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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 postscript. 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. -------------------------------- Page -------------------------------- 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 yours

P.S. On conferring with Mr Waldstein I find that it was not a course but a single lecture 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 extent of the essay would be less then I at first supposed

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