Amherst College - Olio Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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AIIIHERST COLLEGE ll Amherst to justify more than a brief comment upon its linish, charm and power. It is literary criticism at its best. Quiet force, penetrating in- sight, competent judgment, and intellectual clairvoyance-these are its solid qualities. The deft phrase, the unlailing rehnement, and the sure touch are there, even when the sentences are packed with thought and learning. For many years Mr. Brownell has acted as the literary adviser of the Scribners, and to him belongs in large measure their deservedly high reputation as the publishers of books of intrinsic worth. He is a member and habitue of the Century Club, where he meets daily the men of in- fluence in the world ol art and literature. One naturally refrains from attempting to draw the portrait of the living man, and I must, as his close friend, limit myself to saying that Mr. Brownell, in dignity, charm, refinement, and brilliant but unboisterous talk is the living embodiment of his books. As one turns from the latest novel to the Essay on Democracy in French Traits , one feels as if he were making the transition from an ephemeral article in the newspaper to an inscription upon the Pyramids. E. VVINCHESTER DoNAi.n ,ei to gf .mln

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10 THE OLIO: VOL. XLVIII which listens to Guignol, it seems fabulous that tl1e French ever crossed tl1e Rhine. As one notes the gaiety, the bafzhomie, the bright gracious- ness of a Parisian or provincial crowd, the Merovingian epoch seems like a myth. Is there any traceable relationship between St. Remy at Rheims and St. Augustin at Paris, between St. Jean at Lyons and the Nouvel Opera, between Saint Chapelle and the Pantheon ? The differ- ence is as vast as that between gloom and gayety, between the grandiose and the familiar, the mystic and the rational. From the Palace of the Popes at Avignon to the Marseilles Cannebiere, from the Chartres sculpture to M. Falquiere, from Plessis-les-Tours to the Tuileries, is a long way. The Pope listening to dear Father Tom's bewildering logic was not more rattled than were those young listeners to this keen, learned, cosmopolitan critic. Yet how just and natural it all is. But others beside the undergraduates were a little, or a good deal, plagued with incertitude as they heard the lecturer assert that although it is perfectly true that 'education cannot make men moral,' it is equally true that nothing but education can make mafzkimz' moral. ...... . Which best serves the cause of social morality, the Salvation Army or Girard College, Mr. Moody or Harvard College ? Somehow this did not square at once or easily with much heard in the room in which Moral Philosophy was taught. I was in the audience on the hrst night of the lectures, having run up from New York for the purpose, andl recall tl1e general indisposition to pass a frank judgment upon the utterances of this voice wholly new to Amherst. Neither Brownell nor his audience foresaw that within a decade Chautauqua would demand twenty thousand copies of that lecture and its fellows. In 1892 French Art was published. It is far more than a critical history of French painting from Poussin to Monet, of French sculpture from Jean Goujon to Roding it is a profound and luminous exposition of the art instinct, so authoritative and rational that it served as a demonstration to that section of the American people intelligently interested in art, of the rightfulness of Brownell's place as the foremost art critic in America theretofore accorded him by his intimates. And it is interesting to note that Brownellfs appreciation of Rodin, besides introducing that prodigious genius to our people, has, perhaps more than any other favorable agency, unveiled the great sculptor to his own nation. The Victorian Prose Masters is, I fancy, too well known at

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THE OLIO: VOL. XLVII1 To Alma Mater VVe've toiled with loyal hearts, clear Alma Mater, True sons of thine we've ever sought to be 3 Imperfectly we've wrought, but poorly striven, Be ours the failure, thine the victory. Forgive, if aught of malice, Alma Mater, Has stained these pages that will bear thy name, Forgive, and make us gentler, truer, nobler, More .ht to tend and guard thy spotless fame. God keep thee pure and strong, dear Alma Mater, God let thy light e'er brighter, holier shine, And make our dearly loved, our own sweet Amherst An Amherst fair thro' all the years of time.