and what is still more speaking, he wrote at once the _Athalie_, "la chef d'oeuvre de la poésie française," in the judgment of the French critics, to be rendered by the some young tyros. When, in 1556, in Christ Church Hall, _Palamon and Arcite_ was finished, outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank eyes full of pleasure, declared "that Palamon must have been in love indeed. Arcite was a right martial knight, having a swart and manly countenance, yet like a Venus clad in armour." To the son of the dean of Christ Church, the boy of fourteen, who played Emilie in the dress of a princess, her compliment was still higher. It was a present of eight guineas,--for the penurious sovereign, perhaps, the most emphatic expression of approval possible. Shall I admit for a moment that our American young folks have less grace and sensibility than the French girls, and the Oxford youths who pleased Elizabeth? Your face now, Fastidiosus, wears a frown like that of Rhadamanthus; but I remember our Hasty-Pudding days, when you played the part of a queen, and behaved in your disguise like Thor, in the old saga, when he went to Riesenheim in the garb of Freya, and honest giants, like Thrym, were frightened back the whole width of the hall. Well, I do not censure it, and I do not believe you recall it with a sigh; and the reminiscence emboldens me to ask you whether it would not be still better if our dear Harvard, say (the steam of the pudding infects me through twenty years), among the many new wrinkles she in her old age so appropriately contracts, should devote an evening of Commencement-time to a performance, by the students, under the sanction and direction of professors, of some fine old masterpiece? At our little Sweetbrier we have young men and young women together, as at Oberlin, Antioch, and Massachusetts normal schools. I have no doubt our Hermione, when we gave the _Winter's Tale_, had all the charm of Mademoiselle de Veillanne, who played Esther at St. Cyr. I have no doubt our Portia, in the _Merchant of Venice_, in the trial scene, her fine stature and figure robed in the doctor's long silk gown, which fell to her feet, and her abundant hair gathered out of sight into an ample velvet cap, so that she looked like a most wise and fair young judge, recited "The quality of mercy is not strained," in a voice as thrilling as that in which Mademoiselle de Glapion gave the part of Mordecai. I am sure Queen Elizabeth would think our young cavaliers, well-knit and brown from the baseball-field, "right martial knights, having swart and manly countenances." If she could have seen our Antoninus, when we gave the act from Massinger's most sweet and tender tragedy of the _Virgin Martyr_, or the noble Caesar, in our selections from Beaumont and Fletcher's _False One_, she would have been as ready with the guineas as she was in the case of the son of the dean of Christ Church.