anything can be that faithful endeavor will bring expertness in the use of English. If we are watchful of our speech, making our words continually more minutely true, free and resourceful; if we look upon our occasions of writing as opportunities for the deliberate work of unified construction; if in all our utterances we think of him who hears as well as of him who speaks; and above all, if we fix the attention of ourselves and our hearers on the matter we talk about and so let ourselves be supported by our subject--we shall make a daily advance not only in English study, but in personal power, in general serviceableness and in consequent delight. V DOUBTS ABOUT UNIVERSITY EXTENSION[1] A step has lately been taken in American education which excites the interest and hopes of us all. England has been our teacher,--England and a persuasive apostle from that country. A few years ago the English universities became discontented with their isolation. For generations they had been devoting themselves to a single class in the community, and that too a class which needed least to be brought to intelligence and power. The mass of the nation, those by whom its labor and commerce were conducted, had little access to Oxford and Cambridge. Poverty first, then social distinctions, and, until recent days, sectarian haughtiness barred them out. Their exclusion reacted on the training of the universities themselves. Conservatism flourished. The worth of an intellectual interest was rated rather by its traditional character than by its closeness to life. The sciences, latter-day things, were pursued hardly at all. The modern literatures, English included, had no place. Plato and Aristotle furnished most of the philosophy. While the rest of the world was deriving from Germany methods of study, from France methods of exposition, and from America methods of treating all men alike as rational, English scholarship, based on no gymnasia, lycées, or high schools, went its way, little regarding the life of its nation or that of the world at large.