its _esprit du corps_.

Now in an American college there is _esprit du corps_ enough, and sense
of college dignity enough. But the student's _esprit du corps_ is one
thing, and the government's is another. The Commons Hall, for instance,
has died out of most of our colleges. Why? Why, because it had ceased to
be a _Commons_ Hall. It was not the place where the junior and senior
members of a college, the pupils and all their instructors, met
together. It was the place where the undergraduates were fed,--and where
a few wretched tutors were fed at their sides. But every member of the
governing body who could possibly escape did so. At our Cambridge,
they even went so far as to set apart a Commons Hall for each class of
undergraduates at last,--for fear men should see each other eat; as at
"Separate Prisons" the idea of communion in worship is carried out by
introducing each prisoner into a state-pew or royal-box whose partitions
are so high that he cannot see his neighbors. This was before they gave
the _coup-de-grace_ to the whole thing, and scattered the members of
their college just as widely as they could at meal-times, as at all
other times. The recitation, again, probably the only occasion when an
American student meets his instructor, is conducted according to an
arrangement by which the instructor meets all of a large section or
class together, meeting them for recitation simply. In a word, the
American college differs from any other American school chiefly in
having larger endowments and older pupils.

In the English college, on the other hand, before a freshman has
been there three months, he may have established his claim to some
"scholarship," which shall be his post and his "foundation" there
for years. From the very beginning, one or another honor or prize
is proposed to him,--which is the first stepping-stone on a line of
promotion of which the last may be his appointment to the highest
dignities in the University or in the Church. From the beginning,
therefore, he has his duties in the college assigned to him, if he have
earned any right to such honors. Thus, it may be his place to read the
Scripture Lesson at prayers, or to read the Latin grace at the end of
dinner,--the President and Vice-President of his college having done the
same at the beginning.

These arrangements are not to be confounded with the services rendered
by charity students. We have imitated some of these, which are so sadly
describe