Notes from Harvard College.

"How many acres in that college quadrangle at Harvard Square?" "About a hundred and fifty," answered one of the divinity school men. "No, not less than six hundred," rejoined another. Their answers show our need of definite knowledge.

The fact that the college works with so many hands and covers so much ground is what keeps her so wretchedly poor. For, to suppose that Harvard is just rolling in wealth and doesn't know what to do with her cash is about as correct as that divinity-school estimate of the college quadrangle. Harvard would be rich if she were not ambitious. Lazy colleges grow rich. But at Cambridge some very live men know that power means duty-that money brings opportunity and responsibility. If they see anything good in "Fair Harvard," they see nothing to make men vain, but only the good begining of something which they intend to make better. Harvard is still growing. It has a future as well as a past, and the most remarkable things about its life to-day is the pluck, the true grit, with which its sons face the music of the present.

The school needs about five million dollars to set it well upon its feet, and to make it the great university it is destined to be. But those millions are sure to come, as others have come, because these live men believe in that practical sense which vigorously abandons the methods of the darker ages and faces the future. The administration of President Eliot, when it is concluded, will stand as monument to commemorate this American genius for college building.

But Harvard's glory is apparent in her poverty. The pressure upon her resources is simply tremendous. Men less kind and courteous would be ceaselessly wrangling and bitterly jealous, if called to struggle a these do for their share of the college income; while each department, each scientific school, the gymnasium, the library, get but part of what they need, and each is just able to pull through the year and not run in debt. This only means that the life of the school is grandly vigorous. Its various departments beset the sorely tried president and treasurer with the appetites of growing boys. But that appetite shows that the family resources are increasing, and that the college loaf will be big enough by and by.

About six millions dollars of endowment are now happily invested. Several millions' worth of grand buildings, with all that man could ask for in the way of libraries, apparatus, etc., are thronged with students. But there is something better yet at Harvard. It takes more than money to make a college-that is, a college of the future. Wisdom cannot be bought. Experience costs time and tears. Sectarian colleges, and probably all others, have their squabbling age, an age of hair-pulling and scratching, an age of petty jealousies, rivalries and quarrels. If any man doubts that, let him come here and read the story of Harvard's childhood. It took two hundred years to outgrow it. It makes a curious record, this story of the Puritan popes who wanted to be president, or wanted a professorship for self or son, or wanted a certain policy pursued, a course of study introduced, or a certain theology adopted. Affairs now move with an amazing absence of friction. Personal relations are charmingly free from constraint. We can have all courses of study desired, and the thelogies are welcome, one and all.

Harvard, we say, has passed her childhood; the worries of her teething are over, and she is fairly weaned. The ecclesiastical nurses so kind to her in her tender years have let her go at last-somewhat reluctantly. She knows, meanwhile, that she could not have passed her boyhood without their help, and her relations with them are sure to remain kindly. There is no talk here of the conflict of religion and science. Nobody here gives the name "religion" to that dead forest of theology whose dry limbs are cracking and falling with every vigorous wind that stirs. And nobody has done more than the clergy to free old Harvard from certain false theories as to study which fettered her young feet quite as sorely as any false theology ever tied her hands,

Yet the most important thing is not what we study, but how. Greek can be studied here with admirable facilities; so can all the languages and all the sciences, and the best of all is that good as are the helps and high as are the standards, nobody has such a conceited estimate of them as not earnestly to strive to make them better. Knowledge is here thoroughly humble over its own ignorance; it knows enough to know its own limitations. The college life is so vigorous as to spend nearly a million dollars a year, and still feel wretchedly pinched in every department by poverty. And the mental life is so vigorous that scholars feel, all the time, mortally ashamed of doing so little. Life works by certain divine contagion. Facilities, opportunities, rules, standards, traditions-all are good; but life itself is better, and a working faculty will make a working school. That is the central fact of student life at Harvard; this is a working school. Space forbids any attempt to show here the courses of study, or to insert examination papers fitted to show what advanced students are expected to do. The chief fact is that the standards are all the time advancing, while methods are improved and facilities are increased. The library statistics form one index to show student work. Here are over 300,000 volumes and a third as many pamphlets which are here for use. They are not kept like the old lady's umbrella, which she boasted she had had for twenty-seven years, "and it's never been wet yet." Some libraries are kept like that. But here they wish to see books worn out, so far as honest use will wear them. New atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias, speedily grow ragged, and the bookbinder has a tremendous bill every month.

Near Memorial Hall was recently set a charming statue of John Harvard. The young clergyman sits in his chair, his pulpit robe thrown around hime, his book open on his knee, his thin face and tranquil, hopeful eyes turned toward the western sky. He is thinking of the days that are to be. He hears nothing of the vigorous tide of life now flowing round his chair. He knows nothing of past success or present attainment. His face shows no trace either of self-distrust or of self-satisfaction. But the quiet unconsciousness with which his trustful hope looks toward the west is something good to see, and is typical of the college life to-day.- Henry C. Badger, in Magazine of American History for December.