A Hit at Harvard.

A set is beginning to be made against clever people (clever in the English sense, which has come to be American also,) and not altogether without reason. To be clever has been "the thing" in these parts for many years, and every other quality has been sacrificed in order to obtain, if not the reality, at least an appearance of cleverness. What is it to be clever? It is to be something more than bright, but less than intellectual. The clever man is the child of leisure, and, therefore, lazy by birth - an intellectual vagrant.

He is, however, an amusing, agreeable fellow, and is so much in vogue that he has driven not only dull but profound men into obscure nooks and corners. And yet the fashion of being clever is a comparatively new one, and we are probably safe in saying that up to the time of the civil war a clever man was an object of suspicion. For a considerable part of the cleverness with which Boston is afflicted, Harvard College must be held responsible. During the last ten years she has graduated a number of gilded literary youths with hearts so light and consciences so easy (we would not say callous) that, where-as they might have been intellectual, they have been content to be merely clever. It must be acknowledged that in this Puritan part of the world they have given us a new, if not an original point of view; they look upon the universe as a vast storehouse of possible amusements, and read, think and write, not in pursuit of truth, but for diversion. They all have written books; one or two of them have written well: but they are satisfied with their reputation for cleverness, and make no effort to reach anything deeper or higher.

But the prizes of life, as they are called (whether worth the winning or not) are seldom obtained by the clever. A youth of this stamp takes the chief seat at a club or a dinner party, and sometimes obtains a butterfly reputation in literature, but he does not shine at the bar, he will never sit upon the bench, or arrive at eminence among the faculty, These positions are won by square jawed men, who can neither make nor read vers de societe, but who have the tenacity of a bull-terrier and the ambition of Lucifer. They are certainly offensive in their way - unpleasantly successful and aggressive; but they carry through very definite ends, and compel even the dilletante's unwilling respect. - Boston Transcript.