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“ The college provides for this by its surroundings—the old buildings, the old elms, the old campus, the class songs, the memorial days, the pleasant memories, the struggles and rivalries in recitation, the sports, the diploma, the honor, the prestige in the world outside, the relative standing of “our” college and the other colleges. All these things create in the student the esprit du corps which makes him glad to say, “I belong to this or that college.” See the working of this spirit in a college boat-race. ”

“ The College is described as a human body. The Master was the head, endued with the five senses of seeing clearly, hearing discreetly, smelling sagaciously, tasting moderately, and touching fitly; the senior Fellow was the neck; the Deans were the shoulders; the two priests the sides; the Bursars the arms and hands; the Fellows the stomach; the scholars the legs; and the servants the feet, whose function it is to go whithersoever they are bidden. Just as the body when sick would require a physician, so it was said would the College sometimes require a visitor. ”

“ For student use the collection seemed quite adequate, not indeed for specialization, but certainly for the fundamental, general training for which the college stood. The work of the freshman and sophomore years consisted largely of required subjects, the junior and senior years largely of electives. This system, long in vogue, proved most acceptable, particularly to such graduates as my friend the professor, who had taken in college, Latin, Greek, French, and German; much English, some history, and a little economics; geology, physics, chemistry, physiology, and hygiene ”

“ Though a particular University might be strongest in a particular faculty, as Bologna was in Law and Paris in Theology, yet it is a traditional attribute of such a body that several different branches of higher study shall be represented in it. It is among the distinctive advantages of a University, that it brings together in one place students—by whom I mean teachers as well as learners—of various subjects. ”

“ The college is absolutely still, though one or two lights still burn in studious rooms, and peep through curtained chinks. What a beautiful place to live one's life in, a place which greets one with delicate associations, with venerable beauty, at every turn! The moonlight falls through the tall oriel of the Hall, and the armorial shields burn and glow with rich points of colour. ”

“ All these things tend to give an esprit du corps to the C. L. S. C., and when you carry your diploma and remember your march from gate to goal the other day, you say, “I was present at the graduation of the class of ’82, and I shall go there as often as I can.” What the vision and the experience do for us who come here “The Hall in the Grove” will to some extent do for those who can not come. This enthusiasm will do for our members what the similar element in four years of college discipline and experience do for college students. ”

“ When I speak of the College Tutor, it must not be supposed that one man is equal to all this work in a large college,—Trinity, for instance, which usually numbers four hundred Undergraduates in residence. A large college has usually two Tutors,—Trinity has three,—and the students are equally divided among them,—on their sides, the phrase is,—without distinction of year, or, as we should call it, of class. ”

“ I say we just camp here, and not bother about going on to the other place. I’m satisfied. If that house is big enough, it’s just the thing.”
“But have you been to the college?”
“No, but I asked about it. They have intercollegiate games and frats, and I guess it’s all right. It has a peach of a campus, too, and a Carnegie library with chimes–––”
“Well, but, dear, you aren’t going to college just for those things.”
“Oh, the college’ll be all right. Guardy wouldn’t have suggested it if it wasn’t. But we’ll go up there this morning and look around.” ”

“ The old New England college: the representative college of olden days, injected a love of books and the wisdom of books in their students: reams of the classic poets and prose writers: encyclopædic furnishings of the mind with the contents of a few good, stimulating books. Those were the hey-days of pure scholarship. They have existed here: but we students, today, are illustrations of an evolution in educational ideals, even if most of us [370] don’t seem to realize it. We represent the changed temper of higher education. ”

“ Thus the college for ten days: the better students moderately calm, the others cramming information into aching heads, drinking unbelievable quantities of coffee, sitting up, many of them, all night, attending seminars or tutoring sessions, working for long hours in the library, finally taking the examination, only to start a new nerve-racking grind in preparation for the next one. ”

“ I have long been of the opinion that, in a right constituted College, there ought to be two professors for each class—one for the dunces, and another for those who have parts. The province of the former would not be the most agreeable, but perhaps it would require the greatest talents, and therefore ought to be accounted the post of honour. There is no part of my time more disagreeably spent than that which is spent in college meetings ”

“ But of all this side of Oxford life, my father, who had been a New College man in the days when New College exercised its ancient privilege of presenting its members for their degree without submitting them to any examination in the schools, knew nothing. In his day the New College man before the Vice-Chancellor for his degree, instead of using the formula prescribed for every other member of the university to the effect that having satisfied the examiners he begged his degree (peto gradum) , said, “Having satisfied my college, I demand my degree” (postulo gradum) . ”

“ The interests of the professors having become identical with those of the seminary, there now existed, in the faculty of arts, a body of men watchful over its concerns, quick-sighted in detecting all the weak parts of its structure, sagacious in discovering remedies for present evils and sources of new vigour, and eager to bring their views into practical application. ”

“ At the present day the question “What should be the course of study in an educational institution of the rank of a gymnasium?” is being much discussed. This I shall return to later. But the question what the course of study should be seems to me by no means the only important, nor even the most important, one. ”

“ As a professor in the university, not only am I in constant relations with students in the early semesters, and frequently, through my public lectures, with those who are not studying medicine, but also, for upward of twenty-five years, as examiner for the state and for the Faculty, I have learned more or less accurately the educational standing of some 3,000 young men who had left the first class of the gymnasium from two to four years previously. ”

“ The real teaching or coaching or cramming for examination is left to the tutors and Fellows of each college, and the examinations also are chiefly in their hands. Many undergraduates never see a professor, and, as far as the teaching work of the University is concerned, the professorships might safely be abolished. And yet, as I could honestly assure my foreign friends, the best men who take honour degrees at Oxford are quite the equals of the best men at Paris or Berlin. ”

“ Is there some secret charm which still allies the college to the pulpit, so that to talk about it is presently to begin to preach? The Easy Chair asks because it feels that it is about to take the sacerdotal tone, and remind the youth who is leaving or entering college that, like every other epoch in life, college is an opportunity. It is what you make it. Fate, as the older times would have said—life, as we prefer to say—gives us a chance. ”

“ Of the spirit that actuates the College, of all that makes it a living Society, I have said little. In truth, these are incapable of analysis. The charm that the place perennially exercises on those who, generation after generation, make it their home, the affection it inspires, are intangible: they exist, there are but few members of the House who have not felt them, and perhaps that is all I need say on this aspect of our history.
29 A paper read to a party of north-country students visiting the College in 1906. ”

“ Then the trustees passed an ordinance to the effect that any professor in the university could be called upon to teach any branch, upon penalty of dismissal if he refused. We were determined that our teachers should be men of broad general culture, and not mere narrow specialists. Of coarse, every one of them had studied a variety of branches at school or college, and surely any man ought to be able to teach any thing which he himself had ever learned. ”

“ The College seems to be intended chiefly for ladies who have completed their ordinary course of English studies, and it will be divided into two departments, Educational and Industrial. In the latter, classes will be held for various decorative and technical arts, and for wood-carving, etching, and photography, as well as sick-nursing, dressmaking, cookery, physiology, poultry-rearing, and the cultivation of flowers. The curriculum certainly embraces a wonderful amount of subjects, and I have no doubt that the College will supply a real want. ”

“ The faculty very often advise the girls to attend certain performances and are very willing to chaperon them. Speaking of the faculty, I think you are going to enjoy all of yours, for I had them all with the exception of Miss Whittemore, the gym instructor, who is new this year, and I can vouch for them. My advice is to work hard at the beginning of the year, get the principles of the study and a good foundation and the second half-year will come easy. Don't let things slide, for it's awfully hard to make up a lot of work in a short time. If you must cut classes or chapel, cut consistently. ”

“ Now, for the first time, when we have to accompany the Student from the Academy into Life, we must call to mind that the studies and character of the Progressive Scholar are not necessarily completed with his residence at the University ”

“ The curriculum in the old colleges was narrow, but it was compulsory, and its definite aim was to prepare men for undertaking professional study. Too many of the newer colleges, while pretending to be legitimate successors of the older, offer a curriculum of amazing range, music, art, pedagogy, semi-professional studies and elective courses in college work. In looking over the announcements, one is apt at times to imagine that at last he has found the ideal institution in which instruction can be obtained in almost every subject under the sun. ”

“ The social tone of the University was excellent. Many of the tutors and of the undergraduates came of good families, and the struggle for life, or for a college living, or college office, was not, as yet, so fierce as it became afterwards. College tutors toiled on for life, and certainly did their work to the last most conscientiously. ”

“ Poor as they were, sometimes even of a servile race, the wandering scholars, who lectured in every cloister, were hailed as “Masters” by the crowds at their feet.
This title of “Master” suggests, of course, the nomenclature of the Guilds. A University, in fact, was a Guild of Study. The word implies [13] a community of individuals bound together for any purpose, in this case for the purpose of teaching. It was applied to the whole body of students frequenting the “studium,” and hence{67} the term came to be used as synonymous with “studium” to denote the institution itself. ”

“ C. B. Sumner, who dreamed and planned and worked for the college, lives to see it established and prosper, its bare, single building grown to the beautiful campus and many buildings of the present, its student body increased more than ten fold, while his son, the youngest of that famous class, has for years been a valued and loved professor in the strong and growing college of today. ”

“ The truth is, our universities are, like those of Scotland now, and Oxford and Cambridge in former times—both schools and colleges. The under graduate course, in those venerable seats of learning, seems at first to have corresponded precisely, in point of age, with that of the modern schools. ”

“ The best colleges give instruction which is similar in character to that given in Germany in the three upper classes of the gymnasium and in the introductory courses at the universities, in France in the two upper classes of the lycée and in the first two years of university study, and in England in the upper form of the public schools and during the years of undergraduate residence at Oxford and Cambridge. ”

“ Every student under the degree of master of arts was required to have a tutor, thus regularizing the position of fellow-commoners, pensioners, sizars, and subsizars as members of the College, and bringing them under the same rule as scholars. ”

“ Above all, the college was to be a place of study, in the first place of philosophy and the liberal arts, and afterwards of theology. The Rochester chronicler describes the college as established for the perpetual sustenance of students ‘in arte dialectica et theologia’ (Flores Historiarum, iii. 44) . ”

“ To this succeeded a very solemn and interesting charge, in which the Provost addressed himself chiefly to the graduates in the arts, adding, with respect to the graduates in Physic, that he had prevailed on a gentleman of their own Profession, whose precepts would receive Dignity from his years and experience, to lay before them what he thought requisite as well for the honour of the College, as for promoting their own future honour and usefulness in life. ”