The outrageous attack upon Harvard which we print today can have been prompted only by extreme malevolence. Accusations directed against Harvard as a rich man's college we have before this heard with contempt, but we know of no paper which has hitherto allowed itself such utter license in attempting to sully what is most fair in the reputation of our University, as that in which the Illustrated American indulges: "It were better for the life and morals of Boston that Harvard College were under the sea;" and again, "The effect of Harvard on the morals of Boston is about the same as that of a standing army of idle soldiers on a European garrison city." It may seem absurd to undertake the refutation of such purely calumnious assertions, yet it would surely be injurious to Harvard were they suffered to pass unnoticed. Were it not to guard against possible credence on the part of those as entirely ignorant of Harvard life as the writer in the Illustrated American, it would be unnecessary to say that there is no approach to the truth in any statement we find there, save in that which tells that Harvard stands beyond the River Charles, looking at Bunker Hill and Boston.

"Harvard is simply a training school for the sons of the rich." In the College at least four hundred men are wholly or in part self-supporting; the great majority of the remainder represent the middle class. True it is that the small minority of rich men's sons are trained here, but the lesson they learn is of the little avail of wealth without the recommendation of personal merit and ability. "Harvard has business only in the Back Bay and lifts her skirts away from the contamination of the North End." Had the writer himself ever approached the North End, he would not thus have exposed his ingnorance. In the houses of the poor in this district, Harvard students seek out in person the objects of their charity and labor to raise them to a higher life. It is safe to say that in no other college is there such effective organization of charitable and philanthropic work. "Harvard is not likely to bother about the idle fancies of human brotherhood or the dignity of man." Yet it is the Harvard undergraduates who have for years supported the Prospect Union; who, under the watchword of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," have furnished an eager corps of instructors to hundreds of the artisan class who longed for the education they could in no other way afford the time or money to obtain.

But we condescend too far. We will waste no more words in giving the lie to the dirtiest bit of journalistic writing which it has been our misfortune to see in connection with the name of Harvard.