There is one fact brought out by the official statistics of the University which is especially gratifying. It is the increase in the graduate School. To be sure the increase is slight and yet it is one the lees significant. The Graduate School is of a nature to show the effects of a depression in the country more than any other department in the University. The men who study there are generally concerned with obtaining special culture in some branch of learning for its own sake, or else are concerned with making themselves fitted to teach. The number of men who can afford the money and time for the first of these objects is apt to be cut down seriously by a general financial depression, and men of the second class are, as a rule, limited in means and sensitive to any difficulty in obtaining money. That, under these circumstances, the Graduate School should more than have held its own is conclusive proof of its firm establishment.

We note this fact with peculiar pleasure also because we feel sure that, the nation as a whole considered, the Graduate School will become more and more the guarantee of Harvard's reputation as the chief place of learning in the land. Local colleges are abundant and must diminish the number of men who will come a great distance for their college education. But that the Graduate School offers advantages not to be obtained else where is evidenced by the fact that the enrolment of the School has trebled within seven years and that last year out of two hundred and forty-two members, one hundred and forty-four had already taken degrees from institutions other than Harvard.