Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

not, must there not always be, a vast majority of the young, in whom impulse is continually mastering reflection, and directing action?

I have spoken of the uniformity of our situation, as another cause tending to assimilate us. All here with the same objects, all at the same point of our career, all receiving the words of instruction from the same lips, all viewing truth and nature through the medium of the same books, all going through the same process of mental expansion,why should there not be found to be a great degree of similarity in our public exercises? Yet this uniformity is complained of, and even ridiculed, by a journalist, now much in the public eye, who volunteers as prompter general at any of our public exhibitions-the performances being, as he conceives, so monotonously alike, that he could assist any speaker who should falter, and correct any who should go wrong, without a copy of his piece. Perhaps it may be doubted, whether the fact is not somewhat exaggerated here; whether our public performances are quite so insipid as that the extempore suggestions of our self-elected prompter would be received as very great improvements, either by the performers or the audience. However this may be, we would recommend to Mr. W.'s consideration, whether having nothing of that diversity of condition, education, interest, and occasion, which individualizes the orators who figure in the active scenes of life, our academic speakers ought not to be excused for considerable uniformity in their style of thinking and expressing thought.

II. College is a place where the great purpose of all is apt to be forgotten, and their most valuable possession to be unappreciated. This great purpose is study. Now this is much more difficult, and requires much more moral exertion, to devote one's self to, as an object, than the more active duties of after life. For besides that a man generally performs these last for the support of himself and others, and is therefore continually urged on by the spur of necessity, they are of a nature so comparatively bustling and various, so made up of minor and immediate points of interest, that he can easily engage in them all his energies and propensities, bodily and mental. Whereas, our great duty

here, not involving in its proper discharge, the present support, comfort, or amusements of life; presenting few definite points to be gained, for zeal and exertion to centre upon; not being in its nature absorbent, but engaging the intellect solely in its pursuit, and requiring the other principles of our nature to be continually checked in their propensities, and the multifarious little objects of interest which are ever springing up, and claiming an undue share of attention, to be deliberately forced down to their proper subordination,-it cannot be steadily pursued, without a broad regard to distant consequences, and a self-denying tension of the faculties, which youth finds it most difficult to maintain.

By that most valuable possession, which is apt to be unappreciated in college, I mean time. And it is the most valuable treasure, of which our abode here puts us in undisturbed possession. Secluded from the calls of business or pleasure, we have our whole time, integri dies noctesque, to devote, if we please, to literary and intellectual pursuits. But it has become almost proverbial, that an enduring and unvarying blessing is seldom duly appreciated; and time, more seldom than any. Least of all, with its abstractness and its uniformity, can it be appreciated at that age, which often neglects advantages the most obvious and peculiar. It is not very wonderful, then, though certainly lamentable, that we do not justly estimate in college our uninterrupted hours, days, and years; that we do not set high enough, in our own minds, the standard of attainments, which we will be satisfied with making, in the four years of the course.

III. We live here in an undomestic and unsocial state,-cut off, most of us, from the homes and the friends of our boyhood. Now, in my mind, there is no one institution of nature, or of civil society, which does so much towards refining the manners and the affections, and entwining round life the most delicate sympathies, as the grouping together of different ages, sexes, and relations, in families. The effect of the unnatural dissolution of this connexion, and the bringing together of a great number of those who properly form but one component part of a social circle, is quite perceptible among us at college; not only in a something

of roughness in our manners, but in a general coldness of feeling, and dryness of sentiment. Indeed, although youth is called the age of sentiment and enthusiasm, I know no less enthusiastic or sentimental place than college; no place, where there is more shyness in the expressing of lively sensibility; no place, where an orator, in the pulpit or elsewhere, can appeal with less success to the fine and ardent sympathies of our nature. The ridiculousness of any passion, where his warmth should verge upon extravagance, or his sentiment upon sentimentality, would be much more keenly felt, than all the eloquence he might utter. This trait of our character, I trace, as I have already hinted, to our being undomesticated. At home, the feelings are kept ever lively and delicate, by the most endearing relations; and the young, instead of being ashamed of the enthusiasm proper to their years, are encouraged to give it vent, by finding it pleasing and becoming in the eyes of their elders with whom they consort. But is it not natural that all these soft tendrils, nourished by the atmosphere of home, should be bruised off, by a sudden mingling with strangers, and strangers of our own age?

But there is an effect, more palpable, and perhaps more important than this, resulting from the circumstance in academic life, which we are considering. The student is

unhomed, loosed from the control and the monitions of parents, just when all his passions and appetites, coming to their full strength, make those monitions and that control most necessary; and is thrown into the almost exclusive society of fifty other young men, in the same predicament, -that all which needs confinement and refrigeration in all their bosoms, may ferment together.

"The almost exclusive society." To the student who comes from a distance, this exclusiveness is generally absolute. In losing the society of his home and his native place, he loses all refined society whatever, and has nothing in its stead, but the chat of his comrades. He finds himself in a land of strangers; and he is tempted to indulge his social feelings and propensities, perhaps naturally irrepressible, by plunging into low company and low habits,-merely from the want of opportunity to enter high and respectable cireles.

But this opportunity is wanting no longer. The highest and most respected have opened their doors to the student. One mansion, in especial, which attracts us to a weekly intercourse with all that is refined and intellectual, all that is fair and enchanting in society, we cannot forbear gratefully adverting to. The auspicious influence exerted there, not only on the enjoyment, but, we verily believe, upon the morals of this seminary, in the elegant intercourse of the evening, is only equalled by that which the honored lord of the mansion exerts upon our literary progress, by the labors of the day.

THE BELOVED.

(GOETHE.)

I THINK of thee, when the high sun glows red
On the vast deep;

I think of thee, when on old ocean's bed
Pale moon-beams sleep.

I see thee, when upon the mountain tops
Dawns the first light;

When on the trembling bridge the wanderer stops,
At dead of night.

I hear thee, when the glossy stream runs by
With mellow gush;

When on the woodland broods, and in the sky,
A solemn hush.

Ay, I am ever by thee; though afar-
Still art thou near;

The sun sets, dimly gleams the evening star,—
Would thou wert here!

WILL YOU SUBSCRIBE, SIR?

HE who endeavours to suit every one, as the old man with his ass, in La Fontaine's tale, generally ends by pleasing no one at all. The diversity of characters, thoughts, habits,

and manners among men, renders it next to impossible that they can all agree in their opinions of one and the same thing. And as a beautiful woman may be, by some, coldly confessed to possess regular features, while by others she is idolized; so, in the greater part of human affairs, we find that one half of mankind come to a diametrically opposite conclusion to the remaining moiety. We are a great stickler for experience in the affairs of life, and do not regret any thing that can give an insight into the human character; not even if we have paid dearly for our knowledge; since that alone serves to impress it forcibly upon the memory, and thus adds one more important lesson for our conduct through life.

It was one of the finest mornings of the last Christmas vacation, when we rolled up, very neatly, a Prospectus of our forthcoming "Collegian," and tying around it a little pink riband, sallied forth to call upon a few acquaintance, to get them to subscribe, or at any rate to let them know that such a thing was going on. Thus armed and equipped, we stepped briskly along to Mr. Grave's office. He is a lawyer, and in his conversation is very argumentative, dealing in majors, minors, and conclusions, from the bench of the judge, to his butcher's stall.

"Surprising weather this, Mr. Grave, for December." "Surprising, indeed! However, as I was saying this morning, after having observed, in the first place, that the climates of Gaul, Britain, and Germany, as well as other countries, upon their territories becoming inhabited and cultivated, became changed, and are now much milder,— and seeing that this country, in the second place, has become inhabited and cultivated, we are brought to the conclusion, that our climate will, in the course of time, undergo, and is now undergoing, a material alteration. And talking of climates, I hear that some of you at Cambridge, are about to let off a rocket."

Yes, yes, a periodical; which will doubtless take a very high rank among the works of the day."

"It will consist, I suppose, in the first place, of some learned discussions."

"Certainly," we eagerly said.

"A department, in the second place, to be devoted to

« ForrigeFortsett »