udents; a term.

The _session_ commences on the 1st of October, and continues
without interruption until the 29th of June.--_Cat. of Univ. of
Virginia_, 1851, p. 15.

SEVENTY-EIGHTH PSALM. The recollections which cluster around this
Psalm, so well known to all the Alumni of Harvard, are of the most
pleasant nature. For more than a hundred years, it has been sung
at the dinner given on Commencement day at Cambridge, and for more
than a half-century to the tune of St. Martin's. Mr. Samuel
Shapleigh, who graduated at Harvard College in the year 1789, and
who was afterwards its Librarian, on the leaf of a hymn-book makes
a memorandum in reference to this Psalm, to the effect that it has
been sung at Cambridge on Commencement day "from _time
immemorial_." The late Rev. Dr. John Pierce, a graduate of the
class of 1793, referring to the same subject, remarks: "The
Seventy-eighth Psalm, it is supposed, has, _from the foundation of
the College_, been sung in the common version of the day." In a
poem, entitled Education, delivered at Cambridge before the Phi
Beta Kappa Society, by Mr. William Biglow, July 18th, 1799,
speaking of the conduct and manners of the students, the author
says:--

"Like pigs they eat, they drink an ocean dry,
They steal like France, like Jacobins they lie,
They raise the very Devil, when called to prayers,
'To sons transmit the same, and they again to theirs'";

and, in explanation of the last line, adds this note: "Alluding to
the Psalm which is _always_ sung in Harvard Hall on Commencement
day." In his account of some of the exercises attendant upon the
Commencement at Harvard College in 1848, Professor Sidney Willard
observes: "At the Commencement dinner the sitting is not of long
duration; and we retired from table soon after the singing of the
Psalm, which, with some variation in the version, has been sung on
the same occasion from time immemorial."--_Memoirs of Youth and
Manhood_, Vol. II. p. 65.

But that we cannot take these accounts as correct in their full
extent, appears from an entry in the MS. Diary of Chief Justice
Sewall relating to a Commencement in 1685, which he closes with
these words: "After Dinner ye 3d part of ye 103d Ps. was sung in
ye Hall."

In the year 1793, at the dinner on Commencement Day, the Rev.
Joseph Willard, then President of the College, requested Mr.
afterwards Dr. John Pierce, to set the tune to the Psalm; with
which request having complied to the