sist the faculties of thought, of imagination and expression. When it is carried beyond this and becomes an end, an ideal of itself, it no longer assists but seriously mars the power and vitality of composition. This it does by giving to it a mechanical character. Upon this point we desire to speak with particularity and emphasis. Is it necessary that originality of thought should decrease as the world moves on? Why is it that with all our superior advantages of text books and instruction, with all our higher standards of attainment, with all the multiform rivalries and increasing pressures of our modern curriculum, yet a professor in our own institution is obliged to confess that "there is less independent thinking in College to-day than there was twenty-five years ago." One original idea should outweigh a myriad compilations. If we purchase superior acquisitions at the price of ideas we are retrograding, not progressing. That the literary efforts of students today are less vigorous and original than in the days of Bellamy, of Hopkins and Emmons, is now quite universally acknowledged. Our President, in his famous Historical Address, remarks on this point with not a little particularity. We quote his own words-" An effect of the modern system of education, or of society, or of both, is to repress originality of thinking, to destroy individual peculiarities, and to produce a general sameness among those who are educated. Though some in younger classes could now rebuke the graduates of honor of former days for slips and errors in knowledge, we miss free and elastic minds, rejoicing in their own movements, and working fearlessly for themselves the mines of truth."

These remarks, emanating from so venerable a source, are very suggestive, and worthy of consideration. In plain English, we borrow and steal what our fathers created. We look for ideas to them, to the great world of written thought;-they looked to themselves. To all composition thus compiled or aggregated, we have applied the adjective mechanical, for, like machinery is it joined together, like machinery is it employed. The trouble is, we are giving to scholarship, to mere acquisition, too high a place; or rather we are giving the society-hall, the pen, but half their due. Perhaps we need not so much to acquire less as to think independently more; at all events we need a greater individuality in the sermons, discourses, essays and various literary efforts of the day, especially those of recent College Alumni. A powerful discourse, an eloquent oration, can never be acquired by the ripest scholarship. As well may you attempt to make a tree grow by nailing slabs together, as to construct an eloquent and convincing speech by jointing together acquired ideas. No, the pure life-giving

sap must flow and percolate through trunk, branch and fibre, before strength or beauty can appear in physical or intellectual productions. Ideas, like light, must lose strength by reflection. Nice scholarship

also is prone to exalt completeness, exhaustiveness, and negative perfection above strength and original power. What Tupper says of character is equally true of composition of every kind. "He who hath no fault is all fault." In their anxiety to avoid faults and blemishes, many avoid ideas also; through excessive caution not to offend the tastes of their auditors they are apt to leave them starving. Our non-graduate preachers and authors often succeed far beyond the average of the laureled alumni, for this simple reason; they look to themselves for thought, labor more for conviction than negative assent, and are less sensitive on many minor points that are thorns in the pathway of the scholar, aiming with his pen more at mechanical completeness than positive strength or beauty.

But these are only the evils of our modern curriculum. Their existence is undeniable; whether necessary or not is doubtful. The ground we occupy is a medium one. We hold that a blind and exclusive attention to the mere studies of our course, usually tends to retard mental expansion, deaden imagination, and repress individual proclivities, so indispensable for literary power; but, on the other hand, we claim for scholarship a high and essential position as a means to an end, to direct and assist the originating faculties in their search after truth, which is the grand, ultimate aim of all effort in science and in literature.

G. M. B.

Life.-3 Song.

Life is but a dream,-a shadow,

I have heard it said or sung;

Life is real, too, and earnest,

These words live on many a tongue.

Life is not a fact so real

As our theories oft suppose,

Glimpses of the world ideal

Every plodding mortal knows.

LITERATURE has suffered many complete changes, both in character and influence, since it first became an element in our modern civilization. Four centuries ago it subserved those great truths of religion and philosophy in which the vitality of the Reformation lay hidden; at a later period it ministered to the amusement and fancy of men; and in our own age, by combining its two former uses, it has become the only channel through which appeals can reach the human heart. Our literature, then, is one of sympathy and genuine feeling. In this its true character, untainted by the sentimentalism which to a great extent corrupts and poisons the literary criticism of this day, it is a strong under current in our society, which readily does away with old convictions and quietly substitutes new opinions in their stead. To convince men, was formerly the task of philosophy; but in this less mechanical age it is the province of our literature to better them. Logic in this century deals with truth strangely, but never efficiently;

for its great lessons are now taught mankind in confidence, earnestness and sincerity. Because these natural impulses of the human heart are the grand sources of all our reforms, fiction, no longer trifling and merely nominal in its influence, is a new power among us which sets in motion the most important reforms. A single novel will often work a more thorough change in a single hour than philosophy would in years. For while the history and experience of the world may have taught us to distrust each other, and educated us, as it were, to the belief that the grand purpose in life consists in the issues which we make with the errors and sins of mankind, it has also led us to distrust ourselves. Philosophy is anything but a consolation to us, reason seems lame in its logic, conscience severe in its judgments, and knowledge treacherous even in its power. But when from such sources as these it is impossible to derive either satisfaction or motive for welldoing, we may turn to those original feelings and impulses, common to our humanity, which education can rarely refine and our modern society has failed to corrupt. These constitute that germ in the real character to which the coldness of argument is repulsive indeed, but which we nourish and protect, until growing strong and deep in the heart, it seems like that kind part of our nature, which is the impelling spring of all that we think and do rightly. This is the spirit which animates our literature; from hence it derives its life: herein it finds its power. We call it enthusiasm; may we not believe, rather, that it is drawn deeper, even from sympathy? Our literature seems, indeed, as if in harmony with the sincerity and earnestness of this age, to have discarded the heartlessness and formality of the last century. For it is a moving power among us in that it supplies our wants rather than criticises them. It is not a strange thing, then, that into the confidence and kindness of our times, glaring Literary Excesses have crept, and that these also are to a certain extent tolerated and even popular. They are extravagancies which if we lived in an age. of reason would doubtless be legitimate, or if this was an era in which the diffusion of knowledge was universal and equal, would certainly be pardonable, but at a period when faith and manliness are the basis of our society, they can hardly be excused, much less justified.

In saying a few words on our Literary Excesses, which in themselves are not serious enough to be called radical errors, it is our wish to avoid the responsibility of criticising those faults, which after all may be only fancied ones, and if possible to suggest some things concerning those authors to which we as Students resort most, and also in some measure to point out the influence which their works leave behind them.

In College, to know of men and books rather than to judge of them, seems to be the main purpose of all our reading. We may here gather in knowledge from many different sources; but to measure its value intelligently, is not given to us thus early in life. We are, in literature at least, only educating those tastes which shall hereafter cull out for us the good from the evil and separate the useful from the worthless. The most intelligent and cultivated man among us, is in advance of the most ignorant one, in so far that he by self-discipline has already learned how to learn. It is no wonder, then, that to us, a standard of complete excellence in a field of learning so vast that its limits seem the further off the more we know of it, should appear a somewhat vague and unattainable thing; and also that the warm and enthusiastic lives which we are living here, should crave after something more stirring, more definite, and, if possible, more mysterious. Such a consideration as the former of these may often, we think, make a better man of him who even with his single talent goes out into the real contest of life, for it will surely render him more faithful and enduring in the work which is set before him; while the latter begets an error in our habits of thinking, not permanent indeed, but certainly popular for a time among some of us. It is an error due to the extreme excesses of those authors whom we sometimes call Idealists. Their philosophy is an intensely individual and earnest one to us, and seems well adapted to the doubts and longings which beset a young man's life. Their progressive theories can satisfy impatience, their mysteries are pleasing to the pryings of curiosity, their reforms are wild enough for the most visionary, and their heroes numerous enough for the most devout. Such is character of modern Idealism. Into its structure enters the strong arm of Fate, an iniquitous scheme of Socialism, and a vacillating Hero-Worship. Supported abroad by such men as Carlyle and Kingsley, it has found no lack of zealous advocates in our own country, and warm hearts, too, in which to take the deepest root. The soul of this reforming philosophy is revolution itself, which aims at the entire subversion of the religious and social character of modern society. Its richest fruits, even in such tendencies, are already ripening for the harvest in the young, thoughtful, and aspiring; and new disciples are everywhere flocking to its support from among the vain and boastful. Its best friend is doubt, and its

worst enemy is faith.

But we are told by our Ideal philosophers, that theirs is the only pure faith. A faith, however, with which Fate may sport, is a melancholy one indeed; for while the former lives in what it sees not, the