Two such authorities as the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica ‘and the’ Dictionary of National Biography’ are arrayed against each other with respect to the derivation of our ancient poet's name. In the ‘Encyclopaedia’ we read:

“Sir Francis Palgravé, despairing of finding a native derivation, suggested (Archæologia, vol. xxiv.) that the poet might have been so called from the Chaldaic name for the book of Genesis, which is ‘b’ Cadmin,‘in the beginning, or’ Cadmon,‘beginning, from the opening words of the first chapter of Genesis. He thought that he might even have been an’ Eastern visitor,’ who had arrived in Britain from the East, mastered the language, and come out as a vernacular poet. A hypothesis so fanciful as this last may be at once rejected…. On the whole, Sir Francis Palgrave's first suggestion seems to involve the least difficulty. ‘Cadmon’ means ‘beginning’ in the Targum of Onkelos, the Chaldee version of the Scriptures, which was in popular use among the Jews from the 1st century B. C. downwards, and some learned ecclesiastic at Whitby who had visited the Holy Land may have given to the poet the name Cadmon (which in Anglo-Saxon mouths became Cædmon), because he was to sing of the ‘beginning’ of things.”

That teacher of literature who has not comprehended the significance of a work of Art, has never been endued with the spirit and power of his high calling. He stands unwittingly in the place of an apostle of “that external quality of bodies which may be shown to be in some sort typical of the Divine attributes.”

“Those qualities, or types,” according to Ruskin, “on whose combination is dependent the power of mere material loveliness” are:

“Infinity, or the type of Divine Incomprehensibility; Unity, or the type of the Divine Comprehensibility; Repose, or the type of the Divine Permanence; Symmetry, or the type of the Divine Justice; Purity, or the type of the Divine Energy; Moderation, or the type of Government by Law.”

The trend of the Modern Language Association has been, thus far, almost exclusively in the direction of grammatical criticism and philological exegesis. The literary side of language has been subordinated or retired until it is almost faded out of memory, in the confusion of tongues and the strife of phonetics. Nearly all of the illustrating power, the æsthetic brilliance of literary culture, is lost upon the philological devotee. As an attempt to counteract this tendency, I purpose a special investigation of some points suggested by the study of one of the noblest works through which the spiritual genius and the artistic sense of our age has expressed itself—I mean Tennyson's “In Memoriam.” As is well known to students of our literature, “In Memoriam “appeared in 1850, the year of Wordsworth's death and of Tennyson's succession to the office of Laureate. It is one of the five or six supreme elegiac poems of our language, “Lycidas “standing first in point of time (1637), then Dryden's “Ode on Mrs. Killigrew” (1686), then Shelley's “Adonais “(1822), suggested by the death of Keats and “In Memoriam “which was occasioned by the death of Arthur Hallam at Vienna in September, 1833—in 1850. Matthew Arnold's “Thyrsis,” evoked by the death of his friend Arthur Hugh Clough, in point of grace and tenderness is entitled to most honorable recognition, but as it is subsequent by several years to the appearance of “In Memoriam,”

I come before you this morning to represent the unornamental, prosaic side of our work—the under-current, so to speak. Pedagogical papers have been read and discussed before this Association till it would seem that little could be left to say in this department; yet I feel encouraged to present another, for the very reason that the discussion of these papers has been more active and universal than that of any other class of papers whatever. And I regard this as a most wholesome sign of our professional spirit. For no teacher ought ever to forget, however attractive he finds the search for the principle of the Germanic accentuation, or the meaning of the second part of ‘Faust,’ that he is not by profession in the first place a philologist or a man of letters, but a teacher, whose first duty is toward his pupils, and whose work is to apply whatever he can find in philology or literature to the task of supplying, to the best of his power, these bright young minds which come to him for instruction, with that which will most help them to fill their future place in the world. And so I ask you to listen to another chapter of prose, in confidence that, however much we may be interested,—as I am sure we all are,—in the “Stressed Vowels in Beowulf,” or the “Spanish Pastoral Romances,” every one who is worthy to be a member of this Association is eager for any new idea which will help him to do this important work in a better manner; and if I can present any such ideas, or start a discussion which shall bring them, I shall feel that the under-current has not come to the surface in vain.

Everything concerning French Louisiana seems at this time to possess an interest for the public; and it has been my purpose in some measure, to give an account of its language, its literature, its dialects, its folklore and its inhabitants. My papers published in the Transactions of our Modern Language Association have been so kindly received that I feel encouraged to continue my labors in a field vast and fertile but difficult to explore. The work to be done is, to a great extent, one of original research and of patient investigation, and it will require several years to present a tolerably complete tableau of picturesque French Louisiana. I now desire to present another feature of the picture by giving a brief sketch of the Acadians and their dialect. It may not be amiss to begin this study by taking a bird's-eye view of the history of Acadia, from the settlement of the colony to the dispersion of the inhabitants. We shall then accompany Evangeline to the beautiful banks of the Teche and follow her canoe and that of Gabriel as they glide along its placid waters, leaving scarcely a ripple on the gentle stream which, the names of the unhappy lovers have rendered immortal.