When, however, we turn to those other departments of study still graciously referred to as the “humanities,” departments which older graduates and commencement orators still tell us embrace the subjects of the deepest human interest, the disparity in material equipment is commonly so great as to be almost ludicrous. Who, of the thousands that yearly are driven or besought to drink deep at the wells of literature, or history, or philosophy, in our American colleges or universities, can fail to recall the desolate class-rooms, their bare and dingy walls, relieved at the most by a few old maps, or a faded photograph or two in heavy wooden frames, the floors swept once a week and washed once a term, the hand-carved chairs and benches, the chalk-dusted platform and desk, and the foul air, which, in the majority of such institutions, enshrine the daily life of academic culture? Where the teacher of science is freely accorded a lecture room for his department alone, the teacher of language, history, or economics must, as a rule, share his quarters, poor as they are, with those of his colleagues whose principal apparatus is books, and must vacate his room promptly to make way for another class at the next hour. Many a high school does better for its teachers than this; indeed, the best of our modern high schools, bearing in mind the grade of their work, offer almost infinitely superior facilities for work in these departments than does the average college or university. Widespread and depressing as this condition is, in general, in all of the departments named, the particular illustration which I wish to use at this time is that afforded by history and the related subjects of political and social science and political economy. Applying the test that the equipment of a department should be determined by the nature of the material with which the department deals, it is obvious that we have here a subject in which printed matter of a variety of forms, manuscripts, maps and charts, pictures and casts, and actual historical objects or reproductions, form the material basis for the student’s work. Where the chemist uses books and apparatus, the historical student uses books and other material as apparatus. For the modern study of history, even of the elementary sort, one must be enabled to examine not only single books, such as may be got from a library and perused at leisure in one’s home, but also extended sets and collections of books and papers, and this under conditions which will admit of comparison and note-taking and the use of the volumes in the actual work of the class-room. For the preparation of maps and charts, facilities in the way of tables and instruments are required entirely beyond what the student can fairly be expected to have in his own room; while especially is there need of abundant space for the permanent display of wall-maps, charts, pictures, and illustrative material,