sailed up the river Dee to the very walls of Chester. Now the old Roman harbor is a beautiful green meadow, called the "Rood Eye," or Island of the Cross. From a grand stand upon the Roman wall the Chester populace can look down upon a modern English race course, the Campus Martius of the Cheshire militia.

But the contrast which pleased me most was the conspicuous notice of the summer meeting of the National Home Reading Union posted by ecclesiastical authority upon the cloister walls of the cathedral. Within those sacred precincts, which once sheltered a band of Benedictine monks and still earlier a convent of nuns, upon the wall opposite the garth where Dean Howison and his daughter lie buried, was a printed announcement of the various lectures and excursions from June 27 to July 6, 1896. From that Norman wall, built long before America was discovered, I copied with great delight into my notebook the chief features of that popular educational programine.

It interested me afterwards to find that most of the lectures were given in an old ecclesiastical building once known as St. Nicholas's Chapel, now the Music Hall, close by the cathedral, where the curfew still rings every night at 9 o'clock, an historic reminder of old Norman dominion over Welsh and Saxon. Some of the peripatetic talks on architecture were given in the cathedral itself to classes of convenient size by archæological experts, Mr. D. H. S. Cranage, of Cambridge, and Mr. W. H. St. John Hope, of the Royal Archæological Institute. The chapter house, the old refectory, the cathedral aisles, and the Lady Chapel were all opened to educational visitations. It was pleasant there to have pointed to you in the cloisters not only monastic stalls for study and writing, but upon the stone seats the holes for "nine men morris" and "fox and geese,” which sinless games the choir boys or less pious monks sometimes played when not under observation.

The cathedral itself is a wonderful object lesson in the varying styles of architecture, from the Norman and Early English to the Early Decorated and Perpendicular. Within that noble edifice were given instructive talks and frequent organ recitals. One evening Dr. J. C. Bridge, the organist of the cathedral, gave in Music Hall a lecture on "Samuel Pepys and his music" and, aided by choir boys and musicians, illustrated this subject by vocal and instrumental means. The bishop of Chester and the dean and canons of the cathedral were present at various lectures and did all in their power to make the summer meeting in an historic diocese enjoyable as well as educational. The clergy themselves doubtless profited by hearing a most instructive lecture by Mr. St. John Hope on "The plans and arrangements of mediæval monasteries." The subject was well illustrated by original diagrams and solved in a simple way many historical and architectural problems. He derived the mediaval monastery from the Roman house, and attributed the origin of the college dormitory to the monastic "infirmary," originally a large and comfortable common hall finally cut up for greater peace and comfort into separate rooms or studies.

The summer assembly.-The town hall of Chester afforded headquarters and reception rooms for the summer assembly. The mayor of the city was the chairman of the local committee, which included nearly 100 of the leading citizens. Mr. R. A. Yerburgh, member of Parliament for Chester, and Mrs. Yerburgh graciously received the 400 or more guests in the mayor's parlor. The company gradually divide through the various rooms of the town hall, which had been tastefully decorated. Simultaneous entertainments, musical and scientific, were in progress in various parts of the building. It was all done by the authority and at the expense of the corporation. Americans should take pains to visit some of the better town halls of Great Britain, for example, Glasgow, Manchester, and Birmingham, and see what people's palaces those self-governing, self-respecting cities rear for their own use and benefit, and how well the mayor's parlor and the town council rooms lend themselves to social functions when public interest requires it.

Mr. Yerburgh is an Oxford graduate and the vice-chairman of the council of the National Home-Reading Union. He presided at the public conference on "The

benefits of reading and how to diffuse them." He said the object of the union was to develop a true taste for reading and to check the growing fondness for the "Shilling shocker" and the "Penny dreadful." He quoted Milton as saying, “A good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." Mr. Yerburgh gave some interesting facts showing the increasing popularity of the movement for encouraging home reading. He said that during the last season no fewer than 8,210 readers had been enrolled, and that since 1889 as many as 27,464 persons had been in the union. It had members not only in Great Britain and Ireland, but in Egypt, Turkey, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, the Channel Islands, France, Belgium, Madeira, South Africa, and Palestine. In the light of events in the Transvaal, Mr. Yerburgh thought the English public might like to know that the Home-Reading Union had a local center at Johannesburg.

Dr. J. B. Paton, the honorary secretary of the union, said there was a sister society in Australia numbering 3,000 members. He deplored the fact that the pupils of the board schools of England, after being taught to read, were thrust out at an early age and left to devour literary garbage. He advocated closer connection between the Home-Reading Union and the national system of schools. He said Sir John Gorst, of the education department, and Her Majesty's inspectors had been urged to open all the common schools in England for evening recreative classes in good reading for the benefit of ex-pupils.

Miss Montgomery, honorary secretary of the Technical and University Extension College in Exeter, gave an admirable extempore talk upon the benefits of good reading (1) as a mental discipline, (2) as a means of positive knowledge, and (3) as a delightful recreation. She made an earnest plea for a little serious reading every day. She thought this would train the judgment, quicken imagination and sympathy, and expand the mental horizon.

An American visitor, present by invitation, was called upon for his views, and said Miss Montgomery had alluded to the lack of intelligent sympathy between England and America in the time of George III. He admitted that there had been a little misunderstanding between the nations about that time. In fact, there had been one or two misunderstandings between governments since that date; but, whatever the varying views of English and American cabinets about the territorial interests of others, there is to-day no lack of sympathy and appreciation between the people of the two countries. They are always borrowing things from one another. Dr. Paton and the Chester Summer Assembly had borrowed Chautauqua ideas, but America is now introducing the methods of English university extension and even borrowing English lecturers. The Home-Reading Union had improved in some respects upon the American system; the chosen literature is better and cheaper; more use is made of cheap reprints of standard authors. The English work is more truly national. The idea of encouraging good reading in connection with evening continuation schools is very noble. It is impossible in America to hold a summer meeting in such an interesting historical environment as Chester or Oxford; but there is fine scenery at Chautauqua, Plattsburg, and Niagara Falls. The English plan of cooperative summer holidays at the seaside or in lake and mountain districts might easily be introduced. The Young Men's Christian associations in America are already doing something in this direction. The educational work of these American Christian associations is, on the whole, better than corresponding work in England, although there is still much to be desired in the way of systematic teaching and continuity of classes.

Summer excursions.—One of the most enjoyable excursions from Chester was on Saturday, the 4th of July, to Llangollen and the abbey of Valle-Crucis, the finest architectural ruin in North Wales. There, within ivy-covered chapel walls, under the open sky, on grassy ground, assembled a pleasant company of young people from various parts of England to listen to an instructive talk on Cistercian architecture by the clever and lucid St. John Hope. He stood upon a block of masonry, with his

Derby hat on, and talked simply and naturally, without a trace of pedantry, concerning the characteristic features of the building and of Cistercian life and religious worship. Afterwards he led his faithful followers through the ruined monastery, from chapel and chapter house to refectory and dormitory. Then the little company returned through green fields where sheep were grazing and soldiers were camping out. Through turnstiles and country lanes, along hedgerows and the banks of a quiet stream the young folk of England wandered. They visited a hillside park belonging to a country gentleman. Picturesque beyond description was the return to the village of Llangollen in a fleet of boats moving slowly along an old canal on the hillside above the river valley. Through the trees were ever-changing outlooks over field and meadow. At one point four historic ways of travel came close together-the river, the caual, the highway, and the railway.

At Llangollen before taking the train we all took tea. We had already lunched there in the morning after seeing "Castell Dinas Bran" and the curious Welsh museum which now fills the quaint, old-fashioned country house called "Plasnewydd," once occupied by Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, two gentle maids who ran away from matrimony and the world and settled in Llangollen. They are buried now in the parish churchyard, and the last thing that some of our company did in that little Welsh village was to buy the picture of those charming old ladies who had the educated sense to put this among other mottoes upon their walls: "There is no darkness but ignorance." So delightful was that summer day in North Wales that an American citizen forgot it was Independence Day until he was reminded of the fact by a Chester geologist, who presented him with a fossil dug up from carboniferous limestone at Llangollen and labeled "July 4."

Excursions were also made to that old border fortress, Hawarden Castle, where an American visitor saw the "Grand Old Man" driving in the park with his wife. Mrs. Gladstone's orphan boys were playing cricket on the lawn, while a group of aged women, also dependent upon Mrs. Gladstone's bounty, sat under the shade of ancient trees. The boys live in an old manor house and the women in an old brewery close by. Mr. Gladstone did not live in the ruined castle, but in an eighteenth century country house. The old castle was built by the Normans soon after the conquest of Chester on the site of an earlier British hill fort. An interesting description of the ruin was given us by Mr. Henry Taylor, F. S. A. The parish church (built about 1275) and churchyard and the village library at Hawarden are well worth visiting. Li Hung Chang's call upon Gladstone at Hawarden afforded the unique opportunity to a Chester artist of photographing the two grand old statesmen side by side.

Mr. Gladstone's son, the Rt. Hon. H. J. Gladstone, is now a member of Parliament and one of the vice-presidents of the Eighth Summer Assembly of the National HomeReading Union. Mr. Gladstone's younger son, the Rev. S. E. Gladstone, besides the parish church has five other churches and school chapels in his charge and is aided by six curates. The popular village and church festivals held in the great park at Hawarden impress the beholder with the social utility of these great landed estates. In his retirement from public life Mr. Gladstone was still doing great things for popular education. Witness his local addresses and his writings for newspapers and magazines, in the summer of 1896.

At Eaton Hall, the country seat of the Duke of Westminster, the visitor was courteously shown out of marble halls through the front door after seeing the family chapel and the magnificent suite of frescoed rooms. It was pleasant to sit down under a great tree in that noble park.

The Duke of Westminster is the patron of all honest efforts for the public good. He gives all the shilling fees paid by visitors to Eaton Hall to the Chester Infirmary, and raises the annual subscription to the fixed sum of $2,500. He was president of the eighth summer assembly and allowed all the home readers to visit his hall and gardens free of expense. The company afterwards walked through the beauti

ful park to the river Dee and the iron bridge, and there took tea in a restaurant on the bank. Down the river, nearer Chester, is another charming restaurant, at Eccleston Ferry, once popularly known as "Jimmy the Boats." Here tea and nice suppers are served for parties, small or great. The duke allows no intoxicating liquors to be sold upon his estates; consequently, these river restaurants are highly respectable. It is pleasant to see the great number of people from Chester and from the whole country round coming in rowboats or steam launches to these picturesque resorts on the river Dee. They visit Eaton Hall and gardens, stroll through the park, take supper at the bridge or at Eccleston Ferry. Children and young folk dance on the smooth grassy banks of the river and then row back to Chester, singing well-known songs. Next to a walk around the walls of Chester there is nothing so fine as a walk or a boating party up the winding Dee. On one side are groves of lime trees and overhanging woods; on the other, green meadows and distant parish churches. No wonder that Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes were so fond of Chester. The Romans must have built villas on that lovely stream, as the English are doing to day. What strange events the shores of this little river Dee have witnessed! Think of the massacre of the monks of Bangor, 1,200 of them, at the old Roman ford, by Ethelfrid, the Saxon, because they had come out from North Wales to pray for the success of British arms. Picture Edgar in his royal barge with six subject British kings rowing him up and down the river in front of St. John's Church and the "Groves" for a public spectacle. Edgar must have felt, on this occasion, something of that supreme satisfaction which Adonibezek once enjoyed when three score and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under his royal table (Judges i, 7). Summer lectures.-The summer meeting at Chester was not altogether "education by picnic." Almost every day for a week there were morning and evening lectures in Music Hall. Some of the lectures were designed to form a continuation of the studies which had been already pursued at home by the members of the reading union. English history was illustrated by suggestive talks on Sir Robert Walpole, the younger Pitt, and George Washington. Professor Lawrence, formerly of the Chicago University, now rector of the parish of Girton, treated the Father of our Country as a typical Englishman of the eighteenth century.

English literature was represented by lectures on Milton, George Eliot, and Matthew Arnold. A most interesting and novel lecture was that on "Cotton and the cotton industry," by H. Yule Oldham, M. A., lecturer on geography in the University of Cambridge, who showed the world-historic significance of this subject and illustrated it by maps and lantern views. Mr. Oldham has a similar lecture on "Coal.” In no way can the new geography be better presented than in connection with economic history.

Natural science, particularly of the Chester district, was happily taught to young people by Professor Marr, of the University of Cambridge, who lectured on “Geology” and conducted geological expeditions; also by G. F. Scott Elliot, who described the botany of the district, and by Dr. C. W. Kimmins, who talked most delightfully to children on "Flowers and their insect visitors." An enjoyable lecture on "Japan and the Japanese," by the Rev. Walter Weston, was illustrated by lantern slides made by Japanese artists. On the whole, the best educational features of the Chester meeting were the lectures on "Architecture" and the visits to Chester Cathedral and Valle-Crucis Abbey.

There was sufficient variety and recreation in the proceedings to make the assembly at Chester well suited to different tastes and really refreshing to both teachers and students. It is a serions mistake in summer weather for people to take too much intellectual food. Many will profit more by outdoor excursions, by walks and talks in regions of scientific or historical interest. For this reason most stress is laid in this review of the Chester summer meeting upon the object lessons of that wonderful environment. It would be an educational delight for any overworked American professor or teacher to spend his summer vacation in Old World centers of historic

interest and natural beauty. A fortnight at Chester is not too long for a person who likes to combine in a leisurely way summer reading with pleasant excursions to places worth the seeing. Most Americans try to take in Chester, with its two thousand years of history, in a single day or a few hours.

In Watergate street, Chester, there is a quaint old-fashioned timbered house bearing this pious inscription: "God's providence is mine inheritance." Something of the spirit of this house motto comes over the American traveler as he views and reviews the ancient monuments, the medieval walls, churches, abbeys, and cathedrals of England. He rejoices over their preservation through all the storms of war and the devastations of time. Spared to the modern beholder by the divine providence of history, they seem to belong to the living age, and to be as truly the inheritance of appreciative Americans as they are of conservative Englishmen. It was a source of great gratification to an American sojourning in Chester to hear on every hand most grateful expressions by our English kinsmen for what Americans had done to aid the late Dean Howison in his extensive restoration of that ancient cathedral, now the sacred and common inheritance of the English-speaking world.

A SUMMER MEETING IN CAMBRIDGE.

It is now an established custom for one of the two great English universities to become a summer rendezvous for extension students. Oxford has been the center for seven seasons; Cambridge for five. In order to concentrate interest and economize effort the two universities have arranged to hold alternately the summer meeting. It was Cambridge's turn in 1895 to keep open house for visitors, but in midsummer of that year the city streets were torn up for the purpose of introducing a new system of sewers, and so Oxford obligingly took the responsibility of entertaining the summer school. In 1896 Cambridge was in good order and hospitably disposed.

The summer session of 1896 opened Thursday evening, July 30, and lasted until Saturday, August 22. In the absence of the vice-chancellor, the master of Trinity College, Dr. Butler, gave the address of welcome and the opening lecture. He said the university would feel a great pleasure and pride in placing at the service of the visitors any and all of those Cambridge institutions, the oldest and youngest, that conduced to study, and also, if the visitors would condescend to accept them, those that conduced to something less austere than study. He cautioned the students against flitting about from lecture to lecture, from literature to science, and to all parts of the intellectual garden, lest they get somewhat confused, not to say inebriated, by the variety of honey they would gather. He recommended a wise limitation to a small number of serious subjects.

Dr. Butler's own lecture was upon the subject of "William Pitt the younger.” The master of Trinity gaid his object was to create an interest in a great man. There were some great men whose acquaintances in history we could not make unless we were first introduced to their fathers. William Fitt the younger without William Pitt the elder-in a word, Pitt without Chatham-was an incalenlable quantity, like America without a previous England, or university extension without a previous university. Pitt the elder, the great commoner, was the first Englishman of his time, and he made England the first country in the world. He selected those great commanders-Generals Amherst and Wolfe-who won America from France. On the 28th of May, 1759-the year when Wolfe captured Quebecthe younger Pitt was born. Many of his father's finest qualities came to the second Pitt by inheritance. The boy was delicate and was never sent away to a public school, but he came to Pembroke College, Cambridge, at the age of 14.

After the lecture the master of Trinity gave a reception at Trinity Lodge and showed his guests the original letter written by Chatham to Mr. Turner, a tutor of Pembroke, when the boy entered that college. The younger Pitt studied at Cambridge not less than seven years. He entered the House of Commons before he was 22 years of age, and two years later-February 23, 1783-made that speech which