speciality, on the watchtower of the night spying for the erratic brilliancy of the comet, in the bowels of the earth cross-examining into eloquence the petrified forests of antecedent aeons; in the laboratory counting the throbbings of the sun's heart, or taking the census of the population of a single drop of water—a micro-cosmos, allowing a peep into the very life-story of a planet, have even before documented the autonomy of the American scientific investigator.
But there are other fields and as rich ones which now attract the eye of the American scholar. In them he has already done much more than to glean the corners. The American scholar is no longer the poor wayfarer claiming the leavings under the old Mosaic poor laws. In philosophy and psychology he has made by no means mean contributions. Into archaeology and philology, which one would suppose to be the eminent domain of nations bordering on senility, the young giant of the West has taken mighty strides. It is true, the American philologist has not within easy accessibility the treasures of the British Museum; no Vatican in his country reminds him by its very architecture of rare parchments and scrolls and codices stored away in its alcoves; no Alhambra
"Still recalls
Aladdin's palace of delight:
Allah il Allah! through its halls
Whispers the fountain as it falls!"
no Escorial suggests the glory of Catholic Spain, the conquest of the Moors and the expulsion of the Jews and whets the curiosity of the ambitious scholar to search for the written witnesses to Jewish love of poetry and methaphysics, Arabic manuscripts and Latin or Gothic documents. Still, even the European scholar, if his love be one or the other of the capricious daughters of Mother Language, must pay her court by waiting on her favorite seat of residence. The American scholar is no stranger in the papal library; his fingers have turned often the catalogue of the British Museum and handled its parchments and tablets. Ghizeh, the necropolis of Egypt, resurrected to new life, will
