Harvard of Fifty Years Ago

President Eliot gave the fifth of the Old South course of lectures on Harvard history last evening, speaking on "Harvard University Fifty Years Ago."

President Eliot said the past fifty years have been the most eventful in Harvard history. In that time the number of students has grown from 734 to 4012; the number of teachers has increased in even greater proportion. The character of education has also changed. There has been a great change in the class of students, for fifty years ago there was a great uniformity of pecuniary condition. Now the expenses of a part of the students have been multiplied several times.

In the conditions of undergraduate life changes no less striking have taken place. Football was not in any sense an organized sport, and rowing was only followed for three or four weeks. The animal spirits were manifested in bonfires in the Yard, and in other pranks. This is now worked off in organized athletics, though there is no necessity for the "rough, violent, fierce sports commonly thought necessary to the development of martial qualities." The fact that over 1200 Harvard men served honorably in the Civil War, over 160 of them giving up their lives, is ample proof that the "martial spirit" was alive in the Harvard of fifty years ago.