politicians. Our pulpits are often Jacobin tribunes, and our press often as vociferous and shallow as the gazettes of the days of Marat. We have Pittsburg riots and burnings. Fraud makes a President, while fanaticism in two cases has put one to death. A civil war is sprung upon the people through theories as false as those of the Contrat-Social, both North and South becoming the victims of political empirics. What are our safeguards? They are supposed to be general intelligence and "the greatest prosperity on the face of the earth." As general intelligence cannot be traced much beyond the intellectual discipline of the common school, it is doubtful whether this is equal to emergencies arising from the conflict of deep-seated passions and interests. The greatest illusion is the attributing of our political safety to "prosperity." When we consider that we are a small population living richly on a very fertile and extensive soil; that this population increases rapidly, and that the soil, cultivated on exhaustive principles, may yet require the labor which is accompanied with misery, as in Europe; and that our most prosperous men are the most to be preaded,-we may well doubt whether "prosperity" will protect us against political difficulties kindred to those of other communities. The better course is to study and apply human experience in other tried communities before it is too late. It is useless to recommend anything to people whose motto is "après moi le déluge," the thoughtful will prefer what they may learn from M. Taine's French Revolution, to a blind, unscientific confidence in national complacency.

JOHN DURAND.

TH

UNIVERSITY ITEMS.

HE necessity of detaining a large body of students every day at the University, from an early hour till late in the afternoon, has led the authorities to establish in the assembly room of the main building a restaurant in which wholesome food can be purchased at the lowest possible rates. A caterer has been obtained, a counter erected, tables at which from four to six persons can sit have been spread with invitingly clean table-cloths, and the experiment has been begun. The room will be open all day, and thus meet the convenience, not only of the "academics," but of the "medics," "dentics," and even the lawyers. Personal inspection has convinced at least one of the committee responsible for these items, that raw oysters of the best, with excellent bread and butter, can be had at this restaurant, and all for the insignificant sum of ten cents. Excellent butter! What do Philadelphians ever care to ask about an eating-room in which the butter is good? That alone is a sufficient diploma; and, though the caterer showed a certificate signed by half the epicures in town, bad butter would damn him doubly. Another point, too, besides the furnishing of good food to those who wish to eat it, will doubtless be gained by this new feature in University life. As students increase, more and more of them come daily from their suburban or country homes, five, ten, twenty, even thirty, miles away. These men necessarily take breakfast early as necessarily they get back quite late to dinner. They need and ought to be allowed to have a regular luncheon, brought with them or bought in the restaurant; and they ought to have a regular time in which to eat it. Two obstacles have stood in their way. When the inconvenience of carrying lunch forbade their bringing it, there was nothing to buy in or near the building that was fit to eat; and, when the lunch was brought, the continuous exercises from 9 to 2.20 o'clock compelled them either to defer lunching till an unreasonably late hour, or to "steal a while away" from a recitation or lecture in which to eat it. The latter was dangerous; the former too often resulted in a headache before lunch and no appetite for dinner. Hence, a recess of twenty minutes is now to be given between 12.10 and 12.30 o'clock in the academic departments; and, the restaurant being provided, not even the out-dwellers

(0°i ¿5w tyc nokéwę oizoõvteg, as Xenophon, we believe, calls them,) need go hungry. This recess will be made by having the first hour last from 10.15 to 11.15, the second end at 12.10, the third run from 12.30 to 1.25, and the fourth last (as now,) till 2.20 o'clock. These arrangements will, doubtless, by making it more and more possible for students to come and go every day from outlying boroughs like West Chester, Coatesville, Downingtown, Phoenixville, Burlington, etc., attract a yet greater number of students from them, and so hurry on the day when, not 314, but 614,—nay, when countless academic students will throng the University halls. Professors, too, we fancy, as well as students, will find this break in no respect disagreeable. Even three hours consecutively drain the nerve-force four hours are an almost intolerably heavy tax. Many members of the University Faculty are detained three times a month by the stated meetings of the three Faculties to which they belong; and special meetings, unlike special providences, (or is it like them?) are not infrequent. On such days, dinner appears at noon in the distant, dim perspective; and even a University professor can filch ten cents from the family market-fund rather than go home exhausted and unfit for work till the next day. From every point of view, therefore, the restaurant founded by Provost Pepper and Dean Kendall, and universally applauded (we learn,) by Faculty and students, is a substantial addition to the University machinery and an undoubted contribution to University success. The new University era will be Ab Refectorio Condito.

At the recent International Medical Congress, Prof. H. C. Wood, of the University, read an address upon fever before the Physiological Section. The results which have been arrived at by Dr. Wood in his elaborate researches into the cause of excessive heat production, and which were spoken of by Dr. Pepper in his address to the American Medical Association during May, as perhaps the most important of recent medical achievements, were frequently alluded to in the discussion which followed. Dr. Burden-Sanderson, Professor of Physiology in the University of London, stated that in his opinion Dr. Wood's theories were sufficiently substantiated by his experiments to be accepted as proven facts,commendation and endorsement which, from such a source, must have been very gratifying. Dr. Wood also prepared the paper

upon the "Antagonism of Remedies," with which the discussion in the Pharmacological Section opened. During the Congress the Doctor was the guest of the Physiological Society of Great Britain, and subsequently, with a few others, was under the care of Trinity College, Cambridge. Later, he spent ten days at Glen Elgh, opposite the Island of Skye, with Professor Frazer, of the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Wood, like all the other American representatives of the medical profession who attended the International Congress, expressed himself very warmly concerning the kindness and hospitality of which he had been the recipient.

The following anecdote may be recorded as a contribution to the discussion which is periodically revived concerning the pronunciation of English, as regards the relative merits of the sharp, clear distinct American tones, nasal when exaggerated, and the broader, less English accent which so readily degenerates into a drawl. Professor Goltz, of the University of Strasburg, after the adjournment of the Section of Physiology, and having listened to Dr. Wood's opening address, is said to have assured him, in an almost tearful manner; that he had understood "almost every word that was said.” You speak so much more distinctly than these Englishmen,” added the Professor, who, with characteristic Teutonic patience, had been listening to many lengthy, and, we may infer, more or less incomprehensible discourses.

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The University was further represented at the International Congress by Professor Goodell. Professor Penrose and Dr. Weir Mitchell, of the Board of Trustees, also spent the summer abroad.

Dr. Richard H. Harte (Medical Department, 1878,) has been nominated by the Medical Faculty as Third Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy in the Medical Department.

A course for post-graduate instruction has been organized in connection with the Medical Department. Two courses will be given annually, the first beginning October 31, 1881, the second March, 1882.

The following constitute the present corps of instructors: Physical Diagnosis and Clinical Medicine, Professor Pepper and Dr. Bruen; Nervous Diseases and Electro-Therapeutics, Professor H. C. Wood; Dermatology, Professor L. A. Duhring; Otology, Professor Geo. Strawbridge; Ophthalmology, Dr. S. D. Risley Gynecology, Dr. B. F. Baer; Laryngoscopy, Dr. C. Seiler.

Among the changes necessitated by Dr. Stillé's resignation of the Chair of History and English Literature, has been a new provision for the teaching of history in the Faculty of Arts. The names of several gentlemen of note and eminence in this department of study were suggested to the Board of Trustees, but their final decision was to ask Dr. Charles P. Krauth, Vice-Provost of the University, to undertake the work which had been in charge of the late Provost. Dr. Krauth is best known-has a more than national fame, indeed,—as a metaphysician and a theologian. But the names of Leibnitz, Hegel, Steffens, and many others, are sufficient warrant for the assertion that the philosophers have been not the the least fruitful students of history. And the type of Dr. Krauth's work in philosophy, as exhibited in his splendid edition of Berkeley's Principles of Knowledge, is one which is especially favorable to historical studies. The same is true of his theological writings, especially of his work on The Conservative Reformation, which may be described as a study of the legitimate lines of historical development as contrasted with destructive and revolutionary tendencies. It was the many excellences of this work of historical research, we presume, which suggested to the Lutherans of America their request that Dr. Krauth should prepare a life of Luther for the coming fourth centenary commemoration of his birth in 1482. On this he has been engaged for several years past. His visit to Europe in the summer of 1880 was for the purpose of seeing for himself the scenes of Luther's eventful life, and thus acquiring a proper sense of his hero's environment. Of the great literature devoted to the elucidation of the Reformer's life, and culminating in Koestlin's elaborate work in our own time, nothing has been neglected in the preparation of this new work. It will be the first satisfactory life of Luther in the language,—we may say, (with the exception of Dr. Sears's good but unequal work,) the first decent English or American biography of the greatest man of the sixteenth century. The University, therefore, will possess in her new teacher of history a student fruitfully occupied in problems of historic research, as well as a scholar widely acquainted with the literature of the subject. It is such a teacher who finds the least difficulty in making his subject a living one to his students.