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236 proper sense of duty, as through any species of coercion, in either case there can be no doubt that this regularity of attendance is of indispensable importance, and that, in one way or another, it must be secured. It is supposed by Dr. McCosh that Harvard University may have been influenced in her views as to this subject by the presumed usages of foreign institutions of similar grade, or by the known practice of the professional schools of our own country; and, in regard to the colleges of Great Britain and Ireland, he hastens to correct the impression, if it exists, that attendance upon scholastic exercises is not made compulsory in them. It seems to me, nevertheless, to be unnecessary to go beyond the reason assigned by President Eliot himself as indicating the expediency of the change, in order to discover his motive for proposing it. This reason is, that the average age of the undergraduate students in Harvard University (and it may be added in all our colleges at present—at least in all those of the Atlantic States) is three or four years more advanced than it was in the earlier part of this century. Dr. McCosh admits the truth of this statement. He does not even seem to deprecate the fact that mature young men seek to avail themselves of the educational advantages which colleges offer. But he hardly attempts to disguise his conviction that the college was not designed for this class of students, nor that their actual predominance in it in numbers is evidence to him that it has been perverted from the original object of its institution. This is apparent from his remark that, "if there be a diminution in the number of young men attending colleges in relation to the population, it is very much owing to the circumstance that certain of the colleges have been practically raising the age of entrance, so as to prevent persons from entering upon their professional business until some of the best years of their life are spent." In his view, therefore, the existing state of things is an evil, and the blame of it is directly chargeable upon the colleges themselves. I do not, I confess, find the evidence to sustain this view of the case. The colleges have not raised the age of entrance by legislation. The minimum age in Columbia College is fifteen years. In Yale College it is fourteen, as it has been for the past half-century. In Harvard University there is no minimum at all. If there is any mode of "practically" raising the standard except by arbitrarily rejecting the younger class of applicants, notwithstanding that, by the published regulations, they are legally admissible, it does not occur to me to conjecture what it can be; yet this is not a practice which I have ever heard imputed to any American college. But it may be said that the colleges have brought the observed result to pass by increasing the severity of the entrance tests. This hypothesis can certainly not be sustained, so far, at least, as the classics are concerned (and it is here that the great labor of preparation lies), if we take as our guide the published entrance conditions. As a rule, the reverse is even the case, the amount exacted, measured by quantity if not by quality, being materially less than it was fifty years ago. Some little addition has been made to the amount of exaction in the mathematics, but not enough to make it difficult for a lad to prepare himself for college as early as fourteen, or earlier. To these statements, Harvard College may possibly present an exception, but the increased entrance exactions there have not been in operation long enough to have had any influence in producing the phenomenon in question. If it is a fact, therefore, that the average age of undergraduate students has risen—and I believe there can be no doubt about that—it is a fact which is not imputable to the colleges, nor one which they could control if they would; unless, indeed, instead of legislating about minimum ages, they should think proper to establish a maximum age, above which no applicant should be admitted, and should place this low enough to exclude every individual who has passed the years of boyhood. Such a measure would probably meet with few advocates. If it were important that we should explain the remarkable fact above mentioned, it would be quite sufficient to point to the immense improvement which has taken place within the century in the training-schools cf grade inferior to the colleges—schools admirably and precisely fitted to the wants of boys of tender age, and armed with a coercive