In the current New England Quarterly, Professor E. K. Rand has undertaken to investigate and annotate Harvard's earliest commencement exercises. He has entitled his article, "Liberal Education in Seventeenth-Century Harvard," utilizing this apparent anachronism as a graceful method of introducing the vir liberalis and the trivium-quadrivium. The burden of Professor Rand's writing is to outline the development of those courses which President Dunster classed as "Technologicae," a term derived from the Greek technai and meaning, according to Professor Rand, the "arts as a whole." What would otherwise have been a pedantic display of mossy notes becomes, under Professor Rand's polished hand and humane perspective, an entertaining essay.