emselves dragging on a precarious life,
yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at
by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than
defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that
there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often
we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The
progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the
house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who
in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged
thought and lofty views derided as old fogies because beyond unassisted
appreciation, until we are half-tempted to believe the generation to be
multiplied Ephraims given to their idols, who had best be let alone.

The American student, under these influences, differs somewhat from his
European brethren. He is younger by two or three years. Though generally
from the better class, he is more, perhaps, identified with the mass of
the people, and is more of a politician than a scholar. His remarks upon
the Homeric dialects, however laudatory, are most suspiciously vague,
and though he escape such slight errors as describing the Gracchi as a
barbarous tribe in the north of Italy or the Piraeus as a meat-market of
Athens, you must beware of his classical allusions. On the other hand he
is more moral, a more independent thinker and a freer man than his
prototype across the sea. His fault is, as Bristed says, that he is
superficial; his virtue, that he is straightforward and earnest in
aiming at practical life.

Such may suffice for a few general remarks. But some memories of one of
our most important universities will better set forth the habits and
customs of the joyous student-life than farther wearisome generality.

The pleasant days are gone that I dreamed away beneath the green arcades
of the fair Elm City. But still come the budding spring and the blooming
summer to embower those quiet streets and to fill the morning hour with
birds' sweet singing. Still comes the gorgeous autumn--the dead summer
lain in state--and the cloud-robed winter to round the circling year.
Still streams the golden sunlight through the green canopies of tented
elms, and still, I ween, do pretty school-girls (feminine of student)
loiter away in flirting fascination the holiday afternoons beneath their
shade. Still do our memories haunt those old walks we l