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BIRTHS

'97. Mrs. Harlan Page Kelsey (Florence Low), a son, born November 1. Mrs. John Hanna Yocum (Florence Knapp), a daughter, Margaret, born October 29.

'98. Mrs. Pierce Butler (Cora Waldo), a daughter, Virginia Waldo, born October 19.

Mrs. Paul Gaylord (Anne H. Hall), a son, Warner Russell, born May 19. '00. Mrs. Robert G. Williams (Annie L. Torrey), a daughter, Elizabeth Torrey, born September 8.

ABOUT COLLEGE

THE HAUNTED ROOM

At night when all the house is still,-
,—or when it ought to be,-
And when my room-mate wearied out from arguing with me,
Has pulled the sheet up from the foot, to wrap around her head,
And gone to sleep to dream that I'm convinced by what she's said;
"Tis then that I become aware of many little ghosts,
Which cling to ceiling and to walls, and flit about in hosts.

Our pictures and our table and the desk we prize so much,
All our special acquisitions the ghosts will never touch,
They clamber o'er the battered chairs, o'er all that's old and queer,
And seem to search for other things which are no longer here.

The most of them are happy, only just a few are sad,
And out of all this mighty throng, not one is really bad,
Although 'tis true a number are a little cross I fear-
Especially the ones that hang upon my chiffonier,

Yet some of them are such good ghosts I often bow my head
As though I were not seeing ghosts but hearing prayers instead.

They're not at all the spooky kind, that savour of the tomb,—
These ghosts are thoughts of other girls who've lived within our room.
ELOISE GATELY BEERS 1906.

The lecture given in Chemistry Hall, on November 11, by M. André Michel was one of especial interest. It was admirably illustrated by the stereopticon views of the most famous paintings of the Lecture by M. Michel nineteenth century. M. Michel said that in order to show the logical development and moral significance of contemporary art he must trace it back to the early part of the nineteenth century.

The period between 1800 and 1820 was characterized by a distinct reaction toward classic models. David was the typical painter of this school as is shown by his pictures, "Oath of the Horaces", and "The Rape of the Sabine Women". The subjects of this school were inspired by the marbles of the ancient sculptors. They lacked individuality, striving alone to discover the beautiful.

Meanwhile the revolution had brought gradually a new element into art. It emphasized the personal and thus made art more real. Delacroix introduced this personal element into his work. He was greatly influenced by Ingres who was remarkable for his technique. Delacroix, on the other hand, was essentially a colorist. In 1822 he painted, "Virgil and Dante in Charon's Bark", which is typical of his work.

As a natural outgrowth of this desire for the personal came an attempt to get at the truth. Courbet was one of the first painters of this realistic school in 1845. Although a good painter he was not intellectual enough to found a school in that he lacked the necessary culture and refinement.

Out of the realistic was developed the famous school of landscape painters, sometimes known as the school of Fontainebleau. Corot, Rousseau, d'Aubigney and Millet are some of its best known artists. The paintings of these men not only give the realistic touch of nature, but also express the emotions of the artist. This school chose its subjects from country scenes near Paris, and from peasant life in that vicinity.

Corot suggests the atmosphere in his nature pictures. They have a tone of serenity which seems to express the fact that to Corot the whole world was a work of love. Rousseau presents a great contrast to Corot, his pictures being characterized by a tone of sadness and unrest. Millet at first imitated the classic and did not follow his own instincts. At one time he saw a peasant woman gathering fagots in the suburbs of Paris, and for the first time he realized his calling-that of painting the peasant and farm life. His representation of the wild beauty of peasant life entitles him to the name of poet. He is remarkable for the sweeping gestures of his peasants. "Evening Prayer", "The Sower", and "Life of the Farm", are some of his well known paintings. In these the human figure is truthfully portrayed. There is in his pictures a freshness and a beauty hitherto unknown.

Meissonnier followed the popular taste and painted the campaigns of Napoleon, thus not creating as true an art. Chasserian greatly influenced the art of his day by the beauty and harmony of his paintings. Unfortunately the greater part of them were destroyed by fire at the time of the commune. Gustave Moreau is the follower of Chasserian. The latter died at an early age and Moreau dedicated to him his famous painting, "Youth and Death”. Moreau's pictures have a certain melancholy which arises from a spirit of too great introspection. M. Michel considers that his work in art compares well with the poetry of Le Conte de Lisle. Puvis de Chavannes followed Moreau only in his technique; he was preeminently a mural painter. He always tried to represent the essential in his work and paid but little attention to details. He combined the best elements of the classic and romantic schools in his art. His decorations in the Boston public library well represent the peculiar genius of this greatest artist of the century.

The open meeting of the Philosophical Society was held in the Students' Building on the evening of November 16. Professor John Grier Hibben of Princeton University was the speaker. The subLecture by Mr. Hibben ject of his lecture was "The Philosophy of the Enlightenment”.

This period during which the treatment of philosophy advanced from pure

speculation to critical examination, coincides practically with the eighteenth century; opening with Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding" in 1691, and closing in 1810 with Kant's "Kritik der reinen Vernunst".

In his essay Locke denied the existence of innate ideas, and endeavored to prove that all our ideas come from experience. These were of two kinds, the simple, and the complex arising from the simple. Of the latter there are two sources: sensation, the source of our knowledge of external objects, and reflection, the source of our knowledge of the activities of the mind in receiving the impression given by the senses. The mind, however, is considered as passive and bound to the content given by the senses. Locke presupposed an external world, dividing the qualities of objects into primary or inherent qualities, by which we know the object, and into secondary qualities, the power to produce in us sensation by means of the primary qualities. However, we are certain intuitively only of the presence of the idea in our minds, and not that there is an object without us which corresponds to an idea. We assume a substrate, because other contents and relations can be thought of only as belonging to some substance.

From these partial and contradictory statements two extreme theories developed the materialism of Diderot and the French encyclopedists, and the idealism of Berkeley, who accepted Locke's denial of innate ideas and also did away with the conception of corporeal substance. Primary qualities, he said, were as truly ideas in us as the secondary, and so a supporting substance was superfluous. Body he proved to be nothing but a complex of ideas and to have no other reality than that of being perceived.

Hume introduced the third development in this movement, that of examination and criticism. Assuming Berkeley's denial of matter, he applied the same proof to psychical substances, with the result that self was found to be nothing but activities, states and qualities. Only the custom of a constant conjunction of ideas in imagination is at the basis of the conception of mind. He destroyed the fundamental conceptions of metaphysics-substance and causality-proving them to be mere relations between ideas, not to be substantiated by experience or logical thought. His thoroughgoing empiricism excluded all doctrine of noumena. Hume's criticism aroused Kant to undertake his wonderful system of philosophy. At this time the people as well as the scholars were interested in philosophical discussions. Locke and Berkeley had exercised a tremendous influence on practical life. Religion tended to deism, and thus easily to atheism. Ethics was of a Utilitarian and Hedonistic stamp, and the political life became strongly individualistic. Kant met this one-sided development with his doctrine of the Immanence of God, the moral obligation and dignity of man. In theoretical philosophy his emphasis was placed not upon sensation, and thus upon the individual, but upon the universal quality reason. With the sensationalist he agreed that the matter of our ideas is furnished by the senses, and with the rationalist that their form is given by understanding, which orders the manifold of sensation by its own laws, thus taking a midway stand, while he subjected the whole of philosophy to an unprejudiced examination and criticism.

The lecture was exceedingly interesting, both because of the contents and because of the clear exposition and directness which characterizes all of Professor Hibben's writings.

The sweeping melody and noble thought of the heroic literature of Ireland was revealed to the numbers who listened to Mr. Yeats on Wednesday, November 18. The lecturer's magnetic personLecture by Mr. Yeats ality felt throughout the presentation of a subject so dearly loved as to be necessarily a part of himself, held the audience enthralled. Owing to the influence of the speaker's personality it is almost impossible to give any adequate account of the lecture, especially because, as Mr. Yeats pointed out, the enthusiasm of the lover of Irish literature is perhaps not sustained by the poor translation of the Gaelic. However the lecturer certainly pictured the power of the literature, a product of past ages it is true, but full of inspiring possibilities in the present age.

With vivid language Mr. Yeats described the two great cycles. The earlier one, centering around the great general, Fin, treating of wars upon strange mythological monsters, in the ages when gods and men were almost alike, belonged in all probability to the dark race which first inhabited Ireland. This legend breathes of nature—the song of the blackbird, the cry of the hound, the scream of the eagle, the call of the wild beasts of the wood. In the selection read from the lamentation of the queen, one sees that she finds consolation in nature. The courteous friendship of the heroes is felt in Fin's cry at the death of Oscar, where Fin says,

"For every good thing is gone from me now".

and grieves that he had not died instead. There are also beautiful touches of love poetry in the Song of Grania, part of which Mr. Yeats read. The chief manuscripts of the cycle of Fin were written in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and consequently changed by the Christian historians. But one can hear these legends in their old guise from the lips of the peasantry in parts of Ireland and Scotland.

There is less allusion to nature in the other cycle which was brought in, so an Irish scholar thinks. by the fair-haired conquering race, and sung by the bards until they passed away. This legend takes its name from the warrior king Cuchullin, but in the death scene it is the figure of the queen which is truly heroic. She had sent her husband to a valley far away from the battle in which his death was foretold, but witches lure him to the scene, and he is killed. The queen stands before her generals, the avengers of Cuchullin's death, and surveys the heads of the conquered. With matchless courtesy to her followers, with pride in her surrow, herself and Cuchullin, she laments her husband's death and dies on his grave. So the Irish poets understood the great nature of woman, fitted for life in all its capacities; their queens were noble women and good sweethearts.

Mr. Yeats then brought out the value of this heroic literature in Ireland. Not only does it bear witness to remote times but it taught the people the great secular virtues-generosity for the weak, courage among enemies, honesty among one's friends, and courtesy towards all. Surely the mission of true poets is to teach and sing of these virtues. Therefore it is a great blessing that these old legends where the heroes are great gentlemen, and the queens show noble courtesy, are kept alive amongst the peasantry, by the help of fairy lore, the tales of the sight of ancient kings, queens, and heroes riding hunting through the night.

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