OUR EVENING ENTERTAINMENTS.

IT very often happens that it is only when an opportunity is irretrievably lost that we appreciate its value and importance, and see our own folly in neglecting it. Judging the future by the past, the same will be the case, I fear, with many of us in regard to improving the opportunities offered to us by the College in shape of our Evening Readings. When the readings in Shakespeare were given last year, though at an hour very uncomfortable to many of us, the interest was strong, and the room was crowded almost to suffocation; but now a course of readings in the same author, by the same professor, while highly appreciated by the Cambridge society, hardly draws fifty students, though given in the evening, when one's mind is comparatively free. The phenomenon we see, but the explanation is not so evident. Perhaps the old saw about the sweeping powers of the new broom applies here.

Probably when the entire programme of ancient and modern writers was announced, every liberal-minded student resolved to go to the most of the readings, if not all; but the number that attended the last recital in Music last year, and the last Greek reading this year, was absolutely a disgrace to the taste and intelligence of Harvard. In the beginning of each course there was generally a very large audience, composed chiefly of students; but toward the end, though given by men who have no superiors in their line in this country, the numbers dwindled down to a sturdy few, who were willing to brave rain, storm, bad ventilation, and the attractions offered by the "Athens of America," and were, as far as I can learn, never sorry for it. In fact, I doubt if ever any man could be sorry that he put himself to any inconvenience for the sake of hearing Cervantes translated and commented on by a James Russell Lowell.

The smallness of the student part of the audience, compared with what it ought to be, cannot be attributed to the incapacity of the professors, but rather to the laziness and ignorance of what was being lost on the part of the students; for often there were to be seen in the audience gray heads, who did not consider their time misspent, but listened with enthusiastic appreciation. One of our professors, who gave a course himself, when the programme was announced, advised his classes not to miss such an opportunity, and said that he should become a student again himself, and go to every reading as far as possible. Subsequent investigations proved that the aforesaid professor kept his word.

Were such an opportunity of hearing the masterpieces of ancient and modern literature offered us ten years from now, I am confident that not one of us would willingly let the opportunity go by. It is only ignorance and carelessness that causes such indifference as we see now. Mr. R. W. Emerson has said that he rarely reads a book in the original if he can get a good translation of it. Whether this is the best policy or not, all men do not agree; but certainly in hearing a Greek tragedy, for instance, translated and explained by one who is thoroughly interested in a subject of which he has made a specialty, you have all the advantage of a book translation, plus the interest which you feel from being in almost personal contact with the translator. May those blessed evenings in which we communed, as it were, with the spirit of AEschylus, Homer, and Aristophanes, come again! The dullest soul that ever breathed could not listen to that spirited rendering of Virgil without his soul kindling into enthusiasm and admiration.

Not only do these readings give one a much broader basis for intellectual culture in the future, but they assist materially in brushing up one's knowledge of a language. AEschylus is reputed hard, yet under Mr. Goodwin's guidance it was very easy to follow the text, and one felt his knowledge of the language increased while he caught the spirit of the original much more completely than from a book translation. Whether it was owing to the more general acquaintance with French among our students, or the attractiveness of Moliere, or the excellence of the rendering by the professor, it cannot be said; but it was greatly to the credit of the College that the French readings were so well attended. Although the slight knowledge of Spanish among our students may be alleged as an excuse, yet I am sure that had the easiness of the tongue and the genius and erudition of the translator been known to the many, the hall would have been crowded. To allow ignorance of Spanish to debar one from enjoying Don Quixote was very foolish; for the writer, though ignorant of Spanish previously, with a smack of Italian and some French and Latin, was able at the end of the course not only to follow the text, but to find the place when several pages were omitted, - a prodigious feat, by the way.

The dingy little basement in University to which our music-loving Corporation have banished the study of music was crowded to repletion by an enthusiastic audience of students on Professor Paine's first recital, and the second and third were equally successful. To the lovers of classical music there is no more precious opportunity than this. Here we can renew our acquaintance with our old friends Chopin, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Sebastian Bach, and all the chief classical masters. I cannot be too urgent in my appeal to all to embrace this opportunity to hear the best classical music; for nothing so elevates and purifies a man's soul, and stimulates all that is noble and manly in us, as the music of Beethoven, Chopin, or Schumann. To all those who have been thus far apathetic to the charms of our Evening Readings, I would say that it is not now too late to change, and strongly advise all to begin and follow through the course which is just now beginning: Dante's "Vita Nuova" and "Divina Commedia."

E. L. M.