claims that it would have a bad tendency to confer an honor of the college upon a student who had shown so little respect as I had done for the rules of the college and for the professors. “I have scarcely ever been so much mortified at any occurrence of my life as at this disappointment, nor has friendship ever been manifested towards me in a more striking manner than by all the members of the society to which I belonged. Mr. Laverty, at once, in the most kind manner, offered to yield me the second honor, which, however, I declined to accept. The other members of the society belonging to the senior class would have united with me in refusing to speak at the approaching commencement, but I was unwilling to place them in this situation on my account, and more especially as several of them were designed for the ministry. I held out myself for some time, but at last yielded on receiving a kind communication from the professors. I left college, however, feeling but little attachment towards the Alma Mater.” In regard to the danger of his expulsion from the college, which Mr. Buchanan has frankly recorded in his autobiographical fragment, I find no other reference to it. But I have seen in the note-books of his studies and in the notes which he kept of lectures that he attended, abundant proof that he was, as he says, “a tolerably hard student.” He seems to have had a strong propensity to logic and metaphysics, and of these studies there are copious traces in his own handwriting. The incident which he relates concerning his disappointment in not receiving one of the highest of the college honors at his graduating “commencement,” is thus touched upon in a letter from his father: MERCERSBURG, September 6, 1809. DEAR SON:— Yours is at hand (though without date) which mortifies us very much for your disappointment, in being deprived of both honors of the college, especially when your prospect was so fair for one of them, and more so when it was done by the professors who are acknowledged by the world to be the best judges of the talents and merits of the several students under their care. I am not disposed to censure your conduct in being ambitious to have the first honors of the college; but as it was thought that Mr. F. and yourself were best entitled to them, you and he ought to have compounded the matter so as to have left it to the disposition of your several societies, and been contented with their choice. The partiality you complain of in the professors is, no doubt, an unjust thing in them, and perhaps it has proceeded from some other cause than that which you are disposed to ascribe to them.