THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE.-Conducted by the Students of Yale University. This Magazine established February, 1836, is the oldest college periodical in America; entering upon its Fifty-ninth Volume with the number for October, 1893. It is published by a board of Editors, annually chosen from each successive Senior Class. It thus may be fairly said to represent in its general articles the average literary culture of the university. In the Notabilia college topics are thoroughly discussed, and in the Memorabilia it is intended to make a complete record of the current events of college life; while in the Book Notices and Editors' Table, contemporary publications and exchanges receive careful attention.

Contributions to its pages are earnestly solicited from students of all departments, and may be sent through the Post Office. They are due the 1st of the month. If rejected, they will be returned to their writers, whose names will not be known outside the Editorial Board. A Gold Medal of the value of Twenty-five Dollars, for the best written Essay, is offered for the competition of all undergraduate subscribers, at the beginning of each academic year.

The Magazine is issued on the 15th day of each month from October to June, inclusive; nine numbers form the annual volume, comprising at least 360 pages. The price is $3.00 per volume, 35 cents per single number. All subscriptions must be paid in advance, directly to the Editors, who alone can give receipts therefor. Upon the day of publication the Magazine is promptly mailed to all subscribers. Single numbers are on sale at the Coöperative Store. Back numbers and volumes can be obtained from the Editors.

A limited number of advertisements will be inserted. The character and large circulation of the Magazine render it a desirable medium for all who would like to secure the patronage of Yale students.

All communications, with regard to the editorial management of the periodical, must be addressed to the EDITORS OF THE VALE LITERARY MAGAZINE, New Haven, Conn.

ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW.

THE drift of the age is more and more to extreme specialization. So great is the pressure of competition that the one who would succeed must bend himself all towards one end, be willing wholly to merge himself in his work, even to the warping of his character and the distortion of his intellectual focus. The business man grows into a machine for amassing dollars, the lawyer for arguing cases, the doctor for diagnosing symptoms. The scientist, from devoting his life to a limited range of facts and generalizations, mummifies the emotional side of his nature until he becomes as shrivelled as his own mouldy specimens. Darwin lamented "that his enjoyment of music had become dulled with age." The tremendous array of facts with which he spent his life crushed out his æsthetic nature.

The struggle against environment has been hard in America. The greater part of the two and a half centuries of our existence has been spent in clearing forests and opening up the virgin resources of the country. Undoubtedly it is a glittering achievement to found towns, perform seem

ingly impossible feats of railroad engineering, amass colossal fortunes, but there is something worth cultivating besides practical driving power. The blight of utilitarianism shows clear in our art and architecture as expressions of the national turn of mind. The late Professor McLaughlin despaired of teaching his classes æsthetics. Such a statement needs no comment. Charles Eliot Norton refused to lecture on Gothic architecture in the class-room allotted him. His teaching was antidoted by the pernicious silent influence of the college building. As a race, Americans do not look for beauty, nor embody it overmuch in their creations. The beauty must first be in us, for "light, skies, and mountains are but the painted vicissitudes of the soul." Yet to see rightly we must see this beauty which is here about us. In failing to appreciate it we altogether miss an entire side of our lives, and any adequate interpretation of the world around us. The smallest things, the greatest, are clad alike in the divine raiment, for beauty is as real as gold. The little leaf-like sand rills formed after a rain storm on the side of a railroad embankment were beautiful to Thoreau, because he read into them something of their universal significance. Things are beautiful in their meanings, not for themselves. We need to be taught, not only how to see, but how to interpret. Herein lies the immense value of literature and art. After all, whether we will or no, we must value things somewhat for their beauty. Why not prize the right things? Let the criteria be as correct as possible. The chief difference between the cultivated man and the savage lies in the fact that the standards of one are so much higher than those of the other. What does an Australian bushman care for a radiant sunset in all its flooding glory of color, or a native of Mashonaland for a Limoge enamel ?

Intelligent criticism is what this country now most needs. The chief function of the critic is to point out unpopular truths. As a people, we are altogether too well pleased with our own size and success to waste time in looking for shortcomings. There is too much stress on

mere immensity. Does not the western sun shine on the biggest river, and waterfall, and cañon, and hasn't the biggest fair in the world just been brought to a triumphal conclusion?

The connection of this with college life here is sufficiently obvious. Yale is quite typically American. The moral tone is healthy, the scientific advantages of the first order, the opportunities of educating a man for practical work excellent; but we want something more—some mental color and richness of tone, some hint of better things, some glimpse of the other side. For orientation there is nothing like largeness of view. The ancients thought the earth the all-important center of the universe. We now know it as a materialized point in a whole infinity of systems. Comparisons, though odious, are often tonic. The English universities, with their beautiful surroundings, mellowed by time, and rich in clustering traditions, are so different from American institutions, that to compare them is hardly fair, and, owing to the utterly different conditions of environment, not particularly suggestive. But a glance nearer home. The fair-minded man must confess that in some respects Harvard is ahead of us. It may be due in part to the influence of Cambridge and Boston, and it is undoubtedly very largely attributable to the connection with the university of such men as Longfellow, Lowell, Wendell Phillips, and, indirectly, Emerson; but whatever the cause, the fact remains that there is a literary and artistic atmosphere there which is almost wholly lacking with us. Yale has, to be sure, many advantages which Harvard has not, but are they necessarily incompatible with the development here of such an atmosphere? Does the "democratic spirit" preclude a more general and correct understanding of what is beautiful in music, art, and literature? On the contrary, a man owes it to himself, whatever his surroundings, to cultivate the æsthetic side of his nature. It seems needless to descant on the pleasure to be derived from a certain amount of artistic appreciation, but we are, I am afraid, rather apt to think that to show such an appreciation is unmanly, that

vigor and refinement are usually found in inverse ratio, and that culture smacks somehow of superciliousness and snobbery. "No young man of noble birth or liberal sentiments," said Plutarch, "from seeing the Jupiter at Pisa would desire to be Phidias, or from the sight of the Juno at Argos to be Polycletus." Twenty centuries have not materially altered the opinion; who would not rather be a phenomenal half-back? "Why not be good hearty athletic Yale men and leave such matters as refinement and artistic appreciation to cultivated Harvard; can't we beat them at football? Sometimes; but granting to the full the wholesome value of athletics, when the last word has been said, there still remains utterly untouched something better.

I know that I am sounding a rather unwelcome note, that the university as a whole is quite well satisfied with things as they are, but nothing is so fatal to advance as smug self-satisfaction. Rational discontent is the gift of the gods. Give a cow pasture, water, a scarcity of flies, and she is satisfied; but the time has come when we should have outgrown this delightful pastoral stage. We look for something better; urged on if need be by Godgiven discontent. What we most need is not new dormitories, or completed quadrangles, but a wider and more serious understanding of the beauty in the world about us, of its artistic interpretation, and of what it all means. If we throw ourselves into attaining such an appreciative point of view with anything like the earnest spirit and determined purpose manifested in placing our college at the head of the athletic world, there is no reason why we should not ultimately be as successful as we have been in rowing or football. Circumstances have been against us, but on the gates of Heaven, says Hafiz, is written, "Woe to the dupe who yields to fate." The future is before us unopened and unconquered; why should not Yale, as well as Oxford, or Harvard, become a growing center of literary and artistic culture? Every one feels that the university is in a transition stage, that the present period is particularly one of expansion and