delightful society for one another; but, from the wider sociological standpoint, what function are they going to fulfill? Will they in any powerful and effective manner help to sustain and strengthen the ideality of less favored classes; or will they live their lives apart, each in his own little "palace of art" constructed by the spirit of self-love and exclusiveness? If they can be counted on to do the former, then the millions are most wisely expended; but if the latter is to be the outcome, then, beyond all doubt, the millions might have been better applied. We believe in natural differentiations, but not in artificially created distinctions; and unless our highly educated class can accept and discharge some social ministry that will have the effect of communicating to others some share in what they have obtained themselves, it seems to us that this vast expenditure of money for higher education may lead to social results of a rather undesirable kind. The university graduate, as we have seen, is cutting a very poor figure in politics. The politicians by profession will not let him do otherwise; and he seems to have no power whatever of appealing to or influencing the people against the politicians. The reason why he is thus powerless—admitting, what perhaps there is no reason to admit in some cases, that he has any ideal of his own above the common—is that the life of the people is almost untouched by any kind of ideality, and that the popular habit of mind is opposed to the recognition of any leadership based upon superiority of mental or moral endowment. We are thus led to the unwelcome conclusion that there is but little diffusion of culture in any true sense among the people, and that it is the general lack of it, and the absence of any interest in larger questions, which give to our politics that character of dreariness and pettiness, not to mention a constant tendency to corruption, which all careful observers have noted.
One careful observer has lately consigned his observations to the pages of the Atlantic Monthly; we refer to the article contributed to the March number of that periodical by Mr. Francis C. Lowell, under the title of Legislative Shortcomings. It is of the Massachusetts Legislature, in which he had two years' experience, that Mr. Lowell speaks. "The first object," he says, of a member elected thereto, "is to secure the passage, or more rarely the defeat, of some legislative measure of only local importance. . . . Occasionally, but not often, this measure is an iniquitous job. Usually the member has no pecuniary interest in it, and often it is little more than a matter of legislative routine. Even when it is unwise, it is frequently nothing worse than a piece of legislative fussiness; or perhaps it was devised to meet some local demand, and is objectionable only on account of the bad precedent it establishes; such, for example, as acts to enable a particular town to subsidize a steamboat or a variety show for the convenience or amusement of its summer visitors. . . . If the member's pet measure is not a local matter, but an act of general importance, he runs the risk of being deemed a crank. If he should strenuously seek the passage of several measures, really important, he would be thought wholly devoid of common sense, and his influence would soon disappear." Then, in order to get his own little bill passed, the member, Mr. Lowell tells us, has to trade his vote—that is to say, he must vote for other men's bills, be they good or bad, if he wishes them to vote for his. If he should fail to do this, "his constituents, without
