AN inspiring address, dealing with the influence of universities upon national life, delivered at the Johns Hopkins University at the last commemoration day by Dr. D. J. Hill, assistant secretary of State, is published in one of the University Circulars just received. Students of human history well know that the pursuit of knowledge has been the fundamental factor of progress through many centuries. The earliest universities in Europe were associations of teachers and students with this aim, and they exerted a powerful influence upon society long before their existence was recognised by Church or State. “It is not too much to say,” remarks Dr. Hill, “that the transformation of Europe which marks the distinction between mediæval and modern times has been chiefly the work of the universities, for they have exercised the most potent influence upon social progress and popular liberty of any single class of human institutions.” The spirit which has led to the establishment of so many institutions for higher education in the United States, by private munificence, seems to have been inherited from the Pilgrim Fathers. Even when the colony of Massachusetts numbered only four thousand, it was decided to found a college; but the resolution is less astonishing when it is remembered that among the first six hundred settlers one in every thirty was a graduate of Cambridge.