exalting intellect and despising the body, we nevertheless are monstrous particular about our table consolations, critical in our dress, and not precisely Stoical in regard to comfortable room arrangements. I do not say that we should go back to the bare floors and wooden stools, which sufficed our grandfathers in these same old rooms, though there is something very beautiful and touching in that patient self-denial, building up the graces of scholarship among those comfortless surroundings. But I do say that in coming here, often from homes of anything but luxury, and planting our Homer, and Horace, and Plato, among rich carpets and sensuous pictures, and quilted easy chairs, we are just lulling our lives to sleep upon a quicksand. Our modern student, indolently lipping his evening pipe, amber-tipped, rose-tinted, over the stern teachings of a philosophy whose crown-word is self-abnegation-is a spectacle for gods and men!

Then there is the excessive notion of cultivation which besets us. You come here and find yourself able to write a piece of grammatical English-possibly to adorn the alternate lines thereof with rhymes— and because you are listened to without visible signs of somnolence, you straightway conceive hopes of literary life. As if anything were necessary but to be unusual, to be even listened to with a modicum of applause; a bleating calf, with three heads, will always draw a crowd, though all the marbles of Athens stood, silently beautiful, under the same roof. No need to play school-boy now, with lines and tangents. You will read Addison and Macauley, storm the battlements of fame with a pop-gun, and enter with folded arms. If we had only remembered that the lofty monument of a life that shall endure, cannot be built with rose-leaves; rough, and gray, and rugged, must the hewn stone rise; garlanded, only, with beauty.

Taste without power-appreciation without ability-ambition without energy-curses all! Products all, of this pretty fallacy of cultivation unredeemed by discipline. We will lay out our life-plan in graceful squares and winding walks, and we will daintily titillate the surface with rake, and hoe, and roller,--all pleasant recreation, done in moonlight and kid gloves; but when it comes to enriching the soil,— it is too coarse; it involves so much practical gee-hawing and dumping of carts!

Why not, then, give up our wild schemes of educational improvement-our absurd fashion of talking of "the Faculty," as though that blood-thirsty body were in some horrible conspiracy to delude and destroy us. Here are learned men-whom not one of us but would acknowledge as our superiors, if met anywhere but under our present

relations willing to devote their best days to us, who have not a single claim upon them. Do you say we pay them? The little sums we pay here yearly, would scarcely put salt upon their tables. It is no pecuniary speculation, we may be assured, but they do it because it is the way to make strong men of us. Let us believe the old way is sometimes the best way; and, working hard and earnestly, if our lives then sum up as failures, we shall know indeed that it was inevitable Fate that willed it so; and out of effort there shall at least have been accomplished a power to preclude the thrice-miserable "might have been."

E. R. S.

Linonia and Brothers.

Let us have a quiet hour;

Let us hob-and-nob with Death-Vision of Sin.

IT has seemed to me, for some time, that much of the common talk about our two Public Societies, and our individual duties to them, is baseless. The present writer thinks, that if the Linonian and Brothers' Societies are not actually dead, they ought to be. He finds them lifeless, (using the word after the manner of sensation-stories,) and believes such a condition is their due. Both of these Societies have outgrown their constitutions. "Every man ought to go up to every meeting and take part in their debates," is a saying so common as hardly to justify quotation marks. But no remark could show more plainly ignorance of the subject. There are two hundred and fifty-five members of Linonia; there are two hundred and fifty-seven members of the Brothers. Now, for two hundred and fifty-five persons to speak only three minutes each, and making no allowance for interruption caused by the succession of speeches, nor any for necessary miscellaneous business, would take TWELVE HOURS and forty-five minutes. I should like to attend that debate, if I didn't know that it would be slightly beaten by the two hundred and fifty-seven. "But I didn't exactly mean that they should all speak, you know, every night." Of course you didn't; I knew that. What was meant, was-"generally speaking;" i. e., as

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a general thing" we ought to go up and speak. Now, in regard to this general thing" it appears, that if the meeting lasted three hours and a half, (long enough for the most enthusiastic,) and the average length of the speeches was, as before, only three minutes, then seventy persons could take part; but if their average length was five minutes, (which, in every good debate they would be, at the least,) then this seventy would be reduced to forty-two. But, making allowance for the discharge of miscellaneous business, and for other incidental interruptions, even our forty-two must be condensed to not more than half that number. Hence it seems to me that our Public Societies, under their present plan, must either be not supported at all, or otherwise by only a very small minority of College.

I have above tried to show that it is physically impossible for the whole of either Society to profit by its disciplinary exercises; that this profit, if there be any, must be enjoyed by a very inconsiderable minority; that it is as foolish to say that every man ought to practice debate in their halls, as to say that he ought to practice self-possession and parliamentary discipline, by occupying the Presidential chair. But it must be owned that this physical impossibility of all the members taking part in the exercises of their own Society, is not the immediate cause of the common want of interest in those exercises. That obstacle would prevent the expression, and so finally the existence of an interest. But there is no tendency to such an interest. No one, I believe, stays away because he thinks there is not room. The immediate cause, then, of the stagnation of these two so-called Societies, I conceive to be this-the complete extinction in them of all sociality. They have ceased to be Societies. Hence, Class compacts have arisen, as the effects, not the causes, of this absence of social vitality. The life which had decayed, and passed away from one condition of existence, has shot up again in another. It is easy to see, too, both how this extinction of the social element is produced, and how it operates. And when I speak of sociality, of course I do not mean an indulgence in conversation, with or without gastronomic entertainment. There can be social debates as well as social conversations. It is brought about, necessarily, by the great excess of numbers. How great an exhibition of feeling, or even of opinion, can there be among persons who hardly know each others names? The stones in the street are more familiar with each other than the individuals are who make up Linonia and the Brothers.

But it is more interesting to notice how this unavoidable estrangement operates. Who go up into the great halls to speak? None but

those who wear on their faces a painful expression of mistaken duty to themselves and to their Society. What is the result? The whole performance is formal, flat, miserable. Few listen to any but their own speeches; and when the meeting breaks up, that it has been a stupid, tedious affair, is the opinion of everybody, but some one who flatters himself that he has made even a more effective harangue than usual.

By exhibiting the real cause of the debility in the Linonia and Brothers, I have endeavored to show that the various means suggested for its cure are not adapted to the end. A reformation in those two nominal Societies, implies a complete reconstruction of them-a radical reorganization. But I do not propose that change, nor any other. For one, I am content that they should rest where they are; only preferring that they should be in name, what they are in fact, mere Institutions.

R. O. W.

Memorabilia Valensia.

COMMENCEMENT AT YALE.

"Wheresoever the carcass is, there are the eagles gathered together." Accordly in the latter part of last July, about the dying Sixty, were hovering fathers, sisters, friends, and such like carrion birds, until New Haven really began to appear a bustling city. Carpet bags, big enough to go alone, were carried about all the streets; the walks about the Colleges were frequented by unfamiliar faces, and strange eyes were peering into Student's rooms, "spying out the land," though mercifully, not with hostile intents. In a word, it was the week which held the One Hundred and Sixtieth Anniversary of Yale College.

ALUMNI MEETING.

On Wednesday morning, at nine o'clock, Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr., called the meeting to order in Alumni Hall, and proposed as President, Pelatiah Perrit of New York, who, having been unanimously elected, took the chair. Prof. Thacher then introduced the oldest living graduate of Yale, of the Class of 1787, Joshua Dewey of Watertown, New York. Next Rev. Mr. Richards of Boston paid a kind tribute to the character of the late Prof. Goodrich. Seldom has a eulogist a subject to whose life so many virtues can justly be awarded. Prof. Goodrich was a great man in his goodness, and it will be many years before his example shall cease its influence among us Students. Prof. Morse represented the Class of 1810, and spoke in the most affectionate manner of his classmates-Ellsworth and Goodrich.

The call upon the Class of 1820 brought President Woolsey to his feet, protesting that when his Class was mentioned, he felt as some ladies feel about their age; yet he hoped to keep young for a number of years ahead, and be of use in the world. Dr. Leonard Bacon of the same Class next rose in response to a demand to that effect, and proceeded to state that when he got up to speak, he always forgot what to say. This statement was greeted with the heartiest laughter of disbelief; it being incredible, above all others in the State, of him whose sledge-hammer mind invariably hit the nail on the head exactly. Various other good specches were made by graduates; and the youngest Class present-that of 1857-spoke eloquently through Messrs. Holmes and Northrop, whose talents have not been forgotten by succeeding Classes. Immediately after Alumni meeting, an historical discourse was delivered by Dr. William Sprague of Albany, in North Church.

PHI BETA KAPPA.

This ready-to-halt fraternity, at half past seven on the same evening, listened to an able address from Judge B. F. Thomas of Boston, upon the subject, “The army of the reserve in the various forces of human civilization." The "immortal nine" having refused to send a delegate, the strains of poesy were unheard in this annual meeting of the Society. What follows were the results of its many ballotings:

On Thursday, July 26, the graduating exercises of the Class of 1860 were gone through with. One hundred and eight received degrees. The following is a list of the speakers and their subjects:

FORENOON.

1. Salutatory Oration in Latin, by William Wisner Martin, Woodbridge, N. J. 2. Oration, "The Self-Restoring Principle in Christian Society," by Erastus Chittenden Beach, Barker, N. Y.

3. Oration, "Self-Knowledge as the basis of True Philosophy," by Henry Ward Camp, Hartford.

4. Oration, "The Advantages of a Representative over a Pure Democracy," by George Louis Beers, Stratford.

5. Dissertation, "The Parting of Washington with his Army and his Officers," by Frederick Henry Colton, Longmeadow, Mass.

6. Oration, "The Law of Honor," by Mason Young, New York City.

7. Poem, "The Chapel on the Shore," by George Lynde Catlin, Staten Island, N. Y.

8. Oration, "Tamerlane," by Thomas Howell White, New Haven.