[Illustration: DR. W. M. L. COPLIN] In November, 1905, the mayor of Philadelphia bestowed upon Dr. Coplin the highest honors which his adopted city could tender a physician—the appointment of Director of the Department of Public Health and Charities, a position for which he is peculiarly fitted, on account of his rare administrative qualifications. * * * * * Probably the most uplifting tendency of the times is that looking towards the nationalization of instruction in the universities of the chief countries of the world, shown by the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford; the Roosevelt Chair of American Institutions at the University of Berlin, endowed by an American banker; Mr. Stillman’s million-dollar gift to the Beaux Arts in Paris and the American Academy of Art at Rome; the Hyde foundation for Harvard professors at the Sorbonne; the Baron de Coubertin’s prizes at Princeton, Leland Stanford and Tulane Universities; the Duc de Loubat’s foundation for the study of American Antiquities at the National College of France; and the opening, in the University of Paris, of a department for the study of the History and Outlines of American Law. [Illustration: CHARLES F. BEACH, JR.] The Paris Law School has five thousand students—about seven times as many as our largest law schools—and they are drawn from every country in Europe. The effect of such instruction on such a large and influential body of opinion can scarcely be estimated. The lecturer chosen for this course by the University was Mr. Charles Fisk Beach, Jr., who had already discharged similar duties in an American law school and whose writings on American economic topics have been widely quoted. Mr. Beach was born in Kentucky, fifty-two years ago, and is a graduate of Centre College. After completing a law course at Columbia University he went abroad and studied at the University of Paris. He then returned to his native country and began the practice of law, paying especial attention to railway and corporation law, and acting as counsel for various corporations and lecturing on Civil Law and Equity Jurisprudence. In 1896 he established himself as consultation lawyer counsel in London and Paris, this experience further adding to his fitness for the post to which he was chosen by the French university. Mr. Beach’s first year’s work proved so successful that the university extended its scope to include American institutions as well as the history and general outline of our legal system. His field of efforts has been extended also to include alternate lectures at Paris and Lille the first half of the term and at Bordeaux and Toulouse the latter half.