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Why apologize for literature at a time when, if we may trust our friends in the eastern provinces who supply us with our weekly reading matter, the entire country is enjoying a literary renascence, and Chicago is its centre? The great industrious city, which one of your own poets has called the "hog-butcher of the world"—this toiling giant has washed his hands of blood and dust, and now in ripe middle age, has turned, we are told, to things of the mind, grants them their full importance, and is become a friend and patron of all the fine arts. This is a very gratifying thought—tinctured only by a grave wonder whether it is true. As I turned over recently the letters of that fine poet and most interesting man, William Vaughn Moody, in whose honor this series of lectures was founded, I could not escape an im-