PROFESSOR WINCHESTER'S COURSES IN WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY IN the days when Professor Winchester was a student in college, the program of instruction included very little reference to instruction in English outside the rhetorical exercises which in one form or another were required each of the four years. In the first term of the sophomore year, logic was required, with Whately's book as text. This was followed in the second term by rhetoric, also based on Whately's text, and in the third term by English literature, based on Shaw's Manual. The first development beyond this meager schedule appears in the catalogue for 18691870, the year following Professor Winchester's graduation, when there was added instruction in the junior year providing for the "rhetorical study" of the writings of certain authors. The author selected for the first term was Chaucer. In the second term attention was given to Demosthenes, Webster, and Jeremy Taylor, and in the third term to Shakespeare and Milton. The credit for this change undoubtedly belonged to Professor Fales Henry Newhall, who was Professor Winchester's predecessor. Further evidence of progress appeared in the replacing of Shaw's Manual by Fiske's abridgment of Taine in 1872-1873. Professor Winchester's election to the chair of rhetoric and English literature coincided with a thoroughgoing revision of the whole curriculum. Thus, in the very first year of his professorship, Professor Winchester was able to introduce a new program of instruction for his department which contained marked advances over that of his predecessor. It provided, for the freshman year, a required course, one hour a week, based upon Trench's English, Past and Present, supplemented by lectures. There were also weekly exercises in composition and declamation. For the sophomore year rhetoric and logic were required five hours each fortnight, with Bain's Manual of Composition and Rhetoric and Atwater's Manual of Logic for texts. Weekly exercises in composition and declamation were also required. In junior year, in addition to the required weekly exercises in composition and declamation, there was an elective course five hours a fortnight in rhetoric and English literature, for which the text-books listed were Whately's Rhetoric and Taine's English Literature (Fiske's abridgment). The course also provided for "historical and critical study of English classics based upon the Clarendon Press editions of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Pope; together with Abbott's Shakespearean Grammar." For the senior year the required rhetorical exercises demanded either essays or original declamations. The above requirements were for the classical course. The same studies were required in the Latin-scientific course and in the scientific course, but, in some cases, were assigned to different years. In 1881-1882 the following significant statement was incorporated in the announcement for the junior elective: "select courses of reading with examinations," though these courses of reading had been in use at least as early as 1879-1880. In the same year a senior elective course was announced for |