through college, and come out into life, furnished and prepared for great usefulness. But the incidental expenses of a college course have been greatly increased within a few years, and these expenses come largely from customs and institutions originating among the students themselves, and which are of no practical utility. They come from the hiring and furnishing of rooms, on a rich and magnificent scale, for these secret societies. The society library must frequently have a great addition to its volumes, and this addition is made often not from a sense of deficiency in the library itself, but so that its volumes may outnumber those of the rival fraternity, and the fact be used for electioneering purposes. Or it is thought necessary to outdo all that has gone before, in providing costly music for Commencement, or to outshine the previous classes in the extent and splendor of the class-album. The poorer students do not like to enter a protest against these extravagant expenditures, lest they should seem mean and wanting in public spirit; and so the evil has been creeping in and growing, until it has become one of great magnitude, and, as we think, calls for the stern interposition of the college authorities.

We might instance also other things which tend to mar the beauty and order of our colleges. But we have a general confidence that all these untoward tendencies and influences will have only a limited and temporary range; that they will in due time be checked and overborne, as have been many other evil customs in the past. These institutions are under the guardianship of sound and Christian men, who have the most vital interest in their true welfare, and who know how to temper severity with lenity.

We cannot and must not expect in the young men connected with our colleges the judgment and discretion which belong to mature age the wisdom that comes only by experience. But if we had the ear of these young men, we could not but say to them There will come a time erelong in your history, when many of the things which you now regard as of great consequence will seem to you "trifles light as air," and other things which you are now disposed to undervalue will assume their true importance in your regard. As you pass on in life, and your college days recede, you will come to value more and

more the regular discipline and drill of the college course, and think more meanly of secret societies and other outside appendages. You will see that the main value of the college lies not in large, loose, miscellaneous reading, in boat-racing, in nightly clubs and social festivities, but in submitting the mind honestly and thoroughly to that long and vigorous curriculum of study which the wisdom of maturer minds has devised. Happy will it be for you, if you can, from your after-years, look back upon your college life, not as a period of trifling, pleasure-seeking, and frivolty, but as the time when your intellect was disciplined, your powers developed, and the whole man made ready for the great work of life. Happy if you can say to some chosen companion of those early and halcyon days, what the poet Cowley could say to his friend,

Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,

How oft unwearied have we spent the nights,
Till the Ledæan stars, so famed for love,

Wondered at us from above.

We spent them not in toys, in lust, in wine,
But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry,

Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine."

ARTICLE III.

THE HYMNS OF CHARLOTTE ELLIOTT.

THE name of this lady has within the last few years become somewhat familiar to Americans, through two or three of her devotional poems, which have found their way into the hymnbooks and hearts of the people. One in particular, whose authorship was not known until it had become quite domesticated with us, has been universally recognized as a most valuable contribution to hymnology. We allude to the one commencing,

"Just as I am, without one plea."

Another, perhaps next in favor among us, begins thus:

"My God, my Father, while I stray

Far from my home, on life's rough way,

Oh, teach me from my heart to say

"Thy will be done!'"

It bears, like the other, the impress of high poetical genius, as well as deep Christian feeling. The concluding stanzas are especially excellent:

"Renew my will from day to day;

Blend it with Thine, and take away
All that now makes it hard to say
'Thy will be done!'

"So when on earth, I breathe no more
The prayer, oft mixed with tears before,
I'll sing, upon a happier shore,

'Thy will be done!""

Had these two hymns been Miss Elliott's only contributions to sacred poetry, the world would have been greatly her debtor, for who can estimate the influence of a really good hymn? There are states of feeling in which even the tenderest words of Scripture hardly meet the heart's sore and aching sensitiveness; times of depression, whether from disease, or affliction, or sin, when the distance between God and us seems so great that we cannot approach to him on the throne of his ineffable splendors, but when the record of human suffering and deliverance, embodied in some familiar verse, may lead us where we can feel the healing touch of Christ's soft hand. Could we read, as God reads, and as perhaps we shall be permitted to, when we reach heaven, the history of one well-known hymn, the instances of awakening, conversion, and sanctification in which it has borne a part, we should have a new illustration how God uses the weak things of this world to subdue the mighty. We do not wonder to be told that, "an eminent clergyman of the Church of England, almost as well known for his profound exegetical works on this side the Atlantic as the other, once said to Miss Elliott, when she was bemoaning her inability to do more for Christ by active effort, that he should be happy if all his ministers had done as much good as this one hymn of hers, Just as I am.' "The good," says the Rev. William Bacon

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Stevens, who introduces the American edition of the Morning and Evening Hymns for a Week,' "the good which this single hymn has done, the feeble faith which it has encouraged, the timid resolve which it has strengthened, the wavering minds which it has fixed, and the many souls who have made its verses a vehicle by which they have consecrated themselves to Christ, can be known only when the day shall declare it.'" Take, for another instance, that hymn of Toplady's, written less than a hundred years ago, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me!" or Wesley's, "Jesus, lover of my soul!" What associations are blended with these in our minds. How often have we listened to them, or repeated them for our own consolation, or that of others, until now they never fail to awaken a long train of precious recollections. And how many other souls have they cheered and comforted as well; how many new-born children of God have fed upon their sweetness, and how many dying saints have breathed out in them their latest breath. Just now, nothing has affected us more in the sad memorials of the decease of the late princely consort of the Queen of England than this touching record of his last hours-that the prayer contained in the first lines of the hymn above referred to was repeated over and over again by him, as he sunk into the arms. of death:

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee!"

Miss Elliott has proved herself worthy to rank with the authors of these hymns, and with Watts, Steele, Montgomery, Cowper, and others, whose productions take an acknowledged precedence in this branch of literature. In the little book whose title we gave a few sentences back, we have fifteen hymns from her pen, all but one or two of which are of rare poetic merit. One of these, less familiar to our readers, we give entire:

“Christian, seek not yet repose;

Hear thy guardian angel say
Thou art in the midst of foes-

Watch and pray!'

"Principalities and powers,

Mustering their unseen array,

Wait for thy unguarded hours —

• Watch and pray!'

Of still higher excellence, as a hymn adapted to social and public worship as well as to closet musings and devotions, is the following, with which some of our congregations are becoming acquainted. We hardly know where to turn to find anything more perfectly in harmony with spiritual aspirations - the longing to depart, when He sees fit, and to be with Christ. Though in our more recent hymn-books, we must enrich our page with its sweet melody.

"Let me be with Thee where Thou art,

My Saviour, my eternal rest!

Then only will this longing heart
Be fully and forever blest.

"Let me be with Thee where Thou art,
Thy unveiled glory to behold;
Then only will this wandering heart

Cease to be treacherous, faithless, cold.

"Let me be with Thee where Thou art,
Where spotless saints thy name adore;
Then only will this sinful heart

Be evil and defiled no more.

"Let me be with Thee where Thou art,

Where none can die, where none remove;

Then neither life nor death will part

Me from Thy presence and Thy love."