CUI BONO?

IT is generally supposed that in granting to the Senior Class for next year voluntary attendance upon recitations, as an experiment which if not successful would not be repeated, a favor to the students was intended, whose future continuance would depend upon their appreciation of it. If the numbers constantly present at these exercises next year should not be greatly diminished, the next Senior Class might expect to have the same privilege. We think that two considerations have been overlooked. In the first place, the experiment will be tried next year under peculiarly unfavorable auspices, simply because it is an experiment. The reaction so common under all similar circumstances, when any restraint is first removed, will probably take place, and the students will probably be very generally irregular in their attendance, while, as is well known to all, the members of each class are powerfully influenced by the advice and traditions they receive from their predecessors, and hence, if many of the Senior Class next year should neglect their recitations, no doubt they would experience the consequent evils, and the succeeding class would be so far benefited by their experience as to, in great measure, avoid their error.

No one would be so venturesome as to maintain that it inspires students very much to go to recitations, and the present coercion to our duty is only considered an evil because it is compulsion, we think, and it but occasionally conflicts with the inclination of any except the most negligent scholars. Our position is not unlike that of the Frenchman who had never been out of Paris, but when forbidden by the king to leave it, he could not rest night or day from moving heaven and earth till this liberty was restored to him. Then, returning to his customary avocations, he never, to the day of his death, stepped beyond the limits of the city. The privilege we are next year to enjoy is but a trivial one, - no great advantage at best, - and liable to be abused to our serious hurt; while we think few students will not sooner or later agree with us that the prospective and consequent increase in the number of examinations will be more of a nuisance than the compulsory attendance upon recitations, and afford them little reason for self-felicitation. If any one is to be benefited by this change, it is the instructors, who will be impelled to make their exercises more interesting, instructive, and necessary than some of them are at present. This may cost them some effort, but that effort, we assure them, will be truly beneficial. Had it been desired to remove one of the restraints we labor under without any possibility of evil result being incurred, we presume to suppose that voluntary prayers would have been the alteration made. Though Ralph Waldo Emerson has objected that prayer is the highest act of which the human mind is capable, and that we ought not to be deprived, or allowed to deprive ourselves, of prayer in the morning, we would like to submit that it is not we who pray, - we prefer to do that in our rooms, - but a single member of the Faculty, while the most of his hearers are far from being in a devotional frame of mind. Understanding that the gentleman in the Board of Overseers who decided the matter of prayers by his vote was also chiefly instrumental in procuring for us voluntary recitations, we are forced to the conclusion that no kindness could have been intended us, but that all the good intentions concerned in the matter were designed for one corps of instructors.

C.