tronomy, literature and language, political science, and education.

The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, instituted. in the summer of 1878, prescribed a definite course of reading and study covering the principal subjects of a college curriculum, though "omitting of necessity the thorough drill in mathematics and the languages." The peculiar Chautauqua idea is the plan of simultaneous study by all classes— the work of each year being complete in itself. In addition to the regular course of four years, are special courses in Roman history and literature, English history and literature, astronomy, political science, microscopy, botany, chemistry, psychology, philology, art, temperance, missions, agriculture. The circle enrolls seventy-five thousand members—from every State in the Union, from the Dominion of Canada, Alaska, the Sandwich Islands, Great Britain, several of the European states, India, Japan, South Africa, and the isles of the sea. The local club idea is admirably exemplified in the separate Chautauqua circles, of which there are many thousands. Besides these are the local unions, embracing the circles of a given section-as the New England Chautauqua Association, the Northern Illinois Union, the United Circle of Philadelphia, the Brooklyn Assembly, and the North Carolina Chautauqua. The C. L. S. C. (as it is known) is but part of a plan which, taking more definite shape, was organized (1883) into, and incorporated as, the "Chautauqua University." To the original function have been added the College of Liberal Arts and the School of Theology. Six courses are offered in the former, two each, leading to the degrees of A. B., Ph. B., and B. S.

Similar in general scope and workings to the last is the "Correspondence University," organized the same year at Ithaca, New York. It has regularly sustained classes in physical science, languages (including Hebrew), philosophy, history and political science, and law.

(2.) Special Organizations.

Out of these experiments developed the idea of providing special courses for particular classes. It was not entirely new, though the application was. The Mechanics' Institutes and Libraries, and Apprentices' Societies of cities had been more or less common for a century. Very early, also, both East and West, especially in Pennsylvania and Ohio, were teachers' libraries, circulating, limited in books, and more restricted in variety, but designed to provide all the teachers of a neighborhood with a somewhat uniform course of reading. Later, the organizations noticed in the preceding section were doing something for teachers; but the influence was general and quite as serviceable to the clergyman, the farmer, or the school-girl, as to the teacher. The Boston society was exclusive and had a limited membership, while others were specialized in subjects foreign to the profession, and so were missed by the teacher.

In the winter of 1883 Ohio organized a "State Reading Circle" for teachers, and published a suggestive list of books in literature, history, science, and pedagogy, with directions for reading and organizing into local circles. No course was prescribed, the multitude of books recommended left teachers, as before, in doubt as to what to read, and with little of joint action. Besides, it also suggested much of general culture, and little of professional. It soon came to be recognized, in Ohio and the neighboring States, that if the name and the idea have any significance, the "Teachers' Reading Circle" must be chiefly professional. There is much to be mastered familiarity with professional literature, the historic systems and reformers of education, something of philosophical doctrine as a basis for one's theories, current systems and contemporary school interests, the constitution and functions of the child and the teacher, the State and society in which he finds his labor. This does not mean that one shall be less a man or woman, less cultured and scholarly, but more a teacher.

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Toward this idea Ohio had pioneered the way. With this thought before them, the year following teachers in Indiana organized a circle. It is a State institution, the control vested in a board of nine members elected by the State Teachers' Association, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction being a member ex officio. It has a prescribed course of reading, after published outlines, with directions and bibliographical references, an official department in the "State School Journal," and a system of certificates and diplomas for completed work. The course extends over four years, and is made to include three lines of study, two of which are professional and one general culture. As a result of the four years of experiment in Indiana-for it was an experiment-the last year reported a membership of over seven thousand, with all the counties in the State represented, and enrolling in some counties every teacher.

Reading circles now in some form are parts of half the State systems and they are found in many cities. The year following the movement in Indiana similar organizations were effected in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Dakota, Alabama, and North Carolina. Something has been done in Rhode Island, also in New York, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maine, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Arkansas—twenty-five States in all. The organizations, as might be supposed, vary greatly in plan, in management, in comprehensiveness and efficiency. Illinois reports 2,341 members in the first two years, and 738 who finished and passed upon the work prescribed. Two courses were maintained—an elementary course of two years and an advanced one of three. Similarly the Missouri organization, while contemplating a four years' course, makes the first two years complete in themselves and elementary. The New Jersey Circle opened in 1887 with flattering prospects, city and town teachers joining with those from rural districts, and the enrollment as to numbers being out of all proportion to the number of teachers in the State. Of the Rhode Island

Circle the membership is coextensive with that of the State Institute of Instruction, and without further fees. The subjects offered are pedagogy, history, literature, language, geography, and science. The work is voluntary and elective. In Michigan the general course is three years, though the State Council offers additional subjects for advanced study. The "Chautauqua Teachers' Reading Union," organized in 1885, is part of the general Chautauqua plan, and so more national than State. It has nine courses of study, elective, and extending over three years. The "Teachers' National Reading Circle," instituted the year following, has a like organization and similar course.

Two States-Indiana and Illinois-have projected "Children's Reading Circles," to suggest appropriate books and, working through local teachers, encourage the better selection of books, and their more thoughtful reading by the young. The management otherwise is the same, and under the same board of control as is the "Teachers' Reading Circle."

The Agassiz Association is an organization of several hundred local societies banded together for the elementary study of nature. Primarily for children and young people, its membership has come to include all who wish to do, or use it to induce others to do, original work in science. The parent society was that of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, organized in 1876, from which and under whose direction others have taken their plan and inspiration. The clubs number nearly one thousand, with fifteen thousand members, and are found in every State, Canada, England, and Japan. They study botany, entomology, geology, anatomy, physiology, etc. The official organ is "The Swiss Cross."

Bibliography.

"Sectarian vs. Public Schools," "The New-Englander," vol. vi, pp. 230, 299; "Defects in Political Institutions," Cardinal Gibbons, "North American Review," October, 1887; "The Proposed American Catholic University," "American Catholic Quarterly Review," April, 1885; "Peter

Cooper,' ," "The Chautauquan," vol. iv, No. 7, p. 398; "On the Educational Uses of Museums," "Proceedings of the New York University Convocation," 1887, p. 208; "How to spread Information," "National Educational Association," 1887, p. 238; "The Chautauqua Movement," by J. H. Vincent, 1886; and "Expositions," in "Education," vol. vi, pp. 62, 178, 272; "History of the Agassiz Association," by H. H. Ballard, "Science," vol. ix, p. 93.

CHAPTER XVI.

LEARNED SOCIETIES AND LIBRARIES.

1. General Societies.

"AN inventory of the means of general intelligence," said Horace Mann, "which did not include these institutions -the lecture, mechanics' institutes, and scientific and general societies—would justly be regarded as incomplete."

Less formal in its organization but more spontaneous in its results than the school, the free association of students and investigators has led to some of the most valuable conclusions of modern science. The individual bias corrected and the personal enthusiasm tempered by the combined judgment and diverse views of one's fellows, knowledge takes on the form of universality, and so becomes true science. This friction works out a revision which otherwise must come from the slow process of the unskilled criticism of the general public. The scientific academy has a field as definitely marked as the college or university, and has been described * as "the most potent agency which our civilization possesses for the discovery of truth."

While the Smithsonian Institution combines in itself the two functions of increasing and diffusing knowledge, about

* By President Gilman, "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society," vol. xviii (1880), p. 588.