avenues and the sites and general disposition of large blocks of building can be determined upon so that some general intention may be followed in future action. The designer of such a plan will have hard work to make the Carey Building group agreeably with or be axial to the great Agassiz Museum or Hastings Hall, or the Laboratory. He will have a difficult corner to arrange where the Law School and Gymnasium and Scientific School come near each other, and he will be in a quandary where the Chapel and Fogg Museum and Thayer Hall crowd one another without symmetrical relations. The condition of this last neighborhood suggests that studies for the future of what remains unoccupied of the old Yard are quite as important as those for outlying lands. As years pass it is more and more difficult to create any harmonious ensemble; but still, skilful men can improve present defects and help to prevent more intricacies like those now existing.

Private enterprises of the same magnitude are now rarely undertaken without the precaution of such plans. Nor are we without examples of designs made for institutions of learning. For Smith College, Columbia College, Groton School, Lawrenceville School, Andover Academy, Princeton College, and doubtless for many similar schools and colleges such plans have been carefully prepared. Where it has seemed wise to depart from them, nothing has prevented the change. If such changes take place, it does not argue against a plan which in many instances can be strictly followed and which in itself is an indication of study given to the subject.

In these times of monetary depression there is opportunity to discuss this matter. The University is growing with great rapidity. With returning prosperity any day may see an extension of the buildings, not only on the outlying fields, but on all the Quincy Street line where the College owns a long frontage deserving most serious study. The development of the Cambridge Park on the borders of the river offers another reason for undertaking this work now. Before the Park was begun the acquisition of Soldier's Field and the Longfellow playgrounds at the south of the river, led to various general suggestions that the University would do well to acquire a wide stretch of land between these grounds and the College Yard. How very splendid now it would be for

some benefactor, in connection with the Park Commissioners, to open a broad way for the short distance from the river bank to the College Yard near Quincy Street, and thus, not only benefit the public by linking the Park and the park-like College grounds, but by this means render the approach to the University from the city a stately drive along the river's side and through the park land, - what a fine substitute would this be for Old Cambridge bridge and the Port. A study for developing the whole property would at once suggest to capable people possibilities of this sort, and the first step towards such great improvements is to formulate them and ardently desire them.

Until some headway is made with this more general subject, it has seemed idle to urge further the appointment of an advisory committee as to the design of buildings, but the arguments for and against this portion of the vote of the Overseers are much like those relating to the adoption of a general plan of the grounds. It is hardly necessary to argue as to the civilizing and ennobling effect which buildings of a superior character may exert, and we have had a demonstration at the Chicago Fair that a well studied scheme and a few fixed data as to design are wonderful helps toward a grand result and are far from being intolerable restraints upon the designers of individual buildings. What can be done by even a little work in the right direction is shown at Cambridge by the unifying effect of the two new College gateways which harmonize so well with the old buildings and tend to make the Yard more of a unit. A few years of work, following the lines of a well-considered scheme, would make a wonderful difference in the whole aspect of the University buildings.

Perhaps the founding of art commissions in the great cities may bring the College public to see that such work is useful and possible, and they may come to demanding it for the University even more strongly than now. Indeed, some of us even think it is the part of a University to take a lead in such matters. Up to this time the only actual progress that has been made toward any of this work is covered by a statement from the Corporation that they are having a careful survey made of all the College property and that this is to be used for the preparation of planting plans for considerable portions of the grounds. May we hope that this first step will suggest still further progress. The matter is one

which is largely in the hands of the Corporation, but it seems quite proper for all Harvard graduates to urge their views and wishes upon that body.

February, 1896.

Robert S. Peabody, '66.

FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW.

MAJOR-GENERAL FRANCIS CHANNING BARLOW died at his home in New York, on Jan. 11, 1896. He was born in Brooklyn, Long Island, of New England parentage, on October 19, 1844. His father, David Hatch Barlow, the first scholar in his class (H. U. 1824), and also its class poet, was at this time the pastor of the First Unitarian Church in that city. General Barlow spent the last years of his life so quietly in the practice of law, that the generation now at the front scarcely appreciates how large a figure he was during the War of the Rebellion and the next ten years while he continued in public life.

Having graduated in July, 1855, at Harvard, he went to New York in September, and was occupied with private pupils for about twelve months. He then entered the office of William Curtis Noyes, Esq., and was admitted to the bar in May, 1858, and in the autumn of that year formed a partnership with George Bliss, Jr., Esq. He was practicing law in that city when the attack on Fort Sumter took place, in April, 1861. On April 19 he enlisted as a private in the Twelfth Regiment of the New York State Militia. He was married on April 20 to Arabella Wharton Griffith, of Somerville, New Jersey, and on April 21 he marched with his regiment to take part in the defense of Washington. He was appointed first lieutenant in that regiment on May 3, but the brief need of militia troops was soon satisfied, and on Aug. 5 he was mustered out of service with that regiment, and returned to his office. He was not content to stay there, however, and on Nov. 9, 1861, was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the Sixty-first Regiment of New York Volunteers and started for the field at once. During the Peninsular campaign his regiment formed a part of General Howard's brigade, and he was promoted to be its colonel on April 14, 1862. The Sixty-first Regiment under his