A FRIEND has taken the trouble to send us an extract from the New York Journal of Commerce which denounces college boat races as being a nucleus of blacklegs, betting, and every instrument of Satan to give young men "their first lessons in the evil world." The article, as the writer says, was written under the impressions made while belated at Springfield, and suffering from the bad digestion of a Massasoit pot-pourri meal. This accounts for the gloomy view taken; but as regards the expressed opinion that races would be better rowed at home, and "subject to the inspection and judgment of teachers and guardians of the young men," we can only suggest the impracticability of our President being the umpire in a boat-race, or our Professors a police force to prevent pool-selling on the banks. No one denies that a regatta has many objectionable concomitants, but a slur is cast upon the collegians' character in supposing that they associate with blacklegs, or that they are at all influenced by them, when, in fact, nothing would better please the undergraduate than that such persons should be banished from regattas.

In our opinion, the grand object of college regattas, as of all similar contests, is that it clearly impresses, as well upon the spectators as the participants, that great success can be attained only by concentrated and continued effort. Thus they, and even persons who do not witness the struggle, by the very knowledge that men have struggled thus and succeeded, are urged to more exertion, in hope of greater success. The principle is the same, whether the struggle lies in pulling an oar or writing a dictionary.