WHEN the present elective system went into force, the English department enjoyed a peculiar privilege in alone continuing to have its work required after the Freshman year. It is certainly to be regretted that the instructors in this department show so little disposition to recognize and profit by this fact. It would be natural to suppose that they would have endeavored to demonstrate by their efficiency and liberality the wisdom of the Faculty in continuing to require Rhetoric, Themes, and Forensics. It is only too evident, however, that this is not the case. The action of Professor Hill, in giving lectures on English Literature to the Sophomores, is certainly to be commended; but aside from this the instruction in Rhetoric is so notoriously inefficient as to be the laughing-stock of the entire College. It has been frequently suggested that Rhetoric ought to be made a sub-freshman study, and it is safe to say that the instruction given in a certain section last year would be easily within the comprehension of a child of three years. One would think that if the Rhetoric instructors did not care to make their courses attractive, they would at least not seek to fill them by overriding the rules in regard to anticipation. Rhetoric is such an easy subject, and the instruction is so unpopular, that if anticipation were allowed as freely as the Regulations intend, the number on the rolls of the Rhetoric sections would fall to as low a figure as the actual attendance on the course counts at present. When, to avoid this, after having the passing mark raised from 40 to 70 per cent, an instructor deliberately tells a man with whom he is entirely unacquainted, that he should advise him not to take the anticipatory examination, it is bad enough; but when after forty men have attempted the examination, and have given more time to preparation for it than is generally given to preparing for the regular examinations in Sophomore Rhetoric, and when these are the picked men of a class of 220, the action of an instructor in refusing to allow more than eight to pass, and in reducing the per cents of these to the lowest possible figure, becomes a matter for something more than ridicule. If the English instructors desire to see Rhetoric abolished as a required study, they are certainly going to work in a most far-sighted manner.

No one can better appreciate the difficulties which beset our cotemporaries, or more readily pardon their errors, than ourselves. We feel constrained, however, to remind our friends of the Echo that no college paper can achieve success without hard work on the part of all connected with it. To drop a miscellaneous assortment of items into a hopper can hardly be called editing a paper, in the strict sense of the word. It is, we think, the general opinion that the Echo has never been all that a Harvard daily should be, nor yet all it at one time gave promise of becoming. In a new enterprise deficiencies are to be excused; but the present volume of the Echo falls considerably below the standard of its predecessors. And yet it would seem as if, among the battalions of editors which our cotemporary boasts, enough talent and energy might be found to secure freedom from grammatical and typographical errors, at least. We are of the opinion that Harvard deserves as good a daily as Yale, and will support one. There is, however, room for only one daily here, and we are thus dependent upon the Echo. We hope to see a speedy "brace" on the part of our cotemporary, and we are extremely sorry that the present comment is necessary.