Peterhouse, Cambridge, celebrated with great pomp on Monday, its six
hundredth anniversary, having been founded on December 22nd, 1284. Mr. Lowell, who as usual had to answer to the toast of the Cambridge of the Transatlantic world, congratulated the English people on having accomplished, on what was virtually the shortest day, two such feats as the founding of Peterhouse on December 22nd, 1284, and the land-
ing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock on December 22nd, 1624. However, both feats were accomplished when the shortest day was passed, and really marked, not the lowest point of the pendulum, but the beginning of a new ascent. Nor was the foundation of the oldest College in Cambridge an event of intrinsically less importance than the foundation of a new State which was destined to become a great Republic. The Republic of learning has exerted at least as much influence over the world as the great Republic of the West, and has been, perhaps, the truer Republic of the two. The Peterhouse Cele- bration was stately, but we confess to serious disappointment at the conventionally political character of the speeches. Can no event of the kind, however unique, be celebrated without toasts to the Army, the Navy, &c., and the common-place speeches which these toasts elicit ?
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