Movements in English Education. III. THE TEACHERS' SOCIETIES. One of the papers in M. Ernest Lavisse's A Propos de nos Ecoles is a charming address which he delivered at the opening of a new elementary school at his old home in Aisne-"Au milieu de mes camarades," as he puts it, "et de mes amis d'enfance, dans ce pays auquel m'attachent tant de souvenirs chers et sacrés." He contrasts the grand new school with the humble little building which he remembered in his childhood, and he wonders what the old teacher, Père Matton, would have said if he could have seen the ceremony in which the younger generation of his scholars, already middle-aged, were taking part. "La République," exclaims M. Lavisse to the teachers of to-day, "La République vous traite comme des princes." There has, in fact, been an extraordinary change, both in France and in England, in the position of teachers since our grandfathers, or even our fathers, were boys. "During the last quarter of a century," wrote the Royal Commissioners on Secondary Education (the period under their review being that which had elapsed since the report of the Schools Inquiry Commissioners in 1867), "the position of the teacher has sensibly improved. His work is viewed by the public with ever-growing sympathy and respect. The new opportunities for the education of women, the increasing proportion of graduate teachers in all grades of school, and the efforts of educational societies have worked almost a revolution in the status of the teacher, and have given a higher tone and dignity to the whole profession.' How this has come about is a long story. The fact remains that it is so, and that teachers have never been so respected, have, as a body, never been so popular or so influential as they are to-day. The change draws attention to a question which is likely to become more important as the years go on, viz., What is the position which teachers ought to occupy in the economy of national life? The problem is thus put by the Secondary Education Commissioners: "The service which teachers render is one over which the State must in self-defence retain effective oversight; the provision of teaching and the conduct of education cannot be left to private enterprise alone. Nor, on the other hand, do the teachers stand in the same relation to government as does the civil service. Education is a thing too intimately concerned with individual preference and private life for it to be desirable to throw the whole of it under government control. It needs organization, but it would be destroyed by uniformity; it is stimulated by inspection, but it could be crushed by a code. In the public service, where the chief object is administrative efficiency, the individual officer is necessarily subordinate; in education, where a chief object is the discovery of more perfect methods of teaching, the individual teacher must be left comparatively free. Every good teacher is a discoverer, and in order to make discoveries, he must have liberty of experiment." Thus the position of teachers in the state must remain somewhat anomalous and exceptional. On the one hand, it will need constant readjustment to the central and local government; on the other hand, as a guarantee against political or administrative interference with their proper and necessary freedom, the body of teachers must be not only allowed, but encouraged, to strengthen their professional organizations. They can never safely become a branch of the civil service, because they would then lose liberty of corporate and political endeavor. On the other hand, the State can never afford to lose all control over the efficiency and completeness of their work. A sturdy champion of his own and his colleagues' independence, Mr. Thring, of Uppingham, used to ask how the State should deal with the teachers. "Should they be considered as skilled workmen engaged in work requiring consummate skill, who understand their work and are ready to do it, or as carrying out the instructions of a higher authority that understands the work which they merely execute as instruments?" The answer to both these questions ought to be in the negative. The work of the teacher in the modern state must be carried on under mixed conditions, partly of freedom and partly of control. To secure for themselves, however, the due measure of freedom, the teachers must organize themselves into societies. Acting individually, they are powerless to protect themselves against forms of state or local interference which might paralyze their best work. We find, therefore, that, acting under the goad of a sure instinct, our teachers have rapidly strengthened their position by the formation of a number of large and efficient societies. As fighting bodies none of them can compare with the National Union of Teachers-the association of the teachers in public elementary schools. This can boast 30,000 members, and few changes in educational matters escape the notice of its watchful executive. It has much political influence, and played an important part in the great educational struggle of last session. Some observers resent its activities, dub it a trades union, and charge it with narrowness and party spirit. But, whatever may be the dangers of the situation, there is no doubt that the position which the Union now enjoys has been earned by unceasing effort and devoted labor. To it, and almost to it alone, the country owes the destruction of vicious theories about state interference with the work of the elementary schools which were rampant twenty years ago, and are still cherished in a sneaking kind of way by many people who ought to know better. But victories of this kind are not bought for nothing. Fighters have not the virtues of students, and are apt, indeed, to lose perceptions which are necessary to the most far-seeing statesmanship. "Every country," says the proverb, "has the foes it deserves;" and when a critic dwells on the failings of the National Union of Teachers, it is well to remind him of the kind of policy against which the Union had so long to protest. Secondary teachers in England have had less to fight against, and consequently their associations have been more dilettante and less easily mobilized for attack or defence. But the long peace is nearly over, and many secondary schoolmasters and schoolmistresses think they already hear the rolling of the drums before the engagement. Consequently they are forming line and preparing for action. But it must be admitted that some of their regiments would be none the worse for a little active service. The Headmasters' Conference, for example, is a dignified company. All the headmasters of the great public schools belong to it and direct what it is pleased to call its policy. But it stands for no consistent view of national education. When the eye runs down the list of its members, one recalls Disraeli's sarcasm about the front ministerial bench-"Call that a government! It is merely a row of competitors.' The Teachers' Guild is catholic to a fault. It embraces so many elements that it effectively represents none of them. It is a band of clashing interests, ably led by a group of far-seeing men and women, and voiced by the most influential journal in our educational press. The Guild has been and is one of the best influences in English education, but it is not strong as a fighting body. The College of Preceptors has a great name, but it was never intended to be a militant organization. It has done good work, and is still faithful to its traditions. To it we owe one of the most promising attempts to establish a system of training for secondary teachers. Pedagogy still has an uncomfortable sound to English ears. But if the prejudice against the word ever vanishes, the credit will lie in large measure with the College of Preceptors. It is to a number of smaller organizations, each representing a special interest, that the next educational Wellington will have to turn. The Incorporated Association of Headmasters, the Association of Headmistresses, the Preparatory School Association, the Association of Assistant Masters, the Association of Assistant Mistresses, the Private Schools Association, and the Association of Headmasters of Higher Grade Elementary and Organized Science Schools-these are the societies which are in fighting trim and will be heard of as soon as the reorganization of secondary education is seriously taken in hand. In the meantime they are all doing much to raise the standard of qualification in the teaching profession, and to diffuse more widely the necessary knowledge about educational policy. So long as they do not allow selfish motives of corporate interest to dominate their work, they will render valuable service to English education. They are strengthening the teacher's position, and securing for him (and we should add for her) the enjoyment of the freedom from preoccupation and ignorant interference which all good teaching needs. A practical question which is being much discussed is whether the teachers, as such, should have representation among the proposed new local authorities for secondary education. The same problem is beginning to show itself in Germany, in the sphere of elementary education, while in France statutory provision is made for a form of representation which apparently meets all reasonable needs. In England the question presents itself in an interesting form. Speaking broadly, the universities are self-governing. Under statute and subject to certain limitations and appeals, the policy both of the universities and of the colleges is directed by the graduates themselves. To this, as to every other statement about English education, there are important exceptions; but it is not going too far to say that in the main the hand of the outside administrator, be he politician, civil servant, or county councillor, falls very lightly on any part of English higher education. Any administrative fingers which appear to itch for interference are apt to get a sharp rap from one or other of the watchful guardians of academic privilege. At the other end of the scale, the elementary school teacher is supposed to have no direct share in administration. His to obey, not to govern. But he has his revenge. His union is represented on each side of the House of Commons-represented with tact and unfailing knowledge. His executive officers well know their way to Whitehall. His weekly journal is alert and trenchant, and exults in any opportunity of trouncing a parson who bullies "his" teacher or a starveling country school board. And, though the elementary school teacher may serve on a board which employs him, there is no rule which disqualifies exteachers from election. The result is that on several recent occasions the teachers' nominee has been returned, by a great major ity, at the head of the poll. Thus the elementary school teachers at the present time have in substance more direct influence over Parliament and on local elected bodies than their colleagues at the universities. Between the two extremities stand the teachers in secondary schools. Up to the present time they have had comparatively little experience of departmental control. The Charity Commission rarely inspects them, and its operations are rather a synonym for delay than for administrative interference. The local authorities who have anything to do with secondary schools come with gifts in their hands, and their interference, wherever it takes place, is voluntarily accepted by the teachers for the sake of the grants which accompany it. But when secondary education is organized, the color of these relations between the schools and the various authorities will quickly change. There are, consequently, many among the teachers who look forward to blunders and stupidities on the part of the new bodies which it is proposed to set up. "The trap," they say, "is well baited and prettily tied up with ribbons, but once we get inside it we shall hear very little more of honied words and pretty speeches. The power will be in the hands of men who, in regard to some of our most important interests, are our natural enemies." Those who hold this opinion the most strongly are against any form of local, or, for that matter, of effective central, authority whatever. But others, who regard the evils of the present situation as so grave that new public authorities are needed to remedy them, hope to temper the policy of the new bodies by infusing into them some measure of teachers' representation. Against this scheme the cutand-dried constitutionalist aims his sharpest arrows. He maintains that, were any such arrangement permitted, all chance of administrative purity in the actions of the new local authorities would be gone. Everything, he argues, would be wire-pulled by the teachers in their own pecuniary interests. The teachers' societies would invariably act, not in a disinterested spirit, but as mere trades unions for the furtherance of the selfish purpose of their members. The teachers' representatives would be present at the council board in order to screen inefficiency, to justify routine, to avert necessary reform, and to raise the scale of salaries. On the other hand there are many who, though not unconscious of these perils, are yet convinced that of the two evils the exclusion of the teachers from all voice in the local and central administration would be by far the most injurious to the public interest. They argue that educational and administrative ex perience cannot be safely divorced. "Taken together and combined in one authority, knowledge of educational work and skill in public administration would supplement one another, correct one another's characteristic defects and form the most efficient instrument for guidance and control." The relation of the expert to public elected authorities is one of the most difficult problems in democratic organization. Probably, on the whole it would be better, as things are, to devise some statutory form of teachers' representation on the local authorities, if any are soon created. The thing might be done by requiring each authority to submit to the central department a scheme showing how it proposed by co-optation to secure the due representation of the various forms of educational experience. But if, as seems not improbable, legislation on secondary education is put off for a few years, the matter may settle itself by the gradual permeation of more pedagogical knowledge among the administrators, and of a clearer perception of administrative difficulties among the teachers. If the natural course of things produces administrators with a real knowledge of educational methods, and teachers with a sympathetic understanding of the problems of administration, we shall have no occasion to invent a new-fangled and hybrid form of local authority which might too easily lend itself to mischief and misuse. X. London. Ordinary baldness has proved to be the work of a species of microbe. A French chemist, M. Labouraud, has got upon the trail of this particular bacillus, and has obliged him to reveal the secret of his operations, which are as surprising as they are objectionable; for he does not make his sphere of activity the bulb at the root of the hair, as might be suspected; his methods are not so straightforward; we have to do, not with an assassin, but a poisoner. He establishes himself in the small glands whose function it is to secrete a natural pommade, and in this place of vantage distils at his ease a special poison which is the direct cause of baldness. To prove this it is only necessary to make a culture in bouillon, filter off the microbes, and inject a liquid containing them under the skin of a rabbit-an Angora rabbit, if you like when he will infallibly and rapidly be transformed into a somewhat shapeless billiard-ball. Out of consideration for those who still have heads of hair, it should be said quickly that not every one's head is a good culture bouillon for this particular creature; that women particularly offer him very little encouragement; and, finally, that there still seems to be something to discover before we have complete knowledge as to why we go bald. We are indebted for these interesting facts to l'Illustration. Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois événements, naître, vivre, et mourir; il ne se sent pas naître, il souffre à mourir, et il oublie de vivre. La Bruyère. Books. THE EMPIRE OF THE PTOLEMIES. By J. P. Mahaffy. London and New York: Macmillan & Co., 1895. "To Egypt 'tis a long and toilsome road." With these words from the Odyssey, Polybius accounts for the difficulties that beset a writer on Egyptian history. If this was true in the second century before Christ, when Egyptian history was in the making, much truer is it today, when such history is a thing of the remote past. And the student of his kind can only be grateful to a scholar who undertakes the wearisome journey, and succeeds in bringing home rich spoils, won in large part by his own efforts. Such a traveler we have in Professor Mahaffy, and such spoils in his latest book, "The Empire of the Ptolemies.' Of all the successors of Alexander the Ptolemies were the ablest, and founded the most enduring empire, through which, more than through any other medium Greek science and letters were first conserved, and then passed on to Rome,-through Rome to reach the modern world. Professor Mahaffy has given us a thoughtful study of this empire in a book which is in many respects the most valuable that has come from his active pen. He has attempted-and we use his own words-unbaffled by the "scantiness of our miserable sources,' 66 to write a human history of Egypt" [in the Ptolemaic age] and to "draw a living picture of the men who swayed this wealthy kingdom so long." He has already written much on the Greeks of antiquity-their history, literature, institutions, ideals, morals and manners,-but usually at second hand, as the popularizer of knowledge gathered by the pedants for whom he has a hearty scorn. Here, however, he makes original contributions to the subject in hand. Circumstances have caused him to become one of the first of British authorities on the Greek papyri of the Ptolemaic period, and his native gifts as a writer-his insight, his wit, his pungency and his skill in orderly and vivid presentation-lend to his work on Egyptian history, which owes so much to the papyri, an exceptional interest and value. In thirteen chapters, the substance of which was originally written as lectures for the history class at the University of Dublin, the author passes in review the careers and personalities of all the Ptolemies, from Soter, the founder of the line, to the fateful Cleopatra. While well-known facts have not been neglected, especial attention has been given to such aspects of the history of these monarchs as have received illumination from recent discoveries and discussions. This fresh light has been obtained not alone from newly found papyri, which, while now and then yielding a literary treasure of great value, have to do for the most part with trivial matters of financial administrations or judicial process, but also from that reëxamination of the traditional sources of information, the ancient texts, which is going on all the time. In especial, the character and achievements of the mighty Ptolemy Soter, of Philadelphus and of his sister-wife Arsinoe, and of the enigmatical Euergetes have an attraction for our author, and his sketches of these rulers are examples of excellent historical writing. In his account of the later princes, where the sources of information are chiefly literary-Polybius, Plutarch, Josephus-Professor Mahaffy shows dramatic power of a different quality. The main currents of political life and activity in Egypt; some of the features of the great intellectual movements of the times; in particular, the services to literature and science of the various rulers, chiefly in the establishment and maintenance of the Alexandrian Museum, Library, and other kindred institutions; manifold details in the life of the humbler folk, civic and military-all these matters, for the three centuries preceding the Christian era in Egypt, engage our author's attention, and are set forth in a lucid style and with a due regard for proportion. There is an excellent chronological table, a full index, and many admirable wood-cuts of coin-types. Scholars will welcome the publication here, in a convenient form, of the Greek text of the Decree of Canopus (Sân Stone, 238 B. C.) and of the Rosetta Stone (196 B. C.), with the author's learned and judicious notes, not to speak of numerous extracts from papyri. The defects of the book are for the most part such as inhere in the subject. An epoch in Egyptian history about which our information is miserably scant cannot be made, at least by the conscientious historian, as interesting as one for which our sources flow abundantly. The scenes that pass before our author's eye are altogether too numerous and varied for all of them to be caught and reproduced with equal fidelity and effect. It is an easy task for a critic to point out what seem to him omissions in another's work. That the intellectual and moral life of the age-in its philosophical and religious aspects, especially in relation to the birth and early history of Christian thought is not more fully treated in this book is a disappointment, for which the fact that the author has elsewhere considered some phases of it is hardly a compensation. Professor Mahaffy does not let us forget that he is an Irishman and a clergyman; indeed, in a book from his pen we should sadly miss the familiar and apposite citations of modern instances, mostly Celtic, in illustration of ancient usage, together with the frequent fling at the æsthete, the pedant, and "the Greek scholars in our universities." The book is carefully printed, and of typographical errors few are misleading. Among the errors we must, however, note at least the following for correction: On p. 54, H. Collitz (not N. Collitz), and on p. 109, Th. Schreiber (not M. Schreiber) are meant. On p. 473, B. c. 39 should be B. c. 36; on p. 433, middle, read "made" for "make." The Philippeum at Olympia (p. 136) was hardly set up by Philip. On p. 76, from the avev Boulever of Dio Cassius we might draw a conclusion exactly the opposite to that drawn by Professor Mahaffy. And a purist is vexed at seeing Sylla and coelo on the pages of a carefully printed book. This is hardly the place in which to take our author to task for the use he now and then makes of his evidence, forcing it beyond its proper limits. For the most part, however, we owe a debt to his independence and originality, qualities which in this book lead him to the truth oftener perhaps than in some of his earlier writings. The Empire of the Ptolemies' is a book which no serious student of history can afford to ignore, and is full of instruction, as well as of entertainment, for every reader. Harvard University. JOHN H. WRIGHT. TRUMPETS AND SHAWMS. By Henry Hanby Hay, author of 'Created Gold and Other Poems,' Philadelphia: Arnold & Co., 1896. Mr. Hay is no stranger to readers of contemporary poetry, and his volume 'Created Gold and Other Poems,' published a few years since, will be recalled by many for its originality and for the favorable comment which it excited on this side of the water and particularly in England. As to the volume before us, we are peculiarly fortunate in the possession of an interesting and appreciative introduction from the pen of Mr. Hay's friend and fellow Manxman, the distinguished novelist, Mr. Hall Caine. We have thus before us not only some of those little hints and details that go to give a personal atmosphere to a book; but we have likewise a frank and honest appraisement of its character, a suggestion of the place of this "full-freighted craft on the ocean of song." Mr. Hall Caine, considering the possible poetical treatment of material arising out of the historic past and the picturesque present of such a spot as his native island, distinguishes "the dramatic method," and the "scenic manner." The latter he claims to be peculiarly Mr. Hay's. Take this bit of vivid description as an "I close my eyes and face the setting sun, Behind the pier, the cluttered market-place, A dozen cart-wide, elbow-bending lanes, Or again: Picture, before you read this simple tale, The first of these selections is from a poem entitled 'One by the Sea-A Boy,'of which we are not certain that it is not one of the best of the book, for its fervor, directness, and perfectly clear presentment. Yet if the reader will continue the poem entitled 'Robert, the Guide,' of which the second quotation above is the first few lines, he will probably take issue at once with the inference to be drawn from Mr. Caine's words, and claim for Mr. Hay not a little of the "dramatic method." The author is solicitous of success in this direction if we mistake not, witness the suggestive, but somewhat lurid poem entitled 'Leaves from a Woman's Life.' This volume of verse is by no means restricted in theme or in manner, and nothing Icould be wider of the mark than to describe it as of that class of local verse in which the poet, tethered by those invincible ties that bind to home, to reminiscence of self and to a narrow circle of intimates, sings like a captive bird. again and again the beauties of his cage, its sanded floor, and smooth and polished perches. Though Mr. Hay was born in Manxland, he has come out of it long since into the open American world, bringing with him tender and hallowed memories and delighting, like every true son, no matter what his country, to return and drink in again the present beauties of his countryland. If anything is to be said of Mr. Hay's choice of themes, it must be in recognition of his range of subject with perhaps not a little wonder at his daring. Thus Mr. Hay has dared to ignore the accepted tradition that Sophocles answered the impeachment of his son Iophon before the Phratores by reading the parodos of his 'Edipus at Colonus,' to give us in place "a portion of the newly-finished tragedy, entitled 'Achilles,"" as to which it may be surmised that a similar triumph to that of tradition might not have ensued. In his previous volume, Mr. Hay hazarded an act precedent to Hamlet, entitled 'Hamlet at Wittenberg.' In the present book he has given us a |