play." You have heard the facts rightly; that it was given under
the superintendence of the English professor, the evening before
Commencement, "with many of the accessories of a theatre." You urge
that it is unprecedented to have at a dignified institution, which
aims at a high standard, under the superintendence of a professor,
such a performance; that it excites the prejudices of some people
against us; and you quote the sharp remarks of _David's Harp_,
the organ of the Dunkers. You urge that such things can be nothing
more than the play of boys and girls, and are something worse than
mere waste of time, for they set young people to thinking of the
theatre, which is irretrievably sunk and only harmful. In your
character of trustee, you are sorry it has been done, and beg that it
may not be done again.

I beg you to listen to a patient stating of the case. It is not
without precedent. When you were at Worms, in Germany, do you remember
in the Luther Memorial the superb figure of Reuchlin, on one of the
outer corners? One or two of the statues may be somewhat grander, but
no other seemed to me so handsome, as it stood colossal on its pillar,
the scholar's gown falling from the stately shoulders, and the face so
fine there in the bronze, under the abundant hair and cap. Reuchlin
is said to be the proper founder of the German drama. Before his time
there had been, to be sure, some performing of miracle-plays, and
perhaps things of a different sort. The German literary historians,
however, make it an era when Reuchlin came as professor to Heidelberg,
and, in 1497, set up a stage, with students for actors, at the house
of Johann, Kämmerer von Dalberg. He wrote his plays in Latin. If you
wish, I can send you their titles. Each act, probably, was prefaced by
a synopsis in German, and soon translations came into vogue, and were
performed as well. On that little strip of level which the crags and