Professor Wendell a New Immortal.

The election of Dr. Barrett Wendell and Gari MeIchers to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters illustrates very strikingly the purpose as well as the need of such a body as the Academy. These two men, by their achievements in different lines of endeavor are fully deserving of their new honors. Dr. Wendell, who is professor of English Literature at Harvard, is distinguished as a writer, critic and lecturer. Gari MeIchers is an American artist who is hardly known here, although he has been much honored abroad. Dr. Wendell as a lecturer at the Sobonne and other French universities, represented this country and was duly appreciated in France, although he had until yesterday received no substantial recognition here. The same is true of MeIchers. The very existence of such a body as the American Academy, and the recognition it accorded the two new members, does something toward removing the impression that we are as a nation indifferent to achievements in arts and letters, and that we have no standards in such matters. The Academy is striving to establish and maintain such standards, as well as to encourage and stimulate interest in them. --Brooklyn Daily Eagle.