though a very pleasant application of the theory upon which the whole was constructed, operated in practice as might have been expected, and though long since disused, it is still the subject of a multitude of the most amusing college traditions. Rooms for the officers and students, the commons hall and the chapel, were the frame work of the machinery for social, moral and religious education, and these, with recitation and lecture rooms, completed their catalogue of the indispensable furniture of a collegiate institution. Still they regarded these things rather as the necessary conditions of the existence of a college, than as the proper material organization of a literary institution. The ten ministers who brought their forty folio volumes to Branford and gave them "for the founding of a college in this colony," understood the true wealth of a college as well as any of their successors. One-third of the number of donations to the college during the first century of its existence were for the increase of its library or apparatus or its other means of exerting and satisfying a taste for learning. But they considered it their duty to provide first the indispensable foundation of good moral influences, and then to furnish the material of literature, to the extent of their ability. And in those times, when the privations of poverty were varied only by the calamities of war, they were able to do but little toward rearing their superstructure, so that at the time of the Revolution the colleges which were in existence presented the appearance of mere boarding establishments for men who were preparing for professional life. From that period we are to date the beginning of our intellectual independence. The devotion of the Puritans to learning was of foreign origin, and it was long in taking root in the soil so as to bring forth native fruit.

The political reformation of which the American Revolution. was the first great act, was accompanied by the rise of modern science, just as the revival of letters was coeval with the great Protestant Reformation. It was therefore at a most fortunate juncture that the American universities began to assume their distinctive form. It was still long before any one called in question the old axiom, that the only way for exercising a proper care for the morals of the institution was by the monastic system. All that machinery was still retained, but in the waking of the national mind, it began to be felt within the walls of the colleges that they must have facilities for promoting intellectual growth. Until 1820, Yale College had not an edifice dedicated distinctly to art or science. The external appearance was still that of a collection of students' rooms and recitation rooms. But by mounting to attics and plunging into cellars you might have found everywhere the germs of a new developement which was soon to change the whole external aspect of the institution. Here was a cabinet of minerals there a laboratory-there an apartment stored with philosophical or astronomical apparatus, and in another room was the library-venerable as the oldest department of the institution and respectable in its contents.

Within the last few years the managers of our institutions have begun to doubt of the necessity of all the system which had been handed down to them. One part of it, the common table, has been very generally given up, and every where we believe with the most happy results, which would be still more happy, if the substitute could be in all cases the private family instead of clubs, which while they are free from many of the evils of the commons, do not afford that healthful forming of the man as distinct from the scholar, which the student leaves behind him when he leaves his home. How far we ought to go towards the system of the German universities, which have no buildings except what are necessary to contain the materiel of literature, is a question yet to be decided. The object to be attained, so far as possible, plainly is, to unite the restraining and forming influences of home with the intellectual discipline of a public institution.

The relinquishment of such parts of the old system as are found unnecessary, leaves the colleges at liberty to devote their care and their means more directly to supplying the means of literary and scientific attainment. What has so far been done is but a beginning; but it is enough to show the purpose which governs the present policy of our colleges. Yale College, as we have said, had in 1820, no building devoted to science or art. We now find upon the college square, the edifice which is our present subject; a gallery of paintings; a mineralogical cabinet; containing also apparatus and lecture rooms for the department of geology, natural philosophy and astromony; an extensive apparatus for the use of the professor of chemistry in the academical department; and an analytical laboratory just opened for the departments of practical and agricultural chemistry.

It is to be observed that this corporeal organization of science has not grown by accessions from without, but has been created by a living spirit within. Wealthy donors have not come forward to immortalize their names by connecting them with works, which should be associated with the history of American learning and civilization. With the apparent, rather than real exception of the gallery of paintings, every addition has been made in consequence of an imperative necessity felt within the institution for such an accession, in order to enable the institution to give such an education as its guardians felt bound to furnish; and the systematic carefulness with which the limited resources of the college have been made to contribute to the supply of the means of furnishing a truly liberal education, indicates a spirit honestly devoted to the work of raising up such an institution as the country requires. What has been done is but a small portion of what is needed and hoped. The chemical department is tolerably furnished, but the astronomical is crippled by the want of apparatus adapted to the present state of the science. There is a mineralogical and geological cabinet containing twenty thousand choice specimens, but there is little or nothing to illustrate other departments of natural

history. But a beginning has fairly been made. While the men who gave the first impulse to science are still with us, their spirit has spread through the country. The community are learning to sympathize with their zeal, and they may now rely upon the support of the public in their pursuit. The noble emulation in the patronage of science which is here and there displaying itself, is one of the most cheering features of the times. It is comparatively a new feature. Liberality hitherto has sprung mainly from religious motives. This new spirit of munificence accompanies a new commercial independence. We are just becoming able to construct our own works with our own capital. The State of Massachusetts, which ten years ago went to Europe for the means of constructing rail roads within her own borders, has now available capital seeking investment in similar works in every corner of the Union, while her manufacturers are searching the windings of all our mountain streams and surveying the rapids of our great rivers to find opportunity to extend their operations. Throughout our business world, we are beginning to feel that confidence in ourselves which leads us to hope that we can pass securely through a crisis which involves the whole trade of England in disaster. In this stage of our progress it is cheering beyond measure to find our Astors, and Lawrences, and Appletons, and Willistons giving abundantly from their abundance to erect upon our own soil tem ples to learning which shall revive here the glory of the old republics. We feel rebuked when we see a stranger's name united with this central light-the Smithsonian Institute - but when we see this spirit springing up among our own citizens, we feel assured again that we shall yet realize those almost visionary anticipations which could inspire a stranger to make such a gift; and so far as his example has been the means of calling such a spirit into being, he is to be held in lasting honor among those few men of other lands whose noble enthusiasm has made their names familiar to every child in America.

1

LAMENT FOR THE FLOWERS.

BY LILY GRAHAM.

"Withering-withering-all are withering."

There was a tall Valerian, and crowds of Meadow-Queen,
Though the blossoms long had faded, the leaves were thick and green;
A golden Coreopsis, with its heart of glossy jet,

And perfumed straggling fringes of feathery Mignonette;
And there the fair Convolvulus crept o'er the grassy ledge,
Bordered with sunny Southernwood, a low and fragrant hedge;
And clouds of starry Asters gleamed amid the garden bowers,
And proud the peerless Dahlia rose, the queen of Autumn flowers!
And there were tiny rose-buds, and fern-leaves just unfurled,
And scores of young Petunias-the wonders of the world-
With cups so glossy white, and leaflets broad and green,
And many a fluted Marygold, with Larkspur stems between,
With delicate Alyssum spires, and Mallows red and white,
And worlds of giant Violets, all blooming fresh and bright,
And stately Altheas towered, amid the leafy bowers,
With many-hued Chrysanthemums, and buds and folded flowers.
There grew my bright exotics, the Jasmine's golden star,
The Daisy from fair England, the Rose from lands afar,
Verbenas and Geraniums, with leaves of pencilled green;
O, never in a garden fair, were sweeter blossoms seen,

So sheltered were they from the blast, so shaded from the sun-
Amid the brightest realms of earth, there was no lovelier one;
And happier than the proudest queen, I trod my garden bowers,
The lady of a fair domain—a sunny world of flowers!

So gentle and so beautiful! I loved them all so well,
Each rainbow-tinted flower, each bright unfolding bell;

I tended them at eventide, and watched them day by day,

With morning sunlight on their brows, as though they knelt to pray;

I watched them when the sun went down behind the distant hill,
When stars were in the quiet sky, and heaven and earth were still :
But vain was all my careful love-the Frost hath dimm'd the bowers,
It hath robb'd me of my treasures-my flowers! O. my flowers!

O'er glossy leaves and fragrant bells did fading sunlight pass,
But the morrow's dawning looked again upon a withered mass.
For the Frost hath touched my flowers! they hang upon their stalks,
With blackened leaves all droopingly, along the garden walks;
O woe is me! the cruel Frost hath months of care undone-
Amid a thousand living things, it hath not left me one!

Was it for this I cherished ye, through all the summer hours?
Was it to see ye perish thus-my flowers! O my flowers!

Albany, Oct. 27, 1847.

CLASSIC VAGARIES.

PROLOGUE.

When we spoke of Lucan's "gorgeous descriptions" of naval battles in our last " Vagary," we ought perhaps to have said flaming descriptions." Of all the turgid poets whose verses we have ever read, Lucan is incomparably the worst. Claudian's pompousness is rather pretty on the whole, being generally limited in its effects to his phraseology-his images, tropes and words. Statius too, merely tries to be glowingly beautiful while he is really glowingly flat. But Lucan ascends the very highest heaven of bombast. He is mock-epic, mock-tragic. He swells his facts instead of his style: tells large stories instead of using great words. He seems to consider exaggeration, sublimity; and extravagance, power. This theory may not yet be obsolete, but it ought to be. At all events, Lucan's poetry, which seems to be doomed to printer's ink immortality, will enjoy a ridicule as immortal as its existence. To illustrate what we say, we sketch in prose a few incidents of his poetical battles.

In the first extravaganza, Lucan tries to be horrible, and turns out amusing. It represents an unfortunate young man, whose hand, just after he had grappled an enemy's vessel with it, was severed from his wrist at a blow. As the lost member clung tenaciously to the side of the ship, he tried to rescue it with his other arm! In the attempt, he lost the whole of the latter up to the shoulder. His misfortunes, however, redoubled his valor. His mutilated body had plenty of noble rage left in it. He leaped among the enemy and tried to crush them by kicking and stamping! What a scene for the painter.

A second sketch shows how one Lycidas fastened a grappling iron upon the side of a hostile craft. The vessel receded and he would have been dragged into the water, had not his messmates caught him by the legs. Of course, in Lucan's hands, he could not do less, under such circumstances, than be drawn under. The legs, the poet says- although it is difficult to guess how he found it out-died immediately. But the trunk, containing the vitals, gave signs of life for a considerable length of time. We do not speak of the high artistic propriety of introducing such scenes, but how the poor tar must have held on to that grappling iron!

Several of Lucan's heroes, having expended all their own weapons, drew out those that were sticking in their bodies, and stanching their blood with one hand, used all the strength supplied by this momentary check of life's ebb, to hurl and thrust their javelins with the other; until, having impaled an enemy, they died contentedly.