ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 49 



written work of the sophomores and the bringing up of the freshmen con- 

 ditioned in grammar. During the autumn term the work in English and 

 elocution with the freshmen was given to my assistant, and I taught the class 

 in General History. The text of Swinion's Outlines was carefully studied, 

 and supplemented by such outside reading as the students could profitably do, 

 and the instructor direct and control, and by such familiar lectures from 

 time to time on important topics as the instructor deemed of advantage. 

 The class numbered fifty-seven and was taught in two sections. I met a part 

 of the freshmen two hours on Saturday mornings for declamation, there being 

 more of this work than my assistant conld direct. I also met the sophomores 

 two hours weekly, on Tuesdays and Fridays, for declamations and essays, 

 there being one hundred and three in the class, each presenting three exer- 

 cises. I met the juniors, numbering forty-seven, once a week for the reading of 

 Shakespeare, the play chosen being Much Ado About Nothing. I met the seniors 

 once a week for essays in English Literature. This class numbered twenty- 

 three, and each student presented two essays, the subjects being taken from 

 the works of the Romaritic Poets. During this term each member of the 

 junior and senior classes delivered one public oration after the regular morn- 

 ing chapel service, this exercise, like all the English work, being under my 

 supervision. 



Daring the spring term it was found that the sophomores in rhetoric could 

 be taught in two sections instead of three, as had been planned; and these 

 two sections were given to Mr. Pattengill, leaving myself only rhetorical 

 work, Shakespeare, and a class of freshmen in English. This class, number- 

 ing fifty-six, and consisting of students entering at this time and not able to 

 pass an examination in the work of the fall term, with a few who had failed 

 in the fall, met every day for nine weeks, in the afternoon, and carefully 

 traversed the subject as presented in Whitney's Essentials. This term, as 

 before, I shared the rhetorical work of the freshmen with Mr. Pattengill, 

 meeting sections of the class two hours every Saturday. I also superintended 

 most of the rhetorical work of the sophomores, the exercises being one des- 

 criptive, one narrative and one argumentative essay from each member of the 

 class, eighty-seven in number, and Mr. Pattengill and myself sharing about 

 equally in the correction of the manuscripts. The juniors read Shakespere 

 as in the previous term, this term reading Henry IV. They also each delivered 

 one public speech. The sophomores met regularly Tuesdays and Fridays for 

 the study of Webster's Reply to Hayne. 



Daring the summer term my work varied but little from the work of the 

 corresponding term of the previous year. Nineteen of the seniors elected 

 English Literature, which extended through eight weeks. The texts studied 

 were Milton's Areopagetica, Pope's Essays and Epistles, Burke's American 

 Taxation, Johnson's Rasselas and Lives of Dryden and Pope, George Eliot's 

 Silas Marner, Select Poems of Browning and Tennyson's Lochsley Hall, 

 Lochsley Hall Sixty Years After and Select Poems. Thirty-six juniors, 

 with a few special students, did the regular work in English litera- 

 ture. Kellog's edition of S. A. Brooke's Primer of English Literature 

 was used as a text-book, and the selections in this book, as well as those 

 in J. W. Hale's Longer English Poems and Swinton's Forty Master- 

 pieces were carefully studied. Critical and biographical essays supplemented 

 the regular work. More attention was given this year than before, to the 

 study of the literature, and less to the study of its history, and the results 



