lesson is not forgotten. When at length boys are gathered out one by one from the whole population, and brought together in the academy, to prepare for college, they come with all these primary lessons of obedience and equality thoroughly mastered and stored up for use. Consequently there is comparatively little tendency with us to that violence, petty tyranny, and bullying so characteristic of English schools. Mr. Hughes exhibits a great deal of this even at Rugby, and makes the best of it, by allowing it to pass under the general appellation of English vigor and pluck, but stripped of all disguises, it is better described under the name of juvenile barbarism. We do not mean to say that our schools are entirely free from this ugly element, but we have far less of it than is seen in the English schools, and we account for the difference, in part, by the reason which we have just given.

Something like our common-school system is almost indispensable to teach these early lessons effectually. There are obvious reasons why the family is not adequate to this end. It is only when the children of many families, with antecedents and habits often very diverse, are brought together upon one platform, and under one law, that the principles touching the relations of child with child can be thoroughly taught. Here is one grand cause which goes far to shape and control the intercourse of our students in the academy and the college.

(2.) But there is also another cause, acting in the same direction. The principle of caste in English society shows itself most distinctly in her schools and Universities, and instead of being, as Englishmen fondly suppose, a principle favorable to law and order, it leads directly to violence and disorder. Mr. Hughes has furnished us some glimpses of the internal antagonisms to which this principle gives rise, in the relations of Hardy the Servitor" to his fellow-students, especially during the early days of his life at Oxford. And it is worthy of notice, as an illustration of some things already said, that what afterwards recommends this Hardy to the more favorable regard of his haughty and aristocratic neighbors, is not his high character as a scholar, is not his excellent moral qualities, is not even his sturdy English pluck, about which there is so much talk and boasting, but it is his physical energy, the fact that his oar

will turn the scale in a boat-race. Now there is no peace anywhere in this world, and certainly not in a community of Anglo-Saxons, where a portion of that community plumes itself on merely adventitious circumstances, "the accident of an accident," and on these grounds claims for itself a lofty superiority over the rest. There may for a time be outward decorum and quiet, but the seeds of discord are within, and as sure as effect follows cause, they will germinate and bring forth fruit in open collision and strife, in manifold mischiefs and disorders.

Far different is the state of things with us. There is no better specimen on earth of a pure Democracy than a genuine American College. It is, in the first place, the natural growth of our democratic institutions. But when formed, it is a more perfect example even of the working of democratic principles than the society itself out of which it has sprung. When a young man comes upon this college ground with high airs and swelling pretensions, founded not upon what he himself is, but upon what somebody else is, he is certain to meet with something very soon which causes a dreadful collapse. He finds himself in a community which will not tolerate any of this kind of nonsense, while it is instinctively quick to appreciate real character and ability.

The evils and confusions which are constantly generated in an English University by this law of caste, we cannot stop to trace out in detail. It so happens that some of our colleges, in their early history, while this country remained under English rule, were conducted, in a measure, upon this principle, though never to the full extent seen in English institutions. The students were enrolled' upon the catalogue according to the rank and standing of the families from which they came; certain conventionalisms, derived partly from the old country and partly of native origin, guiding in the enrolment. accompaniment to this usage, the fagging system, still largely in vogue in England, was also admitted, by which a part of the students were bound to do service for others, and to show towards them at all times a deferential respect and obedience. We had for a long time in our history all the good derivable from these highly conservative principles, and the traditions of rough

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ness and disorder in our colleges which have come down to us from that period do not tend to give us a very exalted opinion of the practical worth of the principles themselves. There was on the one hand, as there always will be in such circumstances, an abuse of power and privilege, a tendency to acts of mean and contemptible tyranny and exaction; and there was on the other hand a constant and systematic resistance, secret or open, to this artificial authority. Even long after these usages were abolished, in form, the evils to which they had given rise remained to plague and vex these college communities, and had to be rooted out by slow degrees. But as now constituted, there are no organizations which better deserve to be called democracies, so far as the relations of the students one with another are concerned, than our genuine American colleges, and the healthy and invigorating influence of this principle is widely manifest.

Whether the causes above named have or have not the importance which we have attached to them, it is undeniable, we think, that the moral condition of our schools and colleges is a great way in advance of that of England. There is with us. not only far less of open vice and profligacy, but less also of sham character and honor; less of fiction and pretence; a more true and elevated aim; less of that prevailing nonsense which mars everything it touches; less of those ignoble, frivolous, petty ambitions, so largely to be seen in the English Universities. But there is yet great room for improvement among ourselves, and in closing we wish to make a few suggestions touching our own institutions.

In respect to thorough and exact scholarship, as has been already said, the advance in our colleges (and as a necessary consequence in our preparatory schools) has been for the last twenty-five years very marked and commendable. Our progress in this department has been as rapid perhaps as is desirable. There has been no great and sudden transition, but a steady and healthful growth. And there has been progress too in other directions. There has been a decided improvement in general refinement and civilization. There is less disposition to rude, coarse, vulgar tricks and practices than formerly. A public sentiment has gradually grown up among the students them

selves against these practices. As compared with former times the individuals who engage in them are few in number, and they are not sustained by the prevailing tone of feeling about them. The bearing of the students in their intercourse one with another is more gentlemanly and cultivated. The rightful authority of the Faculty is accepted with a better grace, and is not regarded so much as something to be warred against and thwarted. The religious condition of these institutions is far better than in times past. In the early part of the present century our colleges were overrun with infidelity, in its most gross and hateful forms. The professors of religion were few in number, and were set as a mark for the scoffer. Now, in our New England colleges, (and the same general statement will doubtless hold true of the great body of our Northern colleges,) the proportion of professors of religion is very large. For the past two or three years almost half of the whole number of students (not far from 3000) in the colleges of New England have been members of evangelical churches, and hence, in no small degree, come the increased sobriety and order noticeable in these little communities.

But we have also our evil tendencies as well as our good ones, and these evils are creeping in under the mask of virtues. We hear a great deal nowadays about "physical culture" and "muscular Christianity." If we understand the matter aright, the first two works at the head of this article were written

partly in the service of this new movement. Our college boat-races are one of the croppings-out of this modern sentiment. This custom has been borrowed from the English Universities, where it has been long in vogue, and is "more honored in the breach than in the observance." We will not say that it is an unmixed evil, but the good in it bears no proper proportion to the evil. We are satisfied that it destroys far more health and strength than it creates, that it kills more than it makes alive, even in a physical point of view. But intellectually and morally the case is still worse. It absorbs the thoughts of the student to the exclusion of books, and leads on to habits of vicious indulgence. The abstinence and severe bodily training which precede the race, are followed by excess and sensual indulgence when the struggle is over. This is true

in England, and it is and will be more true here, if the custom prevails. At Cambridge and Oxford they talk of the "rowing set" and the " reading set," thereby implying that the young men who give themselves to this business are withdrawn from their books, to the ruin of their scholarship; and the natural tendency of the practice will be to create the same distinction here. The Faculties in our colleges in times past have had to encounter a great many evil tendencies and practices among the students, and to root them out by the force of their influence and authority, and here is one which they will doubtless have to meet in the same way; and the sooner they apply themselves to the task the better.

Be it understood that we make no objection to what may properly be called "physical culture," but on the other hand, highly approve and recommend it. The establishment of gymnasia in connection with our colleges is, we believe, a movement in the right direction, and under proper control and regulations they will prove an immense advantage. But they will have to be watched and guarded, lest they also lead to excess.

We have adverted also to secret societies, which have come in like a flood within a few years. We are satisfied from a small experience and a larger observation, that their tendency is exceedingly pernicious. They do not subserve the end for which they are professedly designed, but rather defeat it. They do not contribute to large, manly, generous culture, but to egotism, self-conceit, and "mutual admiration." They create a great bill of expense, with no corresponding profit. The place for a student to measure himself with his fellow-students is in the open field of competition and debate, and not in these secret conclaves. The sooner this nuisance is abated the better it will be for our colleges.

In general, for these and various other reasons, the expense of a collegiate education is getting to be so great as to become, to fathers with moderate means, who have sons whom they desire to educate, and to young men who have no fathers to lean upon, truly formidable. It has been the real glory of our system, that everything has been made to facilitate the process of obtaining a liberal education, so that bright-minded, enterprizing youth in humble circumstances might find their way