The alumni of Cornell University, in New York city, have arrived at a wise conclusion as to what is the real greatness of a college. The truth that no institution of learning is great unless it stands definitely for some great idea or traditions is one that has been newly enunciated by a committee of the Alumni Association of Cornell, in New York, and acting on this view of the cause of the decline of Cornell of recent years, the association is to set itself about a reform in the administration of its affairs. It is claimed the number of students has been gradually diminishing, not from the causes usually given - the failure of the labor system, the absence abroad of President White, co-education, attacks of the religious press and the raising of the standard in studies - but because the university no longer represented clearly-defined ideas about which students could cluster. The character of Cornell's students had accordingly deteriorated; they were not now such men of force as formerly, only one of the leading colleges being as low as, or inferior to it in this regard. The attitude of the faculty toward the students in their methods of government was condemned. The present marking system and the school-boy treatment of the students were wrong. The committee pays a tribute to the genius and ability of President White, yet expresses disapproval of his absence from the university, his giving so much time to political reforms and distributing his energies and those of the university over too large a field. All this experience of Cornell and her present troubles are of value in showing the worth of the possession of a certain conservative tradition of scholarship for any college, and also in giving warning how easily it may befall that the richest endowment may come to naught if a false policy ever for a time dominate in the councils of a college.