ments. It exhausts its topics with brilliant analysis and illustration. Professor Doremus passes street-gas under ordinary pressure clear through a cubic foot of good sandstone six times coated with shellac, and with a match lights it as it comes through on the other side, and all to show the absurdity of a saucerful of chloride of lime as a disinfectant of volatile poisons and contagious disease. The microscopist places a fine cambric needle before the lens, and the figure thrown upon the canvas measures five inches across the point which just pricked your finger. This sort of thing is exhaustive, and at exhaustiveness Chautauqua aims.

Religiously, Chautauqua is a curious phenomenon. Starting from thoroughly Methodist sources, it speedily announced itself undenominational. A close observation of its laws, methods, and general plan will reveal a strain of Puritanism and a touch of Ritualism, as well as the birthright fervor of Methodism. And already enthusiastic Chautauquans make the bold claim that in the building of the great frame-work of the Chautauqua Idea the hands of the mighty of all time have had something to do—Socrates and Cromwell, Paul and Loyola, Fröbel and Carlyle and Wesley. Of course the narrow-minded will tend to the recognition only of the stones dug from their own quarry, and the exceedingly narrow will fall into the mistake that the ultimate result will be an absorption of all things into their own limited order. But this does not alter facts. On a Saturday evening a little group just arrived at Chautauqua ascended the hill leading from the landing to the hotel. The foot-path led before a whitened statue of Mercury, poised and wing-footed, but shadowed from the full moonlight. by the foliage of the over-arching trees. In passing it one of the company was overheard to say, "I suppose that is a statue of John Wesley." Equally puerile and ridiculous was the inference drawn a short time since in the columns of "The Churchman," of New York city, that the religious features of Chautauqua were becoming largely liturgical and ritualistic, and that its president had strong "Churchly" tendencies, because in the public service of the auditorium some well-chosen sentences from the Book of Common Prayer were employed.

The Chautauqua University is the natural outgrowth of the "Literary and Scientific Circle," multitudes being led by the studies of the Circle to feel deeper wants and to indulge higher aspirations. Having a share of the world's work already on their hands, they were debarred from ordinary college privileges. Arrangements were accordingly made for a thorough University Course-the lessons to be conducted by correspondence, and each pupil to come into close relations to each professor.

There are now 60,000 students enrolled as members of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, of whom 20,000 belong to the class most recently organized, who will finish their course in 1888. These reside in all parts of the world-every State and Territory in the Union, every province of Canada, and every continent, having its representative. The population of the Grove rises to at least 30,000 in the height of the Assembly season.

ROMANIST "FREE SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES.-It is a pregnant and ominous fact that one of the two chief religious denominations of the United States is avowedly arraigned in bitter hostility to that system of primary education which all the other religious bodies, and indeed the bulk of American citizens, have been accustomed to regard as one of the bulwarks of our civilization and our liberties. The controversies which have perennially sprung up all along the path of progress of the "Common School "-ever since its earliest development in this countryare as eagerly pressed now as at any former time. It is always of interest to the fair-minded thinker to obtain a clear view of his subject from a stand-point at the farthest possible remove from his own. This consideration gives a peculiar interest, in the eyes of a Protestant, to a recently published review of "Catholic Free Schools in the United States—their Necessity, Condition, and Future," from the scholarly pen of John Gilmary Shea, LL.D., which has recently appeared in the "American Catholic Quarterly Review." The author sketches the history of elementary schools during the first fifty years of our national history, and shows how in the beginning “religion was the underlying element of all education." The Protestant patronage of "godless" schools he traces to the rebellion of the "active minds of New England" against the despotism of the old-time Congregationalism. The denominations gradually took less interest in their schools, and at last relied almost exclusively on State aid. State schools then took the place of denominational schools; and according to Dr. Shea the old religious element would have entirely died out had not the Bible been, almost accidentally, taken as a school-book. "The lack of readers' made it convenient to employ as a reading book a volume to be found in almost every house." About forty years ago Dr. Shea thinks a golden opportunity was lost by the advocates of religious training. A clear, logical statesman might then have built a plan by which every citizen could obtain for his children the highest possible education, with such religious training as he preferred. "But a wretched compromise was effected, and this is the system which has gained in several States, and is talked of as national." The early Roman Catholic Councils earnestly but fruitlessly exhorted the bishops and clergy to establish schools "in which the young may be taught the principles of faith and morals while they are instructed in letters." About 1852 Archbishop Hughes gave a new impulse to Roman Catholic education by both earnest words and diligent example. "Parochial schools" were established in all directions. Soon "approved " school-books were prepared; and during the last thirty years the progress of these parochial schools has been truly wonderful-all the more wonderful because they have been supported almost exclusively by the “constant small contributions of the many." It is a suggestive fact, freely admitted by Dr. Shea, that in not a single case has a Roman Catholic school been founded or endowed by an individual. "Ireland," says he, "is dotted with the ruins of convents and monasteries, most of which were founded and endowed by individuals in the Ages of Faith. Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, show similar foundations; it is a reproach to the Catholics

of the United States that their body has produced so few men actuated by large and charitable impulses that spring from faith." Yet, though the parochial schools were thus dependent for their creation and maintenance on the liberality of the poor under the direction of the priests, their number had risen in 1875 to 1,444; in 1876, to 1,645; in 1879, to 1,958; and in 1880, to 2,246, with 405,234 pupils. At the commencement of the year 1884, the Catholic body in the United States, according to the statistics furnished by the several dioceses, "taxed as they were to maintain State schools, which they could not conscientiously use for the education of their children," maintained 2,532 parochial schools, in which 481,834 children were educated. The "Catholic Almanac" of 1834 records but three parochial schools; that of 1884, 2,532, and nearly half a million of pupils. The total average attendance at the public schools in 1880 was 5,805,342 in a total population of fifty millions, a little over ten per cent. ; while the Catholic community of eight millions had in its own free schools half a million, or nearly seven per cent. "A few years," predicts the essayist, "will make the Catholic rate exceed that of the State school."

THE ELEVATION OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN.-It is a cause for profound thankfulness that our political philosophers have ceased to urge the extermination of the Indians. The "military policy " has fewer advocates than formerly; and even the annual report of the General of our army has less than usual to say concerning the methodical slaughter of the aboriginal tribes. A pessimist might readily find reason for this apparent change of public sentiment in the unquestioned tendency of the redskins toward extinction. But it is better to seek its source in those humane agencies, which, beginning with the "peace policy" of President Grant, have ever since, with multiform philanthropy, helped to lift the Indians toward civilization. It is noteworthy that at a meeting of the National Teachers' Association recently held in Madison, Wis., one of the most able discussions was upon the best system for the education of Indian youth. General S. C. Armstrong, the Principal of the Normal Industrial School at Hampton, Va.-an authority in these matters-spoke most hopefully of the aggregated results of the efforts made during the last five or six years to elevate and Christianize the Indian youth. From three to five thousand of the thirty thousand Indian youth of school age are now trained industrially amid civilizing surroundings; a knowledge of the mechanic arts, elevated social customs, and a mastery of the English language are imparted to them by experienced teachers, and they are thoroughly drilled to become teachers themselves. The results, thus far, are full of hope. Enough time has elapsed to indicate the tendency of Indian children at their homes after a practical training in the midst of civilization, in which over one half of the instruction given each year is, for the young men, in trades and in farming; for the girls, in housework, cooking, and making garments. The General pleads for "a well-conducted training of the hands, head, and heart for a period of about five

years, sending pupils back to their old homes for a visit of from three to twelve months at the end of the third year."

The results of three years' work have not been disappointing. Of seventy-one sent back from Hampton since 1881, but seven have been reported as "gone back to the blanket," which means giving up citizen's dress for a woolen "toga," putting on paint, going to dances, and letting the hair grow long. Not one of them has become a horse-thief or a renegade. Of the rest, about one half are more or less weak and fickle, needing the agent's care and the influence of the missionary to keep them to steady habits or to lead them back from temporary relapses. The other half are comparatively steady, industrious, and thrifty; good examples to their people, whose feeling about the education of their children has changed remarkably in the past few years.

General Armstrong spent some time in an endeavor to prove what needs no demonstration-that the American Indians should have the best of men to guide them and the largest chances to improve. With the tremendous wave of progress across the continent resulting from four lines of railroad the irresistible grasp by the whites of mining, farm, and grazing lands the necessity of securing lands in severalty in order to have any thing left of the extensive, but doomed, domain they now occupy-the only stand they can make against the forces about them being to become citizens and voters-there is no chance of the Indians of our country but in sufficient and practical education in labor schools, and in an able, energetic, local management through competent agents, who shall be sustained in every effort to advance their people, keep whisky away, and establish them on lands of their own.

MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.

THE COAST AND INTERIOR MISSIONS OF AFRICA. · Africa is attracting more and more the attention of statesmen, missionaries, explorers, and mercantile adventurers. From the East Coast great missionary and trading enterprises have pushed into the heart of the continent, and formed their settlements and stations on the shores of the great lakes. Beginning with the Church Missionary Society on the Victoria Nyanza, in King Mtesa's kingdom, where, within a year, surprising progress has been made in education and in conversions, we go a comparatively short distance south, partly by roads made by the missionaries, passing several missionary stations, until we come to the field of operations of the London Society on Lake Tanganyika, and between the lake and the coast, among an intelligent but warlike people. From this long and narrow lake a short journey southward brings us to Lake Nyassa, lying much nearer to the coast, and easier of access than the other lakes. On the southern shore of this body of water the Scottish Free Church, which had prepared valuable native assistants for this formidable undertaking (regarded formidable ten years ago) at its famous Lovedale Institution in South Africa, has established itself. The

Free Church Society is endeavoring to form a chain of stations around the lake, and to establish free, intelligent, and Christian communities, in which purpose it has the earnest co-operation of the mission of the Kirk of Scotland, situated at Blantyre, on the Shiré River, near the southern shore of the lake.

These lake missions, which have cost much in treasure as well as some valuable lives (particularly to the London Missionary Society), might not have been established if their founders had foreseen all the difficulties and discouragements they have encountered; but they have probably passed their hardest days, and are now entering upon more productive stages. The missionaries, indeed, find much to encourage them. Heathenism, corrupted by its contact with civilization along the coast, has less of hope in it than heathenism in the gross forms in which it is found in the interior of the continent. The Arab slave-catchers have, it is true, been long among the interior tribes, but only for trade. They had not propagated Mohammedanism on the Nyanza when the missionaries settled in Uganda. It did not seem to occur to them to do so until after the standard of Christianity had been raised. Whatever may be true of other portions of Africa, a broad belt in the interior, extending from the Equator south to Lake Ngami, is chiefly dominated by the native religions. Mtesa, after a thorough test, found more to his satisfaction in the lubari of the lake than in the religion of the desert. The missionaries find that the youth are, for the most part, very quick and intelligent. Those in Uganda learn to read with amazing facility, and quickly comprehend the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Nothing more encouraging from any point has come to our knowledge than the conversions reported among the Buganda.

Besides these lake missions, the Church Missionary Society has had for many years a station at Mombasa, in the mountainous region near the coast and below the Equator, and the Universities Mission, which used to be attached to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, has a mission between the coast and Lake Tanganyika. Both of these are centers for freed slaves, and are flourishing enterprises. The American Board, advancing north from its old field in Zululand, has sought to establish a station in Umzila's kingdom, thus making a line of stations from Algoa Bay to Juba at the Equator. But this mission is as yet little more than a project. The southern part of the continent, from the Limpopo River on the East Coast round to the Orange River on the West Coast, and from Cape Town north to the Kalahari Desert-a territory embracing a great variety of tribes, from the dull Bushman to the bright and interesting Bechuanas-is more fully occupied than any other. If the native Christians of all names could be gathered into one South African Church, they would make a large and influential body of Christians. Here British, German, and French societies, as well as the American Board, have long been at work, and the French society is pushing north to the southern branch of the Zambesi and the Chobe, half way between the two coasts. The Western Coast has claimed most attention for a year or two. Stanley's exploration of the Congo, and the attempt of the African Interna