petual action—and they know little of that calm philosophical force which takes in life without relation to externals, or to noise and movement. Yet the paths converge at last almost to the same ends, for, as we have been told, "action instantly tracts on character, modifies ideas, makes them more definite, and grounds them more deeply," whereby the professor and the practiser reach the same conclusions.

I had intended to devote some space to religion in America, but the subject is not easily handled, and might prove invidious. Students of America's beginnings are aware that half the colonies owed their origin to a desire to "worship God freely;" in other words, the people were dissenters. The Episcopal, or Anglican, Church was in the minority in nearly all sections. There is to-day no State Church, yet the rapid growth of Episcopalianism is great and universal. It is the Church of which the President and the leading members of the Government are communicants. It is the Church, not merely of the better classes, but its growth and influence now extend into all parts of the country.

While all religions continue to flourish in America, yet one important new influence is the gradual effacement of Puritanism and Bible reading amongst the masses, especially in childhood. American literature, under American thought and speech, has, from the earliest times, been permeated as Biblicism; even journalism and humorous writing has been indebted to Scripture for many of its points, which, in Britain, have been thought almost profane. Men and women from childhood have been saturated with the writings of the prophets and apostles. But with the banishment of the

Bible from the common schools in many States, owing to the jealousies of the sectarians, this Hebraistic influence disappears.1

Mr. Thistelton Mark, however, draws attention to the fact that there are signs of a movement in America in favour of the extension of direct ethical teaching. A considerable number of schools have been started in connection with different religious denominations, and this rival movement has, to some extent, placed the public schools on the defensive, and has led to more emphasis being laid on the moral side of education. Another interesting outcome of the same movement is to be found in the ethical culture schools of New York, which seek to provide indirect moral teaching a substitute for definite religious instruction.

1 An educational conference, held in 1902, placed on record a resolution deploring the exclusion of the Bible from the common schools. The regret expressed is based on literary, and not on theological grounds. The English Bible is spoken of as a literary work of the highest and purest type," and it is alleged that its influence is gradually ceasing to permeate American books. President Eliot, of Harvard, recently observed that "the mythologies, Old Testament stories, fairy tales, and historical romances on which we are accustomed to feed the childish mind contain a great deal that is perverse, barbarous, or trivial, and to this infiltration into children's minds generation after generation of immoral, cruel, or foolish ideas is probably to be attributed in part the slow ethical progress of the race."

APPENDIX I

THE NATIONAL TITLE

IN nation-making it is a decided advantage to start with a distinctive name in the world. The importance of a national title ought not to be under-rated: for if Rome occupied fifteen centuries in her fall, it was less owing to her constitution and puissance than to the tenacity of the epithet, which was inherited successively by Goths and Vandals, Turks and Slavs, and tribes who knew and cared nothing for the cradle of the Roman race, called themselves Romans, and arrogated to themselves the name and prestige of Rome.

It is a curiosity of nomenclature that there should have arisen in one of the great Commonwealths of the world popular doubt and uncertainty concerning its own national title.

Titles of great States, it is true, usually develop historically : the dominant faction gives its name to the entire people. On the other hand, they are occasionally the result of accident or of ignorance. China is not China to the Chinese. Germany is not Germany to the Germans, and Holland is no more Holland to the Netherlanders than the Netherlanders are the "Dutch."

It is worth observing that there has not been in continental Europe so careful a restriction of the term "America" to the republic as was formerly customary. Up to a very recent period the majority of Europeans, with scant appreciation of a distinction, which the peoples concerned have agreed to respect, between the national and continental designations, have been addicted to describing Canadians, Mexicans,

Nicaraguans, and indeed all other races inhabiting the Western Hemisphere as "Americans." But a study of America's genesis will show us that to be a native of "North America" no more constitutes an "American" than a common European origin and residence would be justification for branding a German as an Austrian, or a Frenchman as a Swede. "America" is a national designation of a single country; 1 "North America" is a continental designation, which includes several countries.

Prior to 1771 the term, we find, had a somewhat vague significance. The greater part of the continent was a terra incognita: Hearne, Mackenzie, and Vancouver had not yet penetrated into the North-west: the Mississippi Valley was as La Salle left it: the Pacific Ocean was supposed to begin where Denver now stands. Yet vague as the continental definition then was, to Englishmen and their colonial kinsmen the terms America and American had long been applied almost exclusively to the thirteen colonies and the hinterland. Thus we find on the Louisburg medal of 1758 a rude outline of the Continent, with divisions inscribed "America" and "Canada," the former occupying the position of the English Colonies on the map.

But after the conquest of Canada we find a growing disposition on the part of the English colonists to claim the whole Continent for America. They naturally assumed, reckoning without their host, that Canada would be ready to throw in its lot with them in the struggle now impending with the Mother country, and that Spain would be forced to relinquish her hold on the south and west. Thus we see the rise of the term "Continental" as applied to the "Continental" Congress and the "Continental" Army. This had, however, but a brief vogue; the colonists were soon undeceived as regards Canada, which elected to continue a member of the British Empire.

1 "Canada,” said John Adams, "is still an appanage of the British Crown in North America." America, however, was independent. "Whereas, the delegates of the United States of America, in Congress assembled . . . in the second year of the independence of America.”

Article 1 of the Articles of Confederation says, "The style of the Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'"

"Continent "1 was dropped as applying to the revolting colonies, and the old term America began to have a still more restricted application to the Atlantic sea-board. When, in 1776, John Adams proposed to his friends Hancock and Jefferson the title of "The United States of America" for the thirteen seceding English Colonies, he was unaware that anything indefinite, inadequate, or contrary to accepted custom dwelt in such a title.

On the contrary, his idea clearly was that the brand-new unification of Colonies (or States) should boast the exclusive title of "America," the designation of the inhabitants thereof being Americans. We know that the colonists, in convention assembled at Philadelphia, fully understood and acquiesced in the title. It was free to them to choose any name, as other new peoples had done, and several such were proposed, but "America" was tacitly agreed upon.2 We know, also, that in the English Parliamentary speeches of the time, Pitt, Fox, and Burke habitually refer to America as a country quite separate and distinct from Canada, Louisiana, Florida, California, or Mexico, contiguous countries at that period. In the early literature of the new country we rarely come across United States" as meaning America, certainly not oftener than we encounter United Kingdom as implying Great Britain and Ireland. In the works of Irving, of Hawthorne, of Emerson, and of Thoreau, the phrase, America, occurs as frequently and

1 Franklin, more enlightened than the rest, was one of the first to protest against the assumption that the English king's dominion "embraced the larger part of the Continent."

To realize the absurdity of confusing America, after 1776, with the Continent of North America, we have only to be told that America (i.e. the thirteen states) comprised only 820,680 square miles of territory, whereas the Continent possesses nearly 8,000,000 square miles.

When the Duc de Noailles, in 1778, delivered a declaration to the British Government acknowledging the treaty between France and the "United States of North America," the American envoy, Lee, called attention to the blunder. The erroneous phraseology also evoked comment in Congress, whose members were as well aware of the difference between America, the new nation, and North America, the continent, as that between North and South Carolina, or New York the city, and New York the state.

3 "It is the avowed policy of Europe," wrote Jay, "to restrict America to a set of States." Vergennes, on behalf of France, continually refers to America, in contradistinction to Canada and Louisiana.