The publishers of the new illustrated periodical, Life, it seems tous, display an undue and over-zealous eagerness to disclaim for their paper any tinge of college tone or influence. Without discussing whether or not such an influence would be after all so terrible a thing as it is painted, we must express our surprise that its editors select and reprint as an advertisement of their paper an envious fling at the Lampoon and at "Boston superciliousness," taken from the New York Critic. "In view of its success," cries the Critic, "there is something highly comic [sic] in the assertion of certain Boston papers that it is a continuation of the Harvard Lampoon. It owes less to the Lampoon than it does to the Columbia Spectator, and as Mr. McVickar, Mr. J. Brander Matthews, Mr. F. D. Sherman, Mr. H. G. Paine, Mr. F. B. Herzog, Mr. Arthur Penn and others of the contributors to Life are Columbia men, there is to be detected a slight touch of Boston superciliousness in the contrary assertion. As a matter of fact, Life has had comparatively little college favor, though largely written by college graduates; and some of the best things which have appeared in it have come from outsiders - such as Mr. G. T. Lanigan and Mr. W. L. Alden." All of which may be very effective with the scoffing Philistines of the outside world and with jealous New Yorkers as an advertisement for Life, but we must think it to be in questionable taste appearing in the columns of Life itself. By appealing to sectional jealousy and popular prejudice in endeavoring to avoid all imputation of amateurishness Life seems to show a guilty self-consciousness and extreme terror of detection.