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Kansas University Weekly.
ment having been excavated and fitted up after the building had been erected, as it was not at first intended to be used. At the time of our visit, the laboratory was occupied by the Junior class, and there was very little room for visitors; every bit of space seemed to be occupied, and many of the students had no more than "elbow room" in which to work. Two things are very essential in a laboratory—air and light; and both are very limited in this Pharmacy cave. The ceilings are so low and the means of ventilation so poor that the smoke and vapors from the experiments practically all remain in the room, impeding the light and making breathing an absolute discomfort—at least to those who habitually breathe air. And then the walls, which were not built to withstand moisture, are constantly damp—drugs have frequently to be replaced because they are ruined by the dampness. Even when kept in cases specially lined to keep out moisture, the drugs often become mouldy and worthless. This condition of things demands attention and action. The regents and others interested, we hope, will do their best to see that the next legislature provides a remedy. If the School of Pharmacy is to continue growing and improving as it has in the past, and keep pace with the institution of which it is a part, it must have more room and better facilities.
LITERARY.
Hermann and Dorothea.
Hermann and Dorothea is a combination of the Idyl and the Epic. Fixing its character from definitions of these two styles of poetry, found in the Century dictionary, it would seem that Goethe's poem falls in the class of the middle epic or poetic tale as contrasted with the higher or heroic epic. It may also make "Epical pretensions to the laurel" in length, metre and treatment.
In theme it is an idyl like the "Cotter's Saturday Night" and has the idyllic simplicity of incident and of statement.
Considered as an epic one can claim for none of its characters the heroic proportions that would entitle it to rank with the Iliad and that ilk, unless we should except the somewhat amazonian figure of Dorothea. At any rate the term of epic occurs in Tennyson's "Princess" linked with qualities which Dorothea is known to have possessed; for we read:
"Take Lilia then for heroine clamored he
And make her some great princess six feet high Grand, epic, homicidal."
Now Dorothea while no princess to be sure, is yet presumably six feet high and notoriously
homicidal—slaying upon one occasion four masculine marauders of the most warlike nation in Europe.
There are some resemblances between Dorothea and Evangeline. Both are helpful and practical and have great presence of mind in adversity, but Evangeline is more spirituelle than Dorothea—has more faith and imagination. This comes more visibly to the front when they are seen in love. It is at once felt that Dorothea deserves comparatively little credit for taking up with such a nice boy as Hermann. Gabriel, on the other hand, is nothing; or, at most it can only be inferred that he may be a "some what" when he is seen to win the vows of so fair a creature as Evangeline. But what shall be said of her ideality, which can take an ordinary nullity and make it chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely, and of her faith, which can preserve this image even into old age.
The poet shows an acquaintance no less with Homer than with the Hebrew scriptures for we read in the 14th chapter of Judges "And Samson went down to Timmath, and saw a woman in Timmath of the daughters of the Philistines,