OUR REFORMS.

MUCH attention has been called, during the past eight or ten months, on the part of the newspapers, to the changes in agitation at Harvard. Some have censured, some approved, the liberality of the University Officers in taking such bold steps toward their universally accorded aim, a University system similar to Oxford or Cambridge.

The mass of reformation so published and criticised, when sifted down, appears most sorry in dimensions. The greatest reform we have been guilty of is the dethronement of Hazing. We say guilty, not out of sympathy with Hazing, but rather from commiseration for the Sophomores, of which class the "customary" disposition and bent have been to all outward appearances usurped by their exuberant successors. The Sophomores may repudiate our proffered condolence, and tell us what we call usurpation is voluntary abdication. In such case, we beg their pardon. We are sometimes influenced by the memory of our own Sophomore days, which, passed as they were under the old regime, we delight in recalling.

Another reform is "The Harvard University Catalogue." The Catalogue is to all intents and purposes the "same old coon"; but some two hundred pages of interesting Examination-papers and choice advertisements have been generously added, making the "dem'd total" only five times as expensive as its less pretentious predecessor.

Upon comparing this valuable work with the Circular of Cambridge, England, no one will fail to be struck with this bold stride toward the English University System. Men of expensive habits may procure a fine library-edition of this compendious volume at the bookstore.

The third reform we call to mind is not so much a reform as an abolishment; but all appreciate it, and only wonder that a similar step was not taken half a century or so ago. We allude, of course, to the annulment of the law prohibiting smoking in the yard.

But touching the important question of Prayers and Recitations, in regard to which such futile hopes have been raised, reform, here needed if at all, is inactive. A plan is rumored of, to give those men whose perpetual standing is eighty per cent, or thereabouts, the privilege of voluntary attendance at recitations. We speak with the highest possible respect for the men who head our rank-lists, when we call this a throwing of pearls before swine. We regard such a course, as the elder Mr. Weller did the sending of flannel "veskits" to the young niggers who would have no possible use for them. But this extravagant waste of unappreciated cuts will be the only step taken, if any, in this particular.

In regard to Prayers, we prefer to maintain a mournful silence.

These, then, are our long-looked-for reforms. A resignation by the Sophomores of their time-honored prerogatives; forty cents' worth of old examination-papers done up in book-form; the right to smoke in the holy precincts of the Yard without scandalizing the feelings of some conscientious proctor; and as a climax to this remarkable category, men who are averse to cuts, and have been heard audibly to growl when an occasional one has been given, are to be informed that they may cut whenever they please.

How mortifying this should be to those prophets of the press above mentioned! We would earnestly thank those journals who have wasted ink and paper in such fruitless speculations, for their kindly interest in Harvard's future. We thank them, inasmuch as we believe their intentions to have been good. But however deeply they may be distressed at the slight progress Harvard has made toward that foreign system, to themselves so attractive, they have at least had the opportunity of seeing the folly of utterly groundless speculation. For our own part, though changes in some particulars of our present system are eminently desirable, we are willing to give up all thought of ultra-marine emulation, and turn our efforts toward that rank among American colleges which is already ours in point of years.

F. F. H.