UNIVERSITY COURIER.
13
ment of the intellect, the enlarging of the capabilities of acquisition, retention, utilization, are but the first and least part of the teacher's work. There is the training of that individual to a true, noble, and persistent purpose that shall control his impulsive, wayward and indolent spirit through life. Ought not the teacher's every energy be stirred in view of such a work? But here is the material susceptible of such results. A soul to be won or lost; not one but many. Your skill and energy may be taxed to their utmost, but what artists are not, even on perishable material when struggling only for human fame? Shall we not then the more love our work, teachers, as we love our country, as we desire the general advancement of civilization and just governments in all nations, especially in our own United States? J. L. S.
MISCELLANY.
COLLEGE NOTES.
We have entered the sixth-hundreth in point of numbers.
Columbia college has a senior class of one hundred and ninty-six members.
Students of colleges inthe Unitad States graduate at the average age of twenty-two.
A prize for the best essay on "Common Sense about Women" at Kirkwood Seminary, was lately won by a Cherokee girl, who has since graduated and gone home to live in the territory.
Monmouth College is in difficulty. On Thursday, the students, in spite of a vote from the faculty, held a reception in honor of Mr.Ross,the winner of the oratorical prize in Chicago. Mr.Malchett, master of ceremonies was suspended. Two hundred students refused to attend college duties until he is taken back.
The Sophomores of Williams College have been compelled to allow the Freshmen to carry canes.
The Daily Echo of Howard has succumbed.
In the German universities there are at least 7,000 American students.
Cambridge has dropped Greek from the list of required studies. Verily the millennium approacheth!
England has thirteen hundred colleges. The United States can boast of 358.
Dr.Oliver Wendell Holmes, after thirty-five years s vice, has resigned the position of lecturer before the Harvard Medical School. A desire to devote his entire attention to literary labors influenced him.
Washington, Jackson, Van Buren, Madison: Taylor, Fillmore, Lincoln, and Johnson did not go to college. Grant was educated at West Point, the two Adamses at Harvard; Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler at William and Mary's College; Madison at Pinceton; Polk at the University of North Carolina; Pierce at Bowdoin; Buchanan at Dickinson; Hayes at Kenyon College; Garfield at Williams; and Arthur at Union. Out of twenty-one, thirteen of our Presidents received collegiate training. Columbia Spectator.
The circulation of some of the leading college papers is as follows: "Yale Courant," 800; "Yale Record," 600; "Yale Literary," 550; "Harvard Crimson," 500; "Princetonian," 1,000; "The Dartmouth," 1,500; "The Argus," 500; "The Chronicle," 1,000.
Japan is awakening to the subject of education. The University of Tokio has 200 students. If a country would take a respectable stand among the nations of the world, the masses must be educated.
At Illinois College those students who reach a certain standard in daily recitation, are excused from examinations. The plan seems to give general satisfaction.
The October number of the Wesleyan Bee bewails the lack of class spirit in that institution. A moderate amount of this class spirit is a very good thing in any college. But a superabundance tends to create a rivalry which in a great many cases leads to demoralization, as has been demonstrated in some of our eastern colleges of late.
The Sophomores of Lafayette College have departed from the customary practice of hazing the Freshmen and given them a banquet instead. This is a new departure, and one in the right direction. Among students, who are to spend much of their time in each other's company, there should be a feeling of love rather than enmity, a feeling of mutual interest rather than independence.
YALE COLLEGE.
In 1700 ten clergymen met at Branford, each bringing a few books under his arm. Placing these on a table each said solemnly, "I give these books for founding a college in this colony." A century and a half has gone by and Yale College counts her books and graduates by the thousands.
The collegiate school which at first struggled for existence become afterward the principle attraction of the town; indeed no just history or description of New Haven can be written which omits mention of the college. Old Yale is so well known and so well beloved and respected throughout the land that even the general reader will not be uninterested.
The revolution which divides the history into two nearly equal parts effected great alterations in college life and manners, and broke up many traditionary English usages which had been adhered to from the foundation.
It reads strangely nowadays, this extract from the manuscript laws of the college: "Every student shall be called by his sur-name, except he be the son of a nobleman or a Knight's eldest son."
This distinction between noblemen and commoners existed down to 1768, until which time the name of the student highest in rank headed the list of his class. In those days the president was a being of majestic dignity. No undergraduate was permitted to wear his hat within ten rods of that august person. Up to the time of the revolution the system of instruction was very limited, compared with its present course.
The graduates were expected for the most part to choose a clerical profession, on which the study of Hebrew was thoroughly pursued, and the New Testament diligently read by all classes. This was the only Greek study. The mathematical sciences received but little attention, and rhetoric was almost unknown as a study until 1770 and the physical sciences were unheard of until a much later period.
Commencements a hundred years ago were different in some respects from the mild affairs of nowadays. They were occasions of such noisy mirth and even riot, that the corporation was obliged to exert itself by stringent laws to control the exuberance of departing Seniors.