We had some delightful lectures from Longfellow on the literature of the Middle Ages. He read us some of his own original poems and some beautiful translations. All the substance of these lectures I think is to be found in his book entitled "The Poets and Poetry of the Middle Ages." I do not see that we gained anything of solid instruction by having them read to us that we could not have got as well by reading them. We had also a course of lectures from Jared Sparks on American history. They were generally dull and heavy, but occasionally made intensely interesting when he described some stirring event of the Revolutionary War. We hung breathless on his account of the treason of Arnold and its detection and the class burst out into applause when he ended,--a thing the like of which never happened in any time in College. There was a little smattering of instruction in modern languages, but it was not of much value. We had a French professor named Viau whom the boys tormented unmercifully. He spoke English very imperfectly, and his ludicrous mistakes destroyed all his dignity and rendered it impossible to maintain any discipline in the class. He would break out occasionally in despair, "Young zhentlemen, you do not respect me and I have not given you any reason to." A usual punishment for misconduct in those days was to deduct a certain number of the marks which determined rank from the scale of the offending student. M. Viau used to hold over us this threat, which, I believe, he never executed, "Young zhentlemen, I shall be obliged to deduce from you." He was followed by the Comte de la Porte, a gentleman in bearing and of a good deal of dignity. The Count was asked one day by Nat Perry, a member of the class from New Hampshire who was very proud of his native State and always boasting of the exploits in war and peace of the people of New Hampshire, what sort of a French scholar M. Viau, his predecessor, was. The Count replied: "He was not a fit teacher for young gentlemen. He was an ignorant person from the Provinces. He did not have the Parisian accent. He did not know the French language in its purity. It would be as if somebody were to undertake to teach English who came from New Hampshire or some such place." The Count said this in entire innocence. It was received with a roar of laughter by the class, and the indignation and wrath of Perry may well be imagined.