RESTRICTIONS ON SCHOLARSHIPS.

FOR a fair exponent of old-time fanatical asceticism the curious reader is referred to an editorial which appeared not long ago in the New York Times, wherein is manifested a spirit which would do credit to Cotton Mather himself. The Faculty of Dartmouth might, of course, if it chose, prohibit its students from wearing plaid suits and high collars, electing Spanish, or eating Limburger cheese after sundown, and a sensible person would only smile and draw his own private conclusions as to the sanity of that august body; but when a respectable journal, making comments on Harvard and Yale, sets itself up as champion of such an inane course as refusing college aid to such students as "drink, smoke, dance, or play billiards," we are forced to believe that the writer either has an eye to the paper's country subscription-list rather than to the convictions of his own conscience, or else possesses a fund of facile gullibility and eremitical unworldliness which is totally inconsistent with the reputation and position of the New York papers. While we have no desire to enter into an elaborate discussion on the wisdom of prohibiting the holders of scholarships from those pleasures whose only harm consists in intemperate use, we will merely say that we think the majority of experienced, fair-minded men would unite in disapproving such a course. The plan of college assistance is, as we understand it, to smooth the rugged path of the poor but promising student, so that that part of his energy which would otherwise be spent in overcoming the difficulties of the journey to Parnassus may be devoted to intellectual effort; and, up to a certain point, everything which relieves the mind of the strain of over-exertion and makes life cheerful is so much help to the hard worker. Shut off from society, compelled to pass four years of exhausting, unremitting labor in dingy dormitories and uncomfortable recitation-rooms, the poor student, who depends solely on his own high rank for his daily bread, has few of the amenities of life. After six or eight hours of sustained intellectual effort, an hour or two in the course of a week spent in dancing, or a half-hour with a party of fellow-students over an open grate with a pipe of Lone Jack or a mug of beer, cannot be productive of such lugubrious results as theorists imagine. The very fact that to hold a scholarship requires extraordinary abstinence, self-control, and mental strength, disproves the much-harped-upon liability to excess in matters of self-gratification.