higher studies, and not perceiving anything unwomanly or undesirable in larger knowledge and stricter intellectual training, invites Hypatia and Mrs. Somerville and Maria Mitchell to avail themselves of her opportunities and resources to prosecute their studies, and recognizes that in a modern world of larger and juster views, which permits women to use every industrial faculty to the utmost, and to own property and dispose of it, it is useless longer to insist with chivalry that woman is a goddess "too bright and good," or with the Orient that she is a slave in this world and a houri in the next.

As for the logic of such an invitation, Yale is doubtless indifferent. She invites women to study not with her undergraduates, but with her post-graduates. Probably she recoils with instinctive conservatism from the vision of a possible Hypatia seated among her faculty in a professorial chair. That might do in Alexandria in the fifth century. But in New Haven in the nineteenth, or even the twentieth-? She recoils still further from the prospect of co-voting. Elizabeth Tudor was a creditable head of a kingdom and a fellow-counsellor of state with Burleigh and Walsingham. But does it follow that a Connecticut woman possessed of great estates should have a voice in the disposition of her property? Probably Yale would agree that when all such amply endowed women unite in asking for such a voice, it might be worth while to consider. Meanwhile she opens the hospitable doors of her post-graduate intellectual treasury, and every woman who will may enter and share the riches.

Oliver asked for more, but not until he had consumed his portion. The comely maid of the omnibus smiles as she sees those treasury doors hospitably opening. She seems perhaps to see the stream of logic at once vanishing and reappearing. If a woman may mingle wisely with post graduates, why not with under-but no. Something, she would say with womanly good sense, may be left to time and the inevitable sequence of events. Shall all be done at once, and the sound seed be spurned because it must be planted and grow and ripen before there is a harvest? In this Columbian year shall we think that nothing was gained when Columbus reached San Salvador, as we used to be taught, or Watling Island, or Grand

Turk, or Samana, among which bewildered knowledge now doubtfully gropes --because he had not reached the continent, and because he believed it to be the old and not a new India?

That comely damsel, with her face. toward the morning, says, quietly, with Durandarte, "patience, and shuffle the cards." One glance at the woman in the Athens of Pericles and at woman in the New Haven of President Dwight answers the question which the nimble elderly wit eluded.

A LATE little incident discloses the defect of a favorite American theory. The theory-and it is one in which this year we are all peculiarly interested-is this, that a popular election expresses the popular view upon great public questions. The orators about to sally forth to take the stump are already whetting their best phrases, and none has a finer edge than that which is attributed to Talleyrand, at whose door all such orphaned and abandoned phrases are left, so that his name is a vast foundling hospital for stray remarks of political cleverness that nobody claims. This one is the familiar saying that everybody knows more than anybody.

But it is rather perilous to assume that ten millions of votes represent what may be truthfully described as the political views of ten millions of voters. Such a vote is undoubtedly the best practicable system yet devised for ascertaining the personal preferences of ten millions of people, but not their views or opinions. Undoubtedly there is a due proportion of views or convictions among that great number of votes. But a very large part is composed of whims, prejudices, personal interests, bargains, bribes, and ignorance. A dull Sclavonian fraudulently naturalized yesterday, a Hungarian iron-worker guiltless of knowledge of the English tongue, and hosts and hordes of such extempore citizens, have no views in American politics, and their opinions represent nothing of what a vote stands for in our theory of popular elections.

The illustration that the Easy Chair had in mind, however, was the result instinctively attributed to a reputed remark of the American Secretary of the Treasury when recently in England. He had crossed the ocean after a long illness, to complete his recovery, and the alert inter

viewer ran him down in London, and in a conversation reported him to have made use of a descriptive phrase in regard to a class of American voters which it is wholly improbable that he did use. The Secretary was reported to have alluded to "clam-mouthed Irishmen," and it was at once felt by his amazed countrymen, from the Penobscot to the Rio Grande, that he had ruined his political career. A British radical member of Parliament once said to the Easy Chair that Mr. Chamberlain could never be Prime Minister, because in a public speech, replying to a charge of "ratting," he had said "the Tories at least are gentlemen," implying that his late Liberal associates were not.

The Secretary of the Treasury is a public man of great experience as a politician, and there is no class of our fellowcitizens which the practical politician is less likely to offend than those of Irish birth or descent. Nothing was more improbable than that he had described them by an offensive epithet. But the peril was perceived instantly, and a message was promptly cabled from the other side to the effect that the Secretary had not said clam-mouthed, but flannel-mouthed. This was much as if a school-boy, having made a blot of ink upon his writing-book, should try to rub it out with his finger. The incident became more ludicrous, but the certain result no better. The public man who could speak of an Irishman in a contemptuous phrase, or even a phrase susceptible of a suspicion of derision, might prepare with Wolsey to bid farewell to all his greatness.

It seems to be pure comedy, but it is not. It is such considerations that determine what is called the availability of candidates. They may be men of the loftiest character and the greatest ability, with knowledge and experience of public affairs, and of a distinct political genius, but if they have said upon a subject wholly unconnected with public affairs something offensive to a large body of voters who agree with their public views, they are nevertheless unavailable. The vote of those voters does not represent convictions or views of public questions, but simply personal dislike. The Secretary of the Treasury is identified with certain views and policies in public affairs.

But were he nominated for office as their representative, thousands of those who agree with him would vote against

him if he had described their ancestors, even with sincere scientific conviction, as ring-tailed baboons.

The moral of these observations is that a popular election does not by any means' represent popular opinion upon a great question, unless the preponderance of the majority is so overwhelming as to be inferred fairly to have swallowed up the feelings wholly unrelated to the real issues of the election. It is but one of many and various illustrations of the same fact. Few important elections are now decided without the open charge by the defeated party that the result was determined by "boodle." That is to say, that the result is not an indication of public opinion, but of private swindling. It is possible to sympathize with the Irishman who avenges what he feels to be an insult to his race and kindred by voting against a candidate whom he believes to be their traducer. But when elections are decided by boodle, they have become games of the same moral dignity with those that are played at Homburg and Monaco.

So long as it may be truly said that a Senatorship or a Governorship is sold for money, the theory that elections represent the will of the people is an amusing fancy of the Reverend John Jasper.

THE other day a row of trees planted by Alexander Hamilton were offered for sale, and were bought by Mr. O. B. Potter, a man of public spirit, who, although he hardly sympathizes with the political views of the Federalist leader, cherishes a patriotic respect for the memory of a great American statesman. It was a touching bit of sentiment, and of a kind that is not common among us. Mr. Potter will perhaps reserve a little ground about the trees for a seat or two, and may even contemplate ultimately a bust or statue of Hamilton in a grove of meditation within sight of Weehawken, across the Hudson River. Trees, associated with famous men, are beautiful memorials. The winds sigh in their foliage, birds sing in their boughs, their shade solicits the traveller, and nature renews their charm with every year.

Wordsworth had a sensitive feeling for this sylvan association, and often celebrates it. In the grounds of his friend Sir George Beaumont he placed the inscription beginning:

"The embowering rose, the acacia, and the pine Will not unwillingly their place resign, If but the cedar thrive that near them stands, Planted by Beaumont's and by Wordsworth's hands."

And for a stone on his own grounds of Rydal Mount the poet wrote--and the strain was like a rippling brook—

"In these fair vales hath many a tree

At Wordsworth's suit been spared; And from the builder's hand this stone, For some rude beauty of its own,

Was rescued by the bard.

So let it rest; and time will come
When here the tender-hearted
May heave a gentle sigh for him

As one of the departed."

So under Hamilton's trees the musing citizen may pace, and like the village maiden at her wheel, revolve the sad vicissitude of things.

But, as Sir Boyle Roche might have said, if the Hamilton trees had been houses overtaken by the city, their fate I would be different. One historic building, indeed, remains, and thus far defies the encroaching town. This is Fraunce's tavern, at the corner of Broad and Pearl streets, in which Washington took leave of his officers. It has the further interest that from its windows the guests gazed upon the procession that escorted Washington from Franklin Square through Pearl Street to Broad, and up Broad to Wall, to be inaugurated President. old building is called Washington's headquarters, and externally is little changed from the time when, "with a heart full of love and gratitude," the commanderin-chief lifted his glass and drank to his comrades.

The

Such buildings, however, are few in the city, and the city consequently loses the charm which is so constant in the great cities of Europe. One reason for the paucity, however, does not accuse our sentiment. The noted buildings were frequently of wood, and in themselves more perishable. The historic sense, too, was wanting in the people. Hereafter buildings of a real interest are more likely to be retained, both because of their more permanent material and of a finer national consciousness. In Washington, for instance, whatever provision may be made for the residence of the President, the White House would hardly be removed to make room for another official mansion upon its site. The loss of such

buildings is, indeed, a sentimental loss, is the name of the deepest human emobut despite the disrepute of the word, it tions. It is a sentiment only which would be gratified by seeing the house in which John Jay was born, or Washington Irving. But what takes us to Rome? What is the spell of Venice, where

"Silent rows the songless gondolier"?

of Salamis? of Marathon? Long ago, in the golden days of the lecture lyceum, Ik Marvel read a delightful essay on the uses of beauty. Even Jeremy Bentham would agree that real estate does not depreciate in a region hallowed by sentiment, and that life is richer where, while the sense of comfort is placated, the imagination is pleased. Emerson says that nobody owns the landscape. But every land-owner knows that a beautiful and noble prospect enhances the value of an estate. whole city has an interest in the removal of Columbia College to its new home, because its settlement there will be its permanent foundation on a fitting and beautiful site, securing to the city always a delightful and studious resort, and an endless source of the purest intellectual association.

The

The whole power of association is a sentiment, and, meditating under the trees of Hamilton which the thoughtful care of Mr. Potter has preserved for us, we are now ready for the remark of Dr. Johnson which the patient reader has been awaiting, perhaps the most familiar of all his remarks-"That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona." The doctor differed from General Hamilton; he thought taxation without representation to be no tyranny, and it is doubtful whether Hamilton could have converted him. But if they could stroll together under Hamilton's trees to-day, contemplating the scene and considering the work of a century, perhaps the tough old Tory might concede that Hamilton was not altogether wrong.

THE attitude of an Easy Chair is one of observation. It was the instinct of the ancestors of the modern colloquial essay that one called his lucubrations the Tatler, and the other the Spectator. As the Yankee rustic is said to have entered the

shop of Messrs. Call and Tuttle, and to have remarked to the urbane clerk who awaited his commands, "Well, sir, I have called, and now I should like to tuttle," those fathers of the gossiping essay observed and tattled. But there is no fresher or more vital strain in literature, because it is the talk of literary artists of what they saw. The essays are fine examples of what has been called in the adjacent Study literary realism.

If the Freeholder, the close kinsman of the Spectator, were observing our political life to-day as he observed that of England, and more especially of London, nearly two centuries ago, he would certainly have remarked a recent illustration of the power of public opinion in this neighborhood. The Freeholder made the best of the situation for the first George, and may have been suspected of some personal interest in the prosperity of the Whigs. But it is pleasant to see how the times with which he dealt live upon his page. Turning his glass upon this later day and its events, his conclu-, sion would be that the great conservative force in a modern community, public opinion, was never more healthful and active than in ours.

The sudden passage of a law devoting part of Central Park to a speedway--a phrase which describes a race-course as gently as sample-room describes what our plainer parents knew as a grog-shopits prompt Executive approval, and the immediate action by the municipal park authorities, startled and aroused the city very much as the arrival of the tea-ships in Boston aroused that sensitive and patriotic town more than a hundred years ago. New York is a good-natured community, and generally tolerant of public official excesses, because of its conscious helplessness, and of a public indolence which recoils from the labor and cost of perpetual conflict. Reversing the usual course of war, the city is beleaguered from within rather than from without, and now and then, pushed a little beyond the point of endurance, it tries a turn with the enemy, and is generally worsted and dispersed.

But the city is fond of its Park, and prefers to retain it for the enjoyment of all the people; and the law, which proposed to sacrifice much of its beauty and convenience to the pleasure of a few, with consequences that promised to baffle and

annul its original and essential purpose, produced a general and active protest, and for a few days the scene recalled the excitement of Boston hurrying to the town meeting, and finally to the tea-ships to throw the tea overboard.

A law passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor is presumably the act of the people by their freely chosen representatives. But this was a law which affected chiefly the people not of the State, but of the city, and the protest was so strong and so universal that it was plain the representatives misrepresented the people. The press thundered against the project; committees were organized; subscriptions poured in; a great public meeting was electrified by eloquent appeals; a committee of eminent citizens was appointed to proceed to Albany and ask the repeal of the law. Simultaneously the Mayor, admonished by the impressive demonstration, called a halt; the park authorities reversed their action, and revoked the order to proceed with the work. The tea should not be landed. But whether it shall be thrown overboard, whether the law shall be repealed, is still unsettled as the Easy Chair is compelled to take down its glass.

But it is a pleasant illustration of public opinion correcting the action of its own agents, even when that action has become invested with the dignity and force of law, but correcting it by entirely lawful methods. It is a demonstration of the spirit of prompt, intelligent, resolute action under law, which is the spirit of the history of liberty-the spirit which will not suffer institutions designed to promote the general welfare to obstruct and injure it. The Freeholder would see in this little incident the later action of the spirit which bowed the Stuarts out of England, and seated William, and at last the Hanoverians, upon the throne. Sam Adams would see in it the spirit which maintained English rights against English encroachment. Indeed, there is a cloud of witnesses who would testify to the good work done in preventing the depredation upon the Park not only in the rescue of a popular pleasureground from harm, but in proving the readiness of intelligent public opinion to assert itself.

This little incident, and the similar protest of the same opinion two years ago