a filial affection its progress from a grammar-school to a flourishing and well-endowed college.

Nor is the work a mere register of events connected with the institution itself, but it gives frequent glimpses into the state of manners and the opinions of other days, and occasional sketches also of the distinguished men who yet live in their works. As an instance of this, we may mention the discriminating account of the famous Cotton Mather, who, if his sense had been equal to his talents, and his digestive powers on a par with his appetite, would have been truly a great man.

The present work is a history of Harvard University, from its foundation to the last important epoch previous to the American revolution. It comprises the whole of the author's original plan; but the editor of it thinks that, had Mr. Peirce lived, he would, perhaps, at some future time have brought his work down to a later period. Nevertheless the book is complete in itself, its subjects being included within well-defined marks and periods; while it comprehends a space, which from its antiquity and other causes, affords more materials than any other to gratify the natural desire of men to look back to the illustrious deeds of their fathers.

The style of the work is good and pleasing. The editor informs us that Mr. Peirce was a diligent reader and hearty admirer of the English Classics, Addison, Pope, Dryden, Swift, and their contemporaries; and that he took these for his models, although he was in some degree tinctured with the plainness of still older writers. The style, indeed, is unostentatiously simple; it is also correctly severe, without being harsh, or descending into feebleness and tameness. It is condensed, not attenuated.

In an age of magazine and novel writing such tricks are played. with our mother tongue, such uncouth words and phrases are pressed into it, such involved sentences are manufactured, while there is such a love of the monstrous, fancy for the artificial, or yielding to the sentimental, that it is really refreshing when, on turning away from the distorted, the dazzling, or the mawkish and twaddling, one alights upon the green, the natural, and the healthy.

As already intimated, the work has been published under the editorship of a Mr. Pickering, who was an early and an attached friend of the author, and who has enriched the volume by assembling in an Appendix a great variety of miscellaneous and illustrative matter relating to the University.

Without attempting to give an analysis or an abstract of the volume, we shall present a few things to be found in it that will engage attention.

The University dates its existence from an act of the General Court, in 1636, by which there was voted £100, towards the erec

tion of a public "school or college," to be situated at Newtown (which name was afterwards changed to Cambridge,) " a place very pleasant and accommodate," and "then under the orthodox and soulflourishing ministry of Mr. Thomas Sheaphard." This most liberal appropriation, taking into consideration also the time at which it was made, speaks volumes in praise of the founders; illustrating also the general feeling which must have countenanced the measure. The transaction took place only six years from the first settlement of Boston, and only sixteen years from the landing at Plymouth, at a time when they were struggling for very existence, surrounded with vast and unexplored wildernesses, inhabited by savage foes, whom imagination invested with more than their real terrors. One would have supposed that the sustenance and protection of their bodily lives would have engrossed their whole time and thoughts; but with what moral purpose and far-sightedness did they set about providing the mind with convenient and enduring food; and with what highminded disinterestedness did they give up so large a portion of their scanty means for the good of posterity, and "that learning might not sleep in the graves of their fathers!" Mr. Peirce remarks well and becomingly on this subject, when he says, "To minds less enlightened, less impressed with the value of liberal studies, and less resolved on achieving whatever duty commanded, such a project would have presented itself in vain; but from the fathers of New England it was precisely the measure which was to have been expected; it flowed from their principles and character, as an effect from its legitimate cause; and, while the qualities of a stream are a test of the nature of its source, this venerable institution must be regarded as a memorial of the wisdom and virtue of its pious founders."

The regular course of academic instruction began in 1638, and in 1639 it was ordered that the college should be called Harvard College, in honour of its great founder, the Rev. John Harvard. It was at first under the charge of Nathaniel Eaton, who, as Cotton Mather says, "was a brave scholar, but cruel withal, and was fined 100 marks for beating a young gentleman (his usher) unmercifully with a cudgel." That this ruffianly, rather than brave, master should have attempted to beat his usher, shows the spirit of subordination much more than that of equality. Indeed the former sentiment was as prevalent at one period as the latter is now in that country. Eaton was also accused of ill-treating the students in various ways, and of giving them bad and scanty diet, a source of complaint which, curiously enough began at the very foundation of the college, and has continued to break out from time to time to the present day.

There is some very amusing matter in the Appendix touching this same cudgelling Mr. Nathaniel Eaton, extracted from several

quarters. We learn that he beat his unfortunate usher with a walnut-tree cudgel, "a yard in length, and big enough to have killed a horse," he being, as may be supposed from this statement, harder to kill than a horse, as indeed may also be inferred from the result; for it seems that his savage master gave him "two hundred stripes about the head and shoulders, and so kept him under blows (with some two or three short intermissions) about the space of two hours." No head, made as heads are made in our degenerate days, could have survived such a flailing; but if not poetical there must be some lawyer-like exaggeration in the statement of the usher's case. Eaton was interrogated anent the ill and scanty diet of his boarders, "for although their friends gave large allowance, yet their diet was ordinarily nothing but porridge and pudding, and that very homely." Nathaniel with that want of manliness and gallantry which might be expected from his cruelty towards the weak, laid all the blame upon his wife. A curious paper is furnished, which, no doubt, contains the statement given by this Mrs. Eaton, relative to the charges brought against her domestic ecomony. It is a very amusing document, and we should extract it, if we had room. It is full of contrition and humble acknowledgment; yet laughable as the whole affair may be to those readers who have been and are exempted from all such abuses, yet we cannot help being touched with the conjugal affection which made the woman so prompt to transfer all the blame to herself, and to exonerate her dear husband. From the very submissive tone of her confessions, we have a fear that Nathaniel was woman's master, and that he had long kept a "walnut-tree cudgel" at home, and one too of much more than the orthodox thickness of a man's little finger. This trouble about the diet of the students at Harvard was gravely investigated by the government of the state, and rightly so it was. The institution's interests might have been disastrously affected by the ferocity and baseness of teachers, not to speak of the lives of pupils.

The wheel of time has brought about strange revolutions in the character of the Commencement exercises. Orations, dissertations, and forensics in the vernacular language, are reliefs and luxuries of modern introduction and growth. Within the memory of some who are now alive, the principal exercises consisted of a Syllogistic discourse in Latin, in which four or five distinguished scholars were appointed respondents, to whom was assigned the task of defending certain positions which the rest of the class severally opposed and attacked. All this was done in Latin, and in the form of Syllogisms and Theses, and might have been very edifying. In the old institutions of a similar kind in Europe, and down to a comparatively recent date, the same method of sharpening the intellect, and making combatants expert, as it was thought, and also of rendering them VOL. III. (1841.) NO. I.

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dexterous in the universal language, was in vogue; the Americans but followed and imitated us in their first foundations.

A list is preserved of the Theses which were defended by the first graduates in 1642, from which we cull a few specimens, which may well make the young scholars at Harvard College, at the present day, bless their stars that they were not born in the times of which we speak :-"Causa sine qua non, non est peculiaris causa a quatuor reliquis generalibus;" "Axioma contingens est, quod ita verum est ut aliquando falsum esse possit;" "Forma est principium individuationis;" "Unius rei non est nisi unica forma constitutiva," &c. &c. How would one of our spruce, learned, modern orators at the bar or in the senate, or even at some academical debating club, with all his scholastic lore at his fingers' ends, and his Latinity upon his tongue, look, were he called upon to defend "pro virili parte," as the order of performances was wont to word it, one of the above Theses in Latin Syllogisms? But the masters were, of course, expected to soar to a higher sphere of disputation, or to plunge into a deeper and darker well of scholastic metaphysics, as will be seen from the following questions, "methodically to be discussed by the candidates for the degree of Master of Arts," at the Commencement in 1743:-" An ex operibus Sanctificationi comitantibus, optimæ exquiratur Justificatio;" "An conscientia invincibiliter erronca sit inculpabilis." But we presume even our learned readers have enough of these scholastic puzzles, and therefore we proceed to some more interesting matters.

The sons of Harvard must have read with great pleasure and sympathy the indications scattered through Mr. Peirce's volume, of the pride and affection with which their forerunners looked upon the University, and the large space it occupied in the public mind. Life has become so crowded with stirring interests, and men are whirled now with such rail-road velocity, through such a multitude and variety of excitements, that a peaceful literary institution does not obtain its due share of consideration or respect by the many, and is only adequately thought of by the scholars who have anchored their barks in those placid recesses to which the turmoil and the foam of the world of noise and of traffic seldom reach. But it was not so in America some hundred years ago. Its people formed then but a "feeble folk,"-an infant colony, supporting their tottering and impeded steps, by clinging to their mother on this side of the deep. The peculiar character of the Pilgrim Fathers and their more immediate successors in general, and the clergy in particular, possessed a great influence out of their sphere. Harvard College was long the eye of New England. It was regarded with pride and veneration. Every leading man felt a strong personal interest in it, and considered the prosperity of the colony as largely involved in its own. Thus the death of president Leverett is spoken of as a "dark and

awful providence," a "heavy judgment of God," a "token of his anger," a "sore frown upon the College." When President Wadsworth died, it was voted by the Corporation, that, "whereas the choosing of a President is a matter of great concern, it be proposed to the Honourable and Reverend Overscers, that they with the Corporation might spend some convenient time in prayer to God for his gracious direction in that important affair." We find the General Court voting to President Wadsworth, one hundred and fifty pounds," to enable him to enter upon and manage the great affair of President of Harvard College, to which he is appointed." The sense of the value and the importance of the institution which was cherished, may be learned from the liberal appropriations made to it from time to time by the General Court, and by the amount of private benefactions. The great number of small gifts, donations, and legacies, from men of humble fortunes, shows at once the high respect in which learning was held, and the spirit of generous self-sacrifice which distinguished the times. It would be doing injustice to Mr. Peirce, to withhold from the reader his appropriate and feeling remarks on this subject.

"In looking over the list of early benefactions to the College," he observes, "we are amused, when we read of a number of sheep bequeathed by one man, a quantity of cotton-cloth worth nine shillings by another, a pewter flagon worth ten shillings by a third, a fruit-dish, a sugar-spoon, a silver-tipt jug, one great salt, one small trencher-salt, by others; and of presents and legacies amounting severally to five shillings, nine shillings, one pound, two pounds, &c., all faithfully recorded, with the names of their respective donors. How soon does a little reflection change any disposition we may have to smile, into a feeling of respect, and even of admiration! What, in fact were these humble benefactions? They were contributions from the 'res angusta domi;' from pious, virtuous, enlightened penury, to the noblest of all causes, the advancement of education. The donations were small, for the people were poor; they leave no doubt as to the motive which actuated the donors; they remind us of the offering, from every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation:' and, like the widow's mite, indicate a respect and zeal for the object, which would have done greater things, had the means been more abundant."

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It is a curious trait, and characteristic of the stern discipline of the times, that personal chastisement was for a long period tolerated and practised in the College. It is related in Judge Sewell's MS. diary, that in June, 1674, Thomas Sargeant, having been convicted of speaking blasphemous words concerning the Holy Ghost, was, among other punishments, publicly whipped before all the scholars in the library, prayer being had before and after by the President! Notwithstanding the barbarity of this law, and the constant troubles it produced, it for a long time maintained its place in the