your College mates, son of Yale. As, for thirteen long years, one after another has departed, they have reverently laid one volume after another upon the old oak shelves. They have passed and are now passing, while we rest quietly under the falling dust of time. But why as they go forth to the world do we linger here within these timehonored walls? Why but as the record of their times! the sacred tabernacle of their memories! the last filial tribute to their Alma Mater! Nay, more! not merely their gift, but their written testimony, to the character of her teachings, left upon the threshold as they go forth forever-the wavering mark of each successive wave upon the shore-sand, as it swells up and lingers for a moment ere it sinks back into the ocean of life. Aye, and we make it our gentle boast too, that we are the links of the successive eras of College history, of their history and yours, of their and your pleasures and sorrows. And most of all do we claim that through our pages runs the almost invisible thread that links your and their intellectual natures, that, despite the changes of time, preserves unbroken the union between soul and soul. Have you had emotions, has high ecstatic joy thrilled your frame! ours has quivered with like throbbings. Has gentle humor wreathed your face in smiles! our pages have smiled in sympathy, and almost rustled with inward laughter in harmony with that rollicking humor that shook your sides. Has one of your number withered and drooped at your side! we have sorrowed with you. Have friends passed out in successive classes! you have mourned their absence not alone. We hold within us their promises of future greatness, the first expressed aspirations of their daring ambition, and with you we rejoice or grieve when tidings of their fulfillment or their failure come in echoes back from the busy hum of life. All these have we seen and felt in sympathy with each other, but ye have forgotten them, while we retain their record treasured in our memories. They have passed from your minds to make room for others, and to you they are now as things gone by. But here there is room for both the past and the present, here they live fresh as ever amid the tomes of this old dust-sheeted pile. They linger here in silence, awaiting for the gathering records of increasing time, of events that from your memories are day by day dropping into the womb of forgetfulness. So that when the spirit of meditation passes over you, you may turn and amid our old forsaken leaves live again with the past, and trace the history of times, of events, of the feelings and of the intellect of College life, from the past to the present. Turn once again, son of Yale, turn to us, and when you have gently brushed the dust of time from our leaves, and again piously laid us in our accustomed places, tell us is it not fit that you too should leave the record unbroken, a sacred trust to those who come after you? But is unbroken, enough? is it enough that we were a mere record? Oh, no! as well might we be yon yellow lifeless Catalogue pile, a long expressionless list of bare names. Our aspirations are far different. We care not to boast the names of the great, of those who have stood as shining lights among us, mountains of Intellect in the fair vale of Feeling. We would be more closely linked with your common sympathies, a friend of the student's more genial moments, the mirror-like reflection of that mellow tint pervading these old classic elms, when the more glaring light of intellect has gone, leaving behind all its purity and all its beauty. We would have moving and heaving within us those gentler emotions, awakened by the refined influence of intellectual culture in the bosom of feeling. Such, were our voice heard, would be the record inscribed on our pages-a record not only of your intellectual efforts, nor yet of your untaught ernotions, but rather would our spirit be the pictured image chiseled by the refining touch of tasteful intellect from the rude, exuberant mass of untutored feeling. "Such were we once. Did you feel a pleasing emotion, a sensation of joy, with generous hand you hastened to share it with us, and placed among our number, here in this obscure nook, shot through the members of this old pile, until our odd, uncouth frame, heaving with like emotion, shook the dust of time from its sides; the lifeless shelves, from our awkward joy-thumps, catching the feeling, shook and danced and creaked in sympathy; the old walls took the merry humor, and from them and from every arch grinning faces peered out upon us; while Father Yale, roused by the unwonted confusion, uprose from the cover, rubbing his eyes, heavy-laden with the sleep of ages, and catching the magic influence, threw off his old silver-buckled shoes, and hopped through the old Yale jig until the venerable walls, forgetting their dignity, rocked and swayed in harmony with the wild jubilee. We have no such merry doings now. Alack-a-day! times have sadly changed. No one now tells us his joys, but

some sage critic sends us the sharp-cornered offspring of his intellect. No more, son of Yale, is our heart gladdened, as in the olden time, by knowing and sharing what is next to thine. Not more than two thirds of our age was passed, when divorce took place between us. You then took one path and we another; since that time the separation has grown wider and wider; never in your moments of pleasure do you turn and share them with us. But whenever stern, sharp-featured intellect asserts its supremacy, then with magnificent air you grasp the pen and give to us the dry, unsociable conceptions of your genius. The only conscious receptacle of your greatness, we would willingly leave the unkind gift a hidden nook in our bosom. But hidden it will not be; no sooner is our frame moved by some little remembrance of past feeling, than its sharp corners prick our sides and send a jagged thrill of agony through every member; but our pain is shockingly augmented when we feel the old man on our cover writhing and twisting in his coffin, through anguish unutterable. Nay, more envious aspirants launch the darts of criticism against your offspring, and our poor sides, pierced with their cruel points, writhe in agony undeserved, and, to heighten our anguish, grinning, devilish faces peer down upon us as though we merited our suffering, in forgetting our places and attempting what we were unable to accomplish. "Thus, Student of Yale, has our separation every day become wider, until now we are scarcely known as the children of the same Alma Mater; until you have forgotten that you are bound to us by ties of consanguinity, and leave the five poor priests, whom you have appointed the guardians of our sacred sanctuary, alone to supply us with food and nourishment. Nay, ingrate! you have not only forgotten them, but have even dared to launch the cruel shafts of criticism at their filial labors. When you have asserted your high prerogative in selecting them, you leave them alone at their labor, excepting that when their toil is slackened an application of your pedal extremity is deemed necessary to their renewed exertion. This should not be, Son of Yale:Kick our faithful quintumvirate, but help them.' Help them at their labors; make our welfare your common interest, and let us be, as of yore, the sharers in your common emotions, the receptacles of the brightest effusions from the mingled sources of your intellect and feelings; let us, we entreat you, be the friend unto whose bosom you confide your treasured thoughts, your cherished emotions. And in turn, when the hour lags, when sadness or dejection is resting upon you, we will return whatever you have given, whatever you may have committed to our sacred trust; we will be the comforter of your sorrows and the companion of your listless hours. friend in need is a friend indeed''

'A

With these words, the old dust-covered pile, heaving a moment with the lingering emotion of its own unwonted expression, sank gently to rest. We stood, gazing in astonishment at the lifeless heap of old moth-eaten volumes; in astonishment that aught could have called up the utterance of these long peut emotions. But while we stood, the spell was broken, our eyes opened on darkness, but yet we rest satisfied that we were fast in our old arm chair, and had never been out of it. It was all a dream, reader, but yet we thought there was reason and justness in it, and we have written it down and allowed our Magazine to make its own appeal. It may be too long; it is long, we candidly confess it now, that you may skip it if it so pleases you. But if you do so please, you cannot escape us, here is another from ourselves, and it will only be from Scylla and Charybdis with you.

We would add, then, a few words for our own selves. While with the present of the first number of our fourteenth volume we would wish for those who have just entered the classic portals, a happy four years of College Life, and to those who have already sojourned here, every happiness during their further stay, we would beg of you all to have some regard for us during the short period that we have now to remain among you. A single class have appointed us to edit a Magazine-not theirs, not ours, but a common College Magazine. We would ask them, if in choosing us to edit, they did not bind themselves to support it by their contributions; and we would ask of the whole college, if the same obligation does not rest upon them, to aid us in preserving the reputation of that which will soon come into their hands, and for which reputation they will hold us responsible. As to criticism, we fear it not. Our Magazine were poor indeed, did it stand in awe of criticism, and our labors worse than lost, did our pages not provoke it. We lay no claim to perfection, but low and pitiful were our goose-quill flights, could they not educe some critic's shafts. No, we court it rather than avoid it. With Sterne, we think nought so foolish as to have no place at the

table for a critic; and so, with him, we have left in our Table half a dozen places purposely open for thern; and, still further, we pay them all court. "Gentlemen, I kiss your hands; I protest, no company could give me half the pleasure; by my soul, I am glad to see you. I beg only you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down without any ceremony and fall on heartily." By thus courting we hope to improve, and by begging all to fall to without ceremony, make all express themselves so heartily, and have no half-way, sniveling fault-finding, but a good wholesale, honest criticism. We see not how else to attain any excellence from it. But while we court it, we beg of you to bear it with us. We thought to disarm it of injustice, by the concealment of the author's name, and to raise it up gradually to a correct standard, by laying our hand gently upon each oue's shoulder, and bidding him strike carefully, lest he hit his friend. We thought that by thus making it a matter of personal interest, each one would judge more discreetly, thereby aiding his own powers and his own taste, and thus, from a multitude of testimony, that the true criterion of judging would be elicited. And we now flatter ourselves that we have not been disappointed. We do think that the tone of that criticism has changed, or at least is changing, and we thank our readers for a more gentle consideration than has been exhibited towards the Magazine for years. We hope much from it, and while it encourages us to greater exertions, we still think that there is much on your part yet to be done. A just standard of criticism is now gaining the ascendancy, and it needs inore labor to meet its requirements. We would have you bear it with us. You have appointed us to attend to the interests of the Magazine; that, we are determined to do; we are determined to have its pages filled, and well filled, if we have to accomplish it, as we have hitherto almost wholly done, by our own exertions. Filled they must be, and if you will not aid us, we must beg of you to forbear your criticism. Burthened with college occupations, it is not in our power to fill up forty-eight pages, nine times in the year, with elaborate, or even with articles more than moderately finished in their tone or construction. Our matter must necessarily be thinly spread. Our subjects are chosen, and what time we can we expend upon them. If they do not please us on further acquaintance, time permits us not to choose new ones. If the tone of our composition does not satisfy us, no articles from your pens make for us a budget from which we may select in preference to our own, and in ours must go, what our first efforts have made them, and such you must take them. We have choice, then, neither of subjects or pieces, whence we may cater to your tastes. Hence when you criticise, do it with these considerations, and let us hear no more that "you will commence writing when the Editors have done splurging." Again and again we have urged you all to write and relieve our labors. If we hear, then, a second expression of such an extremely ungenerous sentiment, prithee, friend, beware! or we may have to entreat thy public acceptance of a fool's cap and gingling silver bells, just suited to the head of the author of so brilliant a sentence.

But enough of this; these things are old, and we fear have gained nothing by repetition from us. We did intend to contribute, if possible, sormething for your amuseinent, but our limits are now too much prescribed to admit of it. A mirth-moving description of our two noble contributors and their several eccentricities awaited you. Suffice it to say that, rolling on our softest cushions and gazing vacantly into our little heap of editorial embers-while their souls, happy fellows, have ascended to the seventh heaven on the smoke clouds of our glorious tribucos, they are now bodily with us in our "sanctum sanctorum"-the retreat sacred to the pleasures of heaven-descended contributors! But they deserve such happiness, glorious, generous souls, aye even to the smoking of our luscious tribucs. Poor wretches! devoted to literature, they seldom experience such unalloyed pleasure. Oh! reader, that you could see them now, as each one grasps another weed-four only remain, generous reader-and with lighted brand prepares to send up a cloud of incense. But stop! here is still another, a queer little oddity. It is a poet. For the last half hour has he been intently watching the smoke clouds bursting on the ceiling. But now the lord of the sanctum seizes the fattest, the plumpest tribuco-three only, now remain, dear, kind, generous reader-a few trial whiffs stream from his mouth, a smoke wreath curls around his glorious beard, the little poet's eyes glisten with inward delight, a conception grand, magnificent has entered his soul; another and another smoke wreath writhes itself free from the comely jaws

of the Editor-the conception waxes-no longer does that eye, that lustrous eye, glister and sparkle, with varying emotions, it is fixed and stern-one idea has seized upon the poet's soul-one moment, and it will be accomplished or kill him with its intensity. The jaws again expand like unto the entrance of some dark chasm-forth rolls a dark heavy volume of smoke, gradually it falls into the wreathed shape of a huge circle, for a moment it swings sluggishly in the air, then with steady motion floats upward and now hovers at a little height above the table; in a moment that idea has roused to action, one bound has borne the little man to our elbow-another, and he hangs for a moment intensely poised-then sinks down into the smoke wreath, feels the mellow vapor press upward against his arms and throwing his head aback,

"Lets fancy steal o'er him, touch with her wand

The imagery fountains, the ideal band,

And guide him along with her silvery rein

Through lands ever smiling, through Fairies' domain"

while, like the far off notes of excelsior, strikes on his ear the strange sounds "go it Fre-e-esh," squeaked from the fat lungs of our glorious contributor.

But hold! we have meanwhile almost forgotten the two more noble occupants of our sanctum, our magnificent prose writers!-happy dogs in our forgetfulness, for with the smoke wreaths of our two last waning tribucs, is fast ebbing all their remembrance of our sacred office; and happy we, for at our leisure we may now mark their several dispositions. How different! yonder one in the chimney nook rests supremely happy. Contentment is written on every feature. And why not? His jolly form just fills the easy rounding of that old cushioned chair; that mellow smoke just suits his soft voluptuous lips, and those lazy wood coals fill up his idea of careless happiness. A quiet smile plays upon his full broad face and as it twinkles among the funwrinkles of that laughter-loving mouth, we read the merry wine songs, the soft love ditties and the sugary-sighing to his rustic nymph, wherewithal we may fill up the little cozy nooks in the future numbers of our beloved Maga. The unpleasant reminiscences of that last ride upon the uncouth elephant-where you lately saw him perched, reader, in the very perfection of uncomfortableness-are fast disappearing, and in the dim smoke cloud the monkeys are again at their merry antics. Nought troubles him save the fast waning of his last tribuco, and even that grieves him not longer, for his merry eye has leered from our long stemmed meerschaum, to the full, plump paper of our "Feinen Kanaster"-the measure of his happiness is full and we love him for it-we love

"Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:

Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

He thinks too much, such men are dangerous.

No

We tremble as we sit near him. True! he smokes; but it has no mellow influence upon him. True! he sendeth forth a long streaming whiff and seemeth satisfied; but in another moment he champs and gnaws the end and fretting the smoke in his lips raises his long lank body from its rest, squirming and twisting until we tremble for the effect of his angular development upon the delicate texture of our cushion. pleasing smoke-dreams flit across his vision. These he deems folly, and even now his sharp unsteady eye rests in scorn upon his contented, unconscious companion. And he hath that too which speaks not well for him, he "hath a beard of useless length, like unto a winter's night, long, dark and cold." Mark you that spare form, a very Cassius ; that restless eye hath ambition in every motion, that long beard treachery in every fold. Such men are dangerous; he has a design and we tremble in our seat as we look upon him. Mark you! that man will be an-Editor.

But where, where, meanwhile is the Poet, the man who doeth our verse? Oh! we had forgotten that we saw him, smoke encircled ascending to a fancied heaven. Much we fear that we shall never, never, hear from him again. It matters not, he rejoices, as do we, that never again will he visit those earthy landscapes,

"Where richest of spices impregnate the breezes,
And incense of odor drips sweet from the treezes."

(Vide Poet's corner in the coffin.)

But names, names? we fancy you ask. Oh no! reader, we have placed a finger on our lips, a hand on our heart, and that, you know, with an Editor means. And "what's in a name"? Why! you have not recognized our dear contributors even from our glowing description, and how could you form any estimate of their character or their persons from the mere mention of their names. Pardon us, reader, you surely do not believe in that lady's absurd philosophy which asserts that to Dick, Tom, and Jerry belong appropriate dispositions? We do sometimes cherish the opinion of Sterne, that laying aside these more common names, certain others do exert a sort of magic influence upon character. Tracing with him the matter "ab ovo," we think with Mr. Tristram Shandy-Gentleman's philosophical father, that his Tristram's misfortunes began nine months before ever he came into the world. But before we begin, we advise him who hath not a minute and inquisitive judgment to follow us no further into the paragraph, as he might not enter into its true spirit and utterly misconceive of our real design-we think then with him, that in certain cases, certain characters are ever associated with certain names, at the moment of the child's christening, and that upon these associations depend the whole tone of a man's life. Now for the existence of these associations, to the fact of which he brings the testimony of a certain very eminent philosopher, we would add that there must have been some prior cause: and tracing forward abo ovo, ad horam natalem vel ad diem lustricum, it is evident that during this embryotic period, the fond mother must have ever had the image of the child, in connection with some chosen name, playing upon her mind, and in connection with this name a common character or some disposition which has struck her fancy. And it is equally evident that the humors of the mother during this period, must have had an influence upon the little being's delicate formation, and that, the association growing stronger and stronger, up to the time of birth, this character at the present moment of the little fellow's first bow upon the threshold of the world, must have been stereotyped upon the name, and made him for life an honest man or a thief, a dunce or the contrary, that is, if Sterne's theory be true. So that, reader, you see the question, "What is in a name?" is not so idle after all, and you will now believe that this is a magnificent theory of ours. "But," says a fair one-as she presents the following prænomens of three interesting members of the Beman family-" can you, sir, show us the application of your theory in this case?" Certainly, madam, with the greatest"Did ever woman, since the creation of the world". -Certainly, madam, nothing will afford us so much pleasure. Our magnificent theory, madam, began far in the dim ages of the past. Others may trace back theirs to the first square foot of Ararat's peak, left dry by the subsiding waters, or even to the gates of Eden. Ours exceeding all others in antiquity, began nine months before the youthful Cain opened his eyes for the first time on the fair gardens of Paradise. Long concealed amid the changes of time, it was left for us, in the glorious light of the present century, to assert its greatness and add its powerful influence to the promotion of civilization throughout the world; to apply it-as to its present application-its application consists, madampshaw! we leave the thing to you, reader: here they go; sing them, chant them, howl them, make what you will of them:

Queen Caroline-Sarah Rogers Rushannah,

Beman,

Robert Hubbard Hunk-Dan Dunk-Peter Jacobus Lackeman,

Charity-Freelove and Ruth

Grace-Mercy and Truth

Faith and Hope and Peace pursue,

Beman,

And that will carry you clear through,

Beman.

Oh! you're puzzled, reader: as well might you endeavor to explain the intimate connection between one of King David's psalms and that little word "Selah" at the end