OUR EXCHANGES.

THE Owl, of Sta. Clara College, differs in many respects from the other exchanges of the Magenta. We have before us the September number, and, as some of the articles read like the productions of very youthful writers, we must be careful to treat it gently.

The spirit of loyal attachment to their Alma Mater is strong among the Sta. Clara students, and, as it appears to be very genuine, it deserves the highest commendation. The religious element in the Owl is considerable, and his feathers are slightly ruffled by the breezes of controversy. It may not quite become the Magenta to meddle with such matters, yet there are one or two points which it behooves us to notice. The Owl's first article on secular education is good as far as it goes, and perhaps the writer did well to leave untouched the knotty and vexatious question of the public schools; but somebody, on page 27, speaks of "the horrors of that Dominican Inquisition in which some of us once so innocently and unquestionably believed." This is hardly clear. Surely no one will presume to deny that there was an Inquisition, operated chiefly by the Dominican Order, in the name of the Popes, and that its proceedings were very horrible indeed. We are innocent enough to believe this; can the Owl instruct our innocence? Some one else declares that "the exercise of common-sense but for a minute" reduces the difference between Romanists and Protestants to a mere doubt respecting the profitableness of invoking the Virgin. The writer would surely have said otherwise had he exercised his own common-sense a minute longer. If not, his instructors could have corrected him. These expressions, in a magazine containing much commendable matter, are all that challenge our critical attention. May the Owl accept it kindly !

AT Lafayette the Seniors are excused from recitations to go and see the circuses and watch the firemen's processions. Happy collegians ! - but do we envy them?

THE last Cornell Era is a bright and interesting paper. From it we should infer that their ardor is not at all dampened by their ill luck at Springfield. Boating at that college seems to be in an unusually vigorous condition. A regatta is to be held there on the 11th, for the Tom Hughes Cup and for an elegant and expensive cup offered by Mr. Cluck, '74, - an editor, we believe, of the Era.

THE name of Professor Byerly, Harvard, '71, appears several times in this paper. It is exceedingly gratifying to his many friends here thus to hear of his growing popularity through "his gentlemanly manners in the class-room as well as his interest in athletic sports." We also remember that he was not first in his class in scholarship alone, and wish him every success.

HENRY WARD BEECHER says that the University of Virginia is fifty years ahead of any school in the United States in its system of teaching. It is as many behind any college.

AND now, finding no "bone of contention" elsewhere, Yale, true to her instincts, is having a pleasant little row all by herself. The Yale papers contain very copious accounts of the trouble. It appears that Captain Cook and Mr. Dunning, President of the Yale Navy, do not agree upon all points in boating matters, and, in consequence, either one or the other will have to resign. There is some dissatisfaction among the students at the proposed method of conducting certain affairs, and, as a result, "we see Mr. Cook's opinion disregarded and his candidate defeated"; thereupon, he "resigns his captaincy with feelings of regret."

ONE of our exchanges heads an article "A Walking Trip on Foot."

"THE Harvard way of accepting defeat seems to us much better than ours, as exhibited in the controversy of '70, and we may well take the lesson thus taught us to heart, to be acted upon in the future." - Yale Courant.

THE Cornell Era. has an article entitled "A Plea for Literary Culture," in which the author has succeeded in giving some very good advice, as far as it goes, and some suggestions which may prove useful to those who have not read them more than sixty or seventy times before. But what we object to in the article is the very narrow view which the writer takes of culture. Were it not that culture is becoming really the ideal for which to work, this would matter little; but as it is, we must try to keep the ideal as high as possible, and this will not be done by describing culture as reading a certain amount and learning to write fairly. True culture is nothing less than the development of every part of our nature, and in leading the intellectual life our studies may be made of as much benefit as reading, provided only that we look at them, not by themselves, but only as a part of a training that will help us to become that which, by our true intellectual instincts, we desire to be.