The criticism of the English department recently published has excited wide comment. Nor can we deny that the comment has not been wholly favorable to the department criticised. The English department is, as all must know, in a far from prosperous condition, if we are to judge prosperity strictly by compactness of work. No one at present contends that an ultimate basis for thorough university work in English literature has as yet been attained at Harvard. Indeed, the provision for honors in English has only been in force during the past two years. But we are not to judge prosperity wholly by compactness of execution. There is without question more difficult and peculiarly trying work thrown upon the gentlemen who act as English instructors than upon the professors in any two other departments of the university. The self-sacrifice of Professor Hill in his devotion to his work is recognized and appreciated by all. The enthusiasm of the younger members of the English department has served as a strong incentive to many more than those few who have come into personal relations with them. And it is therefore no exaggeration to say that, when due consideration is given to the time and pains bestowed upon themes and forensic work, upon required rhetoric and the commencement parts, the work accomplished by Professor Hill and his assistants has been extraordinary. Our correspondent ought not to expect that one man can create a department, above all when that one man has, as Professor Briggs intimates, encountered bitter opposition to his work of creation from those who would be naturally expected to second his efforts. To attack Professor Hill therefore is doubly unjust; it is unjust because it is entirely unjustifiable; it is unjust because it imputes to a conscientious man (whose devotion to his work has more than once endangered his health), those errors and shortcomings for which others are in a large measure to be censured. It is unjust because it overlooks the difficulties which surround a man so situated; because it affirms as the opinion of the university that which is not the opinion of even a minority of its members. The communication is trenchant, but all trenchant remarks are two-edged, and when a personal opinion is made to masquerade as a statement of "things as they are" such statement incurs the dangerous distinction instinctively given to all "personalities." There certainly should now be allowed no possibility for such criticisms to gain credence. To one who avails himself conscientiously of the training afforded by the work of the English department, such a criticism simply repeats ad nauseam the vague and far from scholarly discontent of lax students.