=Progress in Higher Education.=--Let us now turn our attention to the progress that has been made in the field of academic education. It is true that many of the great universities were established centuries ago. These were at first endowed church institutions or theological seminaries; but the great state universities of this country are creations of the progressive period under consideration. General taxation for higher education is comparatively a modern practice. The University of Michigan was one of the first state universities established. Since then nearly every commonwealth, whether it has come into the Union since that time or whether it is one of the older states, has established a university. There has been a great development of higher education by the states. No institutions of the country have grown more rapidly within the last thirty or forty years than the state universities. They have established departments of every kind. Besides the college of liberal arts there are in most of them colleges or schools of law, medicine, engineering in its several lines, education, pharmacy, dentistry, commerce, industrial arts, and fine arts. The state university is abroad in the land; it has, as a rule, an extension department by which it impresses itself upon the people of the state, outside its walls. The principle of higher education by taxation of all the people is no longer questioned; it is no longer an experiment. The state university is relied upon to furnish the country with the leaders of the future--and leaders will always be in demand, for they are always sorely needed.