to the epoch when these arose, and thus arouses emotions that border on antiquarian awe. More than all else, however, official uprightness, amid the corruption and profligacy of a degenerate age, blends with countless other tokens of Divine approval, to impress veneration upon the national heart, toward a government signally favored by the Most High. The suffering, bravery, reforms, liberty, and conscientious principle, that have marked early national life, bow the heads of a whole people in homage to justice, and in sympathy with truth. In the contrast between their own situation and that of godless nationalities, appears a motive that deepens and spiritualizes this homage and sympathy. Nor is the reverence, inculcated by these lessons, vitiated by pride. This, in reasonable degree, precedes and underlies that energy which forms our second resultant in popular character.

A good history furnishes the most animating incentives to future vigor. It infuses the element of ambition into national life, and this potent principle now lends its aid. The hope of surpassing an ancestry of revered and heroic men, nerves to unflagging toil; the will to demolish forever the lingering evils which ancient superstition had implanted in a ruder age, defies obstacles and opposition, and the dread of disgracing high lineage by unworthy sloth, banishes, once for all, the promptings of inaction, and spurs on a united people to fresh triumphs of industry and art. The past, bright with glory, has proved labor to be its basis. To what else can we ascribe discoveries, inventions, commercial success, internal expansion and security? Past struggles have originated in the state what future struggles cannot fail to develop and intensify, to wit, manly, undaunted, efficient energy. Within and without, the public mind has been moulded by, and urged toward, tireless and principled energy in thought and in action.

This leads us to yet another feature in national character, encouraged by the glory of national history. We mean general intelligence. Grand retrospects in the life of a nationality, suppose a general acquaintance, and involve a tolerable sympathy with the ideas and principles then at stake. The most unlettered man can tell something about the great struggles that have checkered the fate of his native country. At all events, the facts and prominent features of such transactions are universally familiar. Then, too, the gradual progress of the popular mind, in the generations past, has grounded it in the plain and practical appreciation of private rights and public interests. History has brought with it, also, the schools, colleges, and libraries, to which it has given birth. Institutions of learning and treasures of

lore, have stimulated the scholars, and educated the masses of the land. The press, too, has not been idle in the diffusion of knowledge. Its olden triumphs have only inaugurated a reign of present and prospective prosperity. The common people prize such relics of the past, for they sow the seeds of sound sense, and familiarize the rudiments and meaning of a vernacular tongue. Then, again, how has the popular, no less than the educated mind, been enriched by the collective discoveries in science and philosophy, which the fruitful past has conspired with the inquisitive present to amass. Here, likewise, contempt for the bigotry and ignorance that have marred foreign, or it may be, at a remote epoch, domestic history, stamps itself indelibly on the national temper. It is by a noble past, also, that the glory of toleration in religion, and of liberty in thought, has been asserted and bequeathed to a people. Through the learning of ancient scholars, the intellectual robustness of the nation of to-day has built itself up. More than ever the philosophers of a by-gone age still mould the popular mind, nerve it to new activity by their abiding, though viewless, presence, and garner, in imperishable beauty, its rarest trophies of creative genius.

Yet another trait of the character thus developed, may be seen in national unity. Cemented by the energy and enlightenment of "then" as well as "now," it stands preeminently a cause of national success. It has been manifested by early struggles for legal rights, intensified by long allegiance to liberty, truth and justice, and perpetuated by its seen necessity to high development and happiness, till it now grounds itself in the very essence of national character. In national unity the past has shown that an effectual barrier is erected against discord and decay. This the popular heart fully believes. Admiration for a retrospect of national concord, combines with the living patriotism it always inspires, to incorporate unison more widely and more thoroughly into the mental and political life of a commonwealth. Itself the consummation of the finest traits that make up the character of any people, it seldom fails to awaken respect abroad, (as repeated instances attest,) while it is far from deadening that enthusiastic loyalty which a distinguished past must always infuse at home into the nation's soul. As memories of by-gone glory and suffering, common to all, deepen the feeling of unity, so, by the collective evidence of history, we find language itself, and the various social appliances which it has adorned of old, dignified and sweetened by fresh ties of sympathy and affection.

Then, too, a grand past fosters the spirit of unity among a people

by deepening the love of the soil where a common ancestry have lived and died, where their children have been born and educated, where the graves of dear friends and relatives now lie. Foreign wars have occurred in distant times. The remains of the fraternal linking of hands in such life-conflicts, around a common altar in the same great outburst of loyalty, yet linger to unite the national heart. So too political success, foreign entanglements and a homogenous race, growing stronger and truer day by day blend with a keen appreciation of the blessings of a government honored in the past and peacefully prosperous in the present, to ingrain national concord into the very stock of national character.

Unity like this harmonizes with reverence, education, and enterprise. If when, thus armed, it detects the germs of disloyalty threatening its purer power, it pauses indeed, but it is only to garner its might and indignantly to crush its foe.

We had intended, at the outset, to consider as the last and brightest product of a noble past-national progress. But our limits forbid what would otherwise have been a grateful task. Perhaps even in this hasty review of our theme, enough has been said to establish the utility and excellence of such influences on national character.

Besides the heroic enterprise, the high-souled reforms, the accomplished scholarship, the benignant christianity, which alike ennoble the past and crown the present of a people with imperishable honor, the thinking mind may trace more enduring and deep-seated manifestations of national greatness. The crowning charm of a grand history finds expression then in an earnest, thoughtful, reverent, sympathetic, progressive character.

J. P. T.

VOL. XXVII.

Ocean Twilight.

The winds breathe in from ocean, and from far,
Blue waves roll up and break along the land,
Through the dim night, one lonely, trembling star,
First of the evening, smiles, as if it planned
To cheer, alone, the dreary darkening strand.

White foam-crests with the distant shore-line blending,
Rising and falling, mourn in solemn tone;

From cave and wave-worn rock with wail unending,
The winds bring back the dying billow's moan,

And ocean wakes a music all its own.

14

Far out upon the waste, where shadows blend,
And lose their life in one wide deepening gloom,
A queer vague life seems lingering, born to lend
A strange charm, even where wild hopeless doom
Too often shrouds one more lone ocean tomb.

Yes, mid the billows' wild unceasing roll,

Imagination ever loves to play,

And imageries are mirrored on the soul,

Whose shadings with the hour must need decay,
Whose memories can never pass away.

C.

College Honor.

HONOR is based on an innate sense of right. College Honor is the application of this sense to the peculiar habits of the Student; and he who runs a College career conformable to it, is dubbed a Student of Honor. Grander than knightly gifts and posts of glory, do we of to-day esteem this plain distinction; for it bespeaks that self-respect in the heart of every true man, which, disclosing itself in his thoughts, words and deeds, marks him, at once and forever, as a man. I wish to speak of this sentiment as it exists among us; and, although petty reflections must be made, I will try to sustain the dignity of my subject. I shall first mention some elements of College Honor: after which I shall notice some incentives to practice them.

What are the elements of College Honor? They can be easily enumerated: so let us seek for them among ourselves, and apply them to our little Student world, having every man stand forth, as in a faithful picture, in all his natural beauty and blemish.

I cite, as the first element of my subject, lofty aims and lofty means in reaching them, without which none can be a Student of Honor; for they are of the fundamental qualities of his character. Low aspirations blight the spirit: while elevated resolves set the heart right, and suggest ingenious action. Are we, in this respect, a glory or shame to ouselves and our student profession? Are we equal to the inspiration of our studies; and do we do justice to the influence of our good

books, from Plato to Tom Brown? It is generally the custom to assent to these and similar enquiries, and, at the same time, to embrace the opportunity to puff scholars and adorn them with sentiments very admirable but very unreal: handling their characters with gloved hands, and, like one-sided historians, painting them as we would have them, not as they are. Such tender treatment, however, violates the student's manhood, which presents faults and inconsistencies hardly apparent in any other pursuit, but for which it is his glory to atone by a peculiar vigor and nobility of head and heart of the most splendid kind. Rather in this spirit let us make the enquiry.

I say, then, that we are below the standard in this first element of College Honor, both in our aims and in our means of attaining them. Our own College will clearly illustrate this point; though, be it added, this is an evil, if we may judge from Mr. Bristed's work, by no means peculiar to American students. Here we are, a large body of young men, gathered from various sections, with intentions and circumstances as widely apart as our homes. Some of us come to College merely to oblige fond parents, with no aspirations beyond an easy course and a sheepskin after four years: gentlemen in deportment, lavish of time and money, we are excellent adjuncts to boat, ball and social clubs, but necessarily pass as ciphers in all that constitutes the earnest scholar, and links us in sympathy with the student heart of the nation. With no taste for study, and with such sordid intentions, is it strange we disregard our books, and evade the issue by all the College tricks we can play? And do we not, by this single act, sacrifice our honor as upright students, meeting confidence with deception, and sinking the average of College endeavor and truthfulness. Far better for our fellows and ourselves, had we never placed our names on College rolls, and tried in catalogues to pass for men.-But others of us come here with quite different purposes, which are, professedly, far higher, but which, in every honorable sense, must be acknowledged to be far lower. Either to sustain an undue reputation among doting friends, or, it may be, to indulge a purely selfish ambition, we are resolved, at all hazards, to stand well morally and scholarly in the College lists; to which end we scruple at nothing. We would preserve our characters for show, not for honor, and our scholarship for reputation, not for its intrinsic worth; and if nature cannot support us, cunning and imposition must aid. Strange it is that we of the thinking world can thus demean ourselves; and tarnish our honor here, where of all places it should be bright. Is fairness thus to knuckle to craft: the dignity of sound scholarship to be compromised;