carrying coals to Newcastle. In many things the French are more democratic than we; the French people has not the respect for title and lineage which prevails in England. But in literature, perhaps owing to the existence of academic tradition, there is in France something like an oligarchy, while among us there is a pure and unlimited democracy.

We certainly do not want a tinsel imitation of the Académie Française; but that Academy is only one of five branches of the French Institute. The other branches are, the Académie des Sciences, containing mathematical and physical sections, the Académie des Beaux Arts, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, and the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. The Académie des Sciences in some measure corresponds to our Royal Society, the Académie des Beaux Arts to our Royal Academy. But to the other two Academies, which deal with history, psychology, and sociology, there is nothing analagous in this country. Herein lies our

weakness. The Institute is a single whole, has a common palace, administration, and library, and receives in all its branches state support. It is impossible to exaggerate the value of this unity, which constantly throws together men of learning and research whose paths are most diverse, which makes a focus and organising ground for every kind of scientific and learned enterprise, which implants in the minds of workers the great and inspiring conviction that all who devote themselves to the search for knowledge are members of one great organisation, an intellectual and moral clergy, devoted to the service of mankind, and to a perpetual warfare with ignorance and intellectual error.

The literary Académie Française was founded by Richelieu in 1635, the Académie des Beaux Arts by Mazarin in 1648, the Académie des Sciences by Colbert in 1666, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1706. But it was in the stirring and boldly optimistic days of the First Republic that the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques came into existence; and at the same time the whole Institute was more closely bound together, and set forward in a determined spirit, and with words of fervid enthusiasm. The Directory of the Republic was 'profoundly convinced that the happiness of the French people is inseparable from perfection in

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science and art and the growth of all branches of human knowledge; these alone can keep burning the sacred fire of liberty which they have lighted.' Fervent hopes indeed, and destined to cool rapidly! Yet the French Institute has from that day to this held its own, and done endless service to knowledge. The branch which dealt with moral and political science was abolished during the tyranny of Napoleon in 1803, but in 1832 it was re-established. At present the revenue contributed by the State to the Institute is not a few beggarly hundreds, but 28,000l. a year, and it would not be easy to find among all the sums voted by the French nation another which does so much good and so little harm. The Institute furnishes prizes to encourage original investigations in science, including history, and it maintains a library and palace where savants can work and meet. It has founded and sustains academies in foreign cities, like the French Schools of Rome, Athens, and Cairo'; and above all, it is valuable as at one of the centenary meetings the Minister of Public Instruction strongly insisted-in maintaining the close relations of all branches of knowledge, and helping to spread a spirit of devotion to the cause of learning and science.

The history of the French Institute has yet to be written. But of one of the smaller institutions which it has founded and supported, the French School at Athens, a most instructive history has recently been published by M. Radet. It is a remarkable record of the way in which the tendencies of an age triumph over the purposes of statesmen and set aside the plans of founders. Half a century ago the French School was established at Athens by Raoul-Rochette, Guigniaut, and other members of the Institute, who persuaded the Ministry to provide them with funds for the purpose by representing the necessity of combating English influence at Athens by all possible means. Thus a band of young men, under the leadership of Daveluy, was despatched to Athens in order that they might persuade the Greeks to learn the French language and to understand that the only civilisation worthy of the name was that which radiated from Paris. As has often happened, Greece conquered her invaders; and by degrees the school, which was to have been the source of a political propaganda, has become a place of higher study

-a college of history and archæology, through which have passed many of those who are now the chief lights of classical learning in France, and which has recently excavated, at the cost of France, the magnificent site of Delphi.

A monumental history of the Academy of Berlin, which deals, like the French Institute, with the whole range of knowledge, from astronomy to philology and history, has been published by Professor Harnack, one of its most illustrious members. In a spirited introduction, Professor Harnack traces the intellectual movements which led to the rise of the great scientific academies of Europe. The Renascence had come to direct men's minds to the forgotten splendour of the literature and art of Greece and Rome, and the Reformation had recalled the fervid inspiration and faith of the early Church. Both together had shattered the ecclesiastical crust which had formed over the activities of the European nations, and set them forward in a new and long career. Towards the end of the seventeenth century a new and powerful tendency made its appearance, a growing belief in the value of truth, of exact method, of scientific demonstration. This was especially furthered by the great growth which had taken place in mathematical, physical, and astronomical science, a growth to which England, in the days of Newton, powerfully contributed. As the exact sciences were developed and became more complicated, the feeling arose that the universities, which were mainly concerned with education, and were besides distinctly conservative in tone, required to be supplemented by great and organised institutions, the primary object of which should be the advancement of knowledge rather than its diffusion. The oldest of the extant European Academies is that of the Lincei at Rome, founded in 1603, which still flourishes after many vicissitudes and some periods of suspended animation. The Royal Society of London followed in 1662, and the Académie des Sciences of Paris in 1666. Thus Berlin was by no means the pioneer of the movement; its Academy was not finally constituted until 1700.

The fact that the representative Academy of Germany was founded in Berlin, rather than in Dresden or Hanover, was the result of circumstances. Its origination was due

to one of the greatest and most restless of human intelligences, Leibnitz. He was full of large but sometimes chimerical plans; one for uniting the Romanist and Protestant Confessions; another for establishing a state supervision of books, which should allow none to be published but such as contained discoveries at once new and useful to the community. After visiting Paris, Leibnitz was smitten with the desire to form a German Academy of Sciences on the model of that of Colbert. He vainly urged his plan on the Governments of Saxony, Austria, and Russia. Prussia at the time seemed too backward in civilisation to be the scene of so enlightened an institution. But when the heir of the Great Elector brought to Berlin, as his bride, Sophia, daughter of the Elector of Hanover, a descendant of our James I, she introduced to the somewhat boorish Court of Brandenburg a higher refinement. As Frederick II, her grandson, wrote, 'Cette Princesse amena en Prusse l'esprit de la société, la vraie politesse, et l'amour des arts et des sciences.' Among other distinguished men whom she attracted to Berlin was Leibnitz, and in her support he at last found means for carrying out his plan of a great academy of learning and science. But to few founders, perhaps to none, is it ever given to discern from the first whither the institutions which they found will tend. Leibnitz no doubt at the time held in his mind, not only more knowledge, but a keener sense of the intellectual changes which were coming over the world than any other man. But even he saw but in part. Some of the functions which he would fain have assigned to the Academy fell away from it in time, while others which he had not anticipated gradually came within its province.

Comparing the Academy in the days of its foundation with the form which it assumed when taken in hand and reconstituted by Frederick the Great, Dr Harnack observes that three of the original purposes had become obscured. The first of these was the religious purpose-that of upholding the cause of the Protestant religion, and spreading it among surrounding peoples. The second object was to promote the service of the state of Prussia; the third was to purify and propagate the German language. As these more local and narrow objects fell into the background, their place was taken by the broad and catholic passion

for the advancement of knowledge. knowledge. It came to be felt that the public good was best served by the spread of exact knowledge and reasonable thought, and that men of science and of letters were then most useful to the State when they attended most completely to their own work, without too strict regard to consequences. We have here once more, and on a greater scale, the moral enforced by the history of the French School of Athens. It is a truth which perhaps no one has so clearly set forth as Auguste Comte, that, just as a small rudder, when steadily pressed in one direction, will bring round the largest ship, so man's faculty of true and straight thinking, small as its influence may seem at any given moment, yet in the long run, by its quiet and uniform influence, will have far greater effect on the course of civilisation than the violent impulses and the warring motives which generally actuate humanity.

was.

The Academy of Frederick consisted of four classes or sections: (1) experimental philosophy or natural science; (2) mathematics and astronomy; (3) speculative philosophy; (4) antiquities, history, and language. The third of these sections was an addition due to the rise of the philosophy of Wolff. When one considers the splendid outburst of philosophy in Germany during the century which followed, one can understand how important the addition In the pages of Professor Harnack may be traced the subsequent fortunes of the Academy. In the time of Frederick the cosmopolitan spirit had prevailed so far that the proceedings of the society were carried on in French. It was not possible that this should endure long; and the national German uprising in the days of Napoleon had an effect in imparting more of a national spirit even to learned institutions. In those days the leading spirits of the Academy were the Humboldts, Wolff, Niebuhr, and Schleiermacher-a splendid galaxy of talent, who changed in many ways the constitution as fixed by Frederick.

We have not space to record these vicissitudes in detail; and, interesting as is the history of the Prussian Academy, its lessons cannot be directly applied in other countries where government is less completely centralised, and learned men less accustomed to a rigorous discipline. But it must be allowed that, on the whole, the Academy of Berlin has nobly carried out the academic ideal. Many