inspiration that his students are drawing every day without his help. He has nothing new to give. He preaches the gospel as it is written in the Book of Hill, gives a lecture or two on classroom morals and "What is Art?" and empties the souls of his students of every idea by the daily theme system, without putting in any new ideas to fill the horrible emptiness. Meanwhile he is sapping his own vitality and giving out the threadbare ideas without accumulating any new ones. After a few years he is useful only for calling the roll or proctoring at examinations.

The solution of the problem, we firmly believe, is found only in a regulation that shall forbid the appointment of any Harvard man to a position as instructor or "assistant" in the University who has not been graduated at least two years. This would prevent, in the first place, any such absurdity as the teaching of students by their own classmates; it would, furthermore, force men who desired to teach in Harvard to develop themselves, either by teaching for a time in another college or by continuing their studies here or abroad. This system would be more expensive for the University, as instructors would naturally demand higher salaries three years after graduation than they are able to ask as newly graduated fledgelings. This expense could, however, be met by abolishing a few superfluous professorships and using the money thus secured for the payment of really competent instructors in the lower courses. A Senior, if he is worth his salt, can get his wisdom from books, but a Freshman needs a live man to set him on the right track.

The Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard was inaugurated a year ago on principles so novel as to make it unique in University administration. Previously there had been at Harvard, as well as at certain other colleges in America, one or two instructors who bore the title of Professor or Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, but no attempt had before been made either to bring together the several courses in various departments which were already conducted on the method (for, in truth, it is only a method) called Comparative Literature, or, on the other hand, by securing the establishment of new courses filling apparent gaps, to provide a systematic body of instruction in this new field, the importance of which was coming. to be appreciated everywhere more and more.

That any one or two professors of Comparative Literature could adequately cover the domain indicated by their title was, of course, plainly impossible. Deeply interested though they might be in the results of others' research and reflection on all topics of literary history, they could not presume to speak as if with authority on such as required the information of a specialist where they were none, and they must needs limit their own particular investigations if these were to be even to a small degree fruitful in the increase of knowledge. The task of the Chairman of the Department was, then, first and foremost, to gain the support of colleagues in allied fields and to harmonize, so far as was possible and advisable, the spirit and procedure of work following the same direction. At Harvard, thanks to the sympathetic

co-operation that had long existed among the different instructors in Modern Languages, and to their friendly relations with other teachers of literature in the College, this task was an exceptionally easy one, and the announcement of the Department for next year will show no less than twenty-five instructors (of whom fourteen are full professors and seven assistant professors) working with a common aim-to promote, namely, among members of the University, the study and appreciation of literature as literature, avowedly in as large and liberal a spirit as they possess.

The desire of these teachers, in their courses in Comparative Literature, is not to bring students to the reading of books of one country, period, or variety, to the neglect of those of any other country, period, or variety, but to help them to understand better the universal and perpetual force of literature in the history of civilization and culture and to guide them, according to their tastes and needs, in the wide world of beauty that books reveal. To them the artificial boundaries of university departments are ultimately of about the same significance in determining the range of generalization as the artificial boundaries of the different departments of France or the counties of England or the States of America in limiting inquiries concerning national tendency,-or, indeed, of the confines of the various lands of a continent as revealing the geological divisions established by Nature.

The departments of the University, it seems to need emphasis, are merely convenient arrangements for the better management of instruction, and should not be allowed to overstep the simple object of their establishment. As the subjects of our teaching at Harvard become more and more involved, we shall be bound to change any departmental customs that are found to hamper the ideals of obligation that each member of the Faculty owes to the University as a whole, and to science in the large. The organization of the Department of Comparative Literature, a congress of representatives of every section of literary study, shows all the advantages of federal relationship. Never has more generous co-operation in teaching been exhibited. Never has a sanguine prospect of good results seemed more justifiable.