Professor Hill called attention, a day or two ago, with reference to these very lectures, to what he termed the "lack of literary curiosity among Harvard men." He had observed, he said, but very little interest from students, in the recent Lanciani lectures - the usual thing in the case of a purely literary subject. It is as much to be deplored as the fact that the English department does not have more scope allowed it, that after all such a comparatively few of the men now in college have this literary curiosity. It is a notorlous fact that a French gamin has a very pronounced gift of language and diction, while the American breed is uncouth and unintelligible. From the study of other literatures we are able to derive a style of our own in which the beauties of several languages are combined; by the study of archaeology, by the study of history of any kind, facts which possess a deep significance of their own are laid before us. If our minds are too dull or too lazy to form the necessary conclusions from them, or if we fancy that we can live safely, while we are stumbling along without a knowledge of the perils that have gone before - and that may come hereafter, we are a very pitiful set indeed; and we ought to have a delicacy about venturing anywhere in the neighborhood of mirrors.
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A Festivus for the Rest of Us