Greetings Editorial. To the great President of a great University, whose opinions on matters collegiate have enabled us during the past year to cover many a virgin page with words of wise antagonism and wiser. concurrence; to the Corporation and the Board of Overseers, those bodies dwelling in a cloud of mystery, from which at untoward moments they thrust hands to snatch from us our dearest possessions; to the sage Faculty, who from the distant cathedra cry to us to be great, yet, with few exceptions, refuse to mingle with us to show us how great men think and live and are; to the wellbeloved Dean of the Faculty, who gives to the greatest amongst us and the least, his time, his strength, his affection; to the Dean of the College, the good shepherd, who forgives us our sins and tells us to go and sin no more; to the many young instructors, with too much geniality and too little genius; to the MONTHLY'S esteemed contemporaries, the ADVOCATE, gentle mother of us all, the CRIMSON, too much maligned, the LAMPOON, too little, the ILLUSTRATED, paved with excellent intentions; to the undergraduate body in general; to the multitudinous hosts of those who subscribe to us; to the precious, select, beloved, æsthetic few who read us; to the grimy gentlemen who print us.-to one and all we send our Christmas greetings, with best wishes for a jovial and a kind new year! Harvard The promise of a new architectural curiosity for our worldrenowned Yard museum, in the shape of an addition to Gore Hall, that "has been designed to agree architecturally with the Architecture rest of Gore Hall, and yet to harmonize a little more with the older buildings in the Yard," fills us with a deep misgiving. Since the apparently simple project of making Emerson Hall "harmonize" with the magnificent building, Robinson Hall, opposite it, failed so dismally, we are sceptical of the success of any undertaking as titanic as that planned by the ambitious architects who are enlarging the College Library. When Robinson Hall was erected a few years ago, we fondly believed that, architecturally, Harvard had found herself, that the era of massive ugliness was overcome. We were too sanguine. Emerson Hall, heavier and more bulky even than Sever, rose and expanded before our amazed eyes, a grain elevator with doors, windows and bronze decorations. Scarcely had we recovered from this shock, when we saw, on Holmes Field, the first sprouts of a white structure with stately pillars, rising from our lamented tennis courts. We gazed at the Law School, red and sombre behind it; at Hemenway Gymnasium, gloomily unæsthetic beside it; at Jefferson Laboratory, ponderous and eminently physical before it; and wondered. Langdell Hall will be as a Greek temple on Boylston Street, or a Puritan at a Restoration banquet. The Yard, unfortunately, is a thing accomplished. For many years to come, our descendants must shudder at Appleton Chapel's uncheering walls; at the "Carpenter's Gothic," as Mr. Henry Arthur Jones termed it, of Gore Hall; at the simple hideousness of Matthews, Grays, and Weld. The buildings set up by our unpretentious ancestors are all that we can unreservedly admire. But for the Yard no pleas can bring succour. Our only request may be, that, in the construction of buildings outside the Yard, a system be established that shall assure us for the future a series of simple, harmonious structures. By the grace of storms and time, perhaps, the objectionable Yard buildings may wither, and be supplanted by edifices more worthy their intent. The organization of a special Architecture Committee, consisting of members of the Faculty and prominent architects outside, would do much to hinder the transgressions of good taste perpetrated within the radius of a quarter mile about University Hall. The formation. of such a committee cannot be too strongly urged. |