One of the chief advantages enjoyed by students at Harvard is the wide range of study and research afforded by its advanced elective system. Here almost any subject, with its various modifications and departments, can be taken up, and under professors who have made life-long studies of their respective and special branches, pursued to the very limits of human knowledge. There are courses so admirably arranged and instructed that one, after spending the ordinary college course of four years in the pursuit of a special line of knowledge, finally appreciates his own incapacity, in the contemplation of the immensity and scope of his subject, and is forced to admit to himself that he is but like "a little child idly counting the sands on the shore of a vast, unexplored sea of knowledge." We are sometimes forced to smile in a rather conceited manner, while reviewing the long list of studies offered by our elective system, when we read in some exchange the rejoicings of an editor over "the advancement in the scope of the curriculum" at his particular college, and with no little pride congratulate ourselves that Harvard University has approached more nearly to the ideal university than any institution in the country.