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university is a complete emancipation from intellectual guardianship, and the commencement of an era of perfect freedom, such as they never enjoy again in subsequent life. They choose the profession, the professors, and the lectures; they may attend them with scrupulous regularity, or waste their precious time in idleness and dissipation. They are supposed to have attained such a degree of intellectual and moral maturity as to be fully able to take care of themselves, except in political matters, in which the German governments are as illiberal and intolerant as they are liberal in allowing an almost unbounded freedom of thought and speech on every other subject. The only indirect compulsion to study are the requisite examinations for the attainment of the doctor's diploma, or for the active service of Church and State. But the strongest stimulus to industry is supposed to be a disinterested, enthusiastic love for science, and the highest culture of the mind.

The German universities are not training schools, like the gymnasia, and our American colleges, but represent the unity and universality of scientific knowledge, the arena for the investigation and spread of truth; and afford the students the best possible opportunity for prosecuting their studies by their own self-educating abilitities, with perfect freedom, for any number of years, and to an almost unbounded extent. To many a youth this academical freedom proves disastrous; but as a general rule, the German student is proverbial for his plodding disposition, and his toilsome, unwearied patience in the pursuit of knowledge.

The number of students in the different universities varies from three or four hundred to two or three thousand. Those who can at all afford it, visit two or more universities, and thus come in living contact with the most distinguished scholars of the age, and acquire a more universal culture.

The peculiar dress, terminology, manners, and habits, by which the German students used to be distinguished from every other class of society, are disappearing more and more, especially in the larger cities, as Berlin, Munich, and Vienna, where they are lost in the mass of the population. The Burschenschaften' have been mostly dissolved, as hotbeds of political agitation and revolution. Still there remains a great deal of originality and peculiar attraction about the German university life. Some English travellers, such as Russell, Laing, and Talfourd, were rather repulsed by it, while William Howitt, and others, from longer observation, have described it favourably.

It must be confessed, that drinking, duel-fighting (although the latter is strictly prohibited by the authorities), and other lawless and vulgar habits, still disgrace several of these learned institutions, especially in smaller towns, as Jena and Giessen, where the students have the citizens, or 'Philistines,' as they call them, under their control. But if we make proper allowance for the difference of national genius and taste, they lose nothing by a comparison with the students of Oxford and Cambridge, while in industry they generally surpass them.

'A German student,' says a recent English writer in the 'Dublin University Magazine,' 'does not feather his oar in a university boat on regatta-day; he does not kick the foot-ball on Parker's-piece; he does not skilfully take the balls at a cricket-match. These gentle pastimes would not satisfy his bolder and noisier disposition. His thoughts are more excitable and somewhat enthusiastic. His manners are more cordial and unreserved. His appearance and demeanour are less aristocratic. Yet he is well bred, spirited, and high-minded; he is frank and open; a faithful friend, and an eccentric lover of his Vaterland. He is a sworn enemy to all falsehood and all deceit. Peculiar notions of honour, and a deep love of independence and liberty, belong to his most deep-rooted principles. Song and music, social parties, convivial fêtes, a martial, undaunted spirit, and excite ment of the patriotic feelings, throw over his life an enchantment which gilds it yet in all his later recollections.'

The students live not in one building, as is generally the case in our colleges, but scattered through the town. They spend from two to five hours every day in the lecture-rooms of the university-hall, and the rest of the time in reading and writing at home, or in intercourse with their fellow-students. The majority, especially the 'foxes,' as the freshmen are called, join one of the clubs, or associations for social enjoyment after true student's fashion. The members generally wear, or used to wear, peculiar colours on their caps, flags, and breastbands, are regularly organized, and meet on special days at a particular inn, or private room. There they sit around oblong tables, in the best of humour, drinking, smoking, and singing, at the top of their clear, strong voices, 'Gaudeamus igitur,' or Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland,' or 'Wir hatten gebauet,' or 'Stimmt an mit hellem hohem Klang,' or 'Freiheit, die ich meine,' or 'Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein,' or 'Wohlauf noch getrunken den funkelnden Wein.' They discuss the merits of their professors and sweethearts; they consult about a serenade to a favourite teacher, or about a joke to be practised upon some sordid Philister' or landlord; they make patriotic speeches on the prospects of the German fatherland; they pour out their heart in an unbroken succession of affection and merriment, pathos and humour, wit and sarcasm, pun and taunt; they smoke and puff; they sing and laugh and talk till midnight, and feel as happy as the fellows in Auerbach's cellar in Göthe's Faust.

I wish the great temperance apostle, John B. Gough, would go to Germany and convince these merry students that the beer and wine goblets are by no means essential to a feast of reason and flow of soul, and that their absence would save them the 'Katzenjammer' on the next day, and a heap of trouble beside. But they would probably meet him with the authority of the great Reformer, who, among many other unguarded things, said

'Who does not love wife, wine, and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long.'

It must not be supposed, however, that all German students take

part in these noisy enjoyments. The more serious amongst them live either in almost ascetic retirement, or confine themselves to friends of strict morality, literary taste, and close application.

We must also add that the noisy, boisterous, and semi-savage spirit of the old Landsmannschaften, and more recent Burschenschaft, is fast dying away. Not only have the governments dissolved the political clubs, which drew the students from their proper avocation into the whirlpool of political agitation and revolution, but the traditional Burschen-comment, with all its ludicrous appendages, is beginning to fall into disrepute among the students themselves. The present generation of Burschen is a more refined class of men; they have exchanged the gauntlet for a pair of kids, the sword or rapier for a riding-whip or walking-stick, and it is no more an honour to besot one's self with beer and tobacco, and to provoke duels. The students of Berlin, Bonn, and other universities, have taken effectual measures to eradicate the barbarous custom of duelling, by establishing Ehrengerichte, or a student's jury, before which quarrels may be peacefully settled.

Students and Colleges.

MY DEAR SPECTATOR,-Of course you are aware that there are certain grave questions being asked rather loudly just now about students and colleges, the answers to which, come from what quarter they may, your readers will at least regard very seriously and anxiously. The privileges of the long vacation have been invaded by persons who seem to be able to live without rest, demanding, 'Are the colleges what they ought to be? Do they contain the men that will eventually do Christ's work in the world in an effective manner? Have they the right tutors presiding over them, and is their influence upon the students healthy and soul-invigorating? Are the students. answering the real end for which they entered college, and under which system can their gifts be best developed-the resident or the non-resident? &c., &c.

Of late, the replies which these inquiries have called forth from certain parties have not been of a nature to inspire much confidence in colleges, tutors, students, or their curriculum, as they at present exist. If recent statements are to be believed, the colleges are anything but what their revered founders intended them to be; being, in fact, such hot-beds of heresy that their managers have exposed themselves to all the miseries of a chancery suit for so audaciously trifling with trust-deeds, and allowing the bequests of the charitable to be so wantonly misapplied. We are informed, with the discretion, however, which fear of the law of libel dictates, that the tutors are unsound, and that, consequently, without any regard to common honesty, they unblushingly take handsome salaries for the inculcation of doctrines

which are thoroughly at variance with the things commonly believed amongst us; for not doing, in short, what, when they accepted office, they declared they would do. The indictment further sets forth, that the students are immoral, their conversation licentious, their interest in lectures very meagre, their use or abuse of the latch-key unlimited, and their attendance at theatres regarded as a necessary part of their education for ministerial life. We are told, moreover, that the course of training to which they are subject, ere they appear before the world as its teachers, is not adapted to make them able ministers of the New Testament, but, on the contrary, only serves to damp their ardour; and one student from a certain college, which of late has been sadly maligned, testifies that he,-most careful youth,-although occasionally found in the congregation of sinners which frequent her Majesty's Theatre, was compelled to leave because he found the moral atmosphere of his college unfavourable to the growth of his spiritual life. A pretty state of things, my dear Spectator!

It is peculiarly unfortunate that such statements should be made, while those who are so well qualified to respond to them have, for a brief period, thrown work aside, and set off for their holiday on mountain and moor, in shady vale, or by the health-inspiring sea. I would that neither the soporific state of the weather, nor the lazy fever which the declining reign of summer leaves as its legacy, had driven them away, but that they were standing to their arms, with their nerves braced up for work, and their intellectual energies all within hail, to teach slanderers of character, whether public or private, a good wholesome lesson, and also to say what ought to be said in the brief silence which has just been created by the revelations and misrepresentations which have been published. We can, however, without much anxiety, await the answer of those deeply interested in the accusations which have been brought against them; meanwhile, you will, I am sure, allow me, as an old student of the college which has been so bitterly assailed, to express the grateful respect and esteem in which I hold its professors, my confidence in the students, and my firm conviction that if the idea of New College, London, could only be properly realised, we should have a ministry thoroughly equal to the wants of the age we live in.

As a student under the old and new dispensations-first of all entering one of the resident colleges, and then being transferred to the college which has for some time been so spitefully croaked at—I think it is only just and right that I should state my impressions about the resident and the non-resident system, and the course of study marked out for the students on the old plan and on the new. I rejoice to think that there exists a magazine, and yours, alas! is the only one I know, in which I can candidly discharge the duty which the necessity of the hour has laid upon me.

I do not for a moment undervalue some of the advantages possessed by the students in resident colleges. I shall never forget the sense of exquisite comfort I felt the first few weeks of my college life. Up to nineteen years of age my life had been full of battle with untoward

circumstances and severe hardships. I scarcely knew what it was to have a day free from care and sorrow during the entire year. Hard work, both of the brain and of the hand, was my hourly experience. Scarcely a word of kindness fell upon my ear, and craving for a sympathy which seemed eternally distant from me, I thought my very soul would die. My best thoughts and hopes went unrespected, and while nourishing a holy ambition about the future, from early morn sometimes to the midnight hour I received nothing but insult and unkindness. When at length Providence, as it appeared to me in a most miraculous manner, opened up a new path in life, I seemed ascending from the valley of the shadow of death to the Mount of Transfiguration.

One morning found me standing before the committee of a college renowned for its theological tutor, and famed in the circles of the wise and thoughtful for the men it sent forth. I was treated as I had never been before-as a gentleman; my crude, imperfect answers to the questions proposed to me were interpreted, through the kindness of superior wisdom, as meaning more than I had ever intended them to mean. A man whose theological science caused him to be revered and looked up to, not only by those of his own denomination, but by some of the foremost men in the Church of England, and whose literary attainments commanded the respect of scholars in general, with a fatherly grasp, which my hand still feels, welcomed me to the college, and professed himself satisfied with the views I had expressed in regard to the Christian ministry. Another, whose classical attainments have made whatever he has written or edited a necessity in every college and university in the land, and who at the same time can give out to raw beginners the magnificent treasures wherewith his brain is stored with a fascinating grace and simplicity that I have never, and I believe shall never see equalled, told the committee, although I could scarcely read the Greek Testament, that he should have much pleasure in assisting me in my studies. Gentlemen on the committee, with a kindness and sympathy I shall never forget, bade me God speed in the life in which I had entered, and so, my college days began.

Dear old college! Beautiful, ever to be remembered days! There was at length quiet and rest for mind and heart after the incessant storm of eight years' struggling. I had a study in which I could feel myself entirely shut out from the world, a magnificent library within a minute's walk, a delightful garden opposite my window. About three hours a day were devoted to lectures in the library; the remainder was my own. One of the best men the world has ever seen would occasionally come and chat in my study, or take my youthful arm as his support while we walked in the garden, to a prayer meeting, or to some public meeting a little way off.

Beautiful days! I repeat. What sallies of wit can ever equal the home-thrust personalities that flitted across the breakfast table? What sermons have we ever heard since then worth remembering? How many public meetings have been attended with half the interest? How many petitions to Parliament have been joined in with anything like the

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