Most significant among the changes which experience and time have brought to pass has been the development on the educational and social side. Always alive to the importance of general education, but unfortunately so proud of the maintenance of public schools that it was disposed to sneer at any learning not to be acquired at them, the American people--that portion of it which foreigners are so apt to overlook when they attempt to characterize us--is seeking to foster in a variety of ways the opportunities for higher learning, and wider intellectual intelligence. Within the last twenty-five years not merely an array of colleges and other educational institutions have sprung into existence, but with them an army of disciples whose clubs and classes and associations for the investigation and study of all the forms of learning from English literature to Sanscrit have given a new tone and stimulus to the social side of American life. An independent, but now generally respectful eagerness to learn has taken the place of an independent ignorance relying upon its own infallibility, which was often worn as a chip upon the shoulder. With it all has been manifest the same originality, independence, and energy of spirit which has been conspicuous from the first. This still serves to handicap as well as to promote progress, for it is apt to beget undue self-confidence and lead our new women and eager youth of both sexes to ignore the accumulated wisdom of older civilizations, and claim a special clearness of vision, the only basis for which is often half-digested superficial knowledge. But educational and professional life all over the country is being constantly enriched by more and more competent students and practitioners who stand not merely for what is best and most earnest in American life, but who typify the true American spirit. While the omniscient class in the population has become less assertive and more humble-minded, the class which was once politically proscribed in some sections of the country because it was cultivated and because it shrugged its shoulders in spite of its breeding, has undergone a transformation also. A large portion of it, always patriotic at heart so far as dying was concerned, has learned to recognize that it must live in sympathy with our republican institutions if it would not be regarded as an exotic, and that aloofness is akin to lack of patriotism. A fringe of vain and more and more extravagant and self-indulgent society exists in our large cities, especially in New York, which affects to claim social superiority to the rest of the population, and is indifferent to national progress and to the best public interests; but it is numerically small, and, except in the newspapers, a very unimportant factor of influence as compared with the already large and growing body of citizens over the country which is eager to live nobly and wisely. This right-minded and aspiring class represents the drawing