8
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
not tempted to catch up one of the little balls and cuddle it snugly in your warm hands, just on purpose to hear the drowsy contended murmur with which it sings itself to sleep, and how cheerfully it chatters to the rest when you put it down again?
All nature has united to form a grand chorus; each being has a song of its own, yet all blend together in perfect melody.
The sweetest music of all is heart music. Did you ever stop to think that you possess a magic instrument, that will make music for you all the day long. It will soothe the weary hours of pain, cool the fevered brain, and quiet the quivering nerves of wounded feelings and disappointed hopes. But, like all delicate instruments, it requires a master hand to touch the richest chords, and sound the purest harmonies. If stranger fingers attempt to press the keys, instead of strains of heavenly music, what jangling discords and snapping of fragile strings. Let us guard well this precious gift, letting no one but the one master, the Spirit of Love, have access to the secret chamber where we keep our treasure. Bye and bye we will want to give our gladest notes of praise in never-ending eternity. May we not find our Harp of a Thousand Strings voiceless and useless. L.
The trustees of John Hopkins University are thinking of moving that institution from its situation, in the center of Baltimore, to Clifton, a beautiful suburb of the city.—Ex.
EGOTISTS.
"It is a hard and nice subject for a man to speak of himself," says Cowley, "it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the readers ears to hear anything of praise for him." The human mind is so constituted as to be continually making mistakes, and excusing them, which in other people could not be tolerated. A person is forced to decide, if he does not wish to commit alarming errors, whether he is living to please the world or himself. Let the tenor of a man's discourse be what it will on the subject of self, it proceeds from vanity. It is pleasant to the individual discussed. An ostentatious man would rather relate a blunder or absurdity which he has committed than be debarred from talking of himself. It is hard to conceive of a person who would manifest no interest when a subject of conversation; for what is more interesting, what is better known to us than self? It is natural, and when this feeling of vanity is under good control it is productive of good.
In writing, men have sought to avoid the objectional "I" by substituting "we." But this is but a change of words and not individuals; every one knows that only one man is writing the "we." We are indebted to the gentlemen of Port Royal for this very reasonable substitution. These gentlemen more marked for learning and humility than any other men of France, determined to banish this way of speaking in the first person singular, from all their works, as arising from self-conceit and vanity. In order to show their aversion for it in the strongest terms, they branded it with the name "Egotism," a term not found among old rhetoricians. But now that writers have fallen into the other extreme called "we-gotism," an extreme quite as offensive to good taste as egotism, it would be a good thing for some one to invent a new way of saying "I." Cowardice
has nothing to do with this shifting of responsibility. Men in studied terms say, "we believe so and so," then the responsibility of the assertion can be centered on no one.
Cardinal Wolsey was guilty of the most intolerable egotism. He says: "Ego et rex meus."
Montaigne, the author of the celebrated essays, was the most eminent egotist that has ever appeared before the literary world. This festive gascon, or gas-bag, has woven all his bodily infirmities into his works, and after giving a disquisition on the talents, virtues and faults of of other men, proceeds to tell how it is with himself. The reader can hardly help being bored with the constant appearance, monotonous bobbing up of the little Frenchman. Shakespeare and Chaucer speak only sparingly of themselves. The world might have known more of them if they had not been quite so modest, but it is quite questionable as to whether they would have been as much admired. In latter years we have had one poet, brilliant and versatile, but who stands spectral-like in all his works. If he had family troubles or if misfortunes overtook him he published it to the world. We read the fine passages with pleasure. We admire his beautiful pictures and scenes, but when he lugs in himself, for whom we have only a passing interest, it jars and mars the beauty of the poem.
Memoirs and prefaces are the delights of insignificant, inferior scribblers. Fearful lest the world will not know that it is burdened with their superior intellects, they write elaborate memoirs, setting forth their achievements. The preface, which Greeley calls preliminary egotism is the Elisian field for pigmies. They think people are anxious to know that they wrote their works while at the sea shore, or in the mountains, or the cars, the whole thing being but a ragged net set in every direction to catch approbation. Hence, a reader is apt to shun all prefaces.
Addison seems to think that "a writer, except humorour writer, should never speak of himself unless he be a considerable character;" but he thinks the evil incurable and says that "there is no man who fancies his thoughts worth publishing that does not consider himself a considerable character."
Egotists in conversation are the shallowest and vainest of mankind, being full of themselves they have no room for any one else. They even go so far in this weakness as to tell old jokes and puns as their own, or their particular friends. They re-hash jests that were made before they were born, and which every one who has conversed with the world, has heard hundreds of times.
THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES.
Much controversy has arisen, of late, concerning the study of languages in our educational institutions, many claiming that the time spent in acquiring languages would be better employed in studying the natural sciences and in gaining a better understanding and more fluent use of our own English. Most of the students who spend long weary hours pouring over their translations have but shadowy ideas of the object of all this work. So, without entering into the controversy, let us note a few advantages of the study of languages.
In the first place, there are certain benefits to be derived from the study of any language. The words of a nation express the thoughts and ideas of that nation. So that when we learn the language of a people we also