The magazine was a part of that spontaneous literary activity which is pretty sure to find vent in college life outside of the class room, in independent reading, in societies sometimes secret, sometimes public, and in weekly, monthly, or quarterly journals. Lowell, with his growing consciousness of literary faculty and his naturally vagarious impulses, turned aside from the set tasks of college, as we have seen, and allowed himself to be indifferent to the routine imposed by college regulations. There are always men in college who undertake to be independent while living in it; sometimes the instinct is wise, sometimes it is merely the impulse of an indolent or conceited nature, but college authorities, like most constitutional governors, are bound to take more account of law than arbitrary and irresponsible rulers are, and their severity falls indiscriminately on the just and unjust. Lowell had made himself amenable to discipline on this score, but he might have escaped with reprimands only, had he not committed a breach of propriety in chapel which could not be overlooked. Such, at least, is the recollection of one of his college mates writing long afterward to Mr. T. W. Higginson, who prints his letter in “Old Cambridge.” The circumstantial account given in this letter has a plausible air, and may be wholly true, but if so, it was probably the final occasion rather than the cause of Lowell’s suspension. The record of the Faculty is somewhat more general in its explanation. “25 June, 1838. Voted that Lowell, senior, on account of continued neglect of his college duties be suspended till the Saturday before Commencement, to pursue his studies with Mr. Frost of Concord, to recite to him twice a day, reviewing the whole of Locke’s ‘Essay’ [On the Human Understanding], and studying also Mackintosh’s ‘Review of Ethical Philosophy,’ to be examined in both on his return, and not to visit Cambridge during the period of his suspension.” Lowell seems to have taken his exile philosophically. The fact that he would not be able to read the class poem he had been chosen to give did not prevent him from writing it, and the isolation of his life gave him plenty of time for working at it. The mild discipline of “rustication” included, as the record shows, the requisite amount of study, and Concord, to which he was sent for a couple of months of study and reflection, was only fifteen miles from Cambridge. The Rev. Barzillai Frost, to whose oversight he was committed and with whom he lodged, was a young man, recently graduated from the Harvard Divinity School, and Mrs. Frost endeared herself to the young culprit by her affectionate care. In a speech which Lowell made at Concord, on the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the town, he introduced this slight reminiscence of his work with Mr. Frost:--