Although the suggestions which the New England Association of Colleges has passed relating to changes in the grammar school course are recommended chiefly for pupils not intending to pursue any higher course of education their ratification by the Harvard Faculty shows them to have some bearing on the question of collegiate education. At the Convention of the Association held in Cambridge last fall, President Eliot was an enthusiastic promoter of most of changes which the Association finally voted to suggest. The general sentiment of the convention was that a great deal of time was wasted in the grammar schools over subjects of a more elementary nature, and that the taking up of certain other subjects was put off too long. As a result of the suggestions, then, if they are followed, the time devoted to some of the very elementary studies will be cut down, and other studies be introduced earlier in the course, when the young mind is as ready to grasp them. In this way the ground now covered by the grammar schools will be gone over in a much shorter time. From the recommendations of the Association it is difficult to make out whether they mean the grammar school course to be shortened, or whether it should remain the same length but carry the pupil further. In either case the change would have its effect on the colleges. In the former instance the student would enter college earlier, graduate earlier, and get to work on his professional studies at an earlier age. This is one way of bringing about the same result as that advocated by the supporters of the three years' course. If the object is to allow men to prepare for professional work at an early age, the proposed changes will aid largely towards this end. The other result of the proposed change would be that the pupil would enter college at the same age as now, but prepared in more advanced subjects. This system has the advantage of presenting college life to a man when he is mature enough to appreciate it. Any reduction of the age at which men should enter college would be attended by this serious object

many of the real advantages of college life would be lost on the student during the first years of his course. Apart from the subject of age, the courses now taken by freshmen are most of them such as might advantageously be studied at school. The elements of natural science, freshman classics and freshman mathematics might well be mastered before college is entered. Then with the resources of the college at hand, the student would be able to start right in, without these freshman preliminaries, to the more serious work of the college. Whether it would be better under these circumstances to limit the college course to three years, thereby allowing the graduate to begin on his professional work a year earlier, is another question.