The Harvard Commemoration Book.

We have here a full and minute account of all the exercises that celebrated the commemoration days and lists of the members of the committees appointed to prepare and carry out the arrangements of the celebration, and of those who took part in the exercises, whether as primaries or guests.

The book, compiled by Mr. Winsor, is complete in every particular, and most methodically planned; the four principal divisions, those that tell of the preparation, the law day, and the undergraduates' day, foundation day and alumni day, being sub-divided according to time; the first event of the day being first mentioned and the last one last, an arrangement that makes the narration very vivid - if the reader happened to have been present at the celebration reinforcing his memory, and if not, allowing him to form a very clear idea of what the celebration was.

To make a digest of the volume would be tedious, for in it only a summary of statistics could be given, and most unsatisfactorily, for speeches such as those eminent graduates delivered at the various dinners do not bear condensing, while every student is acquainted with the undergraduate parts and the CRIMSON - for facts, such as the boat race of the undergraduate day - the authority of the book, has already made the readers of this familiar with much retold in this volume. The frontispiece is a facsimile of the earliest existing record of the college - ; another facsimile; a photogravure of the original charter of Harvard, dating "the one and thirtieth day of the third month called May, 1650," is given, and two views of the yard in 1821, after Alvan Fisher, complete the illustrations.

The speeches, the most interesting part of all, are remarkable in themselves, but above all notable in that they show in conspicuous colors the far-reaching threads that bind the college to every result of the past and every issue of the present; reading them, a conviction grows that every graduate present, or to be, is part of a great organization, whose vitality is unlimited and whose influence enormous.

"Long before the resistance to the Stamp Act, before the fearless voice of Patrick Henry rang out, before Faneuil Hall had thrown open its doors to an eloquent patriotism, a graduate of Harvard in his Commencement Thesis 'announced the whole doctrine of the Revolution' in words that sounded like a tocsin through the land," said Mr. Hamilton in the undergraduate oration, "There is no break in such a history as ours," insisted the Rev. Phillips Brooks.

Surely these two quotations alone justify the most enthusiastic devotion to our University.

Last the perfunctory remarks on the appearance of the book, a sop to those cerberi of literature who never think of leaving their post on the outskirts of bookdom and opening a volume, but confine their admiration to the outsides of gaudy editions; these will be glad to know that the book is handsome to the view, while the reader will be pleased to find the binding solid and the type clear.