addition table, while the third makes each addition by counting on his fingers, the three are presently out of sight of one another, whatever the rates at which the processes involved are performed. The lightning adder may proceed more leisurely than either of the others. He steps a league while they are bustling over furlongs or inches. Now, the ability to take league steps in receiving telegraphic messages, in reading, in addition, in mathematical reasoning, and in many other fields, plainly depends upon the acquisition of league-stepping habits. No possible proficiency and rapidity in elementary processes will serve. The learner must come to do with one stroke of attention what now requires half a dozen, and presently, in one still more inclusive stroke, what now requires thirty-six. He must systematize the work to be done, and must acquire a system of automatic habits corresponding to the system of tasks. When he has done this he is master of the situation in his field. He can, if he chooses, deal accurately with minute details. He can swiftly overlook great areas with an accurate sense of what the details involved amount to--indeed, with far greater justice to details than is possible for one who knows nothing else. Finally, his whole array of habits is swiftly obedient to serve in the solution of new problems. Automatism is not genius, but it is the hands and feet of genius." "=A vague Impression of Beauty.="--The following sentences occur in an article on The Real purpose of Universities in a recent issue of the London Spectator. They give so strange a picture of the ideals of the two leading English universities as to seem worthy of reproduction: "However, Dr. Hill made one statement for which we owe him a sincere gratitude. 'The excellence of the classics,' said he, 'lay chiefly in their complete uselessness.' ... In this simple statement is expressed the true value of our old universities. They should be practically useless. They should not teach you to be a good carpenter or a skillful diplomatist. You can not march out of Oxford or Cambridge into any career which will return you an immediate and efficient income.... The other universities of Europe are prepared to cut you to a certain measure, or to render you technically competent. But our English universities have hitherto declined to discharge this humble function, save in rare lapses, from a noble ideal. They at least profess to accomplish a far greater task. There is a strange period dividing the man from the boy, which clamors aloud for intelligent discipline, and this discipline Oxford and Cambridge are anxious to supply. The undergraduate is too young to specialize, and not too old to receive instruction. When his period of training is finished he is asked to assume the heavy burdens of life, to discharge tasks which may be dull, and which are rarely concerned with what were once called the humanities. As he passes through the university he may not have