was refreshing to hear and to read various utterances of his
against gerund-grinding and pedantry. He recognizes the fact that
the worst enemies of classical instruction in Germany, as,
indeed, elsewhere, have been they of its own household, and he
has stated this view as vigorously as did Sydney Smith in England
and Francis Wayland in America. Whenever he dwelt on this subject
the views which he presented at such length to the Educational
Commission were wont to come out with force and piquancy.

On one occasion our discussion turned upon physical education,
and especially upon the value to students of boating. As an old
Yale boating man, a member of the first crew which ever sent a
challenge to Harvard, and one who had occasion in the
administration of an American university to consider this form of
exercise from various standpoints, I may say that his view of its
merits and his way of promoting it seemed to me thoroughly
sensible.

From time to time some mention from me of city improvements
observed during my daily walks led to an interesting discussion.
The city of Berlin is wonderfully well governed, and exhibits all
those triumphs of modern municipal skill and devotion which are
so conspicuously absent, as a rule, from our American cities.
While his capital preserves its self-governing powers, it is
clear that he purposes to have his full say as to everything
within his jurisdiction. There were various examples of this, and
one of them especially interested me: the renovation of the
Thiergarten. This great park, virtually a gift of the
Hohenzollern monarchs, which once lay upon the borders of the
city, but is now in the very heart of it, had gradually fallen