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men and the rentiers but the artisans and proletariat. The former, Mr. Wendell urges, bear all the burdens and responsibilities; the latter are paid high wages for slack work, and they have at their call the resources of civilization-free schools, dispensaries, hospitals, and all the other modern improvements, and give nothing in return. In a second paper, he outlines some of the features of the coming American revolution, catastrophe which can be averted only by combating "the dangers of thoughtlessness, of heedlessness, of folly," by education in the broadest sense. Of education proper he treats in two papers which are full of the results of his experience and observation as a Harvard professor. His general warning against reposing too much confidence in our public school system is as sound as his specific criticism of some of the defects of American university methods. Mr. Wendell's wit enlivens all his discussions. The following remarks, anent mortmain as it exists to-day in the handing on of fortunes in trust, are typical: "The practical objection to what results," he says, "does not end with the fact that now and again the living, who benefit by this system, are vacuous or otherwise unworthy. Whatever the qualities of the dead, none can be more generally characteristic than their inertia ; as a class, they cannot possibly be enterprising."

woman

Readers of Life, of Harper's Weekly, of Scribner's, and of his own previous books, will require no introduction to Mr. Edward S. Martin's volume of papers, "In a New Century." They are desultory, whimsical, earnest, humorous, as the mood may dictate, but they are never dull. Mr. Martin is what would once have been called a social satirist. The drama of life, especially of fashionable life, has an endless attraction for him. So have politics, business, and the devices by which the average man or - New Yorkers, by preference - try to convert their five or five thousand dollars into a few hours' amusement. Being a satirist, he emphasizes the folly side of his world; but he is a humorist, too, if we may still make the old distinction and so he has pity as well as sarcasm at command. The critic can no more distil into a paragraph the substance of his many papers with their unexpected contents - than you could pour a dozen bottles of different cordials into a thimble. In these days when candidates for Ph.D. in English are racking their brains for the subject of their thesis, we suggest the following: "The Essay of Society as Practised by Dick Steele and Ned Martin; with a Comparison of the Respective Talents of these Two Essayists, and of the Times and Environments in which they Lived, and with Deductions therefrom as to the Intellectual, Moral, and Naval Conditions of England in 1708, and of the United States in 1908. Kindly omit bibliography."

Mr. Stanton's "The Essential Life" differs from these volumes of Messrs. Wendell and Martin in being neither polemical nor satirical, but

personal. Its province is the inner life, not the outer. It is truly spiritual and must to many persons be helpful. Mr. Stanton often speaks without being aware of it, in the voice of one who has listened to Emerson. He has evidently formed his style on Emerson's, and he abounds in lithe phrases. A few sentences, picked at random, will serve as samples of much of the book. "Nothing discloses so little of itself as a mirror." "Conciseness is the refuge of the eloquent.' "There are no Islands of the Blessed save in the archipelago of the heart.” “ Through the rose-window of reverence the past reaches us in beautiful design and color." "Man perpetuates the penalties imposed by evolution upon variations from the type." Evidently, Mr. Stanton himself has a gift for maxim-making. He is what used to be called Orphic. Essays like his may make the appeal of revelation to some readers, and seem trite to others. But that is true of all moralizing. He has taken the best precaution possible against monotony by clothing his wisdom in compact, crystalline language.

THE NEW DEAN OF THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL.

HENRY ASBURY CHRISTIAN, Virginian, bachelor and master of arts of Randolph-Macon College, doctor of medicine of Johns Hopkins University, master of arts of Harvard University, has been appointed Dean of the Harvard Medical School at the age of 32. An analysis of this act of the Corporation shows that the last step has been taken in freeing the Medical School from any tinge of localism. That the new dean is not New England born and neither academically nor medically Harvard bred has astonished certain circles and particularly certain outside circles in which the proud and successful individualism of Harvard has always proved a thorn. Here, some have said, is a concession to the world outside the shade of the Washington Elm. But no one who has followed the appointments of the Harvard Corporation for now many years can fail to be struck with the number of chairs filled ab extra. In the Medical School itself, the appointments of W. T. Councilman, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy; Franz Pfaff, Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics; Theobald Smith, George Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology; W. T. Porter, Professor of Comparative Physiology; James Homer Wright, Assistant Professor of Pathology; and Otto Folin, Associate Professor of Chemistry, as well as Dr. Christian's own appointment as Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic, testify to the tendency of the Corporation to the securing of professors of other derivation than Harvard.

The important feature of the new appointment is that, not merely have

numerous important fundamental departments been placed in charge of good men from the outer and non-Harvard world, but now there stands coram publico a non-Harvard man to represent the Medical School and to shape a certain important part of its career. The second feature of this appointment, as estimated by public comment, is the comparative youth of the appointee. It is interesting to note in this connection that several members of Dr. Christian's Hopkins class have secured high professional honor at the same interval after graduation or even earlier, e. g.: Joseph G. Flint, Professor of Surgery at Yale Medical School; Preston Kyes, Assistant Professor of Experimental Pathology at the University of Chicago; A. W. Hewlett, Professor of Medicine at Ann Arbor. It does not appear that age is a factor of extreme importance for or against the modern appointment. For appointment in fundamental courses (anatomy, physiology, chemistry, bacteriology, and pathology), achievement in research combined with teaching ability is essential. For an appointment in clinical courses, achievement in research must be subordinated to breadth of fundamental training; since, on the basis of training, will the clinical achievements be built up. For an appointment of a broad administrative and correlative character such as the deanship, it is the understanding of numerous points of view that becomes essential, and here it proves that both fundamental training and clinical insight are desirable. Age is a factor subordinate to all these.

What are the compelling reasons for Dr. Christian's appointment as Dean? Certainly not because he is not a Harvard man or because he is 32 years of age, though these points enter into his fitness for the place. Again, not because of a winning personality and an effective way with students and with colleagues, though such points must count much. The compulsion is not a matter of personality, but a matter of preeminent fitness by training. A man with the sort of training which Dr. Christian has received is regarded as the best mouthpiece for the School in its public relations and as the best adviser for interdepartmental adjustments and correlations of many sorts within the School.

Comprehensive training is the first requisite in the intermediary figure known as dean. The intricacy of curricular relations, the difficult permanent dualism which every medical school presents with its fundamental work opposed or apparently opposed to the practical and clinical side, the change of front which gradually goes on with every advance in science and practice, these and kindred difficulties signify one thing that the dean must be a skilful adjuster. The basis of such adjustment, it may be repeated, is comprehensive training. It is not what the new appointee has done, so much as what he knows how to do, that makes the School's outlook bright in its official career. And, if the new dean gives up to some