The American Classical School at Athens.

The third year of the American Classical School or college at Athens begins today. During the coming year it will be under the charge of Professor Van Beuschaten the head of the Greek department of Wesleyan. It is an enterprise in which Harvard is particularly interested, for during the first year of its existence it was managed by Professor W. W. Goodwin, one of the original projectors and one to whom the school owes very much. This institution at Athens affords to all American students who are competent to profit by it the advantage of pursuing their studies in the heart of Greece, free of charge for tuition, and under competent direction. The school occupies a comfortable building in a pleasant quarter of the modern city, and possesses already an admirable working library of about one thousand volumes. "It is now supported by a confederation, so to speak, under the auspices of the Archaeological Institute of America, of fifteen of our chief colleges. This arrangement, though admirable as a temporary expedient and a pleasant novelty, in that it unites with a common interest so many of our centrifugal institutions of higher learning, would be unpractical as a permanent plan. When the utility of the school, as bringing life and sympathy into the study of antiquity, too often arid and dead under the parrot like methods of instruction hard to avoid entirely here a study indispensable to an adequate grasp of the significance of civilization and the scope of human intelligence-is brought before the public, it is desired and expected that some of our many munificent friends of learning will by endowment place it upon a permanent basis. With a fixed director, qualified by prolonged residence on Hellenic soil, and no energy wasted in seeking to maintain its income, our school will compete in friendly emulation with the older institutes at Athens of France and Germany, not only to raise the standard of American scholarship, but to promote the world's understanding of the problems of that ancient life which soared with the swift and unerring flight of the eagle from the infancy of barbarism to the highest intellectual plane which has been attained by man.

A volume embodying the work of the school, while directed by Professor Goodwin is now in course of publication, and promises, in spite of the lack of experience always felt in a new venture, to do honor to the country. The projectors and the first director.