LECTURES ON LIVE TOPICS.

THE absence of college men from public life, always a cause of more or less comment and wonder, has recently, by a high authority, been particularly mentioned and regretted in reference to Harvard. All of us, I think, regret it, and many of us are ambitious to some day increase the number of Harvard's delegation to Washington; but we all feel that there is too little provision here made to fit us for such honorably useful positions as those at which, it is to be supposed, this ambition aims. In pursuance of that well-considered scheme of study which we have been advised to early adopt, we are fitting ourselves for the particular path in life which is to lead to necessary bread-and-butter and merited glory; but in this Republic we all, as heirs apparent, realize the possibility of being called to share the many-seated throne, and are hence disposed, in our particular lines of study, to avail ourselves of such courses as will, while harmonizing with that well-considered scheme, furnish us with the information necessary to a correct understanding of the great financial, political, and social problems which public men are called upon to solve. Such information, however, we are left to pick out for ourselves; and since we are obliged, in order to get at the precious bits which are of actual use, to take and digest an elective course for the whole year, we get all that book knowledge which, when without the power of practical application, is the bane of college graduates; while, to acquire this power, we have no instruction at all. The most important part of our education is left for us to seek out as best we may from newspapers and the experiences of daily life. I think that we all feel that this is the weak point in our education, - the ignorance of how to apply to the great questions of the day the knowledge we get from our studies.

To complete our training and render us fitted for public life, if called upon, we need such instruction as shall teach us, by examples from present history, to clearly see the relations between cause and effect, between theory and practice, between the fundamental principles we have been learning in history and political economy and the apparently disconnected and eccentric movements of the world to-day. Such instruction would be too wide and comprehensive to be confined within the limits of an elective course. If given this year, it should have enabled us to understand, for instance, the financial crisis through which we have been passing, the question of international treaties, brought up by the extradition discussion, the relations of foreign powers during a war, the probable effect of the Eastern war on American industries, and, in a word, the whole matter of this Turko-Russian war. Most of this can be learned in some of the elective courses; but comparatively few of us are desirous or able to take the whole year's course in order to obtain the wished-for information; and to those who can take the electives, this instruction would be a valuable supplement.

For such instruction, Harvard has gentlemen whose opinion on these matters would be universal authority; she has already the precedent of free lectures by her professors, and she has a theatre peculiarly adapted for such purposes. The establishment of a course of fortnightly or monthly lectures on questions of the day by men who devote their lives to the subjects they would be called upon to explain would satisfy an imperative need of our education, and enable Harvard to send forth that constant supply of educated practical men which the country has a right to expect of her, - a right thus far too little regarded.