Decay of Class Spirit.

The result of the election of class officers by the freshman class at Harvard College shows the change that is gradually taking place in the class spirit of the institution. Twenty years ago and more the classes at Harvard were comparatively small, so small, in deed, that, in the course of the four years' term, each undergraduate became tolerably well acquainted with all of the numbers of this class, and with quite a number of young men who were members of classes immediately above or bellows. Of late years, however, the classes have been so large (and there seems to be no limit to their growth in the future) that this class acquaintanceship, and possibly, also, class feeling, are gradually passing away. The associates that a young man has while at Harvard are now, in most instances, the friends that he made while at the preparatory schools, such, for example, as the Boston Latin School and Roxbury Latin school, St. Paul's, Phillips Academy, etc., and after four years' stay at Cambridge there may be quite a number of his own class with whom he has not even a speaking acquaintance. This is altogether different from the fraternal spirit that used to pervade all of the classes at Harvard a generation or more ago, and is much nearer approximation to the conditions that obtain at English universities, where the friends that an undergraduates has are largely those whose acceptance he made at one or another of the great public schools. The conclusion that might be drawn from this change is that, so far as social confederations are concerned, a prominence and importance have been given to the preparatory schools in New England that they did not in other days possess.-Boston Herald.