buildings of the city, (the Exchange) from which we were speedily routed by the college authorities, no student being allowed to have a room in any public building or hotel. But it was during the short time we were quartered there that the Beethoven official came to examine into our musical qualifications to join the college choir. Of course we were given the usual psalmody to sing-upon which we passed a much more satisfactory examination, we dare say, than certain other metrical text-books in languages less familiar-concern. ing which we had subsequently to undergo rigorous investigation.

So kindly were we received by the Beethovenites that at the end of Freshman year they inducted us into the office of President—a post we continued to fill during the three remaining years of the

course.

During that time how many excellent fellows passed in musical review!--both of classes preceding and following. We had, in all, a force of about thirty men. Of these, twenty, perhaps, were singers, and the rest composed a grand orchestra "-as the concert programmes have it. Max Maretzek would probably have turned several summersaults, had he heard our orchestra but once vigorously tune up. Not so much on account of the melodious results, albeitfor the fellows did not make bad music-but rather the extraordinary novelty of the acoustical effects; for we had every unique instrument from the piccolo fife to the big drum. Of course our music in its grand ensemble of voices and instruments was often what might be termed rousing :-and whenever we put forth our musical energies we kept the attention of our auditors from the beginning to the end— you may be sure. And, indeed, the attention thus bestowed was often well repaid. Among our singers we had several capital voices, tenors particularly, and the voices of each and all had that freshness and warmth, which no training and no art can supply and which go more directly to the popular heart than all the graces and embellishments of more artificial song. To be sure, we had far fewer tenors than basses—this being-in common with more professional impressaries the particular woe of our career as Kapellmeister; but then the tenors had to sing all the louder, and we scorned being sung down by any number of ruder Basses-having a certain acoustical advantage, also, in the more penetrating and pervading tones of our higher scale.

In matters of psalmody, we sang the music just as it is usually written for mixed voices; that is, for male and female. But the late

auspicious era, in which the question is so gallantly agitated of admitting young ladies to colleges, not having as yet dawned upon us, our music was essentially male. Of course, the conditions of the music we sung, as to progression of parts, etc., were radically changed: and some fellows insisting on singing tenor, and this part generally running higher than the melody itself, we had such inversion of parts, and such consecutive octaves, fifths, and forbidden horrors of every kind, that some of our modern Philadelphia Doctors of Music might have been driven into a lunatic asylum. Yet these dissonances were something like certain coarser stops in an organ; which, though diabolical in themselves, when drowned in an overtopping harmoniousness, help fill up.

The instruments greatly predominating in our orchestra was the flute. The inevitable flute had, indeed, ever to be repressed and discouraged. Every second fellow who wanted to join the choir played a flute. We grew, indeed, to be relentless on the flute question. Having secured several of the most accomplished upon that pastoral instrument, (like Field and Larned,) we turned our backs resolutely upon all other piping shepherds.

Strange to say, however, the instrument best played of all was the violin. We actually had violin-playing, rather than that fiddling naturally (of students) to be expected. There was Washington and Trotter, particularly, of the "Southern members," and Whitney of the Northern, who drew, really, a capital bow. We were also supplied with a viola, 'cello and double-bass, so that the quartette of the "strings" was complete. Of the "brasses we had but a single representative,-a big ophicleide. This piece of ordnance, when projected out of the chapel window, called explosively the choir together every Saturday noon to rehearsal, filling the breasts of the "milky mothers of the herd," nibbling the grass in College street, with alarm. It was our piece de rèsistance—our great gun, that ophicleide. We based a good deal of our musical reputation upon the fundamental notes of that deep-mouthed orator. The double bass was solemnly grand, but the ophicleide was fundamentally-grander. The big drum, too, though somewhat martial and operatic, when touched by the professor thereof lightly, rumbled deep down into the region of a pedal-pipe tone in an organ, and served very much the same purpose in the general effect.

Of the lighter instrumental cohort-the fancy pieces—we had an ornamental supply. Our views were liberal as to what was proper

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in an orchestra. We had now and then a guitar, a triangle (which of course, was not very un-orchestral,) a piccolo flute, etc. Such instruments as were not heard, by reason of the general din—like the tinkling guitar- were supposed to be heard. They looked pretty when the fellows played them—and a great many serenaded misses in town, could testify that, (when heard at all,) they also sounded pretty.

Our best music was at prayers, on Sunday evenings. During the day the choir was very much dispersed. Some of the members had charge of town choirs; others attended churches of a different denomination than that worshipping at the chapel. But at prayers there was a general gathering. We usually practised, too, on Saturday, an anthem for Sunday evening. The Christmas Nativity anthem was, of all our musical attempts, the most successful and popular : partly from its traditional associations, and partly from the enthusiasm natural to the occasion of its performance-Christmas Eve.

The choir and orchestra, during the period of our administration, did themselves most justice, perhaps, the year we were graduated— '41. Hitherto, each graduating class had gone to the no inconsiderable expense of hiring a New York orchestra to play at Centre Church during the commencement exercises. (We believe this is still done.) But the choir had so augmented in numbers, and their music was really so much more popular with the students, (and with the outside Philistines as well,) than even Max Maretzek's far more scientific instrumental corps, that we determined to save the College all expense of commencement music, and do the melodious thing ourselves. Nor this alone. We resolved to attempt the as yet unheard-of enterprise, and give a concert on the evening preceding Commencement. All this, to be sure, involved not only daily, but nightly exertions on the part of the zealous President of the club: who not only had to arrange-yea, verily, to compose-overtures, intermezzos and musical fantasia of various kinds for the extraordinary variety of instruments on that occasion to be brought forward (for an orchestra constituted as was ours being entirely unknown to the classic masters and ancients, no music for our purpose was found to be extant) but we had to accomplish the still more difficult task of getting the fellows together to rehearse. Herein lies the true test, of course, of an Impressario's genius-the power of getting musicians to preliminary rehearsals. Students, particularly, are in any case frisky enough-but Sophomore examinations

and Senior preparations, and Freshman and Junior impediments of every kind added materially to this friskiness whenever we talked to them about the necessity of rehearsal, and the awful musical responsibility we had assumed. We added the attraction of watermelons and all the fruits of the season as seductive means to secure their attendance at rehearsals—indeed, but for the watermelons we are afraid our concert and commencement-music would have fallen through.

Our rehearsals for the greater privacy-were held in the Rhetorical chamber instead of the chapel: and this was the scene of our own private labors upon that remarkable instrumental-score, which we were compelled to prepare for our nondescript orchestra. There was a long table in the middle of the room, and a piano-forte at the head of it. Upon this table, during the intervals of rehearsal, were generally left the instruments, to do justice to which we were ransacking our brains of music. When we sat solitarily at one end and thrummed out upon the piano a Skull-and-Bone March, or a Freshman Fandango, or some such mad cap invention, the big double bass, lying prone on its stomach before us, and the bigger drum looming ponderously in the distance, and the little fiddles, and the guitars, and everything that could vibrate, seemed to respond to the strains and to suggest their own music. So that there was not so much real difficulty in composing the tunes-but the thing was to get the fellows to play them.

However, after many tribulations and sleepless nights and anxieties, and a fabulous consumption of watermelons, all was in readi. ness. The concert was given in a church on Church street, the pulpit being removed for the occasion and a staging constructed. The number of tickets issued was unlimited and-unfortunately for the accommodations of the church—the sale was unlimited so that when the evening of performance arrived, one-third of the audience had to listen from the street, we putting up the windows, and the auditors complacently submitting to such unprecedented concert-arrangements. Between the parts of the programme an address on music was delivered by the President-he feeling safe from any expressions of disapproval on the part of the audience, from the fact that precautions had wisely been taken, early in the evening, to request the audience to refrain from any tokens of satisfaction or dissastisfaction-if for no other reason, out of regard to the character of the place.

The Beethovenites, we believe, still flourish, eminently, at Yale College-we should be sorry at all events to hear that the music of our old Alma Mater had in any degree died out.—We trust that the same spirit of emulation, the same musical zeal, the same jolly good fellowship prevail now as in previous collegiate years. We understand an organ has latterly taken the place of the heterogeneous orchestra once assembled :—and yet we can hardly think, that either on festive college occasions, or in the more solemn services of churchly worship, more youthful ardor can be exhibited on the one hand, or a profounder and sincerer feeling on the other, than that which characterized the music under the older arrangement.

In reply to the interrogatory of our correspondent, we would say that Gaudeamus igitur was introduced into college some eight or ten years since. We brought it with us, in a book of German student-songs, on our return from Europe. In the same book was that glorious Integer Vita-Horace's ode, set to music by Flemmingwhich was sung at the same time, and we hope is still sung, in the halls of Old Yale.

The Devil-.

[CONCLUDED.]

VII.

"Mr. Smith, Mr. Jenkins; Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Smith ;" and in the concise style of American introductions, we were made acquainted by her who was to be the innocent cause of the rivalry of months, and the hostility of years.

Sheridan, long ago, asserted in his great comedy, that no more aggravated insult could be offered an individual than becoming his rival in love. "Can a man," says Sir Lucius O'Trigger to the irate Acres, "can a man commit a more heinous offence against another than to fall in love with the same woman?" And however little disposed we may be to openly admit in words the truth of the sentiment, every one in spirit agrees with the Irish baronet, that it is a breach of friendship the most unpardonable.