_The students_ in our American colleges have been well estimated by Professor Von Holst in these words: "I have not only visited, but lived in a number of countries, and the results of my observations of their higher educated youth is that, though by no means as to knowledge, yet as to the earnestness, steadiness and enthusiasm in the pursuit of knowledge, the American students stand first. And nature has not been in a stingy mood when weighing out their allotment of brains! Give them but the opportunities, and you will soon see whether they need to shun comparison with the scholars of any other nation." _College government_ is an important question. The college, as a distinct and separate community, has rules and regulations based on well-established principles, which aim to conserve the general good of the whole body of students. The college honor can not be sustained unless there is a recognition of authority and responsibility. The college legislation and government rests principally with the faculty, overseers and trustees, who aim to be liberal, yet firm. College sentiment among students is often capricious and subject to sudden revolutions. Some of them have strong passions, immature judgments, and impetuous and weak wills, and authority must be lodged with those who will sacredly uphold law and exercise a firm, rigorous discipline. In the early stages of college life in this country the regulations were quite severe. In many cases the college authorities did not hesitate to inflict upon the students corporal punishment for certain offenses. College Presidents would sometimes personally attend to the flogging of students, resorting to this punishment with great solemnity. Mr. George C. Bush tells us what occurred at Harvard College in 1674: "On that occasion the overseers of the college, the President and Fellows, the students who chose to attend having been called together in the library, the sentence was read in their presence and the offender required to kneel. The President then offered prayer, after which 'the prison keeper at Cambridge,' at a given signal from him 'attended to the performance of his part of the work.' The President then closed the solemn exercise with prayer." Possibly this relic of severe college government found its example across the water, where it is related that in a bygone age a Fellow at Oxford, "who had been proved guilty of an over-susceptibility to the charms of beauty, was condemned, as a penance, to preach eight sermons in the Church of Saint Peter-in-the-East." In the days of President Dunster, of Harvard, "no possible conduct escaped his eye. Class deportment, plan of studies, personal habits, daily life, private devotions, social intercourse, and civil privileges, were all directed."