STUDENT LIFE IN ATHENS.

THOSE persons who are fond of tracing manners and customs back into the remote past will rejoice in the material afforded them by Mr. Capes's little book entitled "University Life in Ancient Athens," in which it is shown that many of the student customs of to-day were in vogue at east fifteen hundred years ago.

To be sure, there are many differences between the college life of the present and the college life of an age when the student received what mental instruction could be crammed into him while he was under the charge of his gymnastic teacher, when the library, which owed its increase to each student's yearly donation of one hundred volumes, was kept in the gymnasium, and when proctors successfully looked after the moral training of the youth. But both differences and similarities show that student life is much the same, whatever the time or wherever the place.

On entering college the Freshman was subjected to hazing of a kind which, although it is dying out here at Harvard, is still practised in many other colleges. At first badgered to try his mettle, the Freshman, if very fresh, was subjected to mere vulgar banter; but if he showed any quickness at repartee, he was tried by all the resources of student wit, and finally subjected to the pump.

Before he had reached Athens, the sub-Freshman was met by students who urged or compelled him to join the classes of that professor whose partisans they were, - a proceeding which reminds one of the way which the Yale students take to recruit their Freshman societies. The factions often came to blows over the merits of rival instructors, but the most serious rows were between town and gown, - for the students of "the fair metropolis of the world of mind" then strove with as much eagerness as the students of the metropolis of America now strive to make their occupation known by the distinctive academic dress.

The life of an instructor in those days was by no means an easy one. Private tutors were often tossed in blankets, and the lecturers were frequently annoyed by the students singing worn-out songs, - the "Sallies" and "Bull-Dogs" of the time, - or by the talk about the latest dancer at the circus. "You forget all about Demosthenes," says an irate lecturer to his class, "and go on with your songs, which you know by heart already."

In those days a lecturer struck a sleepy student on the head; times have changed since then, and now the Latin instructor politely says:

"Now, Mr. -, if you will awake Mr. -, we will go on with the recitation."

Athens was always more popular with students than was Rome, where the college officers were required to look after the behavior of students in society, to keep them from a too frequent attendance at the theatre or at wine parties. The authorities of Rome publicly whipped a student offending in any of those points; but the city of Athens furnished the theatre tickets.

Term-bills did not meet with prompt payment on all occasions; the money forwarded by the fond parent "was often spent on wine parties, gambling, or immoralities still worse, and in defiance of the law," and as the Athenians had not discovered the device of requiring a bond, the bursars of those days threatened in vain.

These and many other customs of which the book treats all tend to show that the student of the fourth century had about as jolly a time as does the present seeker after knowledge.