JONATHAN TO JOHN BULL.

You grow too fast, my child! Your stalwart limbs,Herculean in might, now rival mine;The starry light upon your forehead dimsThe lustre of my crown—distasteful sign.Contract thy wishes, boy! Do not insistToo much on what's thine own—thou art too new!Bend and curtail thy stature! As I list,It ismyglorious privilege to do.Take my advice—I freely give it thee—Nay, would enforce it. I am ripe in years—Let thy young vigor minister to me!Restrain thy freedom when it interferes!No rival must among the nations beTo jeopardize my own supremacy!

Thanks for your kind advice, my worthy sire!Though thrust upon me, and but little prized.The offices you modestly require,I reckon, will be scarcely realized.My service to you! but not quite so farThat I will lop a limb, or force my lipsTo gratify your longing. Not a starOf my escutcheon shall your fogs eclipse!Let noble deeds evince my parentage.No rival I; my aim is not so low:In nature's course, youth soon outstrippeth age,And is survivor at its overthrow.Freedom is Heaven's best gift. Thanks! I am free,Nor will acknowledge your supremacy!

'Through many an hour of summer suns,By many pleasant ways,Like Hezekiah's, backward runsThe shadow of my days.I kiss the lips I once have kissed;The gas-light wavers dimmer;And softly through a vinous mist,My college friendships glimmer.'—Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue.

—Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue.

It is now I dare not say how many years since the night that chum and I, emerging from No. 24, South College, descended the well-worn staircase, and took our last stroll beneath the heavy shadows that darkly hung from the old elms of our Alma Mater. Commencement, with its dazzling excitement, its galleries of fair faces to smile and approve, its gathered wisdom to listen and adjudge, was no longer the goal of our student-hopes; and the terrible realization that our joyous college-days were over, now pressed hard upon us as we paced slowly along, listening to the low night wind among the summer leaves overhead, or looking up at the darkened windows whence the laugh and song of class-mates had so oft resounded to vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night—and tutors. I thought then, as I have often thought since, that our student-life must be 'the golden prime' compared with which all coming time would be as silver, brass, or iron. Here youth with its keenness of enjoyment and generous heartiness; freedom from care, smooth-browed and mirthful; liberal studies refining and elevating withal; the Numbers, whose ready sympathy had divided sorrow and multiplied joy, were associated as they never could be again; and so I doubt not many a one has felt as he stood at the door of academic life and looked away over its sunny meadows to the dark woodlands and rugged hillsides of world-life. How throbbed in old days the wandering student's heart as on the distant hill-top he turned to take a last look at disappearing Bologna and remembered the fair curtain-lecturing Novella de Andrea[1]—fair prototype of modern Mrs. Caudle; how his spirits rose when, like Lucentio, he came to 'fair Padua, nursery of arts;' or how he mused for the last time wandering beside the turbid Arno, in

'Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,'

we wot not. Little do we know either of the ancient 'larks' of the Sorbonne, of Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; somewhat less, in spite of gifted imagining, ofThe Student of Salamanca. But Howitt'sStudent Life in Germany, setting forth in all its noisy, smoking, beer-drinking conviviality the significance of the Burschenleben,

'I am an unmarried scholar and a free man;'

Bristed'sFive Years in an English University, congenial in its setting forth of the Cantab's carnal delights and intellectual jockeyism;The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman, wherein one 'Cuthbert Bede, B.A.' has by 'numerous illustrations' of numerous dissipations, given as good an idea as is desirable of the 'rowing men' in that very antediluvian receptacle of elegant scholarship; are all present evidences of the affectionate interest with which the graduate reverts to his college days. In like mannerStudent Life in Scotlandhas engaged the late attention of venerableBlackwood, while the pages ofPutnam, inLife in a Canadian College,[2]andFireside Travels,[3]have given some idea of things nearer home, some little time ago. But while numerous pamphlets and essays have been written on our collegiate systems of education,the general development and present doings of Young America in the universities remain untouched.

The academic influences exerted over American students are, it must be premised, vastly different from those of the old world. Imprimis, our colleges are just well into being. Reaching back into no dim antiquity, their rise and progress are traceable from their beginnings—beginnings not always the greatest. Thus saith the poet doctor of his Alma Mater:

'Pray, who was on the CatalogueWhen college was begun?Two nephews of the President,AndtheProfessor's son,(They turned a little Indian by,As brown as any bun;)Lord! how the Seniors knocked aboutThat Freshman class of one!'

From small beginnings and short lives our colleges have gathered neither that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European universities crashing down the ages, though often heavy laden with the dead forms of mediæval preciseness. No established church makes with them common cause, no favoring and influential aristocracy gives them the careless security of a complete protection. Their development thus far has been under very different influences. Founded in the wilderness by our English ancestors, they were, at first, it is true, in their course of study and in foolish formula of ceremony an imperfect copy of trans-Atlantic originals. Starting from this point, their course has been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country, have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general—the increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our regard—and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant progress demanded. On the other hand, however, we see long and well-proven systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial reformers. We see the colleges themselves 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 Ephraimsgiven 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 Piræus 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 loved so well: the avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so sweetly on the sloping green. Still do those old wharves and warehouses—ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of continental struggle—rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived bark anchors down the bay; or the lonely baying of a watch-dog at some farm-house on the hight. I see the sail-boats bending under their canvas and dashing the salt spray from their bows as they rush through the smooth water, and the oyster-boats cleaving the clear brine like an arrow, bound for Fair Haven, of many shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and schooners—suggestive of lobsters or pineapples—bow their big heads meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in countenance by two or three rugged poplars, like the fisher's hut,

'In der blauen Fluth sich beschaut.'

Nor can I soon forget those wild hillsides, so glorious both when the summer floods of foliage came pouring down their sides, and when autumn, favorite child of the year, donned his coat of many colors and came forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over the distant city-spires, rock-ribbedhillside and sail-dotted sea; or threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden, read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, in quaint letters of other years, the stern and stirring old watchword:

Or, going further, we climbed Mount Carmel, and looked from its steep cliff down into the solitary rock-strewn valley—

'Where storm and lightning from that huge gray wall,Had tumbled down vast blocks, and at the baseDashed them in fragments.'

Or went on to the Cheshire hillside, where the Roaring Brook, tumbling down the steep ravine, flashed its clear waters into whitest foam, and veiled the unsightly rocks with its snowy spray; or, perchance, in cumbrous boat, floated upon Lake Saltonstall, hermit of ponds, set like a liquid crystal in the emerald hills—an eyesore to luckless piscatory students, but highly favored of all lovers of ice, whether applied to the bottoms of ringing High Dutchers, or internally in shape of summer refrigerators.

In the midst of these pleasant haunts and this fair city, lies a sloping green of twenty or twenty-five acres, girt and bisected by rows of huge elms, and planted with three churches, whose spires glisten above the tall trees, and with a stuccoed State House, whose peeled columns and crumbling steps are more beautiful in conception than execution. On the upper side, looking down across, stretched out in a long line of eight hundred feet, the buildings of the college stand, in dense shade. Ugly barracks, four stories high, built of red brick, without a line of beautifying architecture, they yet have an ancient air of repose, buried there in the deep shade, that pleases even the fastidious eye. In the rear, an old laboratory, diverted from its original gastronomic purpose of hall, which in our American colleges has dispensed with commons, a cabinet, similarly metamorphosed, and containing some magnificent specimens of the New World's minerals; a gallery of portraits of college, colonial and revolutionary worthies—a collection of rare historical interest; a Gothic pile of library, built of brown sandstone, its slender towers crowned with grinning, uncouth heads, cut in stone, which are pointed out to incipient Freshmen as busts of members of the college faculty; and a castellated Gothic structure of like material, occupied by the two ancient literary fraternities, and notable toward the close of the academic year as the place where isolated Sophomores and Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial Examination—make up the incongruous whole of the college proper.

Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from the six weeks' torpor, (thelongvacation of hurried Americans who must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots, re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand miles in the interior—from the prairies of the West or the bayous of the South—has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon tostorm with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of student-humanity within—a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing that his as yet undeveloped character is 'summâ integritate et innocentiâ;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, ahardstudent in the worse sense, with much of the 'fortiter in re' in his bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical 'suaviter in modo;' a Senior, whose 'otium cum dignitate' at once distinguishes him from the vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms; students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical standing. In which state of things the various employés of college, including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated ProfessorPaley, under the excitement of numerous quarters, greatly multiply their efforts.

But the chief interest of the opening year is clustered around the class about to unite its destinies with the college-world. A new century of students—

'The igneous men of Georgia,The ligneous men of Maine,'

the rough, energetic Westerner, the refined, lethargic metropolitan, with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to be divided between the two rival literary Societies.[4]These having during the last term with great excitement elected their officers for the coming 'campaign,' and held numerous 'indignation meetings,' where hostile speeches and inquiries into the numbers to be sent down by the various academies were diligently prosecuted to the great neglect of debates and essays, now join issue with an adroitness on the part of their respective members which gives great promise for political life. Committees at the station-house await the arrival of every train, accost every individual of right age and verdancy; and, having ascertained that he is not a city clerk nor a graduate, relapsed into his ante-academic state, offer their services as amateur porters, guides, or tutors, according to the wants of the individual. Having thus ingratiated themselves, various are the ways of procedure. Should the new-comer prove confiding, perhaps he is told that 'there isonevacancy left in our Society, and if you wish, I will try and get it for you,' which, after a short absence, presumed to be occupied with strenuous effort, the amiable advocate succeeds in doing, to the great gratitude of his Freshman friend. But should he prove less tractable, and wish to hear both sides, then some comrade is perhaps introduced as belonging to the other Society, and is sorely worsted in a discussion of the respective excellencies of the two rival fraternities. Or if he be religious, the same disguised comrade shall visit him on the Sabbath, and with much profanity urge the claims of his supposititious Society. By such, and more honorable means, the destiny of each is soon fixed, and only a few stragglers await undecided the so-called 'Statement of Facts,' when with infinite laughter and great hustling of 'force committees,' they are preädmitted to 'Brewster's Hall' to hear the three appointed orators of each Society laud themselves and deny all virtue to their opponents; which done, in chaotic state of mind they fall an easy prey to the strongest, and with the rest are initiated that very evening with lusty cheers and noisy songs and speeches protracted far into the night.

Nor less notable are the Secret Societies, two or three of which exist in every class, and are handed down yearly to the care of successors. With more quiet, but with busy effort, their members are carefully chosen and pledged, and with phosphorous, coffins, and dead men's bones, are awfully admitted to the mysteries of Greek initials, private literature, and secret conviviality. Being picked men, and united, they each form animperium in imperioin the large societies much used by ambitious collegians. Curious as it may seem, too, many of these societies have gained some influence and notoriety beyond college walls. The Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon Societies, are now each ramified through a dozen or more colleges, having annual conventions, attended by numerous delegates from the several chapters, and by graduate members of high standing in every department of letters. Yet they have no deep significance like that of the Burschenschaft.

Close treading on the heels of Society movements, comes the annual foot-ball game between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The former havingad mores majorumgiven the challenge and received its acceptance, on some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the 'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of intruders. There is a dead silence as an active Freshman, retiring to gain an impetus, rushes on; a general rush as the ball iswarned; then a seizure of the disputed bladder, and futile endeavors to give it another impetus, ending in stout grappling and the endeavor to force it through. Now there is fierce issue; neither party gives an inch. Now there is a side movement and roll of the struggling orb as to relieve the pressure. Now one party gives a little, then closes desperately in again on the encouraged enemy. Now a dozen are down in a heap, and there is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in short, both

'Breaches of peace and pieces of breeches,'

until the stronger party carries the ball over the bounds, or it gets without the crowd unobserved by most, and goes off hurriedly under the direction of some swift-footed player to the same goal. Then mighty is the cheering of the victors, and woe-begone the looks, though defiant the groans of the vanquished. And thus, with much noise and dispute, and great confounding of umpire, they continue for three, four, or five games, or until the evening chapel-bell calls to prayers. In the evening the victors sing pæans of victory by torch-light on the State House steps, and bouquets, supposed to be sent by the fair ones of the balconies, are presented and received with great glorification.

Nor less exciting and interesting in college annals, is the Burial of Euclid. The incipient Sophomores, assisted by the other classes, must perform duly the funeral rites of their friend of Freshman-days, by nocturnal services at the 'Temple.' Wherefore, toward midnight of some dark Wednesday evening in October, you may see masked and fantastically-dressed students by twos and threes stealing through the darkness to the common rendezvous. An Indian chief of gray leggins and grave demeanor goes down arm in arm with the prince of darkness, and a portly squire of the old English school communes sociably with a patriotic continental. Here is a reïnforcement of 'Labs,' (students of chemistry,) noisy with numerous fish-horns; there a detachment of 'Medics,' appropriately armed with thigh-bones, according to their several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look downfrom the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,' 'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more reference to the occasion than to correct quantities, of which the following opening stanza may serve as a specimen:

'Fundite nunc lacrymas,Plorate Yalenses:Euclid rapuerunt fata,Membra et ejus inhumataLinquimus tres menses.'

The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs, and music by the band—'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,' and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted, and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn.

So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the smallest Freshman in either Society is elected Presidentpro tempore;of thenoctes ambrosianæof the secret societies; of appointments, prize essays, and the periodical issue of theYale Literary, now a venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson, review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening, you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now, too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: 'Dum vivimus vivamus.'

Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous,

'κοὑροι ἁναρρἱπτειν αλα πηδὡ,'

in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows, where the Quinnipiac wanders under quaint old bridges among fair, green hills; some for the Light, shooting out into the broad waters of the open bay, their feathered oars flashing in the sunlight; some for Savin's Rock, where among the cool cedars that overshadow the steep rock, they sing uproarious student-songs until the dreamy beauty of ocean, with its laughing sunlight, its white sails, and green, quiet shores, like visible music, shall steal in and fill the soul until the noisy hilarity becomes eloquent silence. And now, as in the twilight-hour they are again afloat, you may hear the song again:

'Many the mile we row, boys,Merry, merry the song;The joys of long ago, boys,Shall be remembered long.Then as we rest upon the oar,We raise the cheerful strain,Which we have often sung before,And gladly sing again.'

But perhaps the most interesting day of college-life is 'Presentation-Day,' when the Seniors, having passed the various ordeals ofviva voceand written examinations, are presented by the senior tutor to the President, as worthy of their degrees. This ceremony is succeeded by a farewell poem and oration by two of the class chosen for the purpose, after which they partake of a collation with the college faculty, and then gather under the elms in front of the colleges. They seat themselves on a ring of benches, inside of which are placed huge tubs of lemonade, (the strongest drink provided for public occasions,) long clay pipes, and great store of mildest Turkey tobacco. Here, led on by an amateur band of fiddlers, flutists, etc., through the long afternoon of 'the leafy month of June,' surrounded by the other classes who crowd about in cordial sympathy, they smoke manfully, harangue enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, and sing lustily, beginning always with the glorious old Burschen song of 'Gaudeamus':

'Gaudeamus igiturJuvenes dum sumus:Post jucundam juventutem,Post molestam senectutem,Nos habebit humus.'

'Pereat tristitia,Pereant osores,Pereat diabolus,Quivis antiburschiusAtque irrisores.'

Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection:

'Count not the tears of the long-gone years,With their moments of pain and sorrow;But laugh in the light of their memories bright,And treasure them all for the morrow.Then roll the song in waves along,While the hours are bright before us,And grand and hale are the towers of Yale,Like guardians towering o'er us.

'Clasp ye the hand 'neath the arches grandThat with garlands span our greeting.With a silent prayer that an hour as fairMay smile on each after meeting:And long may the song, the joyous song,Roll on in the hours before us,And grand and hale may the elms of YaleFor many a year bend o'er us.'

Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each, a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep our memories green!'

So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth, twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the remembrance of 'the days that are gone.'

'They come ere life departs,Ere winged death appears.To throng their joyous heartsWith dreams of sunnier years:To meet once moreWhere pleasures sprang,And arches rangWith songs of yore.'

FOOTNOTES:[1]'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not to distract the attention of the students.'[2]Vol. i. p. 392.[3]Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.[4]The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.

[1]'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not to distract the attention of the students.'

[2]Vol. i. p. 392.

[3]Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.

[4]The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.

Will nothing rouse the NorthmenTo see what they can do?When in one day of our war-growthThe South are growing two?When they win a victory it always counts a pair,One at home in Dixie, and anotherover there!North, you have spent your millions!North, you have sent your men!But if the war ask billions,You must give it all again.Don't stop to think of what you've done—it's very fine and true—But in fighting for ourlife, the thing is,what we've yet to do.Who dares to talk of party,And the coming President,When the rebels threaten 'bolder raids,'And all the land is rent?Howdarewe learn 'they gather strength,' by every telegraph,If an army of a million could have scattered them like chaff!What means it when the peopleAre prompt with blood and gold,That this devil-born rebellionIs growing two years old?The Nigger feeds them as of old, and keeps away their fears,While 'gayly into battle' go the 'Southern cavaliers.'And the RichmondWhig, which latelyLay groveling in mud,Shows its mulatto insolence,And prates of 'better blood:''We ruled them in the Union; we can thrash them out of bounds:Ye are mad, ye drunken Helots—cap off, ye Yankee hounds!'Yet the Northman has the power,And the North would not be still!Rise up! rise up, ye rulers!Send the people where ye will!Don't organize your victories—fly to battle with your bands—If you can find the brains to lead,we'll find the willing hands!

North, you have spent your millions!North, you have sent your men!But if the war ask billions,You must give it all again.Don't stop to think of what you've done—it's very fine and true—But in fighting for ourlife, the thing is,what we've yet to do.

Who dares to talk of party,And the coming President,When the rebels threaten 'bolder raids,'And all the land is rent?Howdarewe learn 'they gather strength,' by every telegraph,If an army of a million could have scattered them like chaff!

What means it when the peopleAre prompt with blood and gold,That this devil-born rebellionIs growing two years old?The Nigger feeds them as of old, and keeps away their fears,While 'gayly into battle' go the 'Southern cavaliers.'

And the RichmondWhig, which latelyLay groveling in mud,Shows its mulatto insolence,And prates of 'better blood:''We ruled them in the Union; we can thrash them out of bounds:Ye are mad, ye drunken Helots—cap off, ye Yankee hounds!'

Yet the Northman has the power,And the North would not be still!Rise up! rise up, ye rulers!Send the people where ye will!Don't organize your victories—fly to battle with your bands—If you can find the brains to lead,we'll find the willing hands!

John Neal was born at the close of the last century, in Portland, Maine, where he now resides; and during sixty years it has not been decided whether he or his twin sister was the elder.

He was born in 1793. When he was four weeks old, he was fatherless. His school education began early, as his mother was a celebrated teacher. From his mother's school he went to the town school, where he once declared in our hearing that he 'got licked, frozen, and stupefied.' That he had a rough time, may be inferred from the fact that his parents were Quakers, and he, notwithstanding his peaceful birthright,foughthis way through the school as 'Quaker Neal.' He went barefoot in those days through a great deal of trouble. Somewhere in his early life, he went to a Quaker boarding-school at Windham, where he always averred that they starved him through two winters, till it was a luxury to get a mouthful of brown bread that was not a crumb or fragment that some one had left. At this school the boys learned to sympathize in advance with Oliver Twist—to eat trash, till they would quarrel for a bit of salt fish-skin, and to generalize in their hate of Friends from very narrow data. We have heard Neal speak of the two winters he spent in that school as by far the most miserable six or eight months of his whole life.

Very early, we think at the age of twelve years, he was imprisoned behind a counter, and continued there till he was near twenty; and by the time he was twenty one, he had worked his way to a retail shop of his own in Court street, Boston. We next track him to Baltimore, where, in 1815, if we are not out in our chronology, John Pierpont, John Neal, and Joseph L. Lord were in partnership in a wholesale trade. Neal's somersets in business—from partnership to wholesale jobbing, which he went into on his own hook with a capital ofone hundred and fifty dollars, and as he once said, in speaking of this remarkable business operation, 'with about as much credit as a lamp-lighter'—may not be any more interesting to the public than they were to him then; so we shall not be particular about them in this chapter of chronicles.

At Baltimore he was very successful, after he got at it, in making money, but failed after the peace in 1816. This failure made him a lawyer. With his characteristic impetuosity, he renounced and denounced trade, determined to study law, and beat the profession with its own weapons.

This impulse drove him at rather more than railroad speed. He studied as if a demon chased him. By computation of then Justice Story, he accomplished fourteen years' hard work in four. During this time he was reading largely in half-a-dozen languages that he knew nothing of when he began,and maintaining himselfby writing, either as editor ofThe Telegraph, coëditor ofThe Portico, (for which he wrote near a volume octavo in a year or two,) and also as joint-editor of Paul Allen'sRevolution, besides a tremendous avalanche of novels and poetry. We have amused ourself casting up the amount of this four years' labor. It seems entirely too large for the calibre of common belief, and we suppose Neal will hardly believe us, especially if he have grown luxurious and lazy in these latter days. Crowded into these four years, we find: for thePorticoandTelegraph, and half-a-dozen other papers, ten volumes; 'Keep Cool,' two volumes; 'Seventy-Six,' two volumes; 'Errata,' two volumes; 'Niagara and Goldau,' two volumes; Index to Niles' Register, three volumes; 'Otho,' one volume; 'Logan,' four volumes; 'Randolph,' two volumes; Buckingham's Galaxy, Miscellanies, and Poetry, two volumes; making the incredible quantity of thirty volumes. He could no more have gone leisurely andcarefully through this amount of work, than a skater could walk a mile a minute on his skates. The marvel is, that he got through it on any terms, not that he won his own disrespect forever. We do not wonder that he manufactured more bayonets than bee-stings for his literary armory, but we wonder that he became a literary champion at all. With all the irons Neal had in the fire, we are not to expect Addisonian paragraphs; and yet he has in his lifetime been mistaken for Washington Irving, as we can show by an extract from an old letter of his, which we will give by and by.

A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823, properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no weeds.

His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream. They all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances. They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom—there are the thorny points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery and made to pass over the cloth and raise and clean the nap. A criticism taking in all the good and bad points of these novels, would be too extensive to pass the door of any review or magazine, unless in an extra. They are full of the faults and virtues of their author's unformed character. Rich as a California mine, we only wish they could be passed through a gold-washer, and the genuine yield be thrown again into our literary currency.

The character of his poems is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and 'Goldau,' and by thenom de plumehe thought proper to publish them under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and the roar of rushing waters.

We read his 'Otho' years since, when we were younger than now, and our pulse beat stronger; and we read it 'holding our breath to the end'—or this was the exact sensation we felt, as nearly as we can remember, twelve years ago.

The character of Neal's periodical writing was just suited to a working country, that was in too great a hurry to dine decently. People wanted to be arrested. If they could stop, they had brains enough to judge you and your wares; but they needed to be lassoed first, and lashed into quietness afterward, and then they would hear and revere the man who had been 'smart' enough to conquer them. John Neal seemed to be conscious of this without knowing it. A veritable woman in his intuitions, he spoke from them, and the heart of the people responded. The term 'live Yankee' was of his coinage, and it aptly christened himself.

Neal went to Europe in 1823, and remained three years. That an American could manage to maintain himself in England by writing, which Neal did, is a pregnant fact. But his power is better proved than in this way. He left America with a vow of temperance during his travels; he returned with it unbroken. Honor to the strong man!He had traveled through England and France, merely wetting his lips with wine. He wrote volumes for British periodicals, and also his 'Brother Jonathan' in three volumes. After looking over the catalogue of his labors for an hour, we always want to draw a long breath and rest. There is no doubt that since his return from Europe in 1826, he has written and published, in books and newspapers, what would make at least one hundred volumes duodecimo. It would be a hard fate for such an author to be condemned to read his own productions, for he would never get time to read any thing else.

Neal's peculiar style caused many oddities and extravagances to be laid at his door that did not belong there. From this fact of style, people thought he could not disguise himself on paper. This is a mistake, for his papers in Miller'sEuropean Magazinewere attributed to Washington Irving. We transcribe the paragraph of a letter from Neal, promised above, and which we received years since:

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