At a meeting of the Yale Alumni Association last Friday night, ExGovernor Chamberlain of South Carolina introduced a resolution declaring in effect that the professorship of English literature, now vacant, was the most important in the faculty and should be filled by the most eminent scholar available. In all the struggles between the classics and the sciences. the importance of the study of English literature has been steadily on the increase in our various colleges. This is due of course, to many widely differing causes; but we think there is no influence so strongly at work now as the one voiced by Ex-Governor Chamberlain, that while there may be some dispute as to the relative values of earthen branches in a "liberal education," yet there can be no doubt that a knowledge of the works of the most famous English writers, and a fair in sight into the great movements of literature are of the greatest importance to everyone. The wonder is that the present systematic study of English was not made years ago. These seems to be an idea lurking even yet in some minds, that where a students has mastered the elements of English grammar he is fully equipped for this study; that such knowledge will come as a matter of course. And yet it is evident that some preliminary training at college will enable a man to make infinitely more out of our literature than he could do without. The ever-growing number of men who take the English courses here are a proof of what we have been saying-that men are now really beginning to realize the importance of this study of our own literature, while the ever-growing interest that is aroused is certainly a strong proof of the usefulness of such courses to the students.