Prof. Neilson Reviews Illustrated

The new number of the Illustrated Magazine opens with some characteristic sentences by Dean Briggs on the President-Elect. Addressed in the first place to a group of students in English 5, these remarks on the election of Mr. Lowell form, in their mingling of grace, frankness, and humor, perhaps the happiest comment so far made on the event which is of so much interest to us all. This event will remain in the minds of most readers of the second article, that of Mr. S. A. Mellor on the Oxford Undergraduate. Everybody is now meditating advice to the new President, formulating programs for the new regime and such a clear and interesting account of what our great cousin across the seas does for her sons, abounds in suggestion for the enrichment of student life here. The photographs used in illustration enforce what the author has to say of the architectural beauties of Oxford, fill the Harvard reader with the ever-renewed regret over our wasted opportunities here, and bring up the question once more as to whether our architectural situation is without remedy.

Mr. J. S. Reed's verses on A Winter Run are far above the average of our College verse. A familiar phase of Cambridge life is here seized and rendered with a fine feeling for its real picturesqueness:

"A flashing glimpse, a scarce-seen face, A figure clear, then gone.

Once more the dark, the swinging pace, And on again, and on."

The football question is always with us. Professor Royce's recent discussion of it is here made the occasion of two more, one on either side. The present reviewer finds the so-called reply to Professor Royce not at all to his taste. The tone of the article is unfortunate, its style violent, its though confused. The following paragraph is typical in its hopeless lack of logic: "Parenthetically as to 'loyalty', it is one of the moral values that I least admire. It usually implies a subjection of your own sentiments and convictions. A high enterprise needs no appeal to loyalty, and an unworthy one is often supported by it. The agitator that dies for the hopeless cause, or the soldier that falls by the shot-torn flag, never thinks of loyalty. It is his mission in life, and he does not question it. If football is merely played for the loyalty it inspires--spring the trap and let it perish." The article supporting Professor Royce's view lacks the worst faults of the opposing statement, but is also inclined to excess, both in language and argument.

One piece of fiction and three book-notices, with the editorial, complete the issue. The story is a lively picture of the revolt against compulsory College Commons in 1806, and is readable, if not entirely convincing. The editorial gives a friendly welcome to the new President, and the reviews are appreciative notices of books by Professor Royce, Professor Minot, and Mr. W. P. Eaton.

The Illustrated would make its standing surer among college publications if it were a trifle more critical of its English