Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 5 text:

7 ra i, H 5 7+ yi BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR 120011. SERIES II. BOSTON, MARCH, 1887. Von. XIV. Colleges, universities, and olher institutions receiving this volume of the YEAR Book, are respectfully requested to acknowledge the same by for- warding to its Editors a copy of each new Catalogue, Annual Report, or similar publication. All correspondence with reference to admission to any College or School of this University should be addressed to the appropriate Dean. A NEW feature of the year in the College of Liberal Arts, was the academic address delivered on the Opening Day, by Dean Huntington, on The Learning that is Liberal. It was printed in The University Beacon for December. On the 10th of November the commodious new hall of the School of Theology was dedicated. Bishop John F. Hurst delivered the dedicatory discou1'se, taking as his theme, The Theology of the Twentieth Cen- tury. More than a hundred students were at once enrolled, thus prov- ing that the enlarged accommodations were provided none too soon. The entering class was, with a single exception, the largest ever received in the school. ' Last November, at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the oldest of the American colleges, the orator of the day, the Hon. James Russell Lowell, made excellent reply to those who would fain destroy the fixed significance of the academic degrees in arts, and substitute for the traditional classical training, a lawless eclecticism, or a narrowing and deforming specialism. He said, I had rather the col- lege should turn out one of Aristotle's four-square men, capable of hold- ing his own in whatever Held he may be cast, than a score of lop-sided ones, developed abnormally in one direction. g . . . I am familiar with the arguments for making the, study of Greek, especially, a matter of choice or chance. I admit their plausibility and the honesty of those who urge them. I should be willing, also, toadmlt that the study of the ancient languages, without the hope or the prospect of going on to what they contain, would be useful only as a form of intellectual gymnastics. Even so, they would be as serviceable as the higher mathematics to most of ,us. But I think that a wise teacher should adapt his tasks to the highest, and not the lowest, capacities of the taught. For those lower, also, they would not be wholly without profit. When there is a tedious sermon, says George Herbert, X ' God takes n text, and tenchoth pntlonce,' not the least pregnant of lessons. One of the arguments against the compulsory study of Greek, namely, that it is wiser to give our time to

Page 4 text:

Sch Nuvn ipallahi aut iliflusis, Qlbristn st 3Ecclrsine.' Prog. Amd. Franck., A.D. x5B5. Servus ac liber, Lor.-uples ac pauper, Nemo exuptus, Czg'u.vvi.r :it .sexus Quilibst .ratix Habet alaritatis. Ou: HYM N. T

Page 6 text:

4 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. modern languages and modern history than to dead languages and ancient history, involves, I think, a verbal fallacy. Only those languages can properly be called dead, in which nothing living has been written. If the classic languages are dead, they yet speak to us, and with a clearer voice than that of any living tongue. I ' Grnlls lngenlum, Grnlls dedlt ore rotundo 1 Musa loqul praeter laudem nulllus avarls.' If their language is dead, yet the literature it enshrines is rammed with life as, perhaps, no other writing, except Shakspeare's, ever was or will be. It is as contemporary with to-day as with the ears it first enraptured, for it appeals not to the man of then or now, but to the entire round of human nature itself. Men are ephemeral or evanescentg but whatever page the authentic soul of man has touched with her immortalizlng finger, no matter how long ago, is still young and fair as it was to the world's gray fathers. Oblivion looks in the face of the Grecian muse, only to forget her purpose. Even for the mastering of our own tongue, there is no expedient so fruitful as translation out of anotherg how much more when that other is a language at once so precise and so flexible as the Greek? Greek literature is also the most fruitful com- ment on our own. Coleridge has told us with what profit he was made to study Shakspeare and Milton, ln conjunction with the Greek drama- tists. It is no sentimental argument for this study that the most justly balanced, the most serene, and the most fecundatlng minds since the revival of learning, have been saturated with Greek literature. We know not whither other studies will lead un, especially if dissociated from this: we do not know to what summits, far above our lower region of turmoil, this has led, and what the many-sided outlook thence. Will such studies make anachronisms of us? Unfit us for the duties and the business of to-day ? I can recall no writer more truly modern than Montaigne, who was almost more at home in Athens and Rome than in Paris. Yet he was a thrifty manager of his estate, and a most competent mayor of Bordeaux. I remember passing once in London where demo- lltion for a new thoroughfare was going on. Many houses left standing in the rear of those cleared away, bore signs with the inscription, Ancient Lights. This was the protest of their owners against being built out by the new improvements from such glimpse of heaven as their fathers had, without adequate equivalent. I laid the moral to heart. During the current year, in compliance with oft-repeated petitions from eminent and influential citizens, the Trustees of the Clty Hospital of Boston ltave officially decided and announced, that hereafter the operations and instruction of the amphltheatre shall be open to female medical students upon the same terms and conditions as to male. As these advantages are without fee, and as the Hospital is located just across the street from the School of Medicine, the new measure brings an important addition to the facilities of this department.