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soon! And how nobly this fragile untaught girl had acted, thus taking the burden of life into her own delicate hands! Henri took one of those tiny sun-browned hands in his own.

"Dear Ninon, at least, if you can not be Madame la Marquise d'Etoile any longer, you will be my wife and the mistress of Bertram Court." And then, after he had said that, breeze and bird and woodland water sung the old tender tune of youth and happiness together-love, love, love! 'Tis a beautiful tune, easily learned, they say.

"But would you marry me thus, in this dress-the poor little troubadour?" she asked, by and by. "And my poor faithful guitar, too?"

"Would I not marry you in that dress far more proudly than in any other?" was his happy answer.

She looked at him with eyes full of pride and exultation. Ah! that was where the full pathos of the situation

revealed itself. To be wedded like this

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for love, pure love! "Ah! love," she chirped out like a bird.

"You could not kiss me with such a smile as that if you were deceiving me," he said. "Put your hand in mine, Ninon, and swear that no disgrace lies behind this masquerade of yours."

She put her hand, unhesitatingly, in his. "There is no disgrace. I swear it by my love for you, Henri."

And so in due time they were married. They have two homes now-one in Normandy, and one in England, where Ninon is the happy mistress of Bertram Court. But I think their children love the old chateau, the white-capped peasants, and the apple- orchards of Saint Lo, best. They love to drink the yellow cider gushing from the old wooden presses, and say that it is more to their taste than English ale. And, for my part, I agree with them, for I, too, love Normandy.

I

LITERATURE AND ART IN CALIFORNIA.

A QUARTER-CENTENNIAL REVIEW.*

F one may find by the way-side in early spring-time so much as a harebell or dandelion, a springing blade of grass or an unfolding bud, as much real satisfaction may be drawn from these scant treasures as from the more abounding fullness of summer or the mellow ripeness of autumn. In all that relates to education, literature, and art, it is early spring-time in California. What would you have more than some way-side evidences of the serene summer yet to follow, and an intellectual fruitage, of which the gold and purple

* Delivered before the faculty, students, and visitors of the University of California, November 12th, 1875.

of the vintage are but the faintest symbols? What is a quarter of a century in the life of a commonwealth to the rounded centuries which have matured the great universities of Europe, or even the two centuries which have enriched Harvard and Yale? The canvas tents of '49, pitched on the sandy slopes of the peninsula, promised no great city, no perfected system of common schools, no academies and seminaries, and no university planted at Berkeley, in sight from a city of a quarter of a million of inhabitants. The dissolving gravel-beds of a placer-mine and the arid plains were neither symbols of permanence nor of bread. What could you expect in this

stress of humanity, even though the agglomerated community were not lacking in some of the best and bravest of all lands?

There can be no beginning of a commonwealth until a Divine Providence begins to set the solitary in families. Homes, children, the economies of domestic life, the commonwealth of husband and wife, the law of the household, and that human providence which grows tender and thoughtful with each young and dependent life-these are precedent conditions of the future state.

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It was most fitting that a graduate of one of the oldest colleges in the country should have opened the first public school in California. As I read the record, Thomas Douglas, a graduate of Yale College, began a public school in San Francisco on the 3d day of April, 1848. It was a good beginning. But when a few months later nearly the whole population had drifted away to the mines, Douglas was left high and dry on the sand-hills. In the month of April, a year and three weeks later, Reverend Albert Williams opened a select school in the same hamlet, and continued it a few months. The gold-drift was probably too strong for this school also. It dried up in the same sand-hills.

The foundations of the public-school system were laid by a clause in the State Constitution, framed at Monterey in the year 1849, which appropriated the proceeds of 500,000 acres of land as a perpetual school-fund. In December of the same year, the Common Council of San Francisco authorized John C. Pelton to open a public school in the Baptist Chapel on Washington Street. This solitary teacher began his school on the 26th day of December, 1849, with three scholars. It was a day of small things. But the germ of the free-school system was there. Its roots had even then gone down under the very foundations of the commonwealth. Twenty-five years

from that date 100,000 children were enrolled as attendants upon the 1,500 public schools of California. The annual expenditure for these schools exceeded $2,000,000. The expenditure in 1873 was $2,113,356, and the valuation of school property in that year was $4,057,415-45. There are also not less than 12,000 pupils in attendance upon various private schools in the State. The educational work in California, which stops short of the college or university, is prosecuted at an annual cost of not less than $2,500,000. There are also ten colleges, besides the six associated colleges which are crowned by the University; two medical schools, two theological seminaries, one military academy, and about a dozen academies and seminaries devoted to secondary instruction. The California Academy of Sciences and the San Francisco Art School are justly entitled to a place in this review; and not less so the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Asylum, and the Normal School. Let us take account also of the 175,000 books to be found this day in the nearly 100 public libraries in the State, and of the rich collections at Santa Clara and at Berkeley, illustrating every department of the natural sciences.

Nor can any complete presentation of the educational forces and influences of this State be made which does not include the large number of excellent denominational schools which, although not free, are supported by the voluntary contributions of the public. Working in their own way, and on a system peculiarly their own, the Catholic fathers have built up, besides other institutions, the prosperous college of Santa Clara, endowing it with the most complete philosophical apparatus and one of the best libraries on the Pacific Coast. The College of Notre Dame, three miles distant from the former, in point of numbers and endowment leads all the female seminaries in the State.

And all true scholarship has breadth and catholicity. Let not ours be impeached by ignoring what others have done in the domain of letters and science. The fact is none the less significant that the public school, with its canvas roof and three scholars in 1849, is crowned by the University of California in 1875.

But let it go upon the record that no truer corner-stone was ever laid for liberal education than that which the pioneers laid for the College of California.* It had its inception in the Contra Costa Academy, established at Oakland as early as 1853, by the late President Durant. It has continued as a preparatory school, under various names, for sixteen years. That college graduated six classes, and transferred three undergraduate classes, its corner-stone, and its unquenched spirit to our University. Possibly the pioneer educators builded better than they knew. Douglas, the master of arts of Yale, setting the first stakes in the sand-hills; Pelton, with his three scholars; Marvin, the first State Superintendent of Public Schools, who, having made a campaign against the Indians, turned over his emoluments to the school-fund; Nevins, who drew the first school- ordinance for San Francisco; Brayton, who conducted for years the most successful preparatory school in the State, a brave, patient, and lovable man, whose life went out all too soon in the midst of his noble work; Durant, who, beginning at the foundations, saw the University with the clear vision of a prophet, and lived to see the fruition of his hopes-the gentle and pro* Reverend Samuel H. Willey, late Vice-president of the College of California, procured from the first Legislature, sitting at San José, a general law in corporating colleges, one of the precedent conditions being that there should be a property valuation of $20,000. At his instance, lands were donated at San José for a college; but, on account of the unsettled condition of titles, satisfactory proof could not

the wise and firm civil magistrate, who in the richness of his intellect, the purity of his soul, and the steadfastness of his friendship, was more than president, magistrate, or scholar. Tompkins, as a legislator and as regent, worked with unflagging zeal for the University, and fitly crowned that work by endowing, out of his moderate fortune, the first professorship. When he had made his last public speech in behalf of the institution for which he had wrought so well, it remained for him to enter into the sacred guild of those pioneers who had gone a little before.

The name of one living educator ought to be mentioned here: Gilman, the second president, whose organizing mind grasped every detail of the University, who wrought effectively for it by day and planned wisely for it by night—a man of rare executive ability, who seemed halfunconscious of his own power to influence men in behalf of the great interests for which he wrought. Let it be said of him that he bore himself in his high office with a patience and dignity befitting the devoted Christian gentleman and accomplished scholar. Such a man rarely misses his place, because he is a citizen of the world of letters. It is here for a few years, and on the other side of the country for more. But here or there I think he will never need a better testimonial than that which his work will offer.

Some good work has also been done in a scientific way. The geological survey of this State was arrested by the impatience of the people for immediate results. The topographical survey alone, than which nothing better has ever been done in this country, was more than an equivalent for the entire outlay. There will come a time when the practical value of such an enterprise will be better understood. The physical problems in a single State like California could not

be made that the property was actually worth the be solved in half a century. Was it found scholar, the dignified president,

amount required by the statute.

well to ask a scientific commission to solve them and publish the results in a few months?

Through the munificence of a single citizen, the Academy of Sciences has been handsomely endowed, and will soon be equipped for effective work. Through the same liberality an observatory, with one of the largest telescopes of modern times, will soon be under the control of the University, and will, for all practical purposes, become a part of its scientific inventory, which year by year will become richer in the resources that make all growth, all researches, and all culture possible.

The public journal, as a factor in education, is here as elsewhere the outgrowth of our civilization. It embodies the passions, caprices, and enterprises of the community. In its best estate it gives the history of the world for one day. In its poorest estate it is content with a patent outside, the puffing of some mountebank, and the abuse of rivals. But at the close of this quartercentury the only complete history of the rise and progress of this commonwealth is that which the newspapers contain. I have seen an artist sketch an accurate likeness of his friend on his thumb-nail. But the modern newspaper every day sketches the likeness, the pulse, and the throbbing heart of the civilized world.

Just as the ideal state is something far in advance of the actual, so the ideal newspaper is something far better than exists on this side of the continent. Here as elsewhere it is largely the product of steamships, railroads, and telegraphs. The best journals here have hardly yet escaped the limitations of a somewhat narrow provincialism. They are in transition from an isolated and pioneer condition to one of greater breadth, a better tone, and a more judicial temper. But the journal of the future will, after all, be very much what the community makes it. It is the child of civiliza

tion, going forward with the community to a better condition, or going backward with it to coarseness and barbarism. The best newspaper a hundred years ago was a poor affair. A hundred years hence, the journal of to-day will probably be viewed with as much interest for what it lacks as for what it contains.

Our ideal newspaper will pander to no mean prejudices. It will be no generator of slang phrases. It will not murder the king's English. It will have ripe and well-digested opinions. It will not truckle to base men. It will not sneer at religion. It will keep its editorial columns above all just suspicion of purchase. It will leave garbage in the gutter. It will assail no man unjustly, nor fear to defend any man or interest because he or it may be obscure or unpopular. No good citizen will fear the honest journal of the future, and no bad man will like it.

The conduct of a successful journal in any large city will hereafter require not only the best executive ability, but as broad and varied a culture in the editorial department as is found in any other profession. These are now the conditions of success in the metropolis of this State. Pioneer journalism has come to be well-nigh a thing of the past. It is retreating by the back door, and if bowed out respectfully, and with an appreciative estimate of its more salient features, we shall no more want it back again, with its coarse vituperation, its fierce and often brutal spirit, its lack of breadth and tone, than we shall want the moth-eaten blankets which once made up the luxuriant bed of the tired tramp or the tireless prospector.

Observe how the outer bark of the madroño and eucalyptus, with the coming of every summer, bursts, rolls up, and falls to the ground as so much rubbish. That is a sign of expanding life. A great deal of newspaper rubbish

to-day is a sign of growth. The outer rind and husk of things fall to the ground by that vital force which is continually developing a larger and nobler life in the community. But in your estimate of the press, count it not a small thing that it has fostered and defended that system of public education which is the glory of the State. You will need its influence in this behalf a thousand-fold more in the future. You will need that public sentiment which it has power to create and confirm. It is not the diviner's rod, but the rod tipped with burnished metal, which conducts a subtile and dangerous element from the angry heavens to the ground. In this threatened play of dangerous elements-dangerous because subtile and half-unknown-you will need the press to draw them from the disturbed social atmosphere and conduct them safely into the ground.

I cherish the hope that on this very ground some of the best journalists of the near future may be trained. Not that universities and colleges can make editors. For if that were so there would be thousands of capable men in the place of the small number in the upper rank of this profession. But never before did the curriculum of the modern university furnish so good an outfit for the future editor. The very exigencies of his profession require that he should know something about every human interest. Observe that no man will hereafter go to the head of this profession without fair scholarship, a wide range of observation, a large capacity, to deal in a general way with human affairs, and that keen insight which catches the spirit and essence of this on-going life. Most difficult of all is a certain power of statement which no school can teach, and without which the highest plane of the journalist can not be reached. Your long story will not be heard. The world is waiting for the man of condensation. Tell it in few words. If you can mas

ter this high eclecticism of thought and statement, I know of no more promising field for a young man to-day than that of journalism. If you can not, the potato-field in a season of blight is quite as promising.

Without this broader culture for the journalist, there will be great danger that the exigencies of his work will make him a superficial man. The habit will grow upon him of touching merely the surface of things. He will come to think that, as his journal is only for the day, his errors are for the day also. The habit of careful investigation and exactness of thought and statement will be discarded for random guesses and the temporary expedients of the hour. Nothing but the balancing influence of generous culture will arrest this lapsing tendency. It will be disclosed in platitudes and commonplaces; in writing against space, and in that dreadful amplitude which buries a thought under a mountain of verbiage. Nor will the larger equipment of the university avail, unless one shall be able to carry both the discipline of study and the love of literature along with him into his profession. If he lets the dust gather upon his modern classics, or fails to know something of the range of modern scientific discovery, as well as the best thought which gets into the periodical literature of the day, he will sooner or later write himself out. His slipshod days will come, when he will be running round in little circles, originating nothing fresh and new, but as content to overtake an old thought every few months as an impoverished toper may be to swallow the "heel-taps" of a country barroom.

Observe, too, that for lack of this better mental equipment, what a fearful defilement of speech has originated in the local department of modern journalism. Is it not a reproach to the profession that so many scholars, referring to these

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