President Robinson's Views on Athletics.

At a recent meeting of their corporation, President Robinson of Brown University took particular notice of the living question of college athletics. His views, as quoted below, may not coincide exactly with the ideas prevalent at Harvard, but are, nevertheless, worthy of attention. He said:-

"The subject of college athletics has, within the past year, attracted to itself unusual attention. Among several of the older and larger colleges and universities, the question has arisen and been earnestly discussed, whether the time has not now come for the adoption of some uniform regulations that shall control the contests so frequently recurring between the athletic clubs of the different colleges. One of these games-foot-ball-it is charged, has degenerated into methods bordering on the barbarous and brutal, while others have engrossed so much of the attention of the players as seriously to interfere with the higher and real work for which colleges exist. One of the games, also, has sometimes brought the students taking part in it into such relations with professional players and their following as to awaken apprehensions of serious demoralization. Attempts have been made among the faculties of the colleges immediately concerned in these intercollegiate contests to unite on some uniform regulations that shall control them, but thus far without success. In some of these contests, particularly those of football and boat racing, the students of this university, I am glad to say, have not in recent years been participants. Football and boating, however, both have their votaries with us, but matches in these occur only between the classes of our own college, or at most with amateurs in the immediate vicinage of our city. In other athletic games, especially in baseball, our students have engaged to an extent that has proved neither profitable to those participating nor conducive to the best work on the part of the rest of the college. That some intelligent and sys emetic attention ought to be given in all our colleges to physical culture may be regarded as a universally accepted truth. The attempts thus far made among the colleges to agree upon some uniform rules for the regulation of contesting games among their students have failed, for the very simple reason that no set of rules could be framed that should be fitted to each college, and equally applicable and just to all the parties concerned. Rules that were deemed to he suited to the exigencies of one college were found to be unsuited to those of another. The result is, that each college still regulates the outside games of its own athletic clubs as it best can. As matters now stand, only a small portion of our students receive any personal benefit from our athletic sports. Those who take part in them merely to fit themselves for the match games, too often run into hurtful extremes; others, engaging in them fitfully and unintelligently, fail of the good they might otherwise receive, while the majority, content with merely looking on and applauding, get no real benefit whatever from them. The question is worth considering whether the time has not come for this university to take some decisive action toward providing itself with a gymnasium of its own, and not merely with the hired and limited advantages of one in the city; and whether some provision ought not to be made for such institutions in hygiene and practical physical training as shall not only secure to our students a knowledge of the laws of personal health, but shall habituate them to a compliance with the conditions of a healthful physical development."