It is to promote this serious and noble purpose that an American gentleman, Mr. James Hazen Hyde, has founded two chairs, one at the University of Paris, and one at Harvard University, for an annual interchange of professors, (and possibly of ideas,) between France and America. Through this generous arrangement we have had the benefit of hearing, in the United States, MM. Doumic, Rod, de Régnier, Gaston Deschamps, Hugues Le Roux, Mabilleau, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Millet, Le Braz, Tardieu, and the Vicomte d'Avenel. On the same basis Messrs. Barrett Wendell, Santayana, Coolidge, and Baker have spoken at the Sorbonne and at the other French Universities. This year Harvard has called me from the chair of English Literature at Princeton University, and the authorities of the Sorbonne have graciously accorded me the hospitality of this _Amphithéâtre Richelieu_, to take my small part in this international mission. Do you ask for my credentials as an ambassador? Let me omit such formalities as academic degrees, professorships, and doctorates, and present my claims in more simple and humble form. A family residence of two hundred and fifty years in America, whither my ancestors came from Holland in 1652; a working life of thirty years which has taken me among all sorts and conditions of men, in almost all the states of the Union from Maine to Florida and from New York to California; a personal acquaintance with all the Presidents except one since Lincoln; a friendship with many woodsmen, hunters, and fishermen in the forests where I spend the summers; an entire independence of any kind of political, ecclesiastical, or academic partisanship; and some familiarity with American literature, its origins, and its historical relations,--these are all the claims that I can make to your attention. They are small enough, to be sure, but such as they are you may find in them a partial explanation of the course which these lectures are to take.