The President of Harvard College is ever in the van of progress in educational matters, and in his address, read last February before the members of the Johns Hopkins University, now printed in the Century, he strikes the key-note of the "new education" which is beginning to push itself into notice. The gist of the whole matter seems to be simply this: Not to love Latin and Greek the less, but the new subjects the more. This view is one which Harvard has taken the lead in promulgating and in putting into practical effect, and it is one that we believe will come finally to be accepted all over the land.

What the country is asking for now is an education which shall fit into a man's life and work in this age, and help him to be of use to society as well as to make the most of himself. Such an education must be to a degree a suggestive one; it must teach a man how to think even more than what to think, and must from its very nature abandon the old rut of thought. The favor with which the "new subjects" are received shows plainly how undergraduate feeling is disposed toward them. Men at college fully realize the nature of the times into which they have been thrown and when allowed to shape their own courses, naturally follow out this new line of education. Cast-iron rules of education must lose their place as this feeling of revolt against them grows stronger, and it is gratifying, as we have said, to see the President of our university take his present stand.

But to afford the best chance for improvement, it seems best to abolish compulsory work in freshman year, and this can only be done by a change in the work required from the preparatory schools. Raising the standard for admission would bring about several desirable results: It would bring an older class of men here from the schools; it would raise the scholarship both of the college and the school; it would give a year more for following out any particular branch a man may elect. Nearly every one feels how short a time three years is to accomplish anything definite, and the added year would go far to make the college education more satisfactory both to the student and to the outside world, while the increased age of the men would certainly promise a better sort of work than is now given, at least in the first year.