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About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (May 30, 1900)
350 ay es ep =P ALUMNI WEEKLY been so numerous or seductive as they are to-day, and surely never so well taken advantage of. There are men in New Haven who will send out anything which papers will print, and there are students in Yale who will furnish to any correspondent who will send it out any amount of libelous matter about their University. But the young men of Yale are doing their work and doing it well. Debating has seen its hardest days and Yale’s platform work is better than be- fore and gaining. The track games were lost, but track athletics are de- cidedly improving and Yale’s prestige is . to be regained here. The crew is very much improved and will row a good race. Never did a finer set of young men put on Yale baseball clothes than those now on the diamond, under an excellent captain. They are full of base- ball and learning to bat. Let us be done with all-condemning criticism and each work for the Blue. SN REPU, Sag OOS LAE NEED FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION IN THE SOCIETY MATTERS. As this form of the WEEKLY goes to press, there is no news of Sophomore societies on which to comment. We wish, however, to express again our hope that the matter will be pushed through to a quick conclusion. It is not fair to Yale to leave it open longer. There is too much needing attention to allow the situation to be longer cumbered with this embarrassing problem. We believe that both the societies and the Faculty appreciate this point. <p><a a at The withdrawal of Dr. Gallaudet and Mr. Rodgers from their positions as graduate advisers in Yale athletics means the loss of two men who have done splendid work for Yale and who have, above all things else, held up a very high standard of the gentleman in athletics, eect eke os aes YALE LITERATURE. Professor Sneath’s Tennyson. The Mind of Tennyson, His Thoughts on God, Freedom and Immorialty. By Professor E. Hershey Sneath. New York, Charles Scribner’s Son, 1QOO. But for the subtitle, the name of this book would he misleading. Surely any attempted treatise not so qualified on the mind of ‘Tennyson, which omits a study of Maud, e. g., the analysis of motive, the subtle change, action and reaction of moods, the deepening of character by experience, would be in- adequate and incomplete. Similarly the interpretation of character in Becket, e. g., the study of Henry Second, so warmly praised by J. R. Green, hardly should be omitted from a comprehen- sive psychology of Tennyson. This phase of his contribution in which he touches Browning most closely, is much in need of a champion nowadays, but the scope of Professor Sneath’s book excludes him from this arena. The purpose of our critic, then, is to present to us Tennyson, the philosopher, and-that too in the form of a system, deduced, or rather extracted, from the poems and arranged under the cate- gories of God, Freedom, Immortality. The poet’s conclusions as to these three ultimates, if we include duty under the second, are traced with reference to con- crete experience, biographically in part, but mainly as voicing the spirit of the age, its doubts, its struggles, its hopes. Unquestionably Tennyson was of his time. To him, therefore, we look for a picture in little of the Victorian age and for a foreshadowing of its final triumph over the forces which vex it. The common reader, though earnest, will hardly appreciate the range and depth of Tennyson’s philosophic experi- . ence without such a presentation. We may totch this experience at points— doubtless there are passages of Tenny- son which out of all the poetry of our day each one cherishes, leaves as it were, from his own life—but its entire scope does not come home to us. We do not read In Memoriam from end to end, but piecemeal. Further, the poet's most ardent admirers, in any case, have something to regret for an art so ex- quisite that it conceals the very vigor of its impulse. Reduced to uncom- promising prose as in Prof. Sneath’s volume the great abstractions are, it must fairly be confessed, more tangible and ponderable. Very important, e. g., is the reduction of Tennyson’s conclu- sions on Immortality to a set of four- teen propositions (p. 175 ff). The method then is not only sympathetic and interpretive, but systematic and even constructive criticism. It is much the fashion in some quar- ters to cry up the intellect of Brown- ing at the expense of Tennyson; it 1s asserted that Tennyson was*a man of commonplace mind, lacking the origi- nality and fire of Browning. If Pro- fessor Sneath’s volume, by viewing the results of Tennyson’s intellectual achieve- ments in the light of their true import- ance, serves to correct this wrong ten- dency, he can ask for no better success. An Authority on Hawait. A book that has been longer than we intended to have it on our reviewing table is ‘The Making of Hawaii; A’ Study in Social Evolution,” by Profes- sor William Fremont Blackman, of Yale. The work does not purport to be a his- tory of the Hawaiian people, but a study of their social, political and moral de- velopment. For that purpose the author has “omitted some facts which would be indispensable in a history, and in- cluded some inquiries which would per- haps. have had no proper. place in a work of that. character.” Professor Blackman considers the Hawaiian Isl- ands as furnishing better facilities than any other field for the study of some important social problems. This fact he considers “due to the blending there of the temperate and tropical climates; the admixture of divers and widely dif- ferent races; the contact of civilized and nature peoples under unique con- ditions, and with results in some re- spects unexampled, and in all respects instructive; the collision of the Chris- tian, the secular, and the pagan, each in very vital forms; the rapid evolution from a primitive to a highly developed condition of the four fundamental and enduring social institutions, the family, the church, the state, and property; the control of industries by corporations, to an unusual degree; the close juxtaposi- tion in recent years of a wealthy few and a poor multitude,—and all this with- in narrow and manageable limits of time, of area, and of population.” The last paragraph of the preface is also of interest to Yale men. It reads as follows: “The remark is reported to have been made at a dinner party in Honolulu, several years ago, that ‘Yale College runs the government,’ in allu- sion to the number of her graduates who held conspicuous office under the Hawaiian monarchy, or were otherwise greatly influential. I venture to felici- tate the University—and the Hawaiian people also—upon the notable and noble part taken by her sons in the establish- ment and the maintenance of civilization in “The Paradise of the Pacific.’ ” For his study, Professor Blackman divides the story into three periods,— the middle, early and later. In the early period he considers such questions as “Environment,” “Political Organiza- tion,’ “Religion,” “Marriage and the “Family,” “Festivals and Games.” In the later period he has chapters on “Religion and Morals,” “Land Tenure,” “Decay of Native Population,” and “The White Man in the Tropics.” The work has already reached the position of an authority. It is characterized by sane- ness and thoroughness, at which those who know its author are not surprised. It is a most important addition to a literature in which American citizens are bound to become increasingly inter- ested in these days. It may serve as a text-book in many matters, although its style gives it more the interest of the story than of a technical work. Among the many cordial endorsements of Pro- fessor Blackman’s book is one from the Pacific Commercial Advertiser of Hono- lulu, in which this expression is used: “While Professor Brice, an Englishman, has published the best and most scholarly © treatise on the American Common- | \ PhonoElectric’ \ The new wire for Trolley, Telephone and Telegraph construction. Students contemplating electrical work, or graduates already ‘‘in it,’ should be posted regarding our » ++. ‘* PHONO-ELECTRIC”’ WIRE. “ITS TOG. Send for our booklet, containing valuable tables. BRIDGEPORT BRASS CO. MANUFACTURERS OF The celebrated “SEARCH-LIGHT” Lanterns. BRIDGEPORT, CONN. 19 Murray Street, New York. Several thousand Yale men take the Yale Alumni Weekly; several thousand don’t take it. The only way to make it the best paper for everybody is for everybody to take it. of the favorable attitude towards Is it too much, in view the paper of a large number of discriminating Yale men of all ages and different tastes, to say that it 1s worth while, for any- one who is interested in Yale men or Yale affairs, and who doés not now take it at his own address, to try a year’s subscription? If this seems a reasonable proposi- tion to you, it 1s urged that you send in your name now.
