The Department of History and Literature has a great deal of intellectual pride -- and that pride is more than half justified. First to establish the tutorial system at Harvard, the department has retained ever since 1909 a vivid sense of its educational objective and of the right function of the tutors in working toward that objective. The tutors are probably more interested in the idea of undergraduate education and more conscious of their part in it than the men of almost any other department.

The subject matter in most departments is defined arbitrarily, merely for convenience. In History and Literature, on the other hand, the subject matter is shaped by an idea. The department was organized, on Professor Barrett Wendell's initiative, as a protest against the barren treatment of history which isolated political events from their context and therefore failed frequently to grasp their significance. Professor Wendell believed that political events could be studied with far more understanding if they were related to the whole culture of a period, to the prevailing climate of thought. The climate of thought could be approached most directly, he believed, through literature. In accordance with this conception the Department of History and Literature allows men to concentrate either on the history and literature of a country (England, France, Germany) or of a period (the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the 17th, 18th, or 19th century.) The purpose is to enable men to gain as complete an understanding of the culture of a country or of a period as possible.

The breadth of aim in History and Literature has earned for it the sobriquet of department of Trends. Tendencies, and Traditions. As a matter of fact, there is a strong tendency, particularly, in the writing of honors essays, to concentrate on political theory as the most tangible expression of the spirit of any age. But it is one of the advantages of the department that men are allowed almost complete freedom to work mainly either in history or in literature or in political theory.

Unique in its aim, the Department of History and Literature is unique also in its organization. It offers no courses and has no graduate department -- two facts which help to account for the excellence of its tutorial instruction. History and Literature is again unlike any other field in having no written examinations for candidates for honors in the Senior year. A qualifying examination (identical with the general examination for Seniors) is given for Juniors in May. The Senior year is devoted to the honors essay -- to which the committee on degrees attaches much weight -- and to work in special subjects in preparation for an oral examination. An examination is given in the Sophomore year on reading in the ancient authors and one is given in the Junior year on the Bible and Shakspere.

History and Literature has drawn & definitely higher quality of students during the last few years than either History or English and it has well deserved to do so. Its positive merits are strong -- and its negative merits are not to be disregarded. For any man who wants to study English literature without having to know at what o'clock the illegible of a third-rate eighteenth century dramatist was born, or who wants to study history without going through the well wastes of Government 1 and Economic A, the department of History and Literature is a gift from the Gods.