Letter from GEORGE PERKINS MARSH to SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD, dated February 28, 1879.
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Dear Professor Baird
Mr Charles Waldstein Ph.D. of New York, who has passed some
years in Germany, England and other European Countries is completing his academical
education by the study of philosophy and aesthetics, was invited last year to
lecture at the British Museum on the relations between intellectual culture and fine
art, as exemplified in the highest civilization of Greece. See .
The lectures were received with much favor, and very handsomely noticed in the
Academy and other literary periodicals. Mr Waldstein now proposes to revise and
complete this course, and spent a winter at Rome, and is about to proceed to Greece
to gather material for this purpose, with the view of preparing his lectures for
publication. He would be glad to have them appear under the auspices of the
Smithsonian Institution and wishes to know whether the subject of such a course
comes within the range of inquiry embraced by the proceedings of the Institution,
intending, in case of an affirmative reply, to offer the manuscript to the Board,
not of course expecting a decision until the authorities of the Institution have had
an opportunity for its examination.
It would be superfluous as well as
premature for me to volunteer an opinion the value of Mr Waldstein's views on this
subject but I can say that he is a young gentleman of fine talents and much culture,
that he has studied his thesis with great assiduity and under altogether favourable
circumstances, and that he has made a very advantageous impression on scholars and
critics of eminence with whom he has been in communication. If you are disposed to
entertain this proposal Mr Waldstein will be happy to correspond with you in regard
to all necessary detail, and I shall be glad to hear from you on the subject
Very truly yoursGeorge P. Marsh
P.S. On conferring with Mr Waldstein I find that it was not a but a single delivered by him at the B. Museum, and that the precise subject was: the relations c. c. as exemplified in the sculptural representation of the amazon at different periods of Greek civilization. Of course this of the essay would be less then I at first supposed
References in this letter:
Charles Waldstein, later known as Sir Charles Walston (1856-1927), published many studies of classical antiquity and art.