NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Prof. J. J. Sylvester, of Johns Hopkins University, and a grave man of science whom the late Prof. Peirce pronounced to be the best mathematician in the country, is now discovered to be a poet of not a little ability. - [Ex.

Hearing recitations, Colonel Parker says, is not teaching, by any means. Teaching is the bringing of new ideas into the mind through objects, classifying ideas, comparing them, and combining them into new creatures of the imagination. Rote learning is simply inculcating stupidity, both in pupil and teacher. It will be a happy day for the public schools when all teachers are made to understand these plain truths. - [Ex.

It is complained in England that the universities themselves have long since abdicated their teaching functions. Most of the real teaching, it is said, is provided by the unauthorized and outside system of private tutors, who exist independently of the colleges, and have, in a great degree, superseded them. In too many cases the candidate for an ordinary degree, if he wish to pass, is compelled to make use of a private tutor. His college does, indeed, provide him with a certain number of lectures, but the number is usually quite inadequate, and even if it were greater in several instances the teaching provided is not nearly so well calculated for the needs of the pupil as is the better-arranged teaching of the private tutor.

The experiment of co-education at Michigan University has proved to be a thorough success. Professor Donald MacLain, of the medical department, declares that though he went to Ann Arbor ten years ago with "deep and violent prejudices" against the co-education of young men and maidens, he is now "a most ardent advocate of the system," his former objections to it seeming to him, in the light of experience, trivial, untrue, despicable and ridiculous." The sexes pursue the same courses of study "without harm to any one or to any interest, but with the most unequivocal mutual advantage." Lady students no more require a lady principal, matron or guardian than the boys need a mother or elder sister to take care of them. Female candidates for graduation in the medical department have several times gained the highest number of marks. The same amount of work is required from them as from the male students, and things are in no wise made easy for them. Professor MacLean adds that in all the ten years he has never seen any sign of rudeness, indelicacy or impropriety. The presence of female students act as a regenerating and refining influence on the gentlemen, and discipline is easily maintained. Some of the female graduates have gone to India, China, Japan and elsewhere in the capacity of medical missionaries, some of them accomplishing great results. Professor MacLean's frankness is commendable, and illustrates the marvellous change in public opinion as regards the higher education of women. Possibly, at the end of another decade, even Yale may begin to think that there is no derogation in the instruction of women. - [N. Y. Tribune.