be needed, affectation can at least do nothing towards subduing "Shoddy." Mere clique-ism, disgusting everywhere, is ridiculous in a democratic town; its rules of conduct are as out of place as kid gloves in the New Zealand bush, or gold scabbards on a battle-field.

Good meat, and drink, and air give strength to the men and beauty to the women of a moneyed class; but in America these things are the inheritance of every boy and girl, and give their owners no advantage in the world. During the rebellion, the ablest generals and bravest soldiers of the North sprang, not from the merchant families, but from the farmer folk. Without special merit of some kind, there can be no such thing as aristocracy.

Many American men and women, who have too little nobility of soul to be patriots, and too little understanding to see that theirs is already, in many points, the master country of the globe, come to you, and bewail the fate which has caused them to be born citizens of a republic, and dwellers in a country where men call vices by their names. The least educated of their countrymen, the only grossly vulgar class that America brings forth, they fly to Europe "to escape democracy," and pass their lives in Paris, Pau, or Nice, living libels on the country they are believed to represent.

Out of these discordant elements, Cubans, Knickerbockers, Germans, Irish, "first families," "Petroleum," and "Shoddy," we are forced to construct our composite idea-New York. The Irish numerically predominate, but we have no experience as to what should be the moral features of an Irish city, for Dublin has alway been in English hands; possibly that which in New York appears to be cosmopolitan is merely Celtic. However it may be, this much is clear, that the humblest township of New England reflects more truly the America of the past, the most chaotic village of Nebraska portrays more fully the hopes and tendencies of the America of the present, than do this huge State and city.

If the political figure of New York is not encouraging, its natural beauty is singularly great. Those who say that America has no scenery, forget the Hudson, while they can never have explored Lake George, Lake Champlain, and the Mohawk.

That Poole's exquisite scene from the "Decameron," "Philomela's Song," could have been realized on earth I never dreamt until I saw the singers at a New-Yorker's villa on the Hudson grouped in the deep shades of a glen, from which there was an outlook upon the basaltic palisades and lake-like Tappan Zee. It was in some such spot that De Tocqueville wrote the brightest of his brilliant letters-that dated "Sing Sing "—in which he speaks of himself as lying on a hill that overhung the Hudson, watching the white sails gleaming in the hot sun, and trying in vain to fancy what became of the river where it disappeared in the blue "highlands."

That New York city itself is full of beauty the view from Castle Garden would suffice to show; and by night it is not less lovely than by day. The harbour is illuminated by the coloured lanterns of a thousand boats, and the steam-whistles tell of a life that never sleeps. The paddles of the steamers seem not only to beat the water, but to stir the languid air and so provoke a breeze, and the lime-lights at the Fulton and Wall Street ferries burn so brightly that in the warm glare the eye reaches through the still night to the feathery acacias in the streets of Brooklyn. The view is as southern as the people: we have not yet found America.

CHAPTER V.

CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT.

*OLD CAMBRIDGE! Long may she flourish !" proposed by a professor in the University of Cambridge, in America, and drunk standing, with three cheers, by the graduates and undergraduates of Harvard, is a toast that sets one thinking.

Cambridge in America is not by any means a University of to-day. Harvard College, which, being the only "house," has engrossed the privileges, funds, and titles of the University, was founded at Cambridge, Mass., in 1636, only ninety years later than the greatest and wealthiest college of our Cambridge in old England. Puritan Harvard was the sister rather than the daughter of our own Puritan Emmanuel. Harvard himself, and Dunster, the first president of Harvard's College, were among the earliest of the scholars of Emmanuel.

A toast from the Cambridge of new to the Cambridge of old England is one from younger to elder sister; and Dr. Wendell Holmes, "The Autocrat," said as much in proposing it at the Harvard alumni celebration of 1866.

Like other old institutions, Harvard needs a ten days' revolution academic abuses flourish as luxuriantly upon American as on English soil, and University difficulties are much the same in either country. Here, as at home, the complaint is, that the men come up to the University untaught. To all of them their college is forced for a time to play the high-school; to some she is never anything more than school. At Harvard this is worse than with ourselves: the average age of entry, though of late much risen, is still considerably under eighteen.

The college is now aiming at raising gradually the standard of entry when once all are excluded save men, and thinking

men, real students, such as those by whom some of the new Western Universities are attended, then Harvard hopes to leave drill-teaching entirely to the schools, and to permit the widest freedom in the choice of studies to her students.

Harvard is not blameless in this matter. Like other Universities, she is conservative of bad things as well as good; indeed, ten minutes within her walls would suffice to convince even an Englishman that Harvard clings to the times before the Revolution

Her conservatism is shown in many trivial things—in the dress of her janitors, in the cut of the grass-plots and college gates, in the conduct of the Commencement orations in the chapel. For the dainty little dames from Boston who came to hear their friends and brothers recite their disquisitions, none but Latin programmes were provided; and the poor ladies were condemned to find such names as Bush, Maurice, Benjamin, Humphrey, and Underwood among the graduating youths, distorted into Bvsh, Mavritivs, Beniamin, Hvmphredvs, Vnderwood.

This conservatism of the New England Universities had just received a sharp attack. In the Commencement oration, Dr. Hedges, one of the leaders of the Unitarian Church, had strongly pressed the necessity for a complete freedom of study after entry, a liberty to take up what line the student would, to be examined and to graduate in what he chose. He had instanced the success of Michigan University consequent upon the adoption of this plan; he had pointed to the fact that of all the Universities in America, Michigan alone drew her students from every State. President Hill and ex-President Walker had endorsed his views.

There is a special fitness in the reformers coming forward at this time. This year is the commencement of a new era at Harvard; for at the request of the college staff, the connexion of the University with the commonwealth of Massachusetts has just been dissolved, and the members of the Board of overseers are in future to be elected by the University, instead of being nominated by the State. This being so, the question had been raised as to whether the Governor would come in state to Commencement, but he yielded to the wishes of the

graduates, and came with the traditional pomp, attended by a staff in uniform, and escorted by a troop of Volunteer Lancers, whose scarlet coats and Polish caps recalled the times before the Revolution.

While the ceremony was still in progress, I had been introduced to several of the foremost rowing men among the younger graduates of Harvard, and at its conclusion I accompanied them to their river. They were in strict training for their University race with Yale, which was to come off in a week; and as Cambridge had been beaten twice running, and this year had a better crew, they were wishful for criticisms on their style. Such an opinion as a stranger could offer was soon given; they were dashing, fast, long in their stroke; strong, considering their light weights, but terribly overworked. They have taken for a rule the old English notions as to training which have long since disappeared at home, and, looked upon as fanatics by their friends and tutors, they have all the fanatic's excess of zeal.

Rowing and other athletics, with the exceptions of skating and base-ball, are both neglected and despised in America. When the smallest sign of a reaction appears in the New England colleges, there comes at once a cry from Boston that brains are being postponed to brawn. If New Englanders would look about them, they would see that their climate has of itself developed brains at the expense of brawn, and that, if national degeneracy is to be long prevented, brawn must in some way be fostered. The high shoulder, head-voice, and pallor of the Boston men are not incompatible with the possession of the most powerful brain, the keenest wit; but it is not probable that energy and talent will be continued in future generations sprung from the worn-out men and women of to-day.

The prospect at present is not bright; year by year Americans grow thinner, lighter, and shorter-lived. Ælian's Athenians, we may remember, though they were greatly superior to the Greeks in stature, were inferior to them in length of life. The women show even greater signs of weakness than the men, and the high, undulating tones which are affectation in the French are natural to the ladies of America;