branch of the College, may at any time be so endowed as not really to require the constant application of the funds for its support. The College should have enough floating capital to make it the master of the situation, and the Woolsey endowment, though large, will be scarcely sufficient ten years hence. We heartily endorse the obtaining of the money for the Library, and if the class see fit, they can at the final meeting provided for, dispose of the amount as indicated above, with a statement of their preference for its present appli cation to the purchase of books.

The north winds which howl around our editorial sanctum, the dreary looking. trees, and the fall of snow, as well as the mass of copy and proof lying about with November printed upon it, remind us that winter approaches. But before winter, comes Thanksgiving, just in time to include itself in autumn. The visions of home enjoyments, well spread boards, luscious viands waiting to perish, are exhilarating, and with the wish that all our readers may derive pleasure from this annual feast, we take our leave.

C. B. R.

IT

COLLEGE WRITING.

T is a fact which might well occasion surprise, that comparatively little interest is felt in college, in literary composition. From a variety of reasons we might naturally expect a very different state of things. As a rule college students are not without culture and refinement. They are training themselves to think and they live in an atmosphere of thought. Education, after all, is chiefly a development of the power of choice. If a man has increased his acquisitions, so that his mind, like some "fairfreighted ship," carries treasures which ensure it a joyful welcome, if he has stimulated his discernment for delicate distinctions, if he has enlarged his moral perceptions, catching inspiration from such words as honor, duty, justice—in short, if he has obtained the materials, the instruments and the intelligence which are demanded by an enlightened judgment, we call him an educated man. These, then, are the results of a satisfactory college training, and they begin to be perceived while the process is yet going on.

Diffidence is by no means a characteristic of the student. His opinion, so far as he is concerned is all sufficient and all correct, nor is he troubled with "that despicable virtue, prudence." He is never unwilling to let his left hand know what his right hand doeth. He is radical too in his aims and in his ideas. What more natural, then, than that his theories and conclusions should seek ex

pression.

But perhaps our best reason for expecting the prevalence of literary tastes in college is found in the aims and prospects which have brought us together. A large proportion of every class propose to enter professional life. With this in prospect, it would seem not only natural but inevitable that thorough preparation should be earnestly sought. It will be replied that the same is true of the other practical studies. We are compelled to admit that a woeful lack of enthusiasm is everywhere manifest; that the study of logic, of philosophy, of history, is to many of us tedious and unfruitful. But in these departments some other incentive is at work. It may be the power of "stand," it may be the reluctance to appear stupid, or, possibly, it may be that these subjects excite more genuine interest. But, for some reason, they are pursued with more general energy than the art of writing. A dozen average scholars may be found for a single writer; when the amount of application which the scholars represent, if it had been expended upon literary work, would have been, at least, equally successful. In confirmation of this, we cannot evade the fact that, if we examine the list of alumni we find a host of men, who never, in college, displayed any literary excellence or even gave evidence of literary tastes, who yet, in after years, won influence and fame.

Nor is a lack of opportunities the cause of this literary indifference, if we may so term it. The college periodicals, if we may be pardoned the comparison, are admirable grindstones for sharpening the wits and polishing the style of the aspirant for literary culture, and yet they are rather suffered to hang like mill stones around the necks of the unfortunate editors. The daily journals offer simi

The literary

lar inducements, and with similar success. societies provide an ample field for essay writing and extemporaneous debates and yet most of them bear at present "a general flavor of mild decay." Now and then a feeble exertion has been made to revive the old spirit of Brothers and Linonia, but the spark has vanished into darkness blacker than before-and to-day the talk is about "abolishing" the prize debates. In such a measure as this will not college writing receive a fatal blow? If a crowded hall, an attentive and sympathetic audience, an opportunity to assume a popular style, and to address a body of kindred spirits, competition with interested. contestants and the prospect of a more or less substantial pecuniary reward, will not provoke a man to the work of a few days and to a work, which, whatever be its result, yields direct personal benefit, is he not past all hope? We acknowledge the existence of many discouraging influences, but we claim that in a general literary spirit they would find an efficient antidote.

Then too there are the regular compositions of the prescribed course. How are they written? or, rather, how are they produced? Some are borrowed, some are the offspring of encyclopædias and histories. A few are original. We notice the results in abstracts of the life of Cromwell and Bonaparte, in curtailed speeches of congressmen, in extracts from Macaulay and Prescott. Hence it is that the system of buying compositions has arisen and flourishes; so that A can pay his term bill by selling a dozen essays at reduced rates, while B can pass through the entire curriculum without writing a syllable. Hence it is that a production of freshman year does service until the day of graduation and is then handed down intact to succeeding generations. That this state of things actually exists, no one will attempt to deny.

Now it is possible that we can account for it, partially at least, by two facts. Of course there is that distaste for hearty work, and especially for unattractive work, which is our natural inheritance. And then our time is most fully and remarkably occupied, in an endless variety of

ways. These, however, are obstacles against which other studies are obliged to contend. But in regard to writing there are peculiar difficulties.

There exists, in the first place, in many of our minds, the mistaken idea that in composition, as in the fine arts, natural taste and talent are indispensable to success. No one attempts to follow out the same principle in other relations. You would never neglect a history lesson, because your mind had a mathematical turn. You would never attempt to maintain the ground that a man cannot make himself familiar with Greek because he has a natural predilection for mechanics. Native genius, to be sure, is in either instance an undoubted title to success. But, in either instance are not ordinary minds governed by similar laws? Application and exercise are the conditions and the measure of proficiency. And if these are employed we can learn to write and to write well, just as certainly as, by the same process, we can learn to read Cicero's oration against Verres, without the aid of a translation.

The elements of composition are thought, which may also involve research, and expression. Now the former, as we have suggested, is the outgrowth of education. The direct object of our daily duties is to enlarge our minds and to stock them with ideas. Whatever be our personal aims as we look forward to our future lives, whatever be our views in regard to the value and the possibility of literary attainments, of this fact we may rest assured. We cannot be faithful and thorough in the studies which we are pursuing and which often seem to us so barren and unpractical, without acquiring the essential materials of English composition.

To teach the methods of forming a correct style is the province of our instructors, and though it is not our business to teach them the deficiencies of the college course, which they understand and deplore as well as we, we cannot but express our regret that so little attention is given to this subject. It can hardly be expected that a single man should give personal instruction to six hun