Medicine, Teaching and Science, Business, Engineering, Journalism The results of the inquiry may be expressed as follows: At the figure for five-year periods has remained noticeably constant at 6 and 7 per cent. As compared with the great falling off in the clerical profession, from 40 per cent. at the beginning to 6 or 7 per cent. at the end of this century, the proportion of a class choosing the law as a profession has varied little during the same period, at least if the figures are taken representing the average for periods of five years. This is especially true of the last five periods (1871-93), during which the figure was three times 35 per cent., and twice 36 per cent. It may be more than a curious coincidence that the three maxima of the above figure (barring the first in 1797) occur during the periods immediately following the three wars, of 1812, of 1848, and the Civil War. The profession of teaching has attracted a fraction of each class that has varied within very wide limits. In some classes previous to the Civil War, one-fifth or one-sixth of the members became teachers; in others the fraction sank to zero. It is difficult to explain the irregular changes in this figure, unless they are taken to indicate that the teacher's profession has generally been a stepping-stone, in some years deserted for some other profession, in other years, often owing to accidental causes, permanently enrolling college graduates among its members. Since the Civil War, however, the fraction of each class becoming teachers, or devoting themselves to scientific pursuits, has varied within much narrower limits-in the case of the graduates of 1879 to 1893, between 9 and 15 per cent.-indicating that teaching has become. a well recognized profession, and tends nowadays, like the law and medicine, to attract approximately the same fraction of each college generation. The last has been distinctly the case with the medical profession, which during the five-year periods since 1841 has uniformly attracted about one-tenth of those graduating from the college, the figure falling once as low as 8 per cent., and three times rising to 12 per cent. During the second, third and fourth decades of this century it rose to an unusual height. This unusual popularity of the medical profession at that time is also illustrated, though not as conclusively, by the fact that the average number of physicians annually graduating from the Yale Medical School during the third decade of the century was not again equalled or exceeded in any single year before 1896. As regards the above four learned professions, the law, the ministry, medicine, and teaching, the figures conclusively show that, after attracting a larger and larger constituency from among the classes of the first thirty years of this century, the tide then turned, and from attracting nine-tenths of each college class during the early thirties, the proportion fell off steadily, with hardly an exception, till recent times. However, the last eighteen classes, arranged in four groups in the table, send a surprisingly constant fraction of their members into one or the other of the four learned professions, namely, approximately five-eights. The most striking fact brought to light by the table is the great increase of the graduates of the college pursuing a mercantile career. The proportion of business men in the first 20 classes of this century was temporarily high, perhaps owing to the stimulus of the foreign wars and of our war of 1812 and of its after effects. Then the fraction fell to a low level in the twenties and early thirties. Beginning with the class of 1839, the fraction rose steadily, with practically no setback, until the present time, rising most rapidly in the case of those graduating in the late forties, during the Civil War and during the seventies. From generally occupying the fourth place in importance among the occupations of graduates, business rose to the third place with the class of 1842, the second place during the Civil War, and will presumably eventually wrest the first place from the legal profession. While the relative number of merchants among Yale College graduates has grown so much, the number of farmers has greatly fallen off. This is largely, but not wholly, explained by the disappearance from the list of alumni of the Southern planter. In addition, the greater attractions offered by the other vocations and by urban life should be taken into account. One more occupation deserves notice, that of government service. Here it was evidently the Civil War which attracted a considerable number of graduates of the time and of previous years to the military and civil service of the government. Those graduating since the war have in but a few cases followed their example. The general outcome of the movement as indicated in the table may be summed up as follows: The law during the past century has fairly, uniformly enlisted one-third of each college generation. At the beginning of the century the ministry followed closely in second place. Roughly speaking, the law and the ministry were then chosen by two-thirds of the class. Nowadays, the law still holds its own, but the ministry has fallen off greatly in relative importance; its place has been taken by the merchant's vocation, which now attracts about one-third of the graduates. It is noticeable that in the case of the last eighty years covered by the table the sum of the figures for the ministry and of the one for business in each five-year period fluctuates fairly closely about 37 per cent., and that, with very few exceptions, a rapid fall in the figure for the ministry goes hand in hand with a rapid rise in the figure for business, and when the falling off in the ministry is retarded, the same is true of the rise of the figure for the business men. It would not be safe to conclude from this that the kind of men who formerly became clergymen now go into business, though this may be true to some extent. In any case, it is clear that the leadership which naturally falls to the college graduate in this country was formerly chiefly exerted from the bar and the pulpit; that nowadays, however, the industrial leaders are also largely recruited from among college graduates; that the typical college graduate of to-day is no longer the scholar, but the man of affairs. BOOK NOTICES. Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy. By E. L. Godkin, M.A., D.C.L. Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898-vii, 265 pp. This is a book difficult to review in small compass. It contains many bright ideas and several excellent generalizations, but even the certainty of, closest scrutiny attaching to anything published over the signature of the merciless editor of the Evening Post has not sufficed to induce Mr. Godkin to verify his ideas, and consequently his work is everywhere marred with serious overstatements and historical errors. No less than twenty such are to be found in the 225 pages which make up his main contention. His remaining chapter on "The Australian Democracy" does not fall within the province of the present reviewer. As it cites a large number of authors consulted, it may be more accurate than the rest. When Mr. Godkin contradicts himself so flatly as with reference to the early composition of the Roman Senate, on pages 10 and 35, he scarcely needs criticism, but such statements as that "There is no doubt that the pre-Revolutionary writers were in the right way in relying on Greece and Rome for their illustrations. Up to that time the modern world, if we except England, had contributed little or nothing to the science of government" ought not to be allowed to pass uncontradicted. Together probably Switzerland and Holland, though much less familiar to English readers, had contributed more than England. Federalism with local self-government; the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial functions; religious liberty and constitutionalism, had grown up far more in these countries and among our colonial ancestors than in England; while the feudal system, out of which the representative system is said to have grown, only reached England after long existence on the European Continent. Another new thing, which held for a time in Switzerland, was the abolition of all feudal privileges, though, when the cantons rose to great power after crushing Charles the Bold, these privileges were succeeded by restrictions of the rights of citizenship to families already long established in the land, with the effect of producing almost a servile condition for the inhabitants of their subject lands, conquered from the neighboring feudal lords. Mr. Godkin speaks of the rise of the Swiss to military preeminence as of the sixteenth century. It was of the fifteenth. The great mili |