We have observed a practice among college professors of late. which if persisted in dids fair to result most disastrously to the college at which it is permitted. Our readers will remember how short a time ago it was that the academic world was scandalized by the desertion of one of the professors of the Boston University from the society of his learned associates, and his subsequent debut upon the stage as an actor in a play of his own composition This one case certainly was bad enough had it shood by self as an example of the innate depravity even of the most cultivated and most gifted professional mind- as a convincing proof that professors like other men are mortal, a theory which has heretofore met with a very cold reception from the learned world at large. But this case we regret to record does not stand alone. It is but lately that the papers have been filled with the praises of a novel written by a Dartmouth professor of mathematics. This truly is deplorable. The stage and the novel arrayed as enemies of the college ! That so unheard of a thing as conspicuous talent, as genius should be exhibited by a college professor is enough to shake the very foundations of the learned universe. Prof. Beers, of Yale, also we learn is writing stories for the Century and the Continent; and last of all it is reported that a Columbia professor has received an offer to become the regular writer of plays for the Madison Square Theatre of New York.

If this inroad of radicalism is much longer permitted we may look next for the appearance of the epidemic even at Harvard. We do not know that ever, of late years at least, a Harvard professor has been guilty of the sin of light literature, or has ever manifested any desire to show a talent that should startle the world ; still it is the unexpected that always happens and we should be on our guard.