influence of contact with a great variety of other young men. Under such conditions the college itself comes short of its national mission of throwing together youths of promise of every kind, from every part of the country. It will, no doubt, be argued that a university must reflect the state of the world about it; and that the tendency of the times is toward specialization of functions, and social segregation on the basis of wealth. But this is not wholly true, because there is, happily, in the country a tendency also toward social solidarity and social service. A still more conclusive answer is, that one object of a university is to counteract, rather than copy, the defects in civilization of the day. Would a prevalence of spoils, favoritism, or corruption, in the politics of the country, be a reason for their adoption by universities?

A large college ought to give its students a wide horizon, and it fails therein unless it mixes them together so thoroughly that the friendships they form are based on natural affinities, rather on similarity of origin. Now, these ties are formed most rapidly at the threshold of college life, and the set in which a man shall move is mainly determined in his freshman year. It is obviously desirable, therefore, that the freshmen should be thrown together more than they are now.

Moreover, the change from the life of school to that of college is too abrupt at the present day. Taken gradually, liberty is a powerful stimulant, but taken suddenly, in large doses, it is liable to act as an intoxicant or an opiate.

No doubt, every boy ought to learn to paddle his own canoe; but we do not begin the process by tossing him into a canoe, and setting him adrift in deep water, with a caution that he would do well to look for the paddle. Many a well-intentioned youth comes to college, enjoys innocently enough the pleasures of freedom for a season; but, released from the discipline to which he has been accustomed, and looking on the examinations as remote, falls into indolent habits. Presently he finds himself on probation for neglect of his studies. He has become submerged, and has a hard, perhaps unsuccessful, struggle to get his head

above water. Of late years we have improved the diligence of freshmen by frequent tests; but this alone is not enough. In his luminous Phi Beta Kappa oration, delivered here three months ago, President Wilson dwelt upon the chasm that has opened between college studies and college life. The instructors believe that the object of the college is study, many students fancy that it is mainly enjoyment, and the confusion of aims breed irretrievable waste of opportunity. The undergraduate should be led to feel, from the moment of his arrival, that college life is a serious and many-sided thing, whereof mental discipline is a vital part.

It would seem that all these difficulties could be much lessened if the freshmen were brought together in a group of dormitories and dining-halls, under the comradeship of older men, who appreciated the possibilities of a college life, and took a keen interest in their work and their pleasures. Such a plan would enable us also to recruit our students younger, for the present age of entrance here appears to be due less to the difficulty of preparing for the examination earlier, than to the nature of the life the freshman leads. Complaints of the age of graduation cause a pressure to reduce the length of the college course, and with it the standard of the college degree. There would seem to be no intrinsic reason that our schoolboys should be more backward than those of other civilized countries, any more than that our undergraduates should esteem excellence in scholarship less highly than do the men in English universities.

The last point is one that requires a word of comment, because it touches the most painful defect in the American college at the present time. President Prichett has declared that "it is a serious indictment of the standards of any organization when the conditions within it are such that success in the things for which the organization stands no longer appeal effectively to the imaginations of those in We may add that even in these days, indictment is sometimes followed by sentence of execution. No one will deny that in our colleges high scholarship is little admired

it."

now, either by the undergraduates or by the public. We do not make our students enjoy the sense of power that flows from mastery of a difficult subject and on a higher plane we do not make them feel the romance of scholarly discovery. Every one follows the travels of a Columbus or a Livingston with a keen delight which researches in chemistry or biology rarely stir. The mass of mankind can, no doubt, comprehend more readily geographical than scientific discovery; but for the explorer himself it would be pitiful if the joy of the search depended on the number of spectators, rather than on zeal in his quest.

America has not yet contributed her share to scholarly creation; and the fault lies in part at the doors of our universities. They do not strive enough in the impressionable years of early manhood to stimulate intellectual appetite and ambition; nor do they foster productive scholarship enough among those members of their staffs who are capable thereof. Too often a professor of original power explains to docile pupils the process of mining intellectual gold, without seeking nuggets himself, or, when found, showing them to mankind. Productive scholarship is the shyest of all flowers. It cometh not with observation, and may not bloom even under the most careful nurture. American universities must do their utmost to cultivate it, by planting the best seed, letting the sun shine upon it, and taking care that, in our land of rank growth, it is not choked by the thorns of administrative routine.

If I have dwelt upon only a small part of the problems of the university, if I have said nothing of the professional and graduate schools, of the library, the observatory, the laboratories, the museums, the gardens, and the various forms of extension work, it is not because they are of less importance, but because the time is too short to take up more than two or three pressing questions of general interest. The university touches the community at many points, and as time goes on it ought to serve the public through everincreasing channels. But all its activities are more or less connected with, and most of them are based upon, the college. It is there that character ought to be shaped, that aspirations

ought to be formed, that citizens ought to be trained, and scholarly tastes implanted. If the mass of undergraduates could be brought to respect, nay, to admire, intellectual achievement on the part of their comrades, in at all the measure that they do athletic victory; if those among them of natural ability could be led to put forth their strength on the objects which the college is supposed to represent, the professional schools would find their tasks lightened, and their success enhanced. A greater solidarity in college, more earnestness of purpose and intellectual enthusiasm, would mean much for our nation. It is said that if the temperature of the ocean were raised, the water would expand until the floods covered the dry land; and if we can increase the intellectual ambition of college students, the whole face of our country will be changed. When the young men shall see visions, the dreams of old men will come true.

INAUGURAL DISCOURSE

BY LORD BROUGHAM

It now becomes me to return my very sincere and respectable thanks for the kindness which has placed me in a chair filled at former times by so many great men, whose names might well make any comparison formidable to a far more worthy successor.

While I wish you to accept this unexaggerated expression of gratitude, I am anxious to address you rather in the form which I now adopt, than in the more usual one of an unpremeditated discourse. I shall thus at least prove that the remarks which I deem it my duty to make are the fruit of mature reflections, and that I am unwilling to discharge an important office in a perfunctory manner.

I feel very sensibly that if I shall now urge you by general exhortations to be instant in the pursuit of the learning which, in all its branches, flourishes under the kindly shelter of these roofs, I may weary you with the unprofitable

repetition of a thrice-told tale; and if I presume to offer my advice touching the conduct of your studies, I may seem to trespass upon the province of those venerable persons under whose care you have the singular happiness to be placed. But I would, nevertheless, expose myself to either charge, for the sake of joining my voice with theirs in anxiously entreating you to believe how incomparably the present season is, verily and indeed, the most precious of your whole lives. It is not the less true, because it has been oftentimes said, that the period of youth is by far the best fitted for the improvement of the mind, and the retirement of a college almost exclusively adapted to much study. At your enviable age everything has the lively interest of novelty and freshness; attention is perpetually sharpened by curiosity; and the memory is tenacious of the deep impressions it thus receives, to a degree unknown in after life; while the distracting cares of the world, or its beguiling pleasures, cross not the threshold of these calm retreats; its distant noise and bustle are faintly heard, making the shelter you enjoy more grateful; and the struggles of anxious mortals embarked upon that troublous sea are viewed from an eminence, the security of which is rendered more sweet by the prospect of the scene below. Yet a little while, and you, too, will be plunged into those waters of bitterness; and will cast an eye of regret, as now I do, upon the peaceful regions you have quitted forever. Such is your lot as members of society; but it will be your own fault if you look back on this place with repentance or with shame; and be well assured that, whatever time-ay, every hour-you squander here on unprofitable idling, will then rise up against you, and be paid for by years of bitter, but unavailing, regrets. Study, then, I beseech you, so to store your minds with the exquisite learning of former ages, that you may always possess within yourself sources of rational and refined enjoyment, which will enable you to set at naught the grosser pleasures of sense whereof other men are slaves; and so imbue yourselves with the sound philosophy of later days, forming yourselves to the virtuous habits which