to be obtained makes an academical degree of little comparative value. There is no distinctive dress worn now either by students or professors. The college discipline is very like our own, except that the students are treated more like men than schoolboys, and, I should gather, with success. The undergraduates may or may not live in the college rooms, according to their own choice. There are many more students than rooms; and, at the commencement of each year, the vacant rooms are distributed by lottery amongst the freshmen. If the lucky winners like to sell their privilege, they are at liberty to do so; and, practically, the poorer students generally make something by the sale of their right to rooms. Why men should wish to live in the smallest of old-fashioned college rooms instead of in comfortable lodgings in the town is a mystery that no man can comprehend after the age of one-and-twenty; but the wish prevails in Cambridge, U. S. as well as in Cambridge, England. Of late years, the system of "commons" has been given up, and the students take their meals in clubs, or at boarding-houses. The undergraduates are obliged to attend lectures and chapel in the morning. The prayers, which are very short, are worded so as to contain nothing offensive to the tenets of any Christian sect, and must, I fancy, in consequence be curious specimens of moral common-places. On Sundays, there is service held at college, according to the orthodox form, as the Calvinist faith is called in

New England, and students who do not go to church elsewhere are expected to attend it. Parents, however, may fix what form of worship their sons shall frequent: and the majority of the undergraduates who come from near Boston pass their Sundays at home. In glancing over a list of the students, I saw that they belonged to some dozen different religious denominations, and that some three per cent. of the whole number avowed no preference for any particular form of religion. Of those who belonged nominally to the several sects, about a fifth or sixth were Church members. The average expense of the university course varied, as I was told, from £150 to £250 per annum; but, in many instances, I suspect, this latter estimate must be much exceeded. At the class-day I was present at, four students kept open house for all their friends, and I was told they had ordered refreshments to be provided for a thousand persons. Considering the style of the entertainment, it must have cost a dollar a head, at the very least; and a thousand dollars (£200) is rather a large sum, even for our own university swells, to spend on an entertainment. Though the outlay was talked of by the professors as absurd, it did not seem to me to be regarded as anything very unusual.

But, at this rate, I shall never get to Cambridge class-day. It was a glorious hot summer day, hotter than we often have in England; and the chimes of Cambridge rang out merrily, and the little town was

full of ladies with the brightest of bonnets and the prettiest of faces. Class-day is the last day of the Academic course, at least for the fourth-year students, or senior sophomores, as I think they are called; and on this day these students give a sort of farewell festival to the rest of the college, and to their friends. By the kindness of one of my friends - Professor Lowell I was invited to be present at the ceremony. Under a broiling sun, on the twentieth of June last, we strolled, in the forenoon, across the college grounds, past Washington's elm, to the house of the President, or rather the acting Presidentfor at that time the office was vacant, owing to the death of Professor Felton. Washington's elm, I should add, is so called, because the Father of his Country signed the Declaration of Independence beneath its branches. I am not sure, by the way, that I am not confusing Washington with the Barons and Magna Charta. However, I know that Washington did something or other remarkable beneath this elm, and Whitfield, so tradition goes, preached under it, when the university authorities of Harvard refused him permission to use the pulpit of the college chapel.

At the house of the acting President, the professors and the students were collected. It so happened that on that morning the news had reached America of the death of Mr. Clough; and it was pleasant to me, as it would have been to any Englishman, who appreciated

the high talents of that scholar-poet, to see how kindly and how highly his memory was cherished by his brother professors who had known and loved him. The fourth-year sophomores, who were the heroes of the day, were all assembled, arrayed in the glossiest of new black dress clothes and with the whitest of kid gloves. Evening dress somehow takes more kindly to American youths than to our own, and the students seemed to me a set of as good-looking gentlemanlike young men as it has been often my fortune to see. We formed a line, and marched two-and-two together through the grounds, with a band of music leading the way, and a sympathetic crowd of bystanders gazing at us, and following in our wake. I am afraid, as I think of it, that my friend and I must have rather marred the appearance of the procession, by being in coloured clothes. However, black is not a cool colour to wear in the dog-days, and so I hope we were pardoned. Our walk ended in the Unitarian church of Cambridge, which the University has a right to use for public ceremonies. Thanks to my being with the dons' party, I got a seat upon the raised platform at the end of the chapel, and sat there in glory and comparative coolness. The moment we were seated there was a rush of students through the doors, and a perfectly unnecessary fight was got up with the constables who guarded the entrance, which reminded me of wrestlings I had witnessed upon the staircase of the theatre at the Oxford

Commemorations. In fact, the whole scene had an Oxford air about it. There were the ladies with bonnets of every colour, blue, white, and pink, fanning themselves in the crowded seats. There was a host of bright young faces, and the orations were strings of appropriate platitudes and decorous facetia of the mildest character, such as most of us have heard oftentimes in college halls, and under no other circumstances. Of the speakers, I would only say, that they were two young men of six feet high and upwards-one the stroke of the Harvard boat-and as fine specimens of manhood as you would desire to see. We had a band, which played the overture to Martha, and other operatic music, with remarkable precision; a prayer full of the most apposite commonplaces; and an ode of a patriotic character. There were allusions to the war in plenty throughout the proceedings, but everything was too decorous for the exhibition of any ardent patriotism. Amongst the crowd, however, there was one poor lad, pale, worn, and limping upon crutches, who had lost his leg in the battle of Balls Bluff, and who had come to witness the gala day of the class which he had left to join the war. He was the hero of the day, and at every patriotic sentiment all eyes were turned towards him, as though he were the living embodiment of the country's struggle and defeats and victories. I have no doubt, according to the Yankee phrase, he had "a good time of it" that class-day at Cam