whose active feet in the
"College Anthem" have beguiled so many weary hours and added a pleasant
variety to the strain of close attention. But even these are too
evidently professional in their antics. They go about cogitating puns
and inventing tricks. It is their vocation, Hal. They are the gratuitous
jesters of the class-room; and, like the clown when he leaves the stage,
their merriment too often sinks as the bell rings the hour of liberty,
and they pass forth by the Post-Office, grave and sedate, and meditating
fresh gambols for the morrow.

This is the impression left on the mind of any observing student by too
many of his fellows. They seem all frigid old men; and one pauses to
think how such an unnatural state of matters is produced. We feel
inclined to blame for it the unfortunate absence of _University feeling_
which is so marked a characteristic of our Edinburgh students.
Academical interests are so few and far between--students, as students,
have so little in common, except a peevish rivalry--there is such an
entire want of broad college sympathies and ordinary college
friendships, that we fancy that no University in the kingdom is in so
poor a plight. Our system is full of anomalies. A, who cut B whilst he
was a shabby student, curries sedulously up to him and cudgels his
memory for anecdotes about him when he becomes the great so-and-so. Let
there be an end of this shy, proud reserve on the one hand, and this
shuddering fine ladyism on the other; and we think we shall find both
ourselves and the College bettered. Let it be a sufficient reason for
intercourse that two men sit together on the same benches. Let the great
A be held excused for nodding to the shabby B in Princes Street, if he
can say, "That fellow is a student." Once this could be brought about,
we think you would find the whole heart of the University beat faster.
We think you would find a fusion among the students, a growth of common
feelings, an increasing sympathy between class and class, whose
influence (in such a heterogeneous company as ours) might be of
incalculable value in all branches of politics and social progress. It
would do more than this. If we could find some method of making the
University a real mother to her sons--something beyond a building of
class-rooms, a Senatus and a lottery of somewhat shabby prizes--we
should strike a death-blow at the constrained and unnatural attitude of
our Society. At present we are not a unite