late sixteenth century. The father, mentioned above, because of political reasons gave up his medical ambitions and came to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1849, where he became engaged in editing, and in teaching music and languages. Here he met and married, Rose, daughter of George Busby White of Cambridge, England. This family had for generations resided in Cambridge, a line of civic officers and barristers. Two other daughters of this family married and settled in Louisville, one to a son of Bishop Griswold, the other to a Mr. Morton of the firm of Morton and Griswold, publishers, then as now in Louisville. On September 13, 1858, while his parents were yet living in Kentucky, Felix Schelling was born and christened by the venerable Bishop White.

After passing some years in the east and in Europe, the family settled in St. Louis, where Felix Schelling, Senior, became director of the St. Louis Conservatory of Music.. Young Felix was not robust during these years; so his education progressed by means of private lessons, and his devoted mother's constant reading and help. Several summers were passed roaming the prairies on a pony and busying himself making a collection of beetles, butterflies and other insects. At the age of fourteen he gave his first lecture, its subject"Harmless and Noxious Insects." The written words of this first lecture still exist. At the age of fifteen Felix was sent to New York to receive a thorough musical training under that fine old musician, Mr. Henry C. Timm, president of the New York Philharmonic Society. Felix was at this time not without a fair knowledge of music for he had played for Rubenstein at the age of thirteen. Living several years in the home of Mr. Timm, Felix's education progressed not only in music but also in modern languages. About this time the desire for a larger development than was possible to a merely musical profession, began to possess him, culminating in his breaking away from the narrowing lines designed for him and in his admission to college. He entered the course in Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in the sophomore class, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1881.

He took an active part in undergraduate affairs, especially in the musical organizations, was class poet, and a member of the Philomathean Society and of Phi Kappa Psi. When the Pennsylvania Delta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was established in 1892, he became one of the organizing members. He took the degree of LL.B.

from the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1883, joined the Sharswood Law Club and was selected to deliver the Law Oration at Commencement. The summer of 1881 was spent in England, France, Switzerland, and Germany.

In March 1886, Mr. Schelling married Miss Caroline Derbyshire, daughter of James Alexander Derbyshire, of a Quaker family of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In 1890 their first child Dorothea Derbyshire Schelling, was born. She is now the wife of Dr. Joseph Seronde, Professor of Romanic Languages at Yale University. Felix Schelling, Jr. was born in 1895, and is now a promising artist. He is the seventh of the name in direct descent.

Until 1886 Mr. Schelling practised law, but his interest remained constant in academic fields. The graduate work was not then fully organized at the University but he pursued such courses as were offered in Sanscrit and Comparative Philology under Professor Morton W. Easton and received the degree of Master of Arts in 1885. Then in 1886 came his appointment as Instructor in English.

When Mr. Schelling joined the teaching staff of the College in 1886 he found the Department of English in a somewhat nebulous state. English had been taught at Pennsylvania since William Smith, the first Provost, joined its staff in 1754, and the great teaching and inspiration of Henry Reed, the friend of Wordsworth, was still a tradition, but while the courses in Rhetoric were in the capable hands of Professor McElroy there was little organization of the work in literature. In 1888 Mr. Schelling's opportunity came when he was asked by Provost William Pepper to propose a plan by which the scope of the English courses should be broadened and the teaching of the subject be made more effective.

His scheme of organization defined the basic principles upon which the Department of English was for the first time really organized. He proposed the establishment of courses in English Composition, English Language and English Literature, outlining their distinctions but insisting upon their inter-relations. He insisted, too, upon the essential principle of the integrity of the Department of English which must retain direction and control of all instruction in that subject given at the University. He advocated the abolition of the term "rhetoric," and an increase in practical writing with a requirement of a certain amount of it for all students, thus early taking his stand against the theory that competence in

writing can be secured merely by the observation of literary masterpieces. An idea of the indefiniteness concerning the scope of English teaching at that time may be gleaned from the fact that Mr. Schelling had to insist that Old English (Anglo-Saxon) should be taught under the supervision of the teachers of English and not, like Icelandic and Gothic, by the professor of German.

The largeness of Mr. Schelling's view of the situation may be estimated by his further proposal that the Trustees secure the best available English scholar in the country to head this Department, and he relieved them of any responsibility toward himself, modestly sinking his own claims for what he considered the best interests of the University. Provost Pepper, who was a good judge of men, saw in the young instructor who made these proposals, the right man to carry them out, and appointed Mr. Schelling Assistant Professor of English Literature in the same year, 1888. The illness and death of Professor McElroy soon left to him the entire responsibility for the conduct of the Department. For advice, Professor Schelling turned especially to two persons. He consulted first Dr. Horace Howard Furness, who had placed at his friend's disposal his Shakespeare library, and who even volunteered his help in the conduct of courses described below. He next sought the counsel of the Reverend Stopford Brooke, and at the latter's home in London, talked over his plans. Mr. Schelling has told me how distinctly he remembers the last time he saw that kindly, animated face. Brooke put his broad hand on his visitor's shoulder, and with a sigh and a smile, said: "My boy, it's a fine opportunity this of yours: I wish I had your chance."

The plan which Professor Schelling evolved, with the thoughtful and mature counsel of these two scholars, was in brief:

That writing (composition) should be demanded of all students, as much of it as the other claims on their time should make possible.

That formal rhetoric, including all warnings against errors and corrections of hypothetical mistakes, should be abolished.

That the work in writing should be as informal and as interesting-by way of subject-as possible and that correction should be of actual mistakes made.

That, as to the courses in literature, there should be an attempt to approach the subject from the more familiar to the less familiar.

That therefore modern writers should come earliest, prose writers before poets.

Out of this list two courses for the sophomore year were evolved: a course in the reading and understanding of six modern novels (not a course in the history of fiction: this was the first course in the Novel for undergraduates in America, having been given in the session of 1889-1890); and secondly a course in the Essayists, also confined to a very few names, Macaulay, Carlyle, etc. The idea of these courses was not information, but the presentation to the student of good literature and the explanation of its meaning. In Junior year two courses followed in the history of literature: first, the Eighteenth Century as more familiar; second, the Elizabethan Age as more remote, and each was treated by authors with reading in class and out. Finally, as to senior year, there followed a course on the Nineteenth Century Poets and a course in the drama of Elizabeth's day.

A feature of all this work was the written report of the student, its incessant reading and correction by the teacher. Another was the voluntary "seminary" as it was Teutonically called, in which, in the upper classes, the privilege of meeting at the professor's home of an evening to read and discuss authors over and above those in the course was extended to the twelve best men. There was eager acceptance of this although no credits were given for the work.

The work in the English Language was brought under the charge of the late Morton W. Easton, who in 1892 became Professor of English and Comparative Philology while Professor Schelling became John Welsh Centennial Professor of History and English Literature. While this curriculum has naturally been widened and enriched during the progress of years, it is significant that the individual courses that were first proposed are still offered at Pennsylvania and happily still given by their founder.

It was not only in the establishment of courses however that Professor Schelling laid the foundation of the Department of English. As time went on and the College grew, new instructors came, of his selection. In a day when it was the custom in American college education for the head of a department to demand of his assistants rigid compliance with his own theories and practices of teaching, Professor Schelling pursued a different course. Each new man was given the greatest liberty of action, was spurred on

to develop his own individuality, and was encouraged to make suggestions concerning the conduct of the department. That department now contains fifty members and meets annually several thousand students. That its homogeneity and esprit de corps are still matters of comment is due perhaps largely to the character of its founder.

During his career at Pennsylvania, Professor Schelling has taken an active part in the development of the College. So productive a scholar might have with some reason avoided the demands of committee work, yet so devoted an alumnus could not do so. To recount all the activities with which he has thus been connected would be to write a volume upon the growth of new departments, the enlargement of the University's sphere of usefulness, and in some cases, the explosion of educational bubbles of great apparent circumference but of little actual permanence. In these matters, Professor Schelling has been neither a Tory nor a Radical. He has stood for the preservation of the best that the traditional culture has to give, but he has recognized also that the world moves. He was one of the leaders in the movement that resulted in the New Curriculum of the Course in Arts in 1914, and he was one of the Committee of the College Faculty which in 1920 represented the Faculty's belief that the University of Pennsylvania should continue and develop to the utmost its policy of service to the State whose name it bears. It is not only his long term of service but more especially the general trust in his sincerity, his judgment and his courage, that have made him in a special sense the representative of the Faculty of the College.

Professor Schelling's relation to his students has been a constant refutation of the mistaken idea, so often circulated nowadays, that the professor in a large urban university is necessarily remote from that personal influence which is the life of teaching. I know that to the class that entered the College in the fall of 1890 he was always a personal friend and the tradition then established has been constant. In 1904 when the graduating class dedicated the annual publication, the "Record," to him, the inscription was significant:

If anything in this book is worthy of Pennsylvania, or of those who have contributed to her welfare-it is dedicated with all affection and loyalty to Felix E. Schelling.