in he was called." In the European universities, professors are chosen young, and educate themselves for their work. They often spend their lives, from boyhood till a late old age, in the same university; and when they are chosen from without, success and eminence as teachers, no less than as scholars, are deemed requisite qualifications. But in this country, we regard a man who fills one place well as fit for any place; and the usefulness of very many men of high talents and attainments is undoubtedly greatly diminished by the absurd translation of them from spheres of duty, which they fill with eminent ability, to new positions and relations, demanding entirely different modes of study and forms of activity. Thus there is no such thing, in one's life, as "seeing the end from the beginning.' A man who gains an enviable reputation as a physician is as likely, on the strength of that reputation, to be sent to Congress, as to be chosen to office in a medical society; while the accomplished statesman and diplomatist, for his character as such, may be deemed the most fitting candidate for a post of literary trust and honor. The extension of this principle to the government of a college may, indeed, reflect much temporary lustre on the institution, by associating with it a distinguished name, and may, in some instances, secure for the cause of education services of the highest value; but this latter result can never be foreseen and calculated, and, when it occurs, must constitute an exception to the almost universal rule. Therefore, though Harvard University has been, and is, happy in enjoying an unusual number of these exceptions, though, in choosing her officers thus at haphazard, she has seemed to play with loaded dice, we are glad that she has of late set the example of educating her own professors within her own walls. We like the spirit of the old Harvard law, which entitled the tutor, who had acquitted himself well in office for a series of years, to a professor's chair. The tutors should be chosen from among those graduates who are deemed the most hopeful candidates for professorships. In this subordinate office, they should learn to teach and to govern, should themselves acquire and exemplify the spirit and the habits of true scholars, and should gain for themselves on college ground that consideration and regard, which the incumbent may command by his own merits, but which the mere office can never insure. And,

except in rare cases, professors should be chosen only from among those whose skill in the instruction and discipline of youth has been thus tested and approved.

In connection with these somewhat desultory remarks on college discipline, we would say a few words on one topic of prime importance; namely, the bodily health of the students. We fear that at Cambridge the ambition of the more industrious is stimulated too highly, that they are permitted to undertake too many exercises, and that, in the closeness of the competition, college honors are sought even at the risk of life. The last few years have been marked by a series of dangerous maladies and deaths among the high scholars of their respective classes, under circumstances which suggest the apprehension, that larger demands were made upon the intellect than the bodily frame could sustain. We have been told by the victims themselves, that they had frequently passed the whole night without retiring to rest, and that the only alternative has been to do thus, or to leave some exercise of the following day unprepared. There are, indeed, but few in each class, who will incur such hazards for the sake of preeminence; but those few are the very ones whose life and health should be most carefully cherished, and who, if deficient in prudence, ought to be defended against themselves. By the present regulations, a student may choose for himself, and take rank in, as many different departments of study, as will occupy him in recitations and at lectures for twenty-one hours in the week. There being seldom more than one exercise on Saturday, there remain four for each of the other five secular days. A good scholar can hardly spend on an average less than two hours in preparation for each exercise; so that, in adopting the legal maximum of study, he must give, each week, twelve hours a day to his desk and the recitation-room, for five days in succession. This some well matured and vigorous frames can sustain ; not, however, without serious peril. But the students are generally too young to bear what one of mature years might endure. Many of them have not yet attained full stature, and are at the very season of life, when the free enjoyment of air and exercise is essential to insure compactness, health, and vigor to the physical frame. Three lessons a day, with two hours study upon each, are as much as can be performed with safety; and, if more time than this be spent in

literary pursuits, it might better be passed in some profitable course of reading, upon which the forecast shadow of the recitation-room did not rest.

Another arrangement, undoubtedly prejudicial to health, is that which crowds most of the lectures and recitations into the interval between breakfast and dinner. It is an arrangement of great convenience and comfort to the professors, who perform their services without solicitude, and whom the dinner-bell leaves to the free disposal of the residue of the day. But this plan bears a very different aspect, when considered with relation to the students. They sometimes pass four out of the five consecutive morning hours, sitting in a confined posture, and breathing the corrupt air of recitation-rooms; and when this is over, they go to their chambers with the burden of the next day's work upon their minds. Three or even four lessons must be studied before they sleep; and how studied by the ambitious scholar? His aim is not only to deposit them in his memory in a shape in which they may lie ready for future use, but to commit them with entire, minute precision, to have them connected in the memory with well chosen and graceful words, and to prepare himself to recite them with all possible facility and fluency, so as to constrain the instructer to give him the highest mark. Now, to study in this manner three or four lessons in as many successive layers, so carefully placed that they shall remain entirely separate one from another, is an anxious and wearisome task, and can hardly be sustained year after year, without making the eye dim, and the face pale and haggard, and the lungs easily accessible to disease. We earnestly hope for the restoration of the custom of former times, when the hours of study alternated with those of recitation, and the student had deposited one burden before he bowed to take up another. Then but one lesson, as the phrase ran, "was committed over night"; and of that the student was relieved before breakfast. The morning study-hours were closed by another recitation; and the third was fixed at as late an hour in the afternoon as the season would permit. In those days, though there were hard students, there were few broken constitutions; for the confinement of the recitation-room was too transient to inflict serious injury, and the hours of recitation were so arranged as to leave intervals, which invited the students, with

unburdened minds, to bodily exercise and relaxation. In offering these hints, we are at once redeeming a promise to the dead, and discharging a duty to the living. We would confidently appeal for their justice to the medical members of the Senatus Academicus; and will acknowledge ourselves in the wrong, if they will deliberately acquit the present arrangement of all injurious consequences.

Judge White, in his Address, discusses in detail the question of the expediency of domiciliating students within the walls of the College. He advocates the affirmative, in opposition to an able argument for the negative in Dr. Wayland's "Thoughts on the Collegiate System." We cannot but believe the plan of domiciliation, universally adopted in our American colleges, to be indispensably necessary, when considered with reference to the youth of so large a proportion of the students, and their constant need of the judicious supervision of those superior in years. We quote the following remarks of Judge White upon the influence exerted, mentally and morally, one upon another, by fellow-students within the college walls.

"The objection grounded on the moral dangers to the young, arising from their being so intimately associated in a community by itself, guided by its own unwritten code,' and in large numbers, of whom not a few may have been already addicted to habits of vice, is of a graver character, and demands a more extended notice.

"These dangers are not peculiar to bodies of students, still less to students resident within college walls; common boardinghouses certainly would not exclude them. The true remedy is to be sought in counteracting influences; and such influences, we know, exist in great strength at this University, and might, doubtless, be rendered yet more predominant.

"Entering college with good moral characters, and full of youthful aspirations, a vast majority of every class are ardent for virtue as well as for learning, and helpers of each other's joy and progress. If, as suggested, 'older residents influence for evil those who have more recently entered,' other older residents there are, of greater power and attraction, to influence for good. What ingenuous youth of Harvard ever failed to find in other classes, as well as in his own, lights and guides to cheer him on his way, models of virtue and scholarship to elevate his motives and his ambition?

"But the wicked, it is said, 'are much more zealous in making proselytes than the virtuous.' This we doubt. The moral energies of the people, so easily awakened in the cause of philanthropy, show the activity of virtue and benevolence; and none are more susceptible of sympathy in any such cause, than young men in the higher stages of their education; a sympathy, which, when properly directed and cherished, shields them from a thousand temptations.

"We are told, too, of the waste of time which must result from frivolous conversation, where the opportunities of conversation are so abundant.' But this, as we conceive, is not attributable to collegians more than to other young persons, nor to the young alone; older men, congregated in less numbers, have always been liable to the like charge, from the curious quidnuncs whom St. Paul encountered at Athens, to the last meeting on 'change.

"Nothing, indeed, is more natural, than for youth of studious minds and buoyant spirits desipere in loco, in their hours of relaxation, to love the

'Sport that wrinkled care derides,

And laughter holding both his sides.'

But, if abundant opportunities for conversation lead to excess of frivolous talk, they lead also to much intellectual converse equally rational and instructive. The memorable remark of Mr. Fox, that he had been more instructed by his friend Burke, than by all other men and books put together, strikingly illustrates the value of that mutual improvement which results from the companionship and familiar intercourse of intelligent minds. Young friends and fellow-students, frank and confiding, are open as the day to each other. Their mental acquirements become common property. Every individual, among many classmates, has many minds, instead of one only, at work for his improvement. A learned jurist, of the London University, observes, that young men, as far as their mutual information extends, are the best professors for each other.'

“Thus, in addition to all that the students obtain from college professors and teachers, they make continual advancement among themselves, both in knowledge and virtue, by mutual excitement, mutual instruction, and mutual influence; a fact which should make us less anxious to fill up with stated exercises the whole time of the more talented students in college. It has been remarked by a most competent judge, that a very great excellence of the English universities lies in the degree to which they call out voluntary energies and con amore study, not oppressing the mind by enforcing too many studies at once, the

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