"When age hath made me what I am not now,
And every wrinkle tells me where the plough
Of time hath furrowed; when an ice shall flow
Through every vein, and all my head be snow;
When death displays his coldness in my cheek,
And I myself in my own picture seek;
Behold what frailty we in man may see,

Whose shadow is less giv'n to change than he."

ALMOST all that makes Yale-life beautiful is instituted by the student. It constitutes the poetry of our College life; and, indeed, each of these institutions may be assigned to its respective department in poetry. The Pow-wow and the Spoon are, each, a comedy; the Burial of Euclid, a tragedy (?); the Jubilee, a triumphal ode with its "unequal verses and strophes." But it is in Presentation that the poetic element, which enters slightly into each of the others, finds its full and free expression. The oration, the poem, the pictures, the partings-all pure poetry-form the grand old Epic of Yale, whose heroes, as every year it is repeated, are the class that

meet to celebrate the day. They are like the heroes of the Iliad in that the horse enters largely into the honor of victory; but they are greater by as much as the city they have subdued-the citadel they have seized is greater than Troy-more imposing than the Pergamus.

Though often the exchange of pictures precedes Presentation, yet it is upon this day that their full meaning is first felt, and the interest which attaches to them begins to brighten into its true beauty. Before, they have been regarded very much as other pictures are, merely as a work of art, and we coolly talk of the faults and the merits of the artist. But now we do not and we cannot look upon them thus. As, in conversation, the form and features of our friends are forgotten in the glow of animation, so, now, we see not the pictures, but, through them, the very self and soul of friendship. They do not represent but suggest. Our memories are galleries whose walls are hung with many a friendly face, and many a familiar scene. These engravings are the duplicates of those Daguerreotyped there. In after life, when our College days shall almost seem our childhood, we will hold up the two, side by side; then each will bring out and beautify the other. In the one, the artist may have failed to perceive some slight expression,-this has not faded from the heart-plate. In the other, memory may have failed to retain some tint on which may turn the whole expression,-the sun has caught this and the engraver has copied it. Who, that has any thing of that which we call Class-feeling, who, that has formed Class friendships, would willingly part with his Classmates and not carry with him a full folio of Class pictures.

Ours will be, as all have been, a broken volume. Many are the leaves that have been torn from it, but, like the Sibylline books, our estimate of its value increases with the diminution.

Open the folio. Those features are familiar, and the autograph underneath. It is the same that you find some where in some of your text-books written by your friend when some evening he passed a half hour in your room. On the next foliole is a pen-portrait-a few words containing an allusion to some scene in which you took part, or to some " sing" under the "Old Elms" in which you joined, or to some serenade under some window whence bouquets were showered by the hands of angels, like " manna from heaven," or to something else equally suggestive. The signature is, perhaps, simply "Your Classmate," or, may be, some nick-name by which he was

known among his Class in College. In a Class Book, deliver us from prudery, falsely called propriety. Give us that frank free-andeasy manner which is of all the truest characteristic of the student's social life.

The history of Class Books in Yale is short. In Trumbull Gallery may be seen the embryo idea, in the collection presented by a Class now not ten years gone. But the idea has grown, as every great idea grows, until it is perfected by the Class who this year leave Yalensian life. Its progress can be traced through daguerreotypes, photographs, lithographs up to steel engravings. A student in one of the professional departments, whose class were content with photographs, when he heard that the Class of 1858 were unanimous in the choice of steel-plates, remarked that the next Class will not be satisfied short of marble statues. What the "next Class," that is, our Class, will "be satisfied" with is still in the future. We make no prophecies by way of proposals. But it is our impression that the bounds of possibility preclude pictures superior, and Classpride ones inferior to those of our predecessors; we must therefore "follow suit." In Euclidean language, we cannot, in this respect, be greater, and we cannot be less; we must therefore be equal.

It would lengthen this article beyond its limits to describe the Class Book of Fifty-eight-its rich Turkish binding, embossed with new designs of the College buildings. On the inside of the opening cover is a large front view of Yale College, on enameled paper, around which the edge of the cover forms a beautiful frame. Within -but all within is sacred to the Seniors, exclusively classic, or, if we may use the word, classian. We must yield to that feeling which pervades nearly all College, too nearly all, the feeling, which few are so independent as to despise; we mean that prejudice which almost wholly precludes the forming of friendships between members of different Classes. We meet them daily, know them, but pass them without a recognition, although we know that in each of the seven Classes that we meet in our four years sojourn here, there are many whom, so soon as we are out of College walls, we will be proud to claim as College cotemporaries, and yet prouder, as personal acquaintances. Is an upper Class" vain because it is one year in advance? Are the ancients superior to the moderns? Or is a "lower Class" afraid of the stigma, of toadyism? The vanity and the fear are equally contemptible. But our subject is not, now, Class exclusiveness. Within, in the Class Book of fifty-eight, are