The return of this critically marked paper to the student brings us to consider another important process in this work, and that is the review by the student of his first lesson work, or his second period of study upon it. There has enough time elapsed since it was last in his hands to have it come now with all the force of a new lesson, and to enable him to look at it judicially. The critical investigation which follows has a three-fold value. First, it is a review. Second, it is a means for accurate self-test. Third, it is a monitor, under whose warning all future lesson work is subjected to the careful scrutiny which the former criticism suggests. Two things still remain to be done with the returned lesson paper. One to make a separate classified list of the errors it contained; the other to date it, file it, and lay it carefully away for reference. The classified list of errors will serve as a check against the commission of like errors, or an aid in detecting any that may have been carelessly made. At first the list will be large, but after a little it will grow less and less rapidly, till finally its utter lack of growth will be the surest mark of the pupil’s excellence of attainment. Such is an outline for a possible method of conducting educational work by correspondence. It presents a method which I believe is practical, which is drawn from an experience of years in the class room, and which is in harmony with established principles of educational philosophy.
A touching bit of experience has been sent us by a member of the class of ’88. The writer had persuaded his son to join a circle, but, as he writes, “He attended one meeting of the circle and came home very much discouraged, declaring that he would not attend another meeting, urging as his reasons that he compared unfavorably with others, and that he would never be able to pronounce those horrid Greek names, etc. I tried to encourage him and advanced several arguments trying to show him what a great advantage this course of reading would be to him, but finally gave it up, fearing if I urged him so strongly he would become disgusted. I determined then to take the four years’ course of study myself, thinking that by having the books in our home, and sometimes relating anecdotes, incidents and historical facts gathered from these readings, that my boys might become interested for themselves. It is impossible for me to give my children the advantages of a liberal education, as my heart longs to do, and by getting them interested in the C. L. S. C., I hope to make up to them in some degree their loss of a college education.”
EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.
AN AMERICAN DIPLOMAT.
There is very general regret, at home and abroad, that the new administration has removed Professor James Russell Lowell from the office of American minister at the court of St. James. There is no disposition to complain; but there is some natural wonderment. Mr. Lowell was an ideal American diplomat; he represented worthily the people as well as the government of the United States. It is no disparagement to his successor to say that no other American can quite fill the place Mr. Lowell has made for himself. It should be remembered that we, fortunately, have very little proper diplomatic business anywhere in the world; and whenever any serious negotiation is to be undertaken, it can be done at Washington. Our important treaties are made in the national capital; and our gravest foreign affairs are always directly administered by the Secretary of State. Since Franklin it has seldom happened that a minister has been entrusted with any grave duties or burdened with any serious responsibilities. Even during the civil war Mr. Seward managed at Washington the more serious business of the foreign department.
In this generation, we have had some successful foreign ministers; but their success has in every case been in non-official or extra-official lines. Mr. E. B. Washburne, our minister in Paris during the Franco-German war, won a high reputation, not as a diplomat of his country, but as an American minister entrusted, by an act of international courtesy, with the rights and welfare of Prussians in Paris. As the agent of the Berlin government during the war and siege, Mr. Washburne endeared himself to the large German population of Paris by his kindness, common sense, and energy in caring for a body of subjects of a hostile country. No one but a typical American could have done this work at all well. A man trained to diplomacy would have failed. It needed a man who could put his character and American office into a breach made by war, and devise means of providing for an extemporaneous necessity. Most men would have failed; Washburne succeeded because he was a typical American of the largest pattern—able, frank, tireless, resourceful.