Lord Salisbury distributed the annual honours to the students of
the Cooper's Hill College of Indian Engineers yesterday week, and afterwards delivered a very clever and amusing address, of one portion of which,—the hints as to the manners to be adopted towards the natives,—we have said enough elsewhere.
In -the, earlier part of his speech, hoiveder,,Kiloed Salisbury re- ferred to the danger of over-driving the education of our modern students, intimating that there, are -men whose powers are liable to be tea much strained by early, intellectual pressure, so that they take to idleness in the mere recoil of the over- bent bow, and never redeem the hopes formed of them as students. The danger is a real one, perhaps particularly real in such a College as that at Cooper's Hill, where ear- neatness is the order of the day ; but we suspect that the pee. mature reputation which is never redeemed in later life is less frequently a result of over-straining in youth• than, of natural deficiency in that practical audacity and ambition which are necessary to distinction in age. It is a very different thing to beat competitors in learning, and to be bold and able in life. The former success is no test of an independent and energetic exercise of responsibility, and may be easily achieved by a man who has no gift for practical enterprise. The brilliance of students, like the cleverness of children, is but preluding, after all-; and the brilliant prelude often fades away into the weak and nerveless song.
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