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qualified to preside at a female college. Need we say that what would be very passable taste in a boy's school might be execrable in a girl's school? Surely more refinement and delicacy are expected from young ladies than from boys or even young gentlemen; but must not the former as well as the latter take a part, at least, of their tone from the head of the institution in which they are educated.

Far be it from us to insinuate that Dr. Raymond would intentionally teach the young ladies under his charge any bad habits; all we allege is that he is liable, under the circumstances, to commit some awkward blunders while meaning to be very courteous and respectful. He has committed some, even in his catalogue, which are rather amusing. Thus, in the list of "Officers of Government and Instruction," he gives, "Hannah W. Lyman, Lady Principal." Now, in the name of common sense, does not any one know that Hannah is not the name of a gentleman? But assuming it to be necessary and proper to put "Lady" after Hannah, why is it not equally so to put it after Maria and Alida? Why not say, "Maria Mitchell, Lady Professor of Astronomy, and Lady Director of the Observatory," and, "Alida C. Avery, M. D., Lady Professor of Physiology and Hygiene and Lady Resident Physician?" Or why not say, per contra, "John H. Raymond, LL. D., Gentleman Principal,” or Gentleman President?" This would at least be consistent.

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With the same regard to propriety and chasteness, every word supposed to mean anything important has its initial letter a capital, such as, "Department," "Course," "Regular Course," "Theory," "Art, "Musical Theory,' "Choral Class," "Music," "History," "Professor," "Library," etc. All these occur in the text in less than a page and a half (pp. 22, 23), without either beginning a sentence or forming a heading. As for "Lady Principal," "President," "Department," "College," "Professor," " Teacher," etc., they occur in almost every page, sometimes most of them in every sentence (Vide pp. 24, 25).

Some two or three years since we criticised certain of of our male colleges for this sort of vulgarity, but they were sensible enough to take it in good part, admit their error

and avoid it in future; so that now they do not use one capital for every twenty they were wont to use.*

We hope the editor of the Vassar catalogue will become somewhat less inflated also in this respect, if only to suggest to the students that it is not dress or loud emphatic talk that constitutes a lady, but rather modesty and a somewhat subdued tone.

It is somewhat curious that in the same list of "Officers " Dr. Alida Avery and Maria Mitchell appear as "Professors," while Elizabeth L. Geigher and Jessie Usher appear as "Teachers," one of the Greek language, the other of the Latin language. Another lady appears in the same list as "Instructor;" and, between two "Teachers," as if she required to get occasional lessons, appears another who is styled "Assistant to the Lady Principal," whatever that may

mean!

As for the curriculum of Vassar, it might satisfy the most learned of the German universities; for our own part we can remember no branch of human knowledge which it does not include. When a young lady of sixteen can translate and write Greek and Latin, speak French, German, and Italian, calculate the orbits of comets and the occultations of Jupiter's satellites, &c., we think she is fairly entitled to a diploma. Yet it would seem that such a phenomenon would not be entirely new. Juvenal speaks of a lady who was so learned that she was able, singly, to relieve the moon when suffering an eclipse!

Una laboranti poterit succurrere lunæ.

As for her logic, he says it was such that the grammarians yielded to her at once; the rhetoricians were confuted, the whole company silenced; neither lawyer nor crier could put in a word, &c. But as Dr. Raymond is not only president of Vassar College, but also " Professor of Mental and

* Vide Nat. Qr. Rev. Nos. XVIII and XXII; Arts. " Commencements of Colleges," etc.

† Cedunt grammatici, vincuntur rhetores, omnis

Turba tacet; nec causidicus, nec præco loquatur,
Altera nec mulier.-Juv. Sat. vi. 438.

Moral Philosophy," we have some confidence that matters will not be allowed to go to extremes. Most readily do we admit that he is a discreet and modest gentleman; and then has he not the "Lady Principal," and the " Assistant to the Lady Principal," nay, the whole "Faculty," to aid him in arriving at a conclusion?

We confess that the transition from Vassar College to Dr. Van Norman's Young Ladies' School, in Thirty-Eighth street, New York, is quite a relief to us. Here there is no ostentation; no attempt to cast the University, or Columbia College into the shade, not to mention Gottingen or the French Academy. Yet, if we wanted a passage from some Latin author well translated, or any other piece of work which an educated, accomplished lady would be expected to perform, we should have much more faith in going to Thirty-Eighth street than to Poughkeepsie. The average number of pupils at the Van Norman school during the past year was 140, and we are glad to learn, that high as its character has been for years, it had never so efficient a corps of teachers, or so encouraging a prospect as it has for the school year just commenced.

It must not be supposed, however, that we would sneer at a good female institution merely because it is called a college; still less would we do so because it is a country college. We once criticised a female university which was situated in the most fashionable part of the Fifth Avenue; but that we did not do so on account of its name, is now sufficiently known.

We do not, for example, criticise Rutgers Female College; on the contrary, we say that it deserves to be supported for the good work it does. We have never been on very intimate terms with Dr. Pierce, its president; there have been years during which we had certainly no reason to abstain from criticising Rutgers under his auspices, had we thought it deserved it; but to this day we never have. We are glad to know that the institution is now in a condition which does much credit to his judgment, energy, and perseverance. We have before us a copy of his Address to the second graduating class of Rutgers Col

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lege, and it affords us pleasure to copy an extract or two from it, by way of contrast with the Vassar style of addressing young ladies. Speaking of the necessity of self-examination in the sense of the divine Plato, as well as of the Christian moralist, Dr. Pierce pertinently remarks:

"Therefore, in the course of a liberal education, the youth should be made to study the soul itself. Of what avail is it that he study the globe, and the adaptation of its continents and isles to the great families of mankind; that with the chemist, he analyze the varied forms of earth and air; that with the naturalist, he study the grasses that clothe the earth, or the animals that feed upon them; that with the geologist, he trace backward to the birth of time the changes of the globe, and read in the rocks and hills the history of the world before man was created; that with the mathematician and geometrician, he investigate the numbers and forms in harmony with which the universe was made; or that with the astronomer, he study the planetary or stellar systems? 'What good to him to have searched the vast aerial domes, and traversed, in his soul, the heaven's infinity,' unless he study the soul itself, by whose powers he is enabled to comprehend these marvellous high works?"

But the president of Rutgers utters still wiser and more useful words. He puts his students on their guard against allowing their education to lead them beyond their sphere, into the domain of the ruder sex-in a word, he warns them against the "Woman's Rights" mania. We are sorry we can only make room for a mere fragment:

"In my Baccalaureate address to the first graduating class of this College, and on other occasions, I trust I have sufficiently shown my sympathy with all judicious efforts to widen the sphere of woman; but I am here constrained, in view of the feverish and disorganizing tendencies of the times, earnestly to impress upon you the great truth that, whether in circumstances of individual concern, or in those affecting the general condition of the sex, it is wisest and best for you to be in sympathy with the customs and laws written on your own souls, and approved by the wisdom of ages, rather than with those women who exhaust all their powers of thought and capacity of feeling, in an absurd protest against the inexorable fact that God in His wisdom hath not made them men!"

If all who have charge of female institutions would address their students in this spirit, there would be much less indelicacy than there is much more modesty; and we can

assure our educators that this is the wish of the American people. It is because so much of the "Woman's Rights" doctrine is taught both by precept and example at our female seminaries, that such a large number of the more thoughtful and enlightened class of Protestants, in all parts of the country, send their daughters to the Catholic convents, where they know they will be taught to comport themselves in a womanly manner; and it is for the opposite reason that so many of our seminaries fail, or only succeed at best in drag ging out a sickly existence. Dr. Raymond would only have to turn his attention to the neighborhood of his late "Polytechnic Institute," to find more than one example of this, from which he may learn a useful lesson. Only a few brief years ago there was a flourishing female seminary on Brooklyn Heights, but if it exists now at all, it is only in a decrepit state. Within the same period the institutions of Drs. Van Norman and Pierce had a pretty hard struggle to sustain themselves, whereas now both flourish in vigorous. but friendly rivalry.

ART. VI.-Reports of Strike-Meetings and other Documents, 1868.

FROM time to time there appear in our daily papers accounts of associated "strikes" of employed persons for more wages, and less daily work, and lists of corresponding organi zations of employers to protect rights which they claim likewise for themselves.

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We do not intend to dwell upon these controversies, their spirit or their deeds, but considering the actual state of things bad, we propose to examine where justice and right lie,—what are the true principles which regulate the amount of wages, and how we can determine it in any case of hiring. We get no light on this, which one would think the main point, from the proceedings of the opposing associations, as we get no polity or statesmanship from political meetings. Misrepresenting crimination and recrimination, and the individual interest, self-aggrandizement, conceit, or vanity of the

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