The Pleasures and Advantages of Debating Societies. I have been favoured with a copy of the order of business for the coming session. I have looked, and I pity the man-he must be a cold, poor, unhappy cynic, who can look over the programme for your session with a sneer on his lip, or contempt in his heart. The world, no doubt, may not alter its course very much according to your grave deliverances. Neither do I think it would be saying much in disparagement of your debates were our supposed cynic to allege that they may not lead to more immediate results than a great deal of debating, probably far inferior, both in zeal and quality, to that which prevails in much more pretentious assemblies. But who that ever put the heart and brains of one-and-twenty into the campaigns of a debating society, but does not scorn such prosaic pedantry? The rapture and the fame of life's duller contests never sent the blood circulating with such a throb as those first initiations into intellectual strife. How the days are counted until the great debate comes round; how pleasant the toil of preparation, so fresh after the restraint of formal and allotted tasks; how fluttering the spirits on the night of meeting; how excited the appointed champions, half afraid that their audience may be scanty, and half terrified when they find

that it is large; how grave the responsibility assumed and professed by the speakers; how nervous the tyro who first tries the sound of his own voice before twelve or fifteen companions to whom he has probably been holloing at the top of his lungs during the whole day! And as the night wears on, and banter, and argument, and repartee fly fast and keen, how the roof echoes to the cheers, and the division is announced amid a state of excitement that might only not be too great for the fate of a kingdom! So far from looking back with anything of misgiving or contempt to such scenes as these, I never think of them without something of the feeling that Professor Wilson has well described in one of his most characteristic and vigorous essays. I refer to his celebrated description of the snowball bicker of Pedmount, which bears a considerable likeness to the debates of such a society as this. The earnestness and reality of the mimic fight contrasts so much with the apathy and coldness with which many real issues are contested in life; the intensity of the past is so different from the indifference of the present, that one cannot help looking back with a feeling almost of respect to the unfeigned keenness and single-hearted zeal which animated these resultless discussions. I have known some philosophers of mature wisdom, although still in their student

years, who used to hold the language of contempt for all such avocations, and to act on it; hard, logical heads, which could not see wherein the advantage lay of talking for a few hours on matters which they did not understand, and pretending, from a short and superficial course of reading, to discuss the most difficult problems in politics, and the most abstruse questions in science. I never could answer these friends, although I never agreed with them. I could not deny the truth of what they said; when we came to speak soberly of it, it was plain enough that the opinions which, week after week, we were accustomed to enunciate so confidently, and to maintain with so much pertinacity, were worth very littlewere founded on very slight materials, and, save in our little senate, were little likely to carry with them the slightest authority. All this was too clear to be denied, although it was painful to be reminded of it; but yet instinct told us that they were wrong. We were sure that however difficult it might be to justify our views by the cold forms of logical demonstration, still our essays and our debates were opening before us a field of thought, and furnishing an incentive to study, to which we were strangers before. Let me advise you to beware of these premature sages. Depend upon it, those who are so wise at twenty, will never grow any wiser, and have a fair chance of not being Solons at forty. The power of abstracting the occupation immediately in hand from the future as well as the past, peopling the present with forms and images of our own creation, to give to the dusty, and it may be in result the unfruitful, walks of study, a fictitious glory, drawn from within, is one of the great secrets of success. It is the solace of intellectual toil; it keeps the energies intent, the functions lively, maintains the spring and play of the intellect, and pours over all the glow and light of enthusiasm. This is the great privilege, the heritage and the strength of your period of life. In truth, this concentrating and ex

cluding power, which youth so easily exercises, is one of the gifts of genius, and one of the principal weapons in the armoury of intellectual warfare in after years. What would have become of the labours of Scaliger or Bentley had they, before beginning, sat down coldly to calculate the importance of their discoveries or their controversies to the world in general? They took this for granted, which, had they tried, they certainly never could have proved, even to themselves. To my mind, it is refreshing in the highest degree to find such men, of far more than years of discretion, advanced in life, and respectable in station, sitting down to abuse each other in a great deal of expensive print, with an intensity which argues a thorough sincerity of hatred, the battlefield being no wider than a dispute about a text in Horace, or the value of a Greek accent, which probably never will be settled while the world lasts, and which, if settled, would not make the world one whit the happier. It is out of such earnest intensity that the sparks and fire of genius are struck. Earnestness is the true specific for securing the fruits of intellectual labour, and it is wonderful from what barren and unlikely fields, when earnestness is rightly directed, a harvest may be reaped. But this earnest zeal perishes, if at every step we are to count the cost, and try, by a cold, worldly standard, how much our crop will yield, what are the dangers of its blight, and for how much it is likely to sell. It is the man who sees nothing but his immediate task who bids fair for eminence, and who shuts out the suggestions of despondency, and the sneers of the bystanders, by maintaining a fixed and steady gaze on what he has in progress. This done, how does light spring out of the darkness! How fancy gilds the weariest paths of occupation, beguiles the tedium of the way, and invests each turn of it with fascination which no one else can see! It is, for instance, not a lively thing, at first sight, to stand for hours up to the knees in salt water, in a drifting

easterly fog, with back bent, and the head generally on a level with the heels, exploring one watery cranny after another under the dripping and tangleladen rocks, and now and then submitting to a horrible slip on the slimy shingle, or a fair capsize into a salt bath. It does not look lively. It suggests nothing but rheumatism; but the chief actor in the scene is at the height of enjoyment, and comes home, as light fails, shivering and triumphant, with the results of his day's campaign in the envied possession of a marine monster equally rare and invisible. Thus does intellectual toil, particularly when nobody compels us to it, bring along with it its rich rewards, which come trooping up on all sides as our labours advance. Do not, then, be ashamed of the enthusiasm natural to your years, nor abate any portion of your earnestness, because it may fall short of a merely utilitarian test. The consciousness of progress is all you need to vindicate your course. The time during which these dreams can be indulged is short enough-cherish them while they last, your fairy temple will vanish soon enough in the mists of reality. You will find on life's chequered stage much which will seem as if it had been rehearsed before, and had found you not altogether unfamiliar with its aspect, and had its foreshadow and counterpart on the benches of the Dialectic. The utilitarian view, therefore, which would condemn such associations and their favourite pursuits as too puerile and too useless to be pursued by men having their way to make in the world, and intended to form its rank and file in its sternest conflicts and hardest fields, commends itself in no respect to my judgment or reason. What it has of delusion is only what it shares with many far less attractive but equally empty shadows and phantoms for which men fight and conquer, or are conquered. What it has of reality is more real, more pure, more ingenuous, more impressed with what is noble and true in the spirit of man than many of the more

earthen conflicts of the world at the doorway of which you stand.

But there remains one great end of your Association, of which I have said nothing, but one which is the most immediate and most practical-the art of speaking in public. Your session cannot be barren of fruits if it enable you to acquire, even in its elements, the power of expressing yourself with accuracy and propriety, and clothing clear thought in language equally clear. Oratory is to be studied as an art as well as logic; and for those who are likely to have occasion for its active exercise, none of its powers are to be despised. Some, indeed, have by nature so great a facility of speech, that the mere power of expression is already possessed. But these, for the most part, rarely turn out great speakers, as the temptation is almost irresistible to dilute their ideas through a fluent stream of words. It is better to think faster than you can speak, than to speak faster than you can think; and those who are gifted naturally with such facility should impose on themselves the sternest of shackles, and endeavour to compress the greatest amount of matter into the smallest quantity of words, if they are ambitious of excelling in the art. It is indeed wonderful what a mesmeric effect is produced by a dozen men staring at you, until you become hardened by experience. Nowhere is this more strikingly evinced than in a debating society. There they sit, fifteen or twenty of your own companions-men whom you meet every day, who know you as well as though you had made a hundred speeches to them, and to whose opinion, out of doors, you do not bow with implicit confidence, but, on the contrary, hardly consider as good, on most subjects, as your own. There is not one of them you are afraid of singly, and if you met them at supper, you could talk and tell your story with any of them. Why, then, that tremor of the knees and uncontrollable beating of the heart, because you are going to tell them why you think that coal ought

not to be treated as contraband of war? Is it that they are acknowledged luminaries on the coal question? Not at all. You know, that if you know little about it, they probably know less; and yet you tremble, and stammer, and falter before them, as if your audience were Vattel and Grotius. Yet so it always is at starting with the stuff of which good orators are made; and I should augur ill of the tyro who could make his maiden speech without discomposure. Herein, therefore, lies one great benefit of your gymnasium. You have, in some degree at least, not to fear your audience, and to trust yourself. But let no one be discouraged because his nerves give way on the first two or three attempts. The results are generally the greatest, when there are difficulties of this kind to conquer.

His lordship concluded his able oration by adverting to the pleasant friendships, never to be dissolved in life, formed by the members of such societies.

Holland. The following have been announced at a meeting of the "Teyer's Godgeleerd Genootschap as the subjects for a prize essay to be competed for in two years, viz.:-1. Can the perfect sinlessness of Jesus be maintained against the historical and philosophical views of the latest time? 2. Is the acknowledgment of that sinlessness consistent with the hypothesis that the person of Jesus Christ came from humanity in the natural manner? 3. What is the importance of the result of this examination to our age? These queries have reference mainly to a work by F. Pecaut, entitled "Le Christ et la Conscience," published at Paris in 1859; but glance also at the state of feeling resulting from Strauss' "Life of Jesus," the "Essays and Reviews," the Popish doctrine of "The Immaculate Conception," &c. The Dutch Church is now feeling in itself the growth of differences analogous to that of High, Low, Broad, &c., among us.

"OUR Collegiate Course" appears to have conciliated to itself the favourable suffrages of many of our readers. This is, indeed, as we hoped; but the enthusiasm and earnestness,-the impatience, we might almost say, to begin, which have been shown by our correspondents, are greater even than we, in the sanguineness of our conception, anticipated. From almost every quarter hopeful "good speed" has reached us, and has not failed to gratify us. For the encouragement and advice received so readily, so kindly, so faithfully, our best thanks are due; and we do hope that the reliance so unreservedly placed in us will not be disappointed. Nor will it, if power and intellect be imparted to equal our labours with our wishes. We fully recognize the great responsibility we have assumed, and we shall earnestly

and honestly exert every effort to "quit" ourselves well in and by the accomplishment of our task. We have not, of course, "the vision and the faculty divine," to see and to foresee all that is or may be advisable or accomplishable; but we are quite aware that an honest aim, honestly and energetically carried out into effectiveness, is seldom left unblessed in its results: and our hopes are that the indispensable blessing will attend our labours, and crown the efforts of our students.

We must, to ensure even moderate success, however, avoid attempting too much at once, or of encouraging or stimulating undue expectations. It is easy to dream dreams of unspeakable reforms, improvements, and ameliorations, but they are at best a "baseless fabric." It is even easy to shadow out

and draw the ground-plans of extensive schemes of human betterment, but it is not easy to bring together, in a right state, the materials and the builders, the means and the opportunity, and to set all the elements of success into an unanimous conspiracy to favour these designs. The splendid castle-buildings of theory, created in an hour, in unimpeachable form, grandeur, and pomp, require the continued and persistent toil of practice to raise their walls and fix their battlements in existent durability, and in subserviency to useful purposes. The price, in short, of all success, is labour; and neither we nor others can expect the former unless prepared to pay toll and tithe of the latter in our progress. Sudden acquirements in useful knowledge are impossible; unlaboured advancement cannot here be had. There are no sinecures on the way to wisdom, though there are some after it has been reached, if one then chooses to have them. To this one duty each must set his heart, who is connected with 66 our Collegiate Course," whether as conductor of classes, or members of the guild and fraternity of students,-persistent and honest labour.

It would be sheer folly in us to attempt to disguise from ourselves or our intending students this indubitable need for labour-labour which, to be useful, must be unintermitted, aimgoverned, and willingly performed. Grudged work is worthless. In fact, knowledge owes its true worth to the labour it necessitates. Labour, in this case, is the measure of value, and the cui bono? query is altogether an impertinent importation; yet, let us grant, one not entirely without its justification, inasmuch as the utility of a thing may be an exciting and an encouraging motive to its acquirement. But the true argument, we think, for the absolute duty of acquiring knowledge is, that it is the means of perfecting our human nature; for humanity, if anything, is intellectuality. Here again, however, let a caveat be entered against

the supposition that mere acquirement mere knowing is enough. The mind may be informed, and yet the nature may be unreformed. We must not only have, but use knowledge; must not only know, but do; must not only possess the arts of intellectuality, but be intellectual. We may gain, attain, contain, and retain knowledge, and yet we may miss all its higher benefits, which are to make us wise, in life, aim, effort, act, and transaction, in time and for eternity.

We have no wish, and, we should think, little need, to recapitulate the matters noticed in our inaugural address upon this subject. We are prepared to recognize mixed motives in our students, and to accept them on their own terms, so far as motives are concerned, and without encumbering them with our theories of the essential humanization which all study, rightly pursued, imparts; but our opinions on the need of labour, though not in their grounds, yet in their effects, must be imperative. To resolve on unrelaxing labour during the term, must be the conscientious duty of each entrant into any class in

our Collegiate Course." The formation of such a resolution should form for each student, in the calm reflectiveness of his own being, a preliminary entrance-test, solemn and sacred as an oath, binding as a vow, unbreakable as the bondage we are in to death; inviolable as a life-secret, and distinctly remembered as the prayer of childhood

-in a word, it must be possessed of vital earnestness-it must not be so much a liking for, or a loving of, as a living for knowledge. Only by such a seriously-formed purpose can the monthly visitations of a tutor be effective in the true culture and elevation of the capacities of a student's nature.

And now we may fittingly allude to desires for an extension of our scheme into other departments. We shall assuredly hold these suggestions in remembrance, and give them a proper consideration. We are, however, trammelled by space, time, agencies, and