Student Life at Harvard. (Lockwood and Brooks, Boston, U.S. ;
Hodder and Stoughton, London.)—This is very different from an Eng- lish story of University life. The difference strikes us at once. Here we should pronounce such an incident as two young men, perfect strangers to each other, meeting outside the examination-room and agreeing to " help each other over rough places "—in plain words, to copy from each other—as decidedly improbable, nor should we be pre- judiced in favour of a hero who began his career in this way, and we should certainly expect him to meet a worse fate than being "condi- tioned," whatever that may mean, if this copying was found out. Here we should send the young gentleman about his business. Then it is somewhat surprising to find a senior undergraduate spunging upon him, apparently in accordance with a regular custom, for a dinner. The rowdy element, too, is much more developed than it is, now, at least) in our Universities. " Woman," also, is much mere prominent than we are accustomed to suppose her to be in University life, though perhaps when a literature of fiction comes to spring up about the Oxford of to- day, with its extensive " society," we may find this difference less than we had thought. It will readily be understood that a volume on each a subject can scarcely fail to have some interest. But we are bound to say that whatever interest there is comes from the subject, and not from the author's treatment of it. There is no fun or dash about it, and when it is serious, it is certainly dull. Compare it with the Peter Prig- gins of forty years ago, or with Tom Brown at Oxford, which repre- Bente the more modern conception of University life, and it will be seen to be vastly inferior.
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