poet, whose name it bears, but whose writings are forgotten. It is remarkable that so much pains should have been taken to illustrate the life and writings of one whose works are so completely unknown at the present day.' Thus, gentlemen artists, I shall be indebted to you for causing the memory of my name to outlast that of my writings." So the grand old poet, the artist in words, paid his homage to his fellow craftsmen, the workers in silver! "Art is long, life is brief" said the sententious ancients; an English singer, of our own day, thus expresses the same thought: "All passes. Art alone Enduring stays to us; The bust outlasts the throne, The coin Tiberius." * Edmund Waller, an English poet, in a short poem entitled "Of English verse," expressed, two centuries before, a like want of faith in the permanence of poetry written in English. His words are of interest also as showing the opinion of his own times, in which poets, scholars, and philosophers translated such works as they desired to perpetuate into one of the learned languages, then the common tongues of European scholars. "But who can hope his line should long Last, in a daily changing tongue? # Poets, that lasting marble seek, Must carve in Latin or in Greek: PUBLIC EDUCATION-INCREASE OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES. Public education in the United States-Its claims to support · The Present ever indebted to the Past for educational institutions-Consequently education is a debt ever due from the Present to the Future - A wise economy called for in matters of education as well as in all other public undertakings - This question of public expenditure one of due proportion to available resources The increase of wealth in the United States necessitates changes in the social surroundings, and in the training of future citizens - Some of the sources of this immense and rapid increase of wealth-Some of the results — The building of the wonderful system of railroads - Their function, as factors of civilization-- An era of Display approach. ing-The Palace building age already begun. The logical and complete system of public free education beginning in the elementary schools, progressing through graded grammar schools to the High and Normal, and culminating in the State University, as adopted by many of the younger States of the Union, has been ably defended against charges of injustice in that the burdens imposed upon the whole people by the support of the High schools preparatory to the University, and of the University itself, were bur dens imposed upon all for the benefit of a very small minority. The argument is twofold and rests first, upon the primal necessity to a country of such institutions of high education, because of the great importance to any community of a class of citizens possessing high culture, and of the injustice of excluding any one who could profit by this culture, from the opportunity of obtaining it, simply because of poverty; and secondly, that in providing these institutions there was no injustice to any class of citizens, because, while the public ele. mentary schools were numerous, it being the theory, that every child in the community should be able to find place in a public school, however far from sufficient this provision of school houses may be in fact, the higher schools and the University were relatively so few, that there was no real disproportion of facilities offered to burdens imposed. - - If the argument were adduced that, in fact, very few children of poor parents entered the higher schools or the University, the reply might justly be, that if so, that proved nothing against the theory; for, all citizens being equal before the law, the children of the prosperous citizen who himself paid a proportionately increased share of taxation, were equally entitled to such opportunities of education as might be desired, with the children of poor parents with different desires. In all discussion concerning the relations of the public to education it should be remembered that the Present is ever indebted to the munifi cence of the Past for institutions of learning. All education then, especially that given by incorporated colleges and for which students pay tuition, is directly or indirectly provided by the public; not by the individual taught. It has ever been the fact that institutions of higher learning have been eleemosynary. They have either been endowed by Soverigns, or States, by wealthy individuals, or by associations of citizens, for the benefit of the community; it being always and in all lands recognized, that the wealth of no single person was equal to procuring for its owner the appliances and means requisite for the higher education. Prince and Noble, Dives and Lazarus, have, equally and alike, been dependent upon the bounty of Learning; have been recipients of her gifts. The learned and the liberal of all ages have recognized this debt to Humanity, and nobly have they responded. The student of to-day at Oxford and Cambridge, or at Yale and Harvard, however much he may contribute from his own personal resources towards the cost of the opportunities afforded him, can never free himself from his obligation to those old time benefactors; literally, as well as figuratively, he is a pensioner upon their bounty. He can only liquidate his money debt by like action which shall make him a like creditor of posterity. John Harvard, Elihu Yale, Ezra Cornell, Stephen Girard, Johns Hopkins, George Peabody, Peter Cooper, and Paul Tulane, are but typical instances, out of an ever growing throng of liberal, public spirited citizens, who thus seek that their good will to man and their personal benefactions shall long outlast the brief limits of their earthly lives. Thomas Jefferson, the great founder of the University of Virginia, in some respects the most liberal minded and far seeing of America's early statesmen, stands as initiating in the United States the type of the modern University, founded and supported by the State, as the crown of its system of public education. It is not to be inferred from this passing allusion to the historic contest as to whether any, or a limited as contrasted with a complete, system of free public education should be provided by the community that there is any purpose to here reopen that discussion. For the matters we are to consider, this question is to be held to have been definitely closed by the decision of the American people as a whole, to give to their children the fullest and best possible free education and training for good citizenship. Our only purpose is to inquire first, how far the merely literary training which is alone generally understood in considering this topic of popular education, supplies, or fails to supply, this recognized need; and secondly, bow far, by either public or private instrumentalities and institutions, facilities now exist for the practical introduction of industrial and other art training into the systems of public instruction, as the complement of the present confessedly unsatisfactory methods. A wise economy must be exercised in matters of education, as well as in all other matters relating to the common weal. Under all questions of public policy lies the economical problem; for communities, or aggregations of individual citizens, can no more indulge in expenditure, however good and desirable in themselves are the objects for which the expenditure is to be made, without due consideration of ways and means, than can individual citizens. Injudicious and extravagant expenditures prove alike disastrous to the individual and the community; as many an ambitious town, too early emulous of city pavements and public improvements; or county, overpersuaded by plausible advocates to unwise assumption of debt in aid of some otherwise desirable railroad, has learned, by bitter experience, during the past two decades. Even sovereign states and their creditors have, in some not-soon-to-be-forgotten instances, suffered under the burdens left as the legacies of unremunerative expenditures. The question then is, not simply whether a given object is desirable or not, other things being equal; but it is whether, to the community as a whole, it is so desirable that, with due consideration of other needs and of the available resources of that community, the requisite expenditure can be wisely undertaken. There has been a time in most American communities when the log house, for dwelling and for school or church, was altogether the most appropriate, and, therefore, the most beautiful, building. It would have been as absurd at that period in the life of the infant settlement, even if by great sacrifice of other vital interests it could have been accomplished, to have built a palatial mansion for the indi vidual, or an imposing edifice of imported stone or brick for the school or church; as it would be to-day, to build upon a corner lot in the fashionable quarter of New York city, such a hut of logs, as was neither wanting in dignity nor utility, in the little settlement of similar buildings on the edge of the frontier forest! This principle of harmony, of fitness, of proportion, of the due adap tation of means to ends, and of the relations of individuals to their sur roundings, runs through all things spiritual as well as material, and is the key to many a knotty problem of political economy. It is the golden rule in all questions relating to works of art. It is this change in the condition of the country, indicated by the contrast just drawn between the frontier log hut and the Fifth Avenue. mansion, which has made imperative a re-consideration of the aims, and a recasting of the methods of popular education. Not since the mines of Peru and Mexico poured their Pactolian streams into the coffers of Spain, has the world witnessed in the case of any single nation, any such rapid and immense increase of material wealth, as has gone on in these United States during the last forty years. The sources of this wealth have been so varied, the places of its production and of its concentration, so extended and so numerous; the methods of its expenditure so infinite in variety, that its magnitude has been hardly suspected. As European nations failed to comprehend the might of the giant power growing up beyond the Atlantic, until awakened to a realization by the trampling of armed hosts whose tread shook a continent; so, few Americans, boastful as we may have been of our progress, have at all realized this rapid increase of wealth, and the concentration of enormous fortunes in single hands; or, what immense powers lay concealed in these thousands of miles of iron roads; until, suddenly awakened to a perception of the startling facts, by a knowledge of the immense operations, by which the men who controlled the roads, as represented by a Scott, a Huntington, a Gould, or a Vanderbilt, were found to have arrogated to themselves the inland commerce of a continent, and to number among their retainers an army of trained followers. In addition, through the vast interests affected by these lines of transportation, and the many and powerful communities linked by them in common interests, these Rulers of Railroads are able to concentrate so large a number of the |