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THE MOON HAS SET

(TRAMONTATA È LA LUNA)

The moon has set; the meadow and the wood
That in enchantment stood

Shake off the spell and waken with a sigh;
The stream is one low cry.

From far there comes the sound of flying feet, A pause, then once again that gallop fleet, Beyond the poplars and the shadowy dune, Toward the departed moon.

Is it some lover whom she lured before
With love by hill and shore,

Whom now she flies and who pursues her still
With love by shore and hill ?

A SONG OF RETURNING

(CANZONE DEL RITORNO)

Now with nightfall on the plain

The shepherd homeward brings his flock again;
I think he loves so well his tranquil lot,
Even death shall change it not;

Because when he is old,

Because when he is old and weary grown

Of the long wanderings on the mountains lone,

He'll slip beyond the bars
Of earth and in the fold,
And in the fold of heaven
A flock of little stars
Shall to his care be given,

And he shall roam the airy fields on high Herding his lambs through the eternal sky.

A MODERN MADRIGAL

(MADRIGALE MODERNO)

Time that has clipped the marble cupid's wings
In this old garden he adorns no more,
Has touched the poet, too; no more he sings
The madrigals of yore.

Gone are the graceful speech and gallant air;
The age is rude and tramples where it will;
No more to courtly hearts doth love repair,
But to the closed and still.

Whence I, who may not dare to let my eyes
Be veiled with sentiment's suffusing tears,
Nor my lips breathe the gentle flatteries

That fitted gentler years

I who may wreathe no praises to entwine
Thy name nor vows of adoration make
Superbly stand and let a heart all thine
In bitter silence break.

TO THE SUN

(AL SOLE)

Sun, from this rock that still assails the sky

With howlings of wild winds that never die,

High limit to the feet of mortal things

Beyond which only dreams and eagles beat their wings,

I face you, equal, for the power is one

That hurled us forth our different tracks to run,

Yours of eternal light in heaven made,

Mine in the shadow where I move, myself a shade;

Nor do I envy your refulgent lot

Who steeped in light may comprehend it not,
May love not nor rejoice, nor know that we
Are but two specks of dust upon immensity!

THE INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS OF

UNDERGRADUATES

JOHN S. P. TATLOCK

The Association of American University Professors some five years ago established a committee on Causes and Remedies for the Alleged Decline in the Intellectual Interests of College Students, a title changed later to Methods of Increasing the Intellectual Interests and Raising the Intellectual Standards of Undergraduates. Whether the American university does all it might to send persons intellectually alert and equipped into the society it serves must be of interest to thoughtful members of that society. The subject is so wide and deep, so ramifies, that this treatment of it is meant to come in a questionable shape, to be interrogative in mood rather than declarative; to express the temperate spirit of a historian, and a healthy skepticism about much that has been said on the subject.

The phrase Intellectual Interest and Standards of Undergraduates must be understood primarily of free and spontaneous mental activity. The problem is not identical with that of students' work for their courses. Scholarship in courses often is not due to a student's intellectual interest, but to a desire to secure training for a future livelihood. This is hardly truer of the scientific and engineering than of the humanistic branches, the students of which are so often preparing

to teach them. Training for a livelihood unfortunately may be effectively obtained without obtaining that equipment and intellectual alertness which will make a man a judicious member or a safe leader for society. If students' interest is quickened and their own standards raised their routine work will be the better. But intellectual interests are most clearly shown in voluntary reading or in amateur scientific observation, suggested by courses but beyond their mere requirements, or quite spontaneous and unconnected with them. So far as the two things are separable, then, we are concerned with intellectual activity for its own sake. And, further, we are concerned with undergraduates, not with graduate professional students.

The phrasing of the committee's problem was changed from Decline in Intellectual Interests to Methods of Increasing the Intellectual Interest, for the obvious reason that it is more profitable to plan for the future than to praise the past. There is another reason, the superiority of the past may be less than some think. Many college teachers, without being confirmed praisers of bygone times, perhaps have a general feeling that their college contemporaries were better informed and mentally more active than are their own students. But memories of youth are notoriously treacherous, especially comparative memories. The courthouse in our native town looked small on our last visit. And did you ever re-read your own freshman themes? But the decline (if there is one) and its causes have a bearing on the other subject. The writer had not at his orders a superior specimen of the undying people whom Gulliver found in Luggnagg, but he conceived a great curiosity. Accordingly he read the early biography of some thirtyfive prominent Americans, from George Ticknor to Theodore Roosevelt, whose college life fell in the first seventy-five or eighty years of the nineteenth century, and in eleven colleges. For the forty years since then

little biography is available, and we must trust our memories.

Now what do my thirty-five witnesses testify as to the general educational atmosphere in the early colleges? What of the professors? The attitude of the professors toward the students was frequently cold and aloof, especially in the larger and more distinguished colleges. C. G. Leland seems to have found it so at Princeton (1841-45), John Bigelow at Trinity (about 1832-33), William H. Seward and W. J. Stillman at Union, F. A. P. Barnard (later president of Columbia) and Andrew D. White at Yale. Harvard, with its stiff sectarianism, seems to have been worst of all. In George Bancroft's time, in the second decade of the century, a period of vigorous expansion in the college, the students regarded the faculty as their natural enemies, and any kindly intercourse was generally secret; only by night did a student venture to a professor's room, a policy of Nicodemus reported by A. P. Peabody, later president of Harvard. Hoar, in the '40's, reports the treatment of students by professors as stern and austere, and the biographers of Hale and others give a like impression. To this attitude of stately aloofness on the part of the more distinguished professors there are honorable exceptions. Bancroft owed much to the personal interest in him of three professors, Charles Sumner to the interest of Ticknor, Senator Hoar to personal inspiration from able personalities; John Fiske became close friends with certain professors, and Roosevelt pays a tribute to the help of A. S. Hill. Above all, N. S. Shaler owed a debt to the intimacy and personal methods and contagious scientific enthusiasm of Alexander Agassiz, as well as to other persons; this was not at rigid Harvard, but in the newly founded Lawrence Scientific School, where the informal methods and inspiring personalities recall the early days at Stanford. To be just to the earlier professors, they conceived it their duty,

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