in these Harvard Lyrics. The poems for the most part have nothing to do with college. They represent the purely literary aspirations of a decade of undergraduates-the purely literary aspirations, which, while playing a definite part in college life, are yet comparatively untouched by it. There are not more than two or three poems in the whole volume which might not have been written by a man who had never seen the tower of Memorial Hall or set foot within the Yard. The actual life of routine and nine o'clocks is too near us to find expression in verse. It can be true poetry only when, by the lapse of time, it has lost its commonplaceness and become a memory. One should enjoy, then, what is enjoyable for its own sake, and look for nothing typical of Harvard in this new collection of Harvard verse.

L. W.

Books Received.

"A LONG DUEL." A Serious Comedy in Four Acts. By Mrs. W. K. Clifford. London and New York: John Lane.

"THE FIGHTING BISHOP." By Herbert M. Hopkins. Indianapolis: The Bowen-Merrill Company.

One of the most curious and most persistent traditions concerning college life is the impression that it is a life of peculiar temptations to sin. A timid parent or a solicitous schoolmaster says to a boy who is entering college:-"Remember, my boy, that you are going to a place of special moral dangers. You will need all your good resolutions and daily prayers to resist the tendencies of college life." This impression of the wickedness of college students is aggravated by the pranks and excesses of a few careless youths. A foolish boy daubs paint on a statue or blows up a pump or steals a sign, and great numbers of persons say: "That is the way young men spend their time in college." Finally, this same impression of college life becomes the material of those social reformers and religious agitators who enrich their rhetoric with irresponsible and reckless judgments. "Harvard students," said a so-called temperance leader this winter, "are going to ruin by platoons." "At Harvard," remarked a Christian preacher only a few weeks since, "they put in a hundred-dollar bath tub for a fifty-cent boy, but what are they doing for their souls?"

Now it is certainly not worth while to contend with intemperate advocacy of temperance or with un-Christian defences of religion; but it may be of interest to consider what are the causes which have created the impression which such rhetoric represents. On the face of things it would seem very improbable that college morals should be of a degraded type. The

college draws its students for the most part from orderly homes and invites them to acquaintance with great thoughts and great problems. Nothing could be more mistaken than the notion that a college is inevitably beset by graver moral risks than confront the rest of the world. The very opposite of this is the truth. A college provides a moral environment which is on the whole peculiarly sheltered, and the temptations to which a college student is exposed are not to be compared with those which meet a young man of the same age in the commercial world. It is as a Professor in Harvard College once said, when asked to speak on the temptations of college life:—“The chief temptation of a University is its temptation to excellence."

What is it, then, which has perpetuated the tradition of a low standard of college morals? There are probably two main sources of the impression. One is the still surviving suspicion that thinking in itself is somehow a moral danger, and that intellectual doubt is a state of sin. A young man is inevitably led in college life into new regions of thinking where the scientific habit of mind, with its suspense of judgment and its confession of much ignorance, is the first condition of advance; and many articles of belief, which once seemed to such a young man easy to grasp, begin to recede beyond the horizon of his honest thought. This intellectual experience is likely to alarm both the youth and his anxious friends. They have been accustomed to identify intellectual conclusions with moral decisions, and moral standards seem to tremble when theological opinions shift.

This source of scepticism about college morals is, however, no longer prolific. People have begun to realize that faith in God involves confidence in intellectual progress and that Jesus Christ had good grounds for maintaining that the truth makes men free. Another reason, however, for the common impression is much more deeply involved in the nature and habit of college life. It is the atmosphere of unreality which has long surrounded academic experience. Any social environment which is abnormal and artificial tends to develop a peculiar code of morals. The monastic system, for instance, while it produced some of the noblest virtues-self-effacement, love of learning, and unworldliness, was beset by special temptations of the

mind. The middle ages were indeed afflicted with a strange epidemic of morbid depression and profound ennui, known as "accidia," which has been practically extirpated by the spirit of modern life. In the same way the army-system develops certain admirable virtues-self-discipline, loyalty, obedience, courage-but at the same time the abnormal conditions of the soldier's life expose him to peculiar temptations. Now the earlier conditions of college life were in part monastic and in part military. These youths were detached from the natural restraints of the real world and set in a world of exceptional liberty, modified by artificial regulations. It was inevitable that a code of morals should be evolved which might seem perfectly reasonable to those within the community; while it seemed perfectly absurd to the rest of the world. In Harvard College, for instance, the moral creed has always found its best expression in the great word "Veritas." The unforgivable sin has always been a lie. Honor, veracity, straightforwardness, sincerity, have always been as characteristic and overshadowing marks of Harvard College as are the elms of the College Yard. But along with such virtues the unreality of college life permitted conduct which no one but a college boy could defend. A youth who could not conceivably contemplate stealing a cent, might steal a trademan's sign and hang it as a trophy in his room. A youth might screw up a tutor's door, though he might not, if detected, deny the deed. A youth might deface public property if only he risked his life in the exploit. These pranks which many generations have supposed to be essential elements in college morals were simply signs of unreality The natural vitality of youth, being repressed and misdirected, uttered itself in abnormal ways.

If, then, the sense of unreality created these fictitious standards, what was the way to improve college morals? It was to make college life more. real; more consistent.--that is to say, with the realities of modern life and duty. In Harvard College there have been three forms of influence which have of late contributed to this end-; first the influence of the elective system; then the influence of athletics: and thirdly, the influence of voluntary religion. The elective system summons a young man to consider his immediate studies

in the light of his future vocation, and supplants the monastic ideal of college life by the ideal of service. The athletic renaissance, which on its surface is a form of prize-winning for the few, is in reality a recognition by the great mass of college students that a sound body is an essential instrument of effective work in the world. The voluntary system in religion dismisses the notion of religion as a superimposed and artificial constraint, and thinks of it as the normal outcome and supreme privilege of a rational life. All these radical changes of the present generation are contributions to reality. They make of college life, not an end, but a means. They bring the college near to the world, so that the student hears the cry of the time, calling for men to serve the modern world with disciplined bodies, with productive minds and with spiritual faith.

As one, then, looks back over a half century of college morals and tries to sum up the effect of these modern influences, ethical standards of college life, what is his total impression of the type of character which the college normally creates? The first fact which strikes him is the persistence of those traits which were the best product of the past. No one can watch the present prodigious expansion of the University without wondering whether its earlier type of character must not be gravely modified by the new blood received into its system. The truth is, however, that-just as the United States has thus far been able to assimilate its influx of population and Americanize it, rather than be un-Americanized by it-so Harvard College has been able thus far to gather its great influx of new students into the spirit of its own traditions. The type which has been so long our pride persists. Each year the prizes of college life fall to the same kind of youth-wholesome, unassuming, and genuine--who had these marks of leadership fifty years ago. The fundamental virtues which are grouped about the word "Veritas" are still our dominating traits. It is impossible to think of any young man maintaining for any length of time a recognized leadership among us who is not sincere, straight, simple and clean.

To this survival of the traits of the past must be added the effect of the new sense of reality. Young men there are, of course, among us who are