At the commencement of the present academical year, I proposed the name of a French gentleman, and this nomination was laid by the President before your honorable body. No appointment, however, was made; but on the contrary a vote was passed, requiring the Smith Professor to instruct all the French classes for the future. I do not, of course, Gentlemen, call in question your right to modify the duties of my Professorship; and I have proceeded to organize the classes, and commence the instruction in the Elements of the French language, agreeably to your vote. But I still entertain the [hope] that a different arrangement, and one more in harmony with the intent of a Professorship of Belles Lettres, and more advantageous to the University, may yet be made. The symmetry and completeness of the Department are at present destroyed. The organization introduced by Mr. Ticknor, and continued successfully to the great honor of the University is broken up. The French language has no native teacher. And I submit to you, Gentlemen, whether depriving the Department of the services of such a teacher will not justly be regarded by the public as lessening the advantages of a residence at the University. I have now under my charge 115 students in French, and 30 in German. Of course, with so many pupils my time is fully occupied. I can exercise but little superintendence over the Department; and have no leisure for the prosecution of those studies, which are absolutely requisite for the proper discharge of the duties originally prescribed to me. When the labor of mastering the Literature of even a single nation is considered,--the utter impossibility of my accomplishing anything, under the present arrangement,--in the various fields of Foreign Literature, over which my Professorship ranges, will be at once apparent. An object of greater importance is clearly sacrificed to one of less. I am required to withdraw from those literary studies and instructions, which had been originally marked out for me, and to devote my time to Elementary Instruction. Now if my labors are of any importance to the College it is to the former class of duties, that the importance belongs. The latter can be performed as well, perhaps better, by an instructor, employed and paid in the usual way. In point of fact, my office as Professor of Belles Lettres is almost annihilated, and I have become merely a teacher of French. To remedy this, Gentlemen, I make to you the following propositions:-- I. That I should be wholly separated from the Department of Modern Languages, and be only Professor of Belles Lettres. II. That I should reside, as now, in Cambridge. III. That I should not be a member of the Faculty.