the spiritual ornament of antiquity, into the poor worshipper of the Islands-a brute except in speech!

But the Greek held to the immortal and the intelligent, using the mortal, though arrayed in grandeur, for the simple protection, all unworthy, of the divinity within; and he maintained himself in his high attainments. So must men hold fast to the divinity that is within themselves, and regard the body, with all its marvelous adaptations, as simple protection and support. This is essential to the maintenance of their rightful position. A certain attention and care for the body is worthy and essential; but sad would it be for a race, and sad for an individual, if ever the cultivation of those qualities which are brutish, should usurp the place of his higher spiritual duty.

So with us in College; we are correct, if we carefully subordinate the physical, while we do not neglect it; if we cultivate physical health, that we may have greater moral usefulness, or secondarily, greater intellectual energy and proficiency. We are not correct, if our enthusiasm is greater for physical than for intellectual or moral pursuits. For the physical is not our distinctive nature-it has a certain brotherhood with the brute-but the spiritual, the intellectual, the moral, is only shared with higher intelligences. In these we are entitled to our highest enjoyment, our chiefest enthusiasm, our most active energy. Whether or not, then, our position upon the subject of the physical is correct, depends upon whether or not we are intellectual first, and as a sole end; and physical as a pure means.

It is difficult to answer affirmatively to the proposition. We believe that we indulge too great an element of the physical. We are not speaking of individual excess, nor denying individual neglect. It can be predicated, indeed, of every branch of exercise, that, as we conduct things now-a-days, one class of men indulge in it to excess, and the other neglect it. Of these particulars, however, the design is not now to speak. The fact to which we desire to refer is, that there is penetrating through our College Society a physical enthusiasm, (so to speak,) a filibustering energy of muscle, far exceeding, nay! far different from that vigor of health and strength of constitution which the requirements of the mind justly demand. We require and should seek for only that bodily well-being which shall preserve the constitution and support labor. That physical excitement, that riot of muscle, which induces indifference or neglect of the intellectual, is a sad misfortune, militating, constantly, against a man's true development.

That this contraband enthusiasm does penetrate our social system, convincingly observed from its latest ebullition at the Statement of

Facts. The above letter refers simply to the apparent respectability which that ebullition sustained-we wish to consider the false basis it

assumes.

Preliminarily, a Statement of Facts Rush assumes that a student's conduct should not be judged as other men's conduct, but that the patient public must unlimitedly indulge it. This assumes, not simply that the public shall not take measures against our impositions; but that they must not even think them wrong, for, in a city, public disapprobation does not long precede the police. The student, it is implied, is presumed to be learning things which are high-toned, great and good; and, if he is learning so worthily, and consequently forming such great, good and high-toned character, surely it should not be denied him to do, if he please, that which is not high-toned, but questionable, or disgraceful. The fallacy of this notion seems to be, that it is not circumscribed; that its latitude is unwarrantable. There are indulgences granted to a large company of students, which they have not when they meet and lose when they separate; but they are by no means such as would excuse what in any other men would be positively discreditable. The criterion of the indulgence, then, is always the intrinsic character of the action. For as there is no indulgence which would extenuate the dishonor of a hand-to-hand street fight between two students, for the reason that the thing is intrinsically discreditable, so no other action in itself discreditable (though in inferior degree,) can be expected by indulgence to be made praiseworty. This conventional indulgence can never be tortured into the extenuating grave departures from a high sense of personal dignity, or regard for consistency and propriety.

As a basis, a Rush tacitly assumes that it is promoting a rivalry that is proper and praiseworthy; that it is the ebullition of an enthusiasm altogether commendable; and that from these considerations it is exteriorally and intrinsically creditable. This assumed basis seems to be radically fallacious. What is the rivalry which it recognizes and promotes? Is it other than the unmistakeable rivalry of brute force, with just the quantity of intelligence entering into its contests, as characterizes the parallel contests of a herd of eccentric bulls; or a company of fascinating rams? We are not attempting to call hard names, but are honestly pursuing an analysis of this delectable College custom. It cannot be gainsayed that the enjoyable rivalry of us young gentlemen, and that of the rams, are identical in the objects. which engage them; in the manner of their contests; and in the encouragement they contribute to, and the assistance they receive from

intelligence. In answer to these statements it may be urged, that we would therefore object to all physical enthusiasm or rivalry; that ballplaying-especially match-playing-would come under our strictures. So far is this from a fair deduction, that indeed John Heenan even would not come under our strictures, since it was the unintelligent brute force which was objected to. Heenan brought intelligence into his contest. It was a trial of scientific, cultivated muscle, of artistic skill, of intelligence against intelligence, as well as of brute force against brute force. A ball-match, upon the other hand, we consider perfectly legitimate. It is a trial of skill—a test of art—a trial in which intelligence has a place at least of propriety. It is not inconsistent with any man's dignity, or decorum. You can preserve, in the contest, all the elevation of sentiment or behavior which you at any time possess. The exhiliration is virtuous; the enthusiasm legitimate. Very different is such enthusiasm from that of which a Rush is called an ebullition. The latter takes no virtuous exhiliration from the fresh atmosphere; is not tempered by the presence of skill and intelligence; is not dignified by the occasion which it produces. Surely it is not the greatest ambition, nor the most unquestionable qualities of men, which it appeals to; for certainly, to shove a number of men by the indiscriminate application of shoulders and fists is not a very lofty aspiration, nor is it unfair to call questionable the qualities which we, as intellectual men, employ in the attempt. Further than this, it cannot appear creditable to a College of young gentlemen, who profess to be devoting four primest years to intellectual progress, to be engaged in a street meleé, which has not a spark of anything intellectual in it; which repels the intellectual; which even adopts the worst form of the exclusively physical. For it is true (nor would it be difficult to assign a reason why it is so) that mankind is agreed in viewing as most vulgar and undignified, that form of contention which is carried on by personal contact. Though a man is no less guilty, he certainly is considered less vulgar if he shoot a man, than if he beat him to death with his fists. No idea of personal contact was ever admitted into a chivalric code, or tolerated by the respect of a people. It is essentially vulgar, and though John Heenan has no such bloody intentions as Roger Pryor, yet Mr. Pryor is overlooked and Heenan is abominated.

And now, when such is the indisputable character of these Rushes, how is it that annually they are repeated? Why will a class of men engage in an affair one year, which they must know they will shortly after look upon in a clearer light? Why will they not anticipate

"Or reach a hand through time to catch the far off interest" of a more proper, more reliable action in the present? Surely we have enough that appeals to us to "forecast the years." In this great old College, we have not only the genii of a high and great development calling upon us, but we are compelled to have a high sense of personal dignity, and this appeals to us too.

We have as yet said nothing of one more reason for our objection to these Rushes, etc. The enthusiasm for such pursuits is bad enough, but worse than itself is its effect; for it tends directly to destroy that other enthusiasm, whose nursery a College claims to be; the enthusiasm for learning, for ideas, for intellectual and spiritual development. The true development is when the muscular is well cared for and entirely subordinated; and in proportion as this is true, will the better enthusiasm be nourished. In College, let us rather cultivate this latter enthusiasm, doing that for which we may be grateful in the years to come. Rather than train the muscle to perfection, let us nourish the brain out of its callowness; instead of being able to strike the strongest blow, let us be able to originate a better thought. It will be more profitable for the work we ought to do in the world; for, if the body is not neglected, it will be thoughts, rather than blows, that the world will demand from us. In a few years we will calmly strike the balance-sheet. The results, too, like the fruit of the seedling planted long ago, will have been known. Returning then to the scenes of today, it is ours now to answer, whether we would prefer to recall, as we stand at the threshold of our old lodgings, "here I lived, while, like the native in El Dorado, I was surrounded by the riches of the whole world, which were mine to take, and I took them not;" or like that other student, who returned to his Alma Mater and standing in his lodgings, said, that that was,

"Where once we held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art,
And labor, and the changing mart,
And all the frame-work of the land."

F. M.

"College Conditions.”

It is not the design of this article to add to the information of collegians, in regard to a subject with which many of them feel so well acquainted from personal experience, but to discuss, speaking of its merits and demerits, this peculiarly Yalensian system of "conditions ;" in regard to which, I think justice to the influence of the powers that be demands that we should think that, as a system, it long since died; but on account of the poverty of its friends, it never received a burial, and, of necessity, its manes must wander up and down the learned Styx, until it has completed its "hundred years." That it is, as a system, virtually dead, in respect to all its good intentions, (which the fact that the system has existed here compels us to suppose it had,) and lives only in its deleterious effects on its victims, it shall be the design of the following remarks to prove. In these remarks I refer only to conditions on term studies, and not to conditions on entering College, as they might not apply with equal justice to the latter. But, in the first place, to make a slight digression, allow me to express my surprise, that a custom that has so long occupied so prominent a place in Yalensian disciplinary tactics, should have hitherto escaped the keen eye of the Lit.; and I can only account for it by supposing that the strong sense of honor of the "Board" forbid them to twit, even a ghost, with the "poverty of its friends."

That we may the better understand our subject, let us, in brief, consider first what we understand to be the aim of an institution of learning like our own, and, then, whether the system under discussion tends to the attainment of that end. First, then, the professed object of such an institution as this is, to furnish young men who desire to gain that discipline of mind, and to acquire that knowledge which will best fit them for life, with superior advantages for the attainment of those desires. Now, the next question is, does this system of "conditions" in any way effect the bringing about of this result? That we may decide this question, let us ask what this system proposes to have in view? It is fair to presume, inasmuch as it is a part of the College discipline, that its object is to compel more attention, on the part of the dilatory, to the studies of the course. Now, providing this result was obtained, is it not lowering the dignity of an in