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HARVARD COLLEGE BY AN 
 OXONIAN 
 
j&sm 
 
x^sU&<S /P. lu^r*- 
 
HARVARD COLLEGE BY 
 AN OXONIAN 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L. 
 
 Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford 
 
 There is a world elsewhere " 
 
 — CORIOLANUS 
 
 Neto fgorft 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND LONDON 
 
 l8 9 5 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, 1894, 
 By MALM II. LAN AND CO. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped November, 1894. Reprinted 
 December, 1894. 
 
 Xortoooti -^regs : 
 
 J. S. dishing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
 
 Boston, Mass , U.S.A. 
 

 c 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Growth of Harvard. — The Infant College. — Early Gifts and 
 Bequests. — "A Constellation of Benefactors." — Grants of Public 
 Money. — The Revolutionary War. — Modern Benefactors. — 
 Founders of Families and Founders of University I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Foundation of Harvard. — Cambridge in England and Cambridge 
 in New England. — " Fair Harvard." — Emmanuel College. — The 
 Washington Elm. — General Washington a Doctor of Laws. — 
 The University at Concord. — An Overbearing Treasurer. — Har- 
 vard and Slavery .......... 23 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Religious Liberty. — The Divinity School. — The College Chapel. — 
 The Dudleian Lectures. — The English Liturgy . . . .42 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Punishments and Fines. — "The Ancient Customs." — Fagging and 
 11 Hazing." — Tutors and Undergraduates. — Rebellions . . 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Odd Characters. — Changes of Names of Places. — Commencement 
 Day. — Lafayette. — Russian Naval Officers. — Oxford Commem- 
 oration. — The Association of the Alumni. — The Classes. — The 
 After-dinner Speeches ......... 77 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Phi Beta Day. — Foundation of the Society. — Emerson's Oration in 
 
 1837. — Charles Sumner. — The Meeting and the Dinner . . 107 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Class Day. — Its Origin and Growth. — Orators, Poets, and Odists. — 
 The New England Summer. — The " Spreads." — The Exercises 
 at the Tree 120 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Undergraduates. — Harvardians and Oxonians contrasted. — The 
 Athletic Craze. — A Baseball Match. — Games regulated by the 
 Governing Body of the University. — President Eliot's Report . 134 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Caps and Gowns. — Harvard College and University. — The Dormi- 
 tories. — Room Rents. — Students' Life Seventy Years Ago. — 
 Memorial Hall . . . . . . . . . .154 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A Visit to Three Dormitories. — Dining Clubs. — The Liquor Law. — 
 Baths. — Signs and " Shingles." — Clubs. — Politics. — Christmas. 
 — A Student's Library . . . . . . . . . 171 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Harvard " Boys." — " Harvard Indifference. " — Harvard and Yale. 
 — Honest Poverty. — Oxford Servitors. — Poor Students. — 
 " Money Aids " 186 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 From a College to a University. — George Ticknor. — Influence of 
 Germany. — Oxford Colleges Forty Years Ago. — Provincialism. — 
 Foundation of New Schools at Harvard. — Duties of Professors . 209 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Elective System. — American Schools. — The Study of Greek at 
 Oxford and Cambridge. — Examinations and Prizes. — The Grad- 
 uate School ........... 227 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Law School. — Nathan Dane. — Joseph Story. — Professor 
 Langdell. — The Law Library. — The Law Review . . . 253 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Lawrence Scientific School. — Special Students .... 266 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Radcliffe College. — The Harvard Annex 273 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Library. — Gifts from England. — The Fire of 1764. — Gore 
 Hall. — The Bequests of Prescott, Sumner, and Carlyle. — J. L. 
 Sibley. — Dr. Justin Winsor 285 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The Government of Harvard. — The Charter. — The Overseers. — 
 The Corporation, Church, and State. — The Faculty. — The Pres- 
 ident. — The Professors. — Oxford and Harvard .... 297 
 
CONTEXTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Graduate Schools in Oxford and Cambridge. — Respublica Litera- 
 torum. — American Students in English Universities. — The Old 
 Home 317 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Charles William Eliot, President .... Frontispiece 
 
 First Harvard Hall, built in 1682 . . Vignette on title-page 
 
 Harvard College in 1726 Facing page 4 
 
 Holden Chapel " " 12 
 
 Harvard College. The Second Centennial Cel- 
 ebration, 1836 ....<,.. " " 26 
 
 The Wadsworth House " " 86 
 
 The Yard " " 122 
 
 The Hemenway Gymnasium " "150 
 
 Memorial Hall " " 169 
 
 The College Gate " 200 
 
 Austin Hall . ... . . . . . ' " "254 
 
 The Museum of Comparative Zoology ... " " 266 
 
 The Library, Gore Hall . " " 289 
 
 Sever Hall " « 304 
 
 xi 
 
TO 
 
 Justin Wtnsor, 3LIL31. 
 
 LIBRARIAN OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
 
 AS A SLIGHT TOKEN 
 
 OF 
 
 MY RESPECT FOR HIS LEARNING 
 
 AND OF 
 
 MY GRATITUDE FOR HIS KINDNESS 
 
 TO MY WIFE AND MYSELF 
 
 DURING OUR RESIDENCE IN CAMBRIDGE 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 W(fi& Book is JBeotcateti 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Growth of Harvard. — The Infant College. — Early Gifts and Be- 
 quests. — "A Constellation of Benefactors." — Grants of Public Money. 
 — The Revolutionary War. — Modern Benefactors. — Founders of 
 Families and Founders of University. 
 
 IN the summer and early autumn of last year, I spent in all 
 nearly two months in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the seat 
 of Harvard College, the first and the oldest of American 
 universities. A young graduate of the College, with whom I 
 had fallen into talk on my outward voyage, as we paced the 
 deck of the Cephalonia, had begged me not to keep Oxford 
 in my memory when I visited the American Cambridge. 
 Oxford's ancient towers, her chapels and cloisters, her halls, 
 her quadrangles and her lawns, High Street and Broad Street, 
 Magdalen Bridge, and the massive ivy- mantled city walls, all 
 made his heart sink within him when he thought of his own 
 beloved Alma Mater. Dear as she was to him, how could she 
 be dear to one in whose mind there always lived the image of 
 the most beautiful and the most venerable of all universities ? 
 " ' Oxford,' Southey once playfully said, ' is a place to make 
 an American unhappy.' " Some touch of this unhappiness 
 seemed to have fallen upon my companion as he then spoke to 
 me. There was no need for it. If Oxford has ever made a 
 single American unhappy, Harvard on many a summer day has 
 made at all events one Englishman happy. 
 
 In a fog on the Banks of Newfoundland I had caught a 
 
 B I 
 
2 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 heavy cold, and for nearly a fortnight after my arrival I kept 
 to the house. When at length I ventured out, I found the 
 " Yard " of Harvard as pleasant a place to stroll in as the 
 garden of St. John's and the walks of Magdalen. One thing 
 only was wanting — there was not a single bench to be found. 
 There was shade, and there was beauty, and the hurrying to 
 and fro of young and eager life ; but there was no place for a 
 weary man to sit and rest himself, as he watched the flickering 
 of the light and shadow upon the grass, and the student's 
 strong and rapid step. In my journal l I recorded : — 
 
 " On a hot June day I strolled with great pleasure in the 
 Yard. The lawns were beautifully green, and the tall, graceful 
 trees cast everywhere a delightful shade. It was surprising 
 how green was the grass and how fresh, overshadowed though 
 it was by trees. There is no quadrangle in Oxford more de- 
 lightful on a hot summer day. Harvard surely is a College 
 that a man can love." The old red-brick halls which enclose 
 two sides of the Yard recalled to my mind not so much Oxford 
 as the Courts of the Temple. Much of the beauty of the scene 
 was due to the freshness of the foliage, for the New England 
 spring is late. I had spent the winter in Switzerland. When 
 I left Clarens on May 2, the lilacs had already faded. Ten 
 days later I found them in full bloom in the parks of Liver- 
 pool. On the twenty-second, the day on which I landed, they 
 were still in bud in Cambridge. In June, therefore, the trees 
 were in their first freshness. In the winter, when they were 
 stripped of their leaves, and when the lawns were hidden 
 beneath the snow, the Yard would not bear a comparison with 
 Oxford. I was fortunate in seeing it at its best ; when the 
 
 1 In the few extracts which I give from my journal I have not strictly 
 followed the text; sometimes I have thrown two entries into one. 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 3 
 
 red-brick halls, half- revealed through the green leaves, half- 
 hidden, with a sky above them blue as the skies of Italy, have 
 a beauty of their own. 
 
 One pleasant sight I unfortunately missed. In the summer 
 evenings it has long been the habit for the Glee Club to sing 
 in the Yard, while the students lie about on the grass, or lean 
 out of the windows of their rooms listening. I went there 
 once or twice in the hope of hearing the songs, but I chose 
 the wrong time or the wrong day. The Yard was silent. This 
 pleasant custom, I fear, is not so well kept up as of old. The 
 Crimson, the undergraduates' daily paper, laments its decay. 
 So long ago as Emerson's young days, singing was cultivated in 
 the College. He presented himself with some of the other 
 freshmen to the singing-master, who, " when his turn came, said 
 to him, ' Chord ! ' < What? ' said Emerson. ' Chord ! Chord ! 
 I tell you,' repeated the master. ' I don't know what you 
 mean,' said Emerson. ' Why, sing ! Sing a note ! ' So I made 
 some kind of a noise, and the singing-master said, ' That will 
 do, sir. You need not come again.' " l 
 
 The long vacation I spent in a pleasant village on Cape 
 Cod. When I returned to Cambridge at the end of Septem- 
 ber, it was almost with a feeling of anxiety that I went back 
 to a spot where I had happily sauntered away so many an idle 
 hour. I feared lest I should find that, under the fierce influ- 
 ence of the summer heats, most of its charms had passed 
 away. My mind was soon set at rest, "The Yard," I re- 
 corded, "looked very pretty and pleasant in the sunshine 
 of an autumn day. I wandered about it for more than half 
 an hour with enjoyment, watching the bustle of the beginning 
 of term, and the young life so full of activity and hope. 
 
 1 O. W. Holmes's R. W. Emerson, 1885, p. 361. 
 
4 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 How many Presidents of the United States — Presidents, at 
 least, in their confident ambition — were passing by me ! " 
 
 How vast was the change since those far-distant days when 
 " the fair and comely edifice " of freshly-cut timber in which 
 the infant University was lodged, on a narrow strip of land 
 "bordering a pleasant river," was "thought by some to be too 
 gorgeous for a wilderness, and yet too mean, in others' appre- 
 hensions, for a college ! " * Oxford, not many years earlier, 
 had seen rise amid the meadows outside her city walls, that 
 graceful pile in which the Gothic college and the ancient 
 Jacobean mansion are so happily blended. The fair monu- 
 ment which Nicholas Wadham raised to himself is durable, 
 for it is built in stone. No less durable is the monument 
 which John Harvard helped to raise, built though it was with 
 unseasoned wood. This home of learning was destined to 
 prove an abiding city; for its foundations rested, not on the 
 piety of any one man, but on the zeal and the affection of a 
 high-minded community. A man of great nobility of charac- 
 ter presided over the General Court of the Colony which 
 passed the first vote of money "towards a school or college." 
 It was Henry Vane — Milton's "Vane, young in years, but in 
 sage counsels old." He links Harvard to Oxford, for it was 
 in Magdalen, most beautiful of colleges, that he had studied. 
 His statue might well stand beside the Puritan minister's, 
 under the shadow of the noble hall which commemorates the 
 brave men who, two hundred years later, fell in the defence 
 of that liberty for which Harvard crossed the sea, and for 
 which Vane gave his life. 
 
 1 New England 's First Fruits and Johnson's Wonder Working Provi- 
 dence, 1 65 1, quoted in The Early College Buildings at Cambridge, by A. M. 
 Davis, 1892, p. 4. 
 
if? 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 5 
 
 However " fair and comely " was the outside of the building, 
 inside there was poverty enough. In a country where the 
 midwinter cold ofttimes is so sharp that it freezes the inlets 
 of the sea, in few of the chambers and studies was there a 
 fireplace. The modern American likes to keep up the tem- 
 perature of his house to seventy degrees. In the lecture- 
 rooms at Harvard, the thermometer is not allowed to fall 
 below sixty-eight. It often stands above this oppressive heat. 
 The forefathers of these delicate New Englanders lived in a 
 building made of ill-seasoned wood, which would soon have 
 shrunk and let the north wind sweep through the crevices. 
 "The students must have collected in the hall within the 
 settle, where, by the light of the public candle, cowering over 
 the public fire, was to be found the only place where they 
 could, with any sort of comfort, pursue their studies during 
 the long winter evenings." 1 A set of rules, under the name 
 of Liberties and Orders of Harvard College, had been drawn 
 up for their government. No scholar was to be admitted till 
 "he was able to read Tully, or such like classical author 
 extempore, and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose, 
 suo {tit aiunt) Marte, and decline perfectly the paradigms 
 of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue." 2 Such a knowledge 
 of Latin seems, at first sight, little likely to have been met 
 with in so young a settlement; but outside Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, there was perhaps, at this time, no spot where among 
 an equal number of inhabitants, so many Englishmen were to 
 be found who had received a liberal education. So early as 
 1638 there were forty or fifty graduates of the old country 
 
 1 The Early Buildings at Cambridge, p. 23; The College in Early 
 Days, p. 8. 
 
 2 Quincy's Harvard, I. 515. 
 
6 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 dwelling in the sparse villages of New England. 1 These men 
 were not those failures of a university who, in the present 
 age, year after year cross the sea to our Colonies to become 
 failures once more. They were a chosen band, broken to toil 
 and hardships, and yet retaining a deep love of learning. 
 Their children should not grow up in ignorance. "'Learn- 
 ing,' to use their own fine expression, was not 'to be buried 
 in the graves of the fathers.' " ~ In almost every parish there 
 was a minister "who usually prepared the young men for their 
 examinations. Latin was taught as a spoken language. 
 Often teacher and pupil would take walks together through 
 the fields and woods, and converse of all they saw in Latin." 3 
 The rules by which the infant College was governed are too 
 long to quote at length. The following will serve as in- 
 stances : — 
 
 " Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know 
 God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life. 
 
 " They shall honour as their parents magistrates, elders, tutors, and 
 aged persons by being silent in their presence (except they be called on 
 to answer), not gainsaying; showing all those laudable expressions of hon- 
 our and reverence in their presence that are in use, as bowing before them, 
 standing uncovered, or the like. 
 
 " None shall pragmatically intrude or intermeddle in other men's affairs. 
 
 "None shall, under any pretence whatsoever, frequent the company 
 and society of such men as lead an ungirt and dissolute life. 
 
 " The scholars shall never use their mother tongue, except that in public 
 exercises of oratory, or such like, they be called to make them in English. 
 
 "Every scholar shall be called by his surname only till he 'be invested 
 with his first degree, except he be a Fellow- Commoner or Knight's eldest 
 son, or of superior nobility." 4 
 
 1 Life of Joseph Story, II. 256. 
 
 2 Harvard College, 250th Anniversary, p. 253. 
 
 3 History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, by G. G. Bush, p. 24. 
 
 4 Quincy's Harvard, I. 515. 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 7 
 
 By this last rule it is not meant that the Christian name 
 shall not be used, but that no title of respect, such as Sir or 
 Master, shall be given. Johnson, in a note on Sir Oliver 
 Mar-text in As You Like It, says : " He that has taken his first 
 degree at the University is in the Academical style called 
 Dominus, and in common language was heretofore termed 
 Sir." x In the Harvard accounts, quoted in Mr. A. M. Davis's 
 Early College Buildings, 2 we find entered Sir Bulkeley, Sir 
 Brewster, and Sir Downing. Sir Downing was George Down- 
 ing, the "stingy fellow" and "perfidious rogue" of Pepys's 
 Diary* 
 
 The lot of the two first presidents, Dunster and Chauncy, 
 was as hard as the lot of learned men has so often been in 
 all times and in all countries. The ills which assailed the 
 scholar's life assailed them. They were scarcely happier 
 than Lydiat or Galileo. Both were men of great learning. 
 Chauncy had been nominated, by the heads of Houses at the 
 English Cambridge, to the chair of Hebrew, and had filled 
 the chair of Greek. 4 They did their duty faithfully, and had 
 as their reward, "thankless labour, unrequited service, arrear- 
 ages unpaid, posthumous applause, a doggerel dirge, and a 
 Latin epitaph." 5 It was the res dura et jrgni novitas — the 
 hard times and all the difficulties of a young settlement — 
 which were mostly to blame. The first president had added 
 to his troubles by " falling into the briers of Antipaedobap- 
 tism. He had borne public testimony in the church at 
 
 1 Johnson's Shakespeare, ed. 1765, II. 66. 2 P. 8. 
 
 3 Ed. 1848, I. 108, 333. 
 
 4 Perhaps, however, he was only Greek Lecturer at Trinity College. 
 See the Dictionary of National Biography^ 
 
 5 Quincy's Harvard, I. 14. 
 
8 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Cambridge against the administration of baptism to any 
 infant whatsoever." Privations he was more able to put up 
 with than heresy. In a petition to the Governor he said: 
 "Considering the poverty of the country, I am willing to 
 descend to the lowest step; desiring nothing more than to 
 supply me and mine with food and raiment." 1 The second 
 president also had his own briers of baptism into which he 
 fell. Contrary to the prevailing faith among the settlers that 
 "a sprinkling was sufficient," he maintained, says an early 
 writer, "that the infant should be washed all over, — an opin- 
 ion not tolerable in this cold region, and impracticable at 
 certain seasons of the year." 2 He had as hard a lot as his 
 predecessor. 
 
 Nineteen years after the College had been founded, it pos- 
 sessed, as was stated in a memorial, " in real revenue about 
 twelve pounds per annum (which is a small pittance to be 
 shared among four Fellows), besides fifteen pounds per annum 
 which, by the donors' appointment, is for scholarships." 3 
 Nevertheless, the sum of money voted by the General Court 
 for the foundation of the College, "was equal to a year's rate 
 of the whole Colony." 4 From the first, gifts and benefits had 
 not been wanting, but it was "willing poverty" rather than 
 wealth which gave. Of wealthy men there were few, if any, 
 to be found. John Harvard, that "godly man," that "lover 
 of learning," a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 
 and "sometime minister of God's word at Charlestown," 
 bequeathed to the College half his property and his library. 
 The sum received was not quite four hundred pounds. His 
 books give us some insight into the character of a man of 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 18, 20. 2 lb. I. 47. 
 
 8 lb. I. 23. * lb. I. 8. 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 9 
 
 whom, unhappily, scarcely anything is known. He had 
 brought with him across the sea more than two hundred and 
 sixty volumes, among them not only Chrysostom and Calvin, 
 Duns Scotus, and Luther, but Homer and Plutarch, Terence 
 and Horace, with Stephanus's notes, Chapman's Homer, 
 Bacon's Essays and Advancement of Learning, and Camden's 
 Remains. The magistrates raised among themselves two 
 hundred pounds to be spent on books. Other gifts came in. 
 The Rev. W. Allen sent two cows. Cotton cloth worth nine 
 shillings was given by Richard Dana, the ancestor of another 
 Richard Dana, who, nearly two hundred years later, when a 
 student of Harvard, failing in health, went for two years 
 before the mast, and on his return gave the world a delightful 
 book. The Rev. Mr. Latham, of Lancaster County, 1 England, 
 sent five pounds. Richard Saltonstall, a man of large means, 
 gave more than five hundred pounds. He belonged to one of 
 those New England families, happily not few in number, who, 
 generation after generation, have shown their love for Harvard. 
 Theophilus Gale, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, "a 
 learned and industrious divine, as appears by his Court of the 
 Gentiles and his Vanity of Pagan Philosophy," bequeathed his 
 library to the College. From Sir John Maynard, who outlived 
 all his brother-lawyers, and but for the coming of William of 
 Orange would have outlived the law also, came eight chests 
 of books. From the New England towns and villages, and even 
 from distant settlements, contributions flowed in. Little Scar- 
 borough, away to the north in Maine, sent two pounds nine 
 shillings and sixpence, while from the far-distant South, the 
 
 1 I have seen on a tombstone in the graveyard of Barnstable, Massa- 
 chusetts, a man described as being born " in the County of Lancashire, 
 England." The meaning of the word shire is apparently lost in America. 
 
10 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 people of Eleutheria in the Bahamas, "out of their poverty," 
 sent one hundred and twenty-four pounds. Smaller gifts came 
 in, such as a pewter flagon worth ten shillings, a bell, a fruit- 
 dish, a sugar-spoon, a silver-tipt jug, one great salt, and one 
 small trencher-salt. 1 In the Information of the Present Neces- 
 sities of the College which was laid before the General Court 
 in 1655, mention is made of "some parcels of land," owned 
 by the College, "none of which can with any reason or to any 
 benefit be sold." A happy thing it was that these "parcels" 
 were retained, for some of them have risen enormously in 
 value. The house and plot of ground in Boston which one 
 Henry Webb bequeathed to the College in 1660, ten years 
 ago, was set down in the accounts as worth one hundred and 
 sixty-five thousand dollars [^33»73o]. 2 Let "the gentle 
 reader" who buys his book at Messrs. Little, Brown & 
 Co.'s shop give a thought to the old Puritan, who two and a 
 half centuries ago lived on this very spot, and dying left "the 
 rent to be forever for the maintenance of some poor scholars, 
 or otherwise for the best good of the College." 
 
 With all these gifts, the College long remained poor. How 
 small were its means, even so late as 1695, is shown by a vote 
 of the Corporation " that six leather chairs be forthwith pro- 
 vided for the use of the library, and six more before the com- 
 mencement, in case the treasury will allow of it." 3 Forks 
 appear for the first time in the accounts, in 1707. So late 
 as the middle of last century, "each scholar carried to the 
 dining-table his own knife and fork, and when he had dined, 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 10, 12, 166, 506-513. 
 
 2 Lb. I. 23; Annual Reports, 1883-4, Appendix, p. 19; The Exhibitions 
 at Harvard College, by A. M. Davis, p. 5. 
 
 3 Higher Education, etc., p. 49. 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 11 
 
 wiped them on the tablecloth." 1 A short time before Adam 
 Smith became an exhibitioner of Balliol College, the knives 
 and forks were chained to the table. 2 In the inns in France, 
 even many years later than this, a knife was not supplied, 
 only a fork. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, in 1742, noticed, as a 
 sign of increasing refinement in Scotland, that at the tavern 
 in Haddington, where the Presbytery dined, knives and forks 
 were provided. 3 There was so little money in the Colony 
 that the Harvard students often settled their accounts in kind. 
 "Bills were paid with rye, Indian [corn], wheat, malt, apples, 
 butter; with cows, oxen, sheep, lambs, steers; with beef, pork, 
 and bacon; with sugar and salt; with wool and sacking. Pay- 
 ments in meat would appear, at one time, to have become dis- 
 proportionately large"; for in 1667 the overseers "ordered 
 that the Steward shall not be injoyned to accept of above 
 one quarter part flesh-meat of any person." 4 
 
 Better days were drawing near. Harvard had warm friends 
 on both sides of the Atlantic, and on both sides wealth was 
 rapidly increasing. From the old home gifts and bequests 
 came to the College, which, likely enough, would have gone 
 to Oxford or Cambridge had either university been opened to 
 the Nonconformists. The miserable test of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles deprived our ancient seats of learning of good men 
 and good money. " Among the English Dissenters, Harvard 
 College had at all times been the object of munificent patro- 
 nage." "The constant stream of gifts which flowed from Eng- 
 land " did not cease even with the War of the Revolution. 5 
 
 1 Early College Buildings, pp. 13, 20. 
 
 2 Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, II. 307. 
 
 3 A . Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 64. 4 Early College Buildings, p. 1 2. 
 5 Quincy's Harvard, II. 115; Higher Education, etc., p. 52. 
 
12 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 In the names given to Holden Chapel and Holworthy and 
 Hollis Halls, are commemorated English benefactors who 
 never set foot on American soil. Sir Matthew Holworthy, 
 a London merchant, bequeathed to the College the largest 
 sum which it received in the seventeenth century. Of men 
 bearing the name of Hollis, there was "a constellation of 
 benefactors," to use the words of President Quincy. So long 
 ago as 1690, Robert Thorner, the uncle of the first of the seven 
 who form this constellation, left property to the College. The 
 last, who died in 1804, bequeathed one hundred pounds to 
 be laid out in Greek and Latin classics. Four of these men 
 bore the Christian name of Thomas. The first Thomas 
 founded Professorships of Divinity and of Mathematics and 
 Natural Philosophy. "Scarcely a ship sailed from London 
 during the last ten years of his life without bearing some 
 evidence of his affection and liberality." On sending the 
 first of his numerous presents of books to the Library, he wrote : 
 "After forty years' diligent application to mercantile busi- 
 ness, my God, whom I serve, has mercifully succeeded my 
 endeavours, and with my increase inclined my heart to a 
 proportional distribution. I have credited the promise, 'He 
 that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, ' and have found 
 it verified in this life." His grandson's donations, though 
 not nearly so large, scarcely fell short of two thousand pounds 
 sterling. 1 He is Thomas Hollis, "the strenuous Whig," de- 
 scribed by Boswell, "who used to send over Europe presents 
 of democratical books, with their boards stamped with daggers 
 and caps of liberty." Many of these volumes came to Har- 
 vard " splendidly bound, and the covers stamped with a char- 
 acteristic emblem or device. Some are marked by a liberty 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 183, 186, 232, 430; II. 147, 411. 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 13 
 
 cap, or an owl holding in its talons a pen, with the motto, 
 'By deeds of peace '; others by the effigy of Liberty, holding 
 in her right hand her cap, and in her left a spear." The 
 learned Mrs. Carter said "he was a bad man. He used to 
 talk uncharitably." To which Johnson replied : "Poh! poh ! 
 madam; who is the worse for being talked of uncharitably? 
 Besides, he was a dull, poor creature as ever lived; and I 
 believe he would not have done harm to a man whom he knew 
 to be of very opposite principles to his own. I remember 
 once at the Society of Arts, when an advertisement was to be 
 drawn up, he pointed me out as the man who could do it best. 
 This, you will observe, was kindness to me. I, however, 
 slipt away, and escaped it." When Mrs. Carter went on to 
 say: "I doubt he was an Atheist," Johnson rejoined, "I don't 
 know that. He might, perhaps, have become one if he had 
 had time to ripen (smiling). He might have exuberated 
 into an Atheist." * Horace Walpole described him as a " most 
 excellent man, a most immaculate Whig, but as simple a poor 
 soul as ever existed, except his editor." 2 Dr. Franklin wrote 
 much more highly of him. Speaking of what he had done, 
 he writes: "It is prodigious the quantity of good that may 
 be done by one man, if he will make a business of it." z 
 
 Though, at its foundation, Harvard received a grant of 
 public money, nevertheless, to the Commonwealth, during the 
 two centuries and a half of its existence, it has owed but little. 
 It has slowly been raised up to its great height, first by the 
 generous zeal for learning in outsiders, and next by the love 
 and liberality of its own children. By the State it was far 
 
 1 Boswell, Life of Johnson, Clarendon Press edition, IV. 97. 
 
 2 Walpole's Utters, VII. 346. 
 
 3 Franklin's Memoirs, ed. 1818, III. 135. 
 
14 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 more encumbered by the unsoundness which afflicted the cur- 
 rency during the whole of the eighteenth century, than relieved 
 by the aids which were conferred. Twenty years before the 
 vast disturbance to public credit that was caused by the Revo- 
 lutionary War, so early as 1755, the treasurer of the Col- 
 lege, on valuing its property, " put down all the capital sums 
 at only one-fifth part of the nominal sums originally given, 
 in consequence of the funds having sunk by the depreciation 
 of the paper currency." l By the end of the war the deprecia- 
 tion had become far greater. Fifteen thousand six hundred 
 pounds, not in nominal but in real value, which before the 
 outbreak of hostilities had been invested in the public funds, 
 if sold out eleven years later, would have produced no more 
 than seven hundred and fifty-eight pounds. 2 Silver and gold 
 had disappeared from common use; "in paper money, a quill 
 cost a dollar and a half, and a dinner over fifty dollars." 8 In 
 1780 the Professor of Divinity was paid in paper money, the 
 magnificent sum of nine thousand one hundred and ninety-two 
 pounds, for one year's salary. Let not our Regius Professor 
 of Divinity at Oxford mournfully reflect that in a petty col- 
 lege in a small colony, in the comparative poverty of last 
 century, a rebel's heterodoxy received as its reward nearly 
 five times as much as his own orthodoxy at the present day in 
 the wealthiest university in the world. In gold, silver, and 
 copper, the poor man would have been paid only eighty-seven 
 pounds ten shillings and eight-pence; 4 more than enough, 
 no doubt, for a Dissenter and a rebel, but scarcely enough for 
 the needs, however modest, of human life. Part of the heavy 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 237. 2 Lb. II. 250. 
 
 3 Higher Education, by G. G. Bush, p. 67. 
 
 4 Quincy's Harvard, II. 538. 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 15 
 
 loss which fell on Harvard was made up by severe economy, 
 and by the management of an honest and able treasurer. 
 Through the worst times the Corporation, mainly trusting 
 to his advice, "held with unshaken firmness the certificates 
 of public debt which they had been compelled to receive, 
 and vested in them with great judgment whatever sums were 
 brought into their treasury. On the funding of the National 
 Debt, the College derived the full benefit of their wisdom 
 and of their confidence in the ultimate returning of the 
 nation to a sense of justice." 1 
 
 The Legislature of Massachusetts twice wronged the com- 
 munity at large by granting a lottery to Harvard. With the 
 aid of the money thus mischievously raised two new halls were 
 built. 2 For ten years, beginning with 1814, the College re- 
 ceived an annual contribution from the State of ten thousand 
 dollars (^2044), a large part of which, by the terms of the 
 vote, was spent in defraying the fees of poor students. 3 Since 
 1824, no public aid of any kind has been granted. Happily, 
 the stream of private bounty soon began to flow more liberally 
 than ever. Even before 1780, about three times as much had 
 come to the College by gifts and bequests as had been contri- 
 buted by the State. 4 The whole of the State's contributions 
 has been frequently exceeded many fold by the gift of a 
 single citizen in a single year. "European universities," 
 writes Professor Goodwin, "boast of the imperial and national 
 governments which support them, and support them with noble 
 liberality; but the bounty of emperors and princes, and even 
 of republics, is precarious, and may fail with political changes. 
 Harvard has a more than imperial treasury in the love and 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 254. 2 lb. II. 273, 292. 
 
 3 lb. II. 331, 356. 4 Higher Education, etc., p. 66. 
 
16 HARVARD COLLEGE, chap. 
 
 respect of her sons, and in the confidence of the community." 1 
 Rarely has the stream of wise beneficence flowed with a wider 
 and more even flood. In 1840, the "productive estate, real 
 and personal," of the College was valued at six hundred and 
 forty-six thousand dollars (^,'132,104), "the result of private 
 munificence, or of the wise management of the Corporation." 2 
 In 1891-92 the income from the estate amounted to four hun- 
 dred and forty-three thousand dollars (,£90,591), more than 
 two-thirds of the value that the estate itself had borne half a 
 century earlier; while the gifts and bequests in that year were 
 no less than five hundred and sixteen thousand dollars 
 (.£105,519). In the three years ending in 1884, the Uni- 
 versity received in bequests and gifts, one million and ninety- 
 six thousand dollars (^£224,128). Seven years later we are 
 told that " the gifts to the University continue in an ever- 
 flowing stream, and amount to about five hundred thousand 
 dollars [^102,249] annually." In 1891-92 the gifts to the 
 University exceeded by sixty thousand dollars (£12,269) the 
 payments of its three thousand students. 3 "The financial 
 year, 1892-93," reports the President to the Board of Over- 
 seers, "was satisfactory as regards the increase of the funds, 
 and balances by gifts and bequests, the total increase of the 
 year being five hundred and fifty-two thousand dollars 
 \_jQi 12,881]." 4 Benefactors of Harvard, it seems, are not 
 likely to suffer from "a satiety of commendation." I know 
 of nothing equal to this "satisfactory," since the days of 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 41. 
 
 2 Quincy's Harvard, II. 402. 
 
 3 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, pp. 98, 100; Annual Reports, 
 1883-84, p. 45; LLigher Education in Massachusetts, by G. G. Bush, 
 p. 224. 
 
 * Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 47. 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 17 
 
 Harry Hotspur and his wife. "'Oh, my sweet Harry,' says 
 she, 'how many hast thou killed to-day?' 'Give my roan 
 horse a drench,' says he; and answers, 'some fourteen,' an 
 hour after; 'a trifle, a trifle.' " The extraordinary moderation 
 of the President's words only shows how splendid for many a 
 year must have been the benefactions. Among the contribu- 
 tions none is more touching than the bequest of an aged 
 negress, a widow. In the evil days of old, she and her hus- 
 band had escaped from slavery. He became the coloured 
 messenger of John Albion Andrew, that great Governor of 
 Massachusetts, who once said : " I know not what record of 
 sin awaits me in the other world, but this I know, — that I 
 was never mean enough to despise any man because he was 
 poor, because he was ignorant, or because he was black." 
 With the bequest, which is valued at more than four thousand 
 dollars (^817), a scholarship is to be founded for the benefit 
 of poor and deserving coloured students. 1 That they need 
 not fear humiliating treatment from their comrades was 
 strikingly shown by an incident which occurred during my 
 visit to Cambridge. A negro undergraduate, going to have 
 his hair cut, found that the hairdresser drew the line at a 
 white man just as in Nicholas Nickleby it had been drawn at 
 a baker. It so happened that the student was a great foot- 
 ball player. His brother-athletes took up his cause, and let 
 the hairdresser know that if he persisted in his intolerance, 
 he would lose the custom of the College. The man quickly 
 yielded. The Legislature of Massachusetts at once passed a 
 statute by which throughout the Commonwealth barbers were 
 henceforth required to be no respecters of persons, and to 
 shave without distinction of colour. 
 
 1 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, March, 1894, p. 442. 
 C 
 
 
18 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 In England rich men found families; in America they 
 found universities, or they enlarge them. The family often 
 falls away to shame; the university remains forever a noble 
 and unsullied memorial. On its founder no stain is ever cast 
 by the misconduct of his descendants. It is only the noble- 
 man's title which, raising each succeeding generation above 
 the world, and making it conspicuous for disgrace, can cast 
 reproach backwards upon the fair fame of him who first held 
 it. How many great lawyers, how many great soldiers and 
 sailors, how many great traders and bankers, by the rank which 
 was given them as an honour, have become shamed through 
 the folly and misconduct of those who inherited it! Had it 
 not been for the title, the very existence of these unworthy 
 descendants would be unknown; the chain which bound them 
 to their illustrious forefather would be unseen. Not every 
 foolish peer is "the tenth transmitter of some foolish face." 
 It is surprising how soon folly can appear among the descend- 
 ants of men of the most vigorous and the most subtle minds. 
 Happy it is for America that, free as her citizens are by the 
 very institutions of the country, from the almost overpowering 
 temptation to found a family, they are diverted into a widely 
 different path in the natural search after distinction ! There 
 are, indeed, among them, men so base that they turn their 
 back on their country where their wealth has been made and 
 is still accumulating, and, doing nothing for its good, lead a 
 luxurious life in Europe amidst all the refinements of an 
 ancient civilization. Others, unworthy of republican equality, 
 become hangers-on of the English aristocracy. " The wealth 
 of the New World," writes Dr. Wendell Holmes, "burrows 
 its way among the privileged classes of the Old World." 1 
 
 1 R. W. E?nerson i by O. W. Holmes, 1885, p. 180. 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 19 
 
 "The gallantry and military spirit of the old English nobility " 
 is no longer content with "going into the city to look for a 
 fortune." It goes all the way to New York; unless, as some- 
 times happens, the fortune crosses the sea to look for it. 
 There are other Americans who, like the wretch Jay Gould, 
 heap up riches for riches' sake; who living give nothing and 
 dying leave nothing to any great and noble object. They 
 pass away without showing that for one single moment they 
 had been touched by a generous thought. "They die, and 
 make no sign." 
 
 It is, for the most part, by men who have been educated 
 at Harvard, or by those who wish to commemorate them, that 
 the gifts and bequests are made. Early last year, for instance, 
 a widow " executed an agreement with the President and Fel- 
 lows to build a Dormitory for the College at a cost of about 
 one hundred and fifty thousand dollars (,£30,673), to be 
 called Perkins Hall." It is raised as a memorial to three 
 graduates of her husband's family, the eldest of whom matri- 
 culated in 1 7 17 and the youngest in 1819. 1 In 1764, under 
 the will of Thomas Hancock, the Hancock Professorship of 
 Hebrew and other Oriental languages had been founded. 
 The endowment was but small. One hundred and twenty- 
 eight years later, a remote descendant of the founder aug- 
 mented it "by a residuary legacy which has thus far yielded 
 seventy-two thousand dollars (^14, 7 2 2). 2 About the same 
 time the College received fifty thousand dollars (^10,224) 
 under the will of George Bemis, towards the foundation of a 
 Chair of International Law. 3 In the same year, from the 
 estate of another graduate, George Draper, there came a 
 
 1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 45. 2 lb. p. 30. 
 
 8 Reports, 1891-92, p. 26, 
 
20 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 bequest of forty-seven thousand dollars (^96 io). 1 These 
 are but instances of the never-failing stream of benefactions 
 by which the love of Harvard men is shown for Harvard. It 
 may be the case, and no doubt sometimes is the case, that it 
 is mainly by the desire of distinction that the gift is prompted. 
 Happy is the country where it is by the University and not by 
 the Crown that the wealthy trader is honoured, and where the 
 title which is coveted and won is not that of Knight or Baro- 
 net, but of Founder ! 
 
 So constant and so bountiful are the contributions which 
 Harvard receives, that on them she counts for most of the 
 enlargements which are needed by the rapidly increasing 
 number of her students, and by the fresh requirements of 
 science and learning. The fees, therefore, that are paid 
 for tuition are laid out in providing not accommodation, but 
 instruction. New subjects are included in each year's course, 
 and additional professorships are established. In the brief 
 space of a young man's life, Harvard "has been removed out 
 of the strait into a broad place where there is no straitness." 
 
 We of the ancient universities may well look with wonder, 
 and even with a certain touch of sadness, on these great 
 doings. Why does not the same stream of bounty flow on 
 Oxford and Cambridge? Why, when they make known their 
 needs, — and their needs often are great, — does not a gene- 
 rous benefactor at once arise. Balliol College, as a memorial 
 to its famous Master, is attempting, this very year, by public 
 subscription, to enlarge its foundation so that it may do even 
 greater things than it has already done. The sum which it 
 has received is not one-tenth part of what this American Uni- 
 versity receives almost every year; and yet less than half a 
 century ago the students at Harvard were not twice as nume- 
 1 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1893, P- 2 5 2< 
 
I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 21 
 
 rous as those of Balliol at the present time. In Cambridge, 
 by the great fall in rents, the salary of the Downing Professor 
 of Medicine has dwindled to two hundred pounds a year. 
 The post lately became vacant by the resignation of the Pro- 
 fessor. "It will be somewhat difficult," wrote the Times, 1 
 " to obtain a suitable successor owing to the fact that the pro- 
 fessorship is most insufficiently endowed." All the fame 
 that Cambridge has gained by her great School of Medicine 
 apparently does nothing for her. In the American Cam- 
 bridge, such an insufficiency in so important a professorship 
 could scarcely exist; it certainly would not last long. Ox- 
 ford 2 is wronged by the men who, even after all the reforms 
 which have been made, are overpaid for the work they do. 
 Much of the work done in the University is but ill-requited. 
 Many a College tutor measures out his labour not by what he 
 receives, but by a noble zeal for learning and for the welfare 
 of his pupils. Some of them, I think, would do more good 
 if they laboured less. The mischief from over-teaching is 
 not much less than the mischief from under-teaching. The 
 over-taught student, when his guide is from his side, gropes 
 helplessly along the road of learning. Be that as it may, the 
 work that is done in the University is generous in its total 
 amount when measured by its reward. Those who are over- 
 paid are few in number compared with the whole body, but 
 they are conspicuous by their position. To them must be 
 added the holders of prize fellowships, — men who for the 
 most part do nothing, and are expected to do nothing, either 
 for learning or even for teaching. In many departments 
 there is need of greater and of new endowments. These 
 will flow in but slowly, if they flow in at all, so long as it is 
 
 1 January 31, 1894. 
 
 2 I say nothing of Cambridge, of which I know but little. 
 
22 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. i. 
 
 known in the country that large sums are still wasted, as wasted 
 they most certainly are. No one can reproach Harvard with 
 an ill use of her funds; no one, I believe, can point to 
 a single man who does not at least do a fair day's work for a 
 fair day's pay. "The College salaries," reported the Presi- 
 dent, ten years ago, "have remained stationary for fifteen 
 years, and all that while the College has been demanding of 
 its teachers more and more learning, labour, enthusiasm, and 
 personal influence." 1 Harvard has no prize appointments to 
 give away. She is above all favouritism. She lends no ear 
 to the claims of religious orthodoxy or of party politics. She 
 seeks the ablest teacher she can find, and she pays him not 
 extravagantly, but not illiberally. Whenever a need for help 
 arises, she appeals with confidence to her children, because 
 she can show that she makes a wise use of all that is intrusted 
 to her. Great as are her endowments, greater still are her 
 needs, for she is ever advancing, ever taking in fresh branches 
 of knowledge, ever drawing to herself fresh students. In the 
 annual report made by the President to the Board of Over- 
 seers, the whole state of the University — its work, its receipts, 
 its expenses, its hopes, its fears, its requirements — is all 
 clearly set forth before the whole community. As they read 
 it and think of the lowly past, " they look backward with 
 exultation and thanksgiving and forward with confidence and 
 high resolve." 2 It is this exultation and thanksgiving, this 
 confidence and high resolve, which form one of the chief 
 sources whence spring the great benefactions which are pour- 
 ing in upon the old College from her proud and grateful 
 children. 
 
 1 Annual Reports, 1883-84, p. 45. 
 
 2 From the address of President Eliot at the Commemoration in 1886. 
 Harvard University, 250th Anniversary, p. 263. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Foundation of Harvard. — Cambridge in England and Cambridge 
 in New England. — "Fair Harvard." — Emmanuel College. — The 
 Washington Elm. — General Washington a Doctor of Laws. — The 
 University at Concord. — An Overbearing Treasurer. — Harvard and 
 Slavery. 
 
 THE pleasantness of Harvard I have already described. 
 It is a spot that a student can love. It is indeed 
 "Fair Harvard." Happily it has, moreover, that other great 
 quality without which a university seems maimed and imper- 
 fect, — a quality which no munificence can confer. It is 
 venerable. Measured by the age of the earliest foundations 
 of Oxford and Cambridge, it is almost in its youth. Never- 
 theless, when it was founded, Milton was still " inglorious," and 
 Cromwell a quiet country gentleman. Two years before our 
 Queen was crowned at Westminster it kept its two hundredth 
 anniversary. In the speeches made on that great day it 
 proudly carried back its past to that far-distant time when its 
 parent, the great English university, was founded on the banks 
 of the Cam. It was by a small knot of Cambridge men, men 
 who may have known "young Lycidas," that the foundations of 
 the American Cambridge were laid in the midst of dangers and 
 hardships. John Harvard was a Master of Arts of Emmanuel 
 College. Story, who at the time of the celebration of the two 
 hundredth anniversary of the College in 1836, by his lectures on 
 law, was making Harvard known to the Old World, gave as 
 
 23 
 
24 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 his toast at the banquet : " Our Ancient Mother, the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge in Old England — Salve magna parens, 
 — Magna virum." " The very spot," he said, "where we 
 are assembled is consecrated by a thousand endearing associa- 
 tions of the past. The very name of Cambridge compels us 
 to cast our eyes across the Atlantic, and brings up a glowing 
 gratitude for our unspeakable obligations to the parent uni- 
 versity whose name we proudly bear, and have borne for two 
 centuries." l 
 
 These Harvard men were not content with doing honour to 
 the English Cambridge. They were more than members of a 
 university ; they were citizens of a great Confederation of 
 States. They were New Englanders — New Englanders not 
 forgetful of the Old England from which they were sprung. 
 " Gratitude to the noble country of our fathers " was next 
 given as a toast by Dr. John Warren, the nephew of General 
 Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill. " Let us imagine ourselves," 
 he said, " to have sprung from any other nation of Europe, 
 and how different, probably, would have been our condition. 
 To England we owe the vigorous freedom of thought which, 
 there taking its origin, was transplanted by our ancestors to a 
 virgin soil, and has grown with a luxuriance beyond example. 
 A common parentage, a common language, a community of 
 feeling, have given us all the privileges of English sentiment, 
 learning, and ingenuity. ... In our parent, England, we 
 have the happiness to see the great supporter and defender of 
 liberal institutions throughout the world. ... I do not 
 hesitate to say that there is a greatness in the conduct of 
 England during the convulsions of Europe [the Napoleonic 
 wars] which has no parallel in the story of admired Greece or 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 675. 
 
II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 25 
 
 Rome. The efforts of these nations were inspirited by a love 
 of conquest, a love of power, a desire of revenge. England 
 was influenced by a higher principle — a determined and 
 unconquerable opposition to despotism." 1 
 
 This speech was made but one and twenty years after the 
 close of a war which had been provoked by our overbearing 
 violence on the seas, and which was disgraced by an act of bar- 
 barity worthy of a horde of Cossacks. The rising town of 
 Washington, the capital of the United States, had been burnt to 
 the ground by Englishmen. " Few more shameful acts are 
 recorded in our history ; and it was the more shameful in 
 that it was done under strict orders from the government 
 at home." 2 Story's memory went back to the War of Inde- 
 pendence. In the small seaport town in which his childhood 
 was passed, peace, when at last it came, found nine hundred 
 widows whose husbands had fallen fighting on sea or land, all 
 victims to the mad folly of our government. 3 Had some 
 Englishman been present at this celebration, when he heard 
 such speeches as these, he might well have started from his 
 seat and exclaimed : — 
 
 "Some write their wrongs in marble; you, more just, 
 Stoop down serene and write them in the dust." 
 
 Not all the speakers were a Story and a Warren. The 
 American Eagle was to flap her wings and make her screams 
 heard, even in an ancient seat of learning. Edward Everett 
 was there, the president of the day, the perfection and model 
 of all that is bad in the oratory of the United States. The 
 following passage shows what was esteemed eloquence in 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 679. 
 
 2 J. R. Green's Short Llistory of the English People, p. 808. 
 
 3 Life of Joseph Story, I. 31. 
 
26 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 a country where Daniel Webster, still in the fulness of his 
 power, was showing how sublime is the force of simplicity. 
 " Yes, in the very dawn of independence, while the lions of 
 land yet lay slumbering in the long shadows of the throne, 
 an eaglet, bred in the delicate air of freedom which fanned 
 the academic groves, had, from his ' coign of vantage ' on 
 yonder tower, drunk the first rosy sparkle of the sun of liberty 
 into his calm, undazzled eye, and whetted his talons for the 
 conflict." 1 It was not in this mould that Lincoln formed that 
 rugged eloquence which was heard at Gettysburg over the 
 graves of the soldiers who fell in the great war. Whoever was 
 his master in speech, most certainly it was not a rhetorician. 
 
 It was for the Centennial Celebration of 1836 that Fair 
 Harvard was written — that song which, as the year comes 
 round, is sung at every commencement by the great gathering 
 of Harvard men. It begins, — 
 
 " Fair Harvard ! thy sons to thy Jubilee throng." 
 
 and ends, — 
 
 " Be the herald of Light and the bearer of Love, 
 Till the stock of the Puritans die." 
 
 The best verse is the following : — 
 
 "To thy bowers we were led in the bloom of our youth, 
 
 From the home of our free-roving years, 
 When our fathers had warned, and our mothers had prayed, 
 
 And our sisters had blest through their tears. 
 Thou then wert our parent, — the nurse of our souls, — 
 
 We were moulded to manhood by thee, 
 Till, freighted with treasure-thoughts, friendships, and hopes, 
 
 Thou didst launch us on Destiny's sea." 
 
 The speeches on this great day must have been brief — brief 
 for the speakers of the Old World, preternaturally brief for the 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 658. 
 
CO C 
 
 oo .2 
 
II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 27 
 
 orators of the New. It was not till the thirty-second toast that 
 the ladies were reached. There were forty toasts in all. " The 
 hour of eight o'clock having now arrived, Josiah Quincy, Junior, 
 moved, ' That this Assembly of the Alumni be adjourned to 
 meet at this place on the 8th of September, 1936.' " x In spite 
 of the forty toasts it was not, so far as I can make out, eight 
 o'clock in the morning when the Assembly broke up, but only 
 eight o'clock in the evening. The moderation of each speaker 
 which allowed forty toasts to be gone through in five or six 
 hours at most is in striking contrast with the speech delivered 
 at Oxford not twenty years later by the Vice-Chancellor. 
 There, too, it was a great day ; for the orator and scholar, 
 the Earl of Derby, was welcomed as the new Chancellor of the 
 University, the successor of the great Duke. Some of the best 
 speakers of England were guests at the banquet, and a fine flow 
 of varied eloquence was looked for. There was a flow, but 
 most of it came from one source. The Vice-Chancellor, a man 
 insignificant except for his piety, spoke for two hours and more 
 at a stretch. By the time he sat down the audience was ex- 
 hausted, the orators were dejected, and the reporters, so I am 
 told, were drunk. 
 
 At Harvard the length of the adjournment was halved by 
 the next generation, who met in November, 1886. Dr. Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes, who in 1836, at the dinner, had sung a 
 song which he had written for the great day, half a century 
 later was the chosen poet of this second commemoration. 
 Lowell, as an undergraduate, had witnessed the earlier gather- 
 ing : he was now the Orator. Our English Cambridge was 
 represented by the Master of St. John's, and Emmanuel College 
 — John Harvard's College — by Dr. Creighton, Senior Fellow 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 706. 
 
28 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 and Professor of Ecclesiastical History. 1 Lowell ended his 
 oration by welcoming the guests, above all, the guests from 
 the foreign seats of learning. In the name of the Alumni 
 " I give," he said, " a special greeting to the gentleman who 
 brings the message of John Harvard's College, Emmanuel. 
 The welcome we give him could not be warmer than that 
 which we offer to his colleagues ; but we cannot help feeling 
 that in pressing his hand our own instinctively draws a little 
 more tightly, as with a sense of nearer kindred." This 
 passage, we are told, was more loudly applauded than almost 
 any other part of his speech. 2 That " blood is thicker than 
 water " was felt not only by the American commodore, when he 
 opened fire on the Chinese forts in support of our hard-pressed 
 gun-boats, but by these New Englanders who had gathered 
 together to celebrate the foundation of their University by their 
 English forefathers. 
 
 Two years earlier than this Commemoration when Emmanuel 
 College had celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of its 
 foundation, " two distinguished alumni of Harvard," said Dr. 
 Creighton, " Professor Lowell and Professor Norton, no less by 
 the dignity of their presence than by the eloquence of their 
 speech, had almost succeeded in converting our festival into a 
 celebration of Harvard College in its ancestral soil of England." 
 " The connection of Emmanuel College with Harvard Univer- 
 sity," he continued, " is an episode of unique picturesqueness 
 in academic annals, and sets Emmanuel College in a con- 
 spicuous place in the intellectual history of mankind." 3 
 
 1 Now Bishop of Peterborough, fellow, and tutor of Merton College, 
 Oxford. 
 
 2 Harvard University, 230th Anniversary, pp. 37, 236. 
 
 3 Lb. pp. 277, 303. 
 
ii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 29 
 
 While Harvard thus keeps up her hold on the past, she at 
 times somewhat needlessly breaks with old customs. When 
 Lowell was appointed Minister to Spain, he wrote to a friend : 
 "You must remember that I am ' H. E.' [His Excellency] 
 now myself, and can show a letter with that superscription. I 
 dare say I shall enjoy it after I get there, but at present it is 
 altogether a bore to be honourabled at every turn. The world 
 is a droll affair. And yet, between ourselves, dear Grace, I 
 should be pleased if my father could see me in capitals on the 
 Triennial Catalogue. You remember Johnson's pathetic letter 
 to Chesterfield. How often I think of it as I grow older ! " ! 
 This Catalogue — " such is the rage of innovation " — is no 
 longer triennial but quinquennial, and the capitals are no longer 
 preserved ; nay, it has suffered still more unworthy treatment, 
 for it is now printed in the vulgar tongue. " Since Harvard 
 has grown to a University," writes the editor of Lowell's Letters, 
 " the Catalogue has been deprived alike of the dignity of its 
 traditional Latin, and of those capitals in which the sons of 
 hers who had attained to public official distinction, such as 
 that of Member of Congress, or Governor of a State, or Judge 
 of a United States Court, were elevated above their fellow- 
 students. To have one's name in capitals in the Catalogue 
 was a reward worth achieving." Nevertheless, there must have 
 been a certain incongruity in a Catalogue in which Caleb Cush- 
 ing was printed large, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, William H. 
 Prescott, Wendell Phillips, and Oliver Wendell Holmes were 
 printed small. 
 
 1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 210. "The notice which you have been 
 pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind ; but it 
 has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am soli- 
 tary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it." — Bos- 
 well's Life of Johnson, I. 262. 
 
30 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Harvard, like Oxford, has been the seat of a camp, and has 
 seen learning yield to the rough needs of war. It was on the 
 Common, not a furlong from the College, beneath the graceful 
 branches of an American elm, that, as an inscription shows, 
 "Washington first took command of the American army, July 
 3> 1 775-" The Common was not the pleasure-spot that it now 
 is, with its green lawn, its groves, and its trim paths. It was 
 " an unenclosed dust plain," across which the drovers, on their 
 way to Boston market, used to take their herds of cattle. The 
 two English cannon stamped G. R., which stand in the middle 
 as trophies of war, had not yet been captured. They were 
 helping to hold Boston against its own citizens. Not fifty years 
 had gone by since the College, in a loyal address, had assured 
 another G. R. that " they had shed tears over the grave of the 
 great King his Father." 1 In July, 1875, the centenary of this 
 famous day was celebrated. " We have still standing," wrote 
 Lowell, " the elm under which Washington took command of 
 the American (till then provincial) army, and under which 
 also Whitefield had preached some thirty years before." 2 The 
 tree, though broken, still retains much of its gracefulness. 
 Among all the spots, famous in the noble history of man's 
 struggle for freedom, it is by no means the least worthy of 
 veneration. As I stood by it and read the inscription, there 
 came into my mind the words of the old English Tory, the 
 stern enemy of American Independence — " that man is little 
 to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the 
 plain of Marathon." This, indeed, was "ground dignified by 
 wisdom, bravery, and virtue." Washington, for many months, 
 had his headquarters in a fine mansion hard by, which is now 
 generally known, not by his name, but by Longfellow's. Here 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 383. 2 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 159. 
 
ii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 31 
 
 the poet had his quiet home for the greater part of his life. 
 Washington's memorials are so many that he can afford to 
 yield one to literature. Cedant anna togae. 
 
 Few of the Harvard students had witnessed the great scene 
 in the world's drama which had been played beneath the elm. 
 Two months earlier the Committee of Safety had dispersed 
 them to their homes. It was at Harvard that many years 
 earlier Samuel Adams, the cousin of two Presidents of the 
 United States, had maintained in a thesis read before the 
 College the lawfulness of rebellion. In 1768, seven years 
 before the war broke out, the Graduating Class had unani- 
 mously voted " to take their degrees in the manufactures of 
 the country," and had appeared at Commencement in untaxed 
 home-manufactured garments. 1 The following year, the Gov- 
 ernor of the Commonwealth had attempted to overawe the 
 House of Representatives by a display of military force. Can- 
 non was pointed at the door of the State House in which they 
 met. They refused to continue their sittings. The Governor, 
 who had received his orders from England, said that he had 
 no authority to take away the troops. He did, however, all 
 that a reasonable man could do. Not being able to remove 
 the cannon from the Legislature, he removed the Legislature 
 from the cannon. He adjourned the House to Harvard Col- 
 lege, where it met in the Chapel. One of the Fellows has 
 described in a letter written at the time, how " this removal 
 hinders the scholars in their studies. The young gentlemen 
 are already taken up with politics. They have caught the 
 spirit of the times. Their declamations and forensic disputes 
 breathe the spirit of liberty. This has always been encouraged, 
 but they have sometimes been wrought up to such a spirit of 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 163. 
 
32 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 enthusiasm, that it has been difficult for their Tutors to keep 
 them within close bounds ; but their Tutors are fearful of 
 giving too great a check to a disposition which may hereafter 
 fill the country with patriots." It was no doubt the memory 
 of "this spirit of liberty" which led Governor Hancock to 
 speak of Harvard as " in some sense the parent and nurse of 
 the late happy Revolution in this Commonwealth." All the 
 Massachusetts men who signed the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence were her children. There were, however, a few Tories 
 among the undergraduates " who were in the practice of bring- 
 ing ' Indian tea ' into Commons, and drinking it to show their 
 loyalty. The Governors of the Seminary advised them not to 
 do it in future, ' as it was a source of grief and uneasiness to 
 many of the students, and as the use of it is disagreeable to the 
 people of the country in general.' " 1 
 
 The " enthusiasm " which the Tutors were unwilling to check 
 in these youthful patriots broke out in a rebellion within the 
 College. While outside the war was raging, the three upper 
 Classes assembled in the Hall, and voted to send a memorial 
 to the Corporation, in which they charged their President with 
 " impiety, heterodoxy, unfitness for the office of preacher of 
 the Christian religion, and still more for that of President." 
 " There was," writes Quincy, " not a shadow of foundation for 
 any of these charges, except the last." A Committee of twelve 
 " were appointed to wait upon the President, and invite him to 
 resign his office." The poor man, who was ignorant of his 
 unpopularity, was so deeply touched that he resolved at once to 
 retire. It was on Saturday that the deputation had waited on 
 him j on the following Monday, after morning prayers, he 
 detained the students, and told them that he should resign. 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 148, 163, 164, 244. 
 
ii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 33 
 
 " His family, he said, would be thrown destitute on the 
 world, and he intimated that resolutions of a favourable 
 character might be of service to him. This conduct subdued 
 their rebellious spirits." They met again, and "with like 
 unanimity passed directly opposite resolutions, excepting only 
 his unfitness for the office of President." 1 The ferment was 
 slow in subsiding. Channing, who entered Harvard about 
 fifteen years later, describes " a state of great insubordination, 
 and the almost total absence of the respect due to individuals 
 [the teachers] of so much worth. The French Revolution 
 had diseased the imagination and unsettled the understanding 
 of men everywhere. The authority of the past was gone." 2 
 
 When, in 1775, hostilities began between the northern 
 country and the Colonies, the seat of war in the opening years 
 was too near for the peaceful life of a university, and moreover 
 the College buildings were needed for barracks. At the end of 
 the vacation the students assembled at Concord, fifteen miles 
 or so from Cambridge. There lodgings were provided for a 
 hundred and twenty-five. Part of the library also was removed 
 and arranged on shelves in a private house. 3 The Concord 
 " turnpike " 4 — since dignified by the name of Avenue — crossed 
 the Common. It was at Concord that the first shots had been 
 fired and the first blood shed. In June of the following year 
 the students once more assembled in Harvard. The English 
 army had abandoned Boston, and there was no longer an 
 enemy in their gates. Their buildings had suffered from the 
 military occupation. From the roof of the hall lead had been 
 stripped, no doubt to be turned into bullets. Before long, Cam- 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 179. 
 
 2 Life of IV. E. Channing, I. 59. 3 Lb. II. 166. 
 4 In America turnpike is commonly used for turnpike-road. 
 
 D 
 
34 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 bridge was again to be crowded, not this time with armed sol- 
 diers, but with prisoners of war, the remnant of Burgoyne's army. 
 In Lowell's day there were still to be seen in Massachusetts 
 Hall the hooks from which had swung the hammocks of the 
 red-coats. 1 Late last century hooks for a very different pur- 
 pose were fixed up in an Oxford College. One of the Fellows 
 of University College whom I was visiting many years ago told 
 me that he had that day received a letter from an aged clergy- 
 man, a former member of the College, asking him to see 
 whether in the ceiling of a certain room a couple of hooks 
 were still there. From the hooks his hunting-breeches used 
 to be suspended, into which he let himself down from a pair 
 of steps. They were, according to the fashion, too tight to 
 draw on in the ordinary way. 
 
 The blockade of the coast by the English fleet, cutting off the 
 supply of luxuries from abroad, compelled the Corporation to 
 pass the following resolutions on August n, 1777 : — 
 
 " Whereas by law 9th of chap. vi. it is provided, ' that there shall always 
 be chocolate, tea, coffee, and milk for breakfast, with bread and biscuit 2 and 
 butter,' and whereas the foreign articles above mentioned are now not to 
 be procured without great difficulty and at a very exorbitant price; Voted, 
 That the Steward shall provide at the common charge only bread or biscuit 
 and milk for breakfast; and if any of the scholars choose tea, coffee, or 
 chocolate they shall procure those articles for themselves; and likewise the 
 sugar and butter to be used with them; and if any scholars choose to have 
 their milk boiled, or thickened with flour, if it may be had, or with meal, 
 the Steward, having reasonable notice, shall provide it." 3 
 
 On the day year on which Washington had taken command 
 of the American army, the degree of Doctor of Laws was con- 
 
 1 Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, 1890, I. 56. 
 
 2 Biscuit, according to the American use of the word, is hot rolls. 
 
 3 Quincy's Harvard, II. 541. 
 
ii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 35 
 
 ferred on him by Harvard. He was the first man to be thus 
 distinguished by the University. It was indeed a noble begin- 
 ning of the long line of honours. His diploma described him 
 as : — 
 
 " Vir illustrissimus, Georgius Washington, Armiger, Exercitus Colonia- 
 rum in America Fcederatarum Imperator praeclarus . . . qui, postulante 
 Patria sedem in Virginia amcenissimam et res propnas perlubenter reliquit, 
 ut . . . Nov-Angliam ab armis Britannorum iniquis et crudelibus liberaret, 
 et Colonias caeteras tueretur, et qui . . . ab urbe Bostonia . . . naves et 
 copias hostium in fugam prsecipitem et probrosam deturebavit, 1 adeo ut 
 cives, plurimis duritiis et saevitiis oppressi, tandem salvi laetentur, villae 
 vicinae quiescant atque sedibus suis Academia nostra restituatur. 
 
 " Sciatis igitur quod nos . . . Dominum supradictum, summo honore 
 dignum, Georgium Washington, Doctorem Utriusque Juris, turn Naturae et 
 Gentium, turn Civilis, statuimus et creavimus." 2 
 
 A year earlier, a few days before the fight at Concord, Oxford 
 had conferred a like degree on Samuel Johnson, on the recom- 
 mendation of its Chancellor, the Prime Minister, Lord North, 
 in return, there can be little doubt, for Taxation no Tyranny ; 
 an Answer to the Resolutions and Addresses of the American 
 Congress. It was thus that " the Whigs of America, Whigs 
 fierce for liberty and disdainful of dominion, who multiply with 
 the fecundity of their own rattlesnakes," 3 replied to the honour 
 conferred by the Tory statesman and the Tory university on 
 the Tory pamphleteer. 
 
 Even before the Revolution was brought to an end the 
 patriots of Harvard found that, not only in a monarchy but 
 also in a democracy, injustice and insolence may have to be 
 borne and borne patiently. George III. was down, but Gov- 
 ernor Hancock was up. In an evil day for the University that 
 
 1 In this headlong and shameful flight the two cannons that now stand 
 on Cambridge Common had been thrown into the harbour. 
 
 2 Quincy's Harvard, II. 506. 3 Boswell's Life of Johnson, II. 314. 
 
36 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 favourite of the people had been appointed Treasurer. " He 
 embarrassed it during a period of nearly twenty years." He 
 would neither discharge the duties of his office nor resign his 
 post. The Corporation, after patiently waiting for two or three 
 years, appointed his successor. To conciliate the great man 
 they passed a vote, that a committee should " wait on the 
 Hon. John Hancock, Esq., with the most respectful compli- 
 ments of the Corporation, and request that he should permit 
 his portrait to be forthwith conveyed to the College, and placed 
 in the Philosophy Chamber, by that of his late honourable 
 uncle." He neither sent his portrait nor settled his accounts. 
 He had been " exposed to those severe trials of human char- 
 acter, — great wealth suddenly acquired and unbounded and 
 long-continued popularity." So powerful was his position that 
 the Corporation did not dare to bring him before a court of 
 law. They could scarcely have been worse off had they had to 
 deal with George III. himself. It was not till full eleven years 
 after their first demand that he condescended to state the 
 amount of the balance still owing by him to the College. On 
 being pressed for payment he would do nothing more than 
 give a bond and security. It was in vain that the distress 
 of the Professors was laid before him. Their salaries were 
 unpaid, but neither interest nor principal could be got out of 
 the great man. He died in 1 793, leaving ample means, but 
 the debt still owing. It was not till eight or nine years later 
 that his heirs discharged it. With some reason does President 
 Quincy remark at the end of this strange story : " In republics 
 popularity is the form of power most apt to corrupt its pos- 
 sessor, and to tempt him, for party ends or personal interest, to 
 trample on right, or set principle at defiance." * 
 
 l Quincy's Harvard, II. 182, 203-209, 523. 
 
II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 37 
 
 However much Harvard distinguished herself in the long 
 struggle for the independence of the Colonies, unhappily she 
 did not always range herself on the side of liberty. All 
 through the opening scenes of the great struggle between 
 freedom and slavery she was the champion of the slave-holder. 
 When on one side stood the President and Congress, the 
 Legislatures of almost all the States, the judicature, the Civil 
 Service, the Churches, the mobs, the wealthy, the cowardly, all 
 the " safe " men, all the " moderate " men, and on the other 
 side William Lloyd Garrison and his little band, " harsh as 
 truth and uncompromising as justice," she chose the part of 
 shame. To serve the Union, stained and darkened though it 
 was by the Fugitive Slave Law, she was ready to sacrifice 
 justice, mercy, and honour. She showed that even in a re- 
 public a university is too apt to side with the powers that be 
 against the right that ought to be. Not even Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge have ever disgraced themselves more than the New 
 England University by taking the part of the strong and the 
 privileged against the weak and the helpless. What Loyal 
 Address to the Crown was more shameful than the toast given 
 at the Centennial Celebration in 1836 : " Massachusetts and 
 South Carolina ; they stood by one another nobly in the 
 darkest days of peril and adversity ; may long years of mutual 
 prosperity find them undivided." l Their mutual prosperity 
 was the prosperity of slave- owners and slave-traders, of 
 planters who grew cotton by slave-labour, and of merchants 
 who dealt in it, and manufacturers who spun it and wove it. 
 This prosperity was threatened by a few " fanatical and factious 
 Abolitionists," as Daniel Webster called them ; 2 threatened 
 far more by the still small voice of conscience, which, under 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 683. 2 Life of Daniel Webster, II. 516. 
 
38 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 the upbraidings of these men, was beginning to make itself 
 heard in ten thousand bosoms. To silence this voice cant 
 was called in at the Banquet, as, in like circumstances, it is 
 called in at all times and in all places. After this toast to the 
 maintenance of Southern slavery, its maintenance by " the 
 grand old Bay State," had been drunk, these Harvard men 
 next drank to " civil and religious liberty here and every- 
 where." " How is it," old Samuel Johnson roughly asked, 
 " How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among 
 the drivers of negroes? " Even Lowell, even the author of the 
 Bigloiu Papers, had caught this strong, this rank contagion of 
 the gown. Two years after this celebration it fell to his lot to 
 write the poem for class day. " I made fun of the Abolition- 
 ists in my Class Poem," so he wrote nearly fifty years later. 1 
 Nine months before this Harvard undergraduate, in the 
 presence of the President, the professors, the students and 
 their friends, made fun of these men, one of them, Elijah 
 Lovejoy, a minister of religion, had been murdered by a cruel 
 mob of citizens — all friends, no doubt, of civil and religious 
 liberty, there and everywhere — murdered because, in defiance 
 of mob-law, he advocated in a small newspaper the freedom of 
 the slave. Four months before this Harvard undergraduate 
 made fun of these men, a new Hall built by the Abolitionists 
 in the City of Brotherly Love, " dedicated to Free Discus- 
 sion, Virtue, Liberty, and Independence," had been burnt to 
 the ground by another mob. Three months before this Har- 
 vard undergraduate made fun of these men, in the city of 
 Boston hard by, another anti-slavery building would have been 
 wrecked by a third mob, had it not been for the Mayor, who 
 for once — a rare example in those bad days — was ready by 
 
 * Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 338. 
 
II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 39 
 
 military force to protect peaceful citizens meeting in lawful 
 assembly. 1 " They make a game of my calamities," some 
 deeply wronged Abolitionist might have exclaimed, had any 
 one of them been present on this Class Day. Lowell's noble 
 nature was soon to shake itself free from " Harvard indiffer- 
 ence." Before the year came to a close he wrote : " The 
 Abolitionists are the only ones with whom I sympathize of the 
 present extant parties." Eight years later he described these 
 same Abolitionists as " a body of heroic men and women, 
 whom not to love and admire would prove me unworthy of 
 either of those sentiments, and whose superiors in all that con- 
 stitutes true manhood and womanhood I believe never ex- 
 isted." 2 
 
 It was not in undergraduate days at Harvard that in Wendell 
 Phillips was first stirred that passionate eloquence which did 
 so much to rouse the land to a sense of its guilt. He had 
 passed through the College and the Law School, and was still 
 indifferent to the good cause. 3 It was perhaps indignation at 
 what his Alma Mater had not done for him that moved him to 
 exclaim, after the long struggle which ended in Lincoln's first 
 election : " The agitation was a yeomanly service to liberty. 
 It educated the people. One such canvass makes amends for 
 the cowardice of our scholars, and consoles us under the inflic- 
 tion of Harvard College." 4 In 1848 Sumner was passing from 
 town to town in Massachusetts, speaking in favour of the Free- 
 Soil Party. Nowhere but in Cambridge was the meeting dis- 
 turbed. There the students " interrupted him with hisses and 
 
 1 Life of W. L. Garrison, II. 184, 213, 218. 
 
 2 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 37, 123. 
 
 3 Life of Charles Sumner, III. 69. 
 
 4 Wendell Phillips's Speeches, etc., ed. 1863, p. 306. 
 
40 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 coarse exclamations. He singled out the leader of the distur- 
 bance and said, ' The young man who hisses will regret it ere 
 his hairs turn gray.' " Perhaps he recalled it with deep sorrow 
 on some lonely day's march with the Northern army, or in all 
 the misery of a Southern prison. Longfellow was one of the 
 audience. In his journal he recorded : l " Sumner spoke admi- 
 rably well. But the shouts and the hisses and the vulgar inter- 
 ruptions grated on my ears. I was glad to get away." 2 Fif- 
 teen months after Sumner was hissed in this New England 
 University another New Englander, Daniel Webster, made that 
 infamous speech of March 7, 1850, which forever covered with 
 shame the name of the greatest American orator. " He is," 
 wrote Lowell, " the most meanly and foolishly treacherous man 
 I ever heard of." 3 In the idle hope of serving the Union and 
 making himself President, the old man was ready in almost 
 everything to yield to the Slave States. Slavery was to be 
 extended and its foundations were to be laid more firmly 
 than ever. The cowardice of scholars was once more seen. 
 He was supported by Ticknor, Everett, Sparks, Felton, 
 Motley, and Parkman. Even Dana, who at the risk of his 
 life defended a runaway slave in the Boston Law Courts, was 
 ready to grant the South a Fugitive Slave Law — "a bona 
 fide one, but one consistent with laws, decency, safety to the 
 free, and the self-respect of the North." 4 Among Harvard 
 men of letters Emerson, Sumner, and Lowell stood together, 
 and I fear alone, on the right side. The Professors in the Law 
 School read lectures in defence of the Fugitive Slave Law. 
 
 1 Life of Charles Sumner, III. 173. 
 
 2 Life of H. W. Longfellow, II. 127. 
 
 3 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 208. 
 
 4 Life of Charles Sumner, III. 205, 208, n. 4 ; Life of R. H. Dana, I. 126. 
 
ii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 41 
 
 The students who heard them, untouched by the generous 
 feelings of youth, were no better than their teachers. More 
 than a hundred attended the classes. Of these only six were 
 on the side of freedom ; "the rest were nearly all bitter against 
 the Free-Soil Party." 1 On May 14, 185 1, Longfellow recorded 
 in his Journal: " Went to hear Emerson on the Fugitive Slave 
 Law at the Cambridge City Hall. ... It is rather painful to 
 see Emerson in the arena of politics hissed and hooted at by 
 young law students." 2 After the ruffian Brooks's cruel assault 
 on Sumner in the Senate, when all that was not base in America 
 was fired with indignation, it was Amherst College that at once 
 conferred an honorary degree on the much-suffering man. His 
 own Alma Mater let three years pass by before she honoured 
 him. No degree was ever conferred on William Lloyd Garri- 
 son either at Harvard or anywhere else. 3 Universities, with 
 their strong spirit of conservatism, are always slow to honour 
 the men who raise the unwilling world to a higher level of 
 morality. If anything could wash away this stain from Harvard, 
 it was the blood of her sons so freely shed on many a battle- 
 field of the great war. But in spite of their generous devotion 
 the stain remains. In the long struggle for freedom it was not 
 till it entered upon its last and greatest act that the oldest and 
 the first of American universities was found in the van. 
 
 1 Life of Charles Sumner, III. 207, 246, n. 2. 
 
 2 Life of LL IV. Longfellow, II. 194. 
 
 3 In 1865 he was made an honorary member of the Harvard Phi 
 Beta Kappa. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Religious Liberty. — The Divinity School.— The College Chapel. — The 
 Dudleian Lectures. — The English Liturgy. 
 
 IF, to civil liberty, Harvard at one time showed herself in- 
 different, in religious liberty she has taken the lead of all 
 the older universities of the English-speaking race. Happily, 
 even in her first charter, she was free from the predominance 
 of any single church. Llad the College been founded in Rhode 
 Island, where Roger Williams and his followers gave the world 
 the first example of a government founded on the principles 
 of complete religious liberty, such freedom would not have 
 been astonishing. In Plymouth, from the Pilgrim Fathers, 
 the Separatists of England, the founders of the Independent 
 Churches, some measure of tolerance might have been looked 
 for. But in Boston, among the stern Puritans, where State 
 and Church were one, where none but members of the Church 
 were freemen of the State, who would not have expected to 
 find President, Fellows, and students all bound fast by a rigid 
 test? This freedom, it has been conjectured, was due 
 rather to a careless feeling of security than to intention. 
 The constitution of the Commonwealth itself might be trusted 
 "to bind their souls with secular chains." If such was the 
 security of the founders of Harvard College, they forgot that 
 the charter of a colony was liable to change. Theirs was 
 
 annulled by the tyranny of Charles II. in those evil days 
 
 42 
 
chap. in. HARVARD COLLEGE. 43 
 
 towards the end of his reign, when Jeffreys, in his progress 
 through English towns, was " making all the charters, like the 
 walls of Jericho, fall down before him." In the new charter, 
 granted in 1692 by William and Mary, property, not church- 
 membership, was made the qualification for a vote. 1 The 
 door, if not thrown open for the entrance of free thought, was, 
 at all events, unbarred. For many a long day there was to 
 be little of freedom as it was understood by Roger Williams 
 of the seventeenth century, and by us of the latter years of 
 the nineteenth. Nevertheless, so great was the alarm given 
 to the orthodox that Yale College was founded in the hope 
 that from it might flow a never-failing spring of untainted 
 Calvinism. 2 From the servitude that was then imposed, that 
 university has no more shaken herself wholly free than has 
 Oxford from the servitude of Anglicanism. Both have done 
 much, but both have still much to do. Even at the present 
 day, Harvard is regarded by Yale as the London University 
 used to be regarded by the orthodox of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge. It is "the Godless university." Harvard retorts on 
 Yale that it is the home of superstition and Phariseeism. A 
 writer in the Harvard Crimson 3 says: "Yale friends naturally 
 accuse Harvard students of being irreligious; while Harvard 
 advocates call the Yale religious life hypocrisy." 
 
 From the time when the new charter was granted to the 
 Colony, Harvard, in matters of theology, has kept pace with 
 the people, its thoughts widening as their thoughts widened. 
 The President and Fellows would often, indeed, have moved 
 faster, but they were restrained by the Board of Overseers, 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 55; The Beginning of New England, by John 
 Fiske, 1893, PP- 264, 275. 
 
 2 Quincy's Harvard, I. 197. 3 June 23, 1893. 
 
44 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 on which the Congregational ministers of Cambridge and the 
 five nearest towns sat by right. In 1820, when the constitu- 
 tion of Massachusetts was revised, even the overseers were 
 ahead of the people in liberal thought. They proposed to 
 admit ministers of all denominations of Christians to these 
 clerical seats, but in a popular vote this proposition was re- 
 jected. 1 Fourteen years later, in 1834, an act was passed by 
 the Legislature of Massachusetts, which enabled the two gov- 
 erning bodies of the University to effect this reform. One or 
 other of these bodies was now behind the people, perhaps 
 both; for it was not till 1843 that they availed themselves of 
 their powers. 2 By the Act of 185 1, all clerical restrictions 
 were removed, not a single seat on the Board being any longer 
 confined to the ministry. 3 
 
 As in Massachusetts, Calvinism had gradually softened into 
 Unitarianism, so Harvard had gradually become, if not a 
 Unitarian College, a College of Unitarians. Judge Story's 
 father, who was born in 1743, was not sent to Harvard, writes 
 his son, " lest he should there imbibe those heretical tenets, 
 which, in the form of Arminianism, were then supposed to 
 haunt those venerable shades." The judge, who went to the 
 College, shook himself free from his Calvinism, and was sev- 
 eral times President of the American Unitarian Association. 4 
 It was by Unitarians that the Divinity School was founded 
 in 1816. In its constitution, "the following article was a 
 fundamental one : ' It being understood that every encourage- 
 ment be given to the serious, impartial, and unbiassed inves- 
 tigation of Christian truth, and that no assent to the peculiari- 
 ties of any denomination of Christians be required either of 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 332. 2 Harvard Catalogue, p. 24. 
 
 3 Lb. 4 Life of Joseph Story, I. 2, 57. 
 
in. HARVARD COLLEGE. 45 
 
 the students, or professors, or instructors. ' " 1 The School was, 
 however, "regarded as distinctively Unitarian, and so caused 
 uneasiness to the government of the University on account of 
 its denominational position. As the College began to take 
 its position as an unsectarian institution, it seemed a hin- 
 drance in its course that a Unitarian Divinity School should 
 be attached to it. It was felt that, in the public estimate, 
 the School would give a denominational aspect to the whole 
 University." 2 An attempt was accordingly made to separate 
 it from the College. "An enabling act was passed by the 
 Legislature in 1858, but the project of separation was never 
 carried further. It was conceded that it would be false to all 
 our traditions, if, in a College named for 3 a Puritan minister, 
 fostered by a Puritan clergy, and bearing on its corporate seal 
 the motto Christo et Ecclesice, religion should be the only 
 subject deliberately excluded." 4 In 1878 the movement set 
 the other way, and a large sum of money was raised for the 
 further endowment of the School. "The Harvard Divinity 
 School," said Professor Eliot on this occasion, "is not dis- 
 tinctively Unitarian either by its constitution or by the inten- 
 tion of its founders. The government of the University can- 
 not undertake to appoint none but Unitarian teachers, or to 
 grant any peculiar favours to Unitarian students." So far 
 was it from doing so, that in 1887, of the six professors in 
 the theological Faculty, two were Baptists and one an Ortho- 
 dox Congregationalist, while of the eleven members compos- 
 ing the visiting committee, not half were Unitarians. 5 Never- 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 546. 
 
 2 Professor C. C. Everett quoted in Higher Education in Massachusetts, 
 by G. G. Bush, p. 144. 
 
 3 An American says " named for " where we say " named after." 
 
 4 Higher Education, etc., p. 141. 5 lb. p. 144. 
 
46 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 theless, in spite of this mixture of creeds, in spite of the fact 
 that three of the professors orthodoxly, if not practically, 
 believed that the other three were doomed to "the everlasting 
 bonfire, " the President could say in his Annual Report : " There 
 is no more harmonious Faculty in the University, and none 
 more completely devoted to the unbiassed search for truth." 1 
 Verily, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the days seem already 
 to have come when " the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and 
 the leopard shall lie down with the kid." 
 
 However much the College was once given over to Unitari- 
 anism, the President and Fellows fifty-six years ago showed 
 that they entertained something of a superstitious feeling in 
 the use of their Chapel. Longfellow, one of the most reli- 
 gious of men, writing to his father about his work at Harvard 
 as a professor, said : "lam now upon Dante — unwritten lec- 
 tures; but I have petitioned the Corporation for the use of 
 the Chapel next summer for a course of written public lectures. 
 By public, I mean free to any and every one who chooses to 
 attend, whether in college or out of college." He no doubt 
 asked for the Chapel as the only available place. Six weeks 
 later he recorded in his Journal: "The President told me that 
 the Corporation would not allow me the use of the Chapel for 
 public lectures in the summer. They do not approve my 
 plan. So it ends." 2 
 
 Professor Goodwin, looking forward to the position that 
 Harvard is likely to hold before many years have gone by, 
 says : " She will be fully equipped for the best work in every de- 
 partment, in Theology, in Law, in Medicine, and in the Arts 
 and Sciences. I think we may be sure that she will always 
 
 1 Higher Education, etc., p. 145. 
 
 *Life ofH W. Longfellow, 1886, I. 275, 282. 
 
in. HARVARD COLLEGE. 47 
 
 represent the foremost progress of science, and will always 
 welcome the boldest speculation on every subject. No party 
 nor sect will control her teaching, to cause either the pro- 
 mulgation of unscientific dogmas or the suppression of scien- 
 tific truth. I need hardly say that no exception will be made 
 in this respect for philosophy, political science, or even theol- 
 ogy. Public opinion is fast settling this matter beyond the 
 reach of controversy. Parties and sects will, of course, preach 
 their own doctrines and creeds then in their own schools, as 
 they do now; but the true university can recognize only the 
 free and unbiassed search for truth for the truth's sake. Hap- 
 pily we have no antiquated statutes or traditions to sweep 
 away to prepare us for the coming age. Our ancient motto 
 Veritas stands always over our own gates, and we interpret it 
 by the principle of freedom. ' Prove all things; hold fast to 
 that which is good.' "* The Professor seems somewhat con- 
 veniently to forget the other ancient motto, Christo et Ecclesice. 
 In the Sunday and week-day services of the College Chapel 
 the same impartiality is shown as in the Divinity School. Five 
 preachers of eminence, from among the ministers of all de- 
 nominations, are chosen every year " to arrange and conduct 
 the religious services of the University. Each conducts daily 
 morning prayers for about three weeks in the first half-year 
 and about three weeks in the second half-year, and each 
 preaches on four Sunday evenings." 2 Dr. Herford, an Eng- 
 lish Unitarian divine, was for some years one of the five. 
 The preachers for the present year are a bishop of the Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church, a Congregationalist, two Episcopa- 
 lians, and a Unitarian. 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 40. 
 
 2 Catalogue, p. 478. 
 
48 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Among those of past years was Bishop Phillips Brooks, 
 whose early death I found everywhere mourned in Massachu- 
 setts, and in whose memory a meeting was last year held in 
 the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. On the Sunday 
 evenings when none of the five officiates, the pulpit is filled 
 by a Select Preacher, to use the Oxford designation. Among 
 these, in 1892, were Bishop Vincent, the Right Rev. H. C. 
 Potter, and Professor Drummond of Glasgow. In the spring 
 of the present year, a Roman Catholic priest — a former stu- 
 dent of Harvard — officiated for the first time. The prayers 
 which he recited were collects translated from the Latin, and 
 the lesson which he read was, as he remarked, from the mass 
 for the day. His sermon was a philosophical argument for 
 faith in the Supernatural. Of the Supernatural he gave no 
 definition. A fortnight later, the pulpit was filled by Pro- 
 fessor Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Societies — a 
 teacher who would hardly call himself a theist. For those 
 students who care to attend the services of the sects to which 
 they belong, seats are provided in the Cambridge churches, 
 at the expense of the College. 
 
 Of the great liberality of the University in religious matters 
 the following curious instance was given me. A son of Joseph 
 Dudley, who was Governor of the Colony in the first years of 
 the eighteenth century, founded a lectureship in divinity. 
 Four lectures were to be delivered every year on certain sub- 
 jects strictly laid down in the trust-deed, one being, "the 
 idolatry, errors, and superstitions of the Romish Church." 
 As the value of money fell, the lecturer's payment became so 
 small that for many years the course was discontinued while 
 the fund accumulated. The College at one time thought of 
 getting an act passed by which it should be applied to some 
 
hi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 49 
 
 other purpose. They were deterred by the reflection that 
 such a measure might be a check to endowments and bequests 
 in a country where the general sentiment as to the sanctity of 
 the wishes of founders and testators is usually strong. The 
 trustees, it was found, were willing to interpret the provisions 
 of the trust somewhat laxly. By spreading the course of four 
 lectures over as many years, they were able to offer an annual 
 payment sufficient to secure on each occasion a preacher who 
 would not disgrace the University. Their first appointment 
 was the Professor of Ecclesiastical History, who, to comply 
 with the testator's direction, took for his subject the errors of 
 Romanism, treating them historically. The third lecture, 
 also in compliance with the terms of the foundation, was "for 
 the confirmation, illustration, and improvement of the great 
 articles of the Christian religion, properly so called." It 
 was delivered by the Right Rev. Bishop John J. Keane, rector 
 of the Roman Catholic University of America. 1 
 
 Till recent years the attendance at the College Chapel was 
 compulsory. Under this system, there was even greater irre- 
 verence than was to be seen in an Oxford Chapel in the days 
 when we had to "keep" so many chapels a week, and when 
 "chapelling" was used as a form of punishment. In my 
 College, and I believe in most others, an undergraduate was 
 expected to attend chapel eight times a week — "to keep 
 eight chapels," as we called it. If in his Freshman's year he 
 was regular, he might in his later terms become laxer in his 
 attendance, especially if his general conduct was good. The 
 penalty for too great laxness was "chapelling." He who 
 was "chapelled" had to attend morning and evening service 
 during a period fixed by the Dean. These services were the 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 139; Catalogue, 1891-92, p. no. 
 
50 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 full services of the Church; prayers for the Queen, Royal 
 Family, and High Court of Parliament included. At Harvard 
 last century, attendance and good behaviour were enforced by 
 the following fines : — 
 
 Absence from prayers two pence 
 
 Tardiness at prayers one penny 
 
 Absence from public worship nine pence 
 
 Tardiness at public worship three pence 
 
 Ill-behaviour at public worship not exceeding nine pence 
 
 Neglect to repeat the sermon nine pence 1 
 
 In my time, at Oriel College, then under the rule of that 
 model of formality and preciseness, Provost Hawkins, the 
 undergraduates, as I was informed by one of the scholars, 
 were each required to "repeat" the University sermon, or at 
 all events to send in to their tutor a report of it. Many of 
 them used to meet after dinner on the Sunday evening, and 
 there, over their cigars and whisky and water, write out the 
 sermon by the aid of one or two who had been present at 
 St. Mary's. Perhaps some of the "repeating" at Harvard 
 was done on the same system. 
 
 Stories are told of the pranks played of old by the students. 
 Sometimes in the candles which lighted the pulpit, holes were 
 bored and gunpowder was inserted so as to cause an explosion 
 during the sermon. One day a cracker was fastened to the 
 Bible. The Bible itself was thrice stolen. Once it was 
 sent, stripped of its binding, to the librarian of Yale College, 
 with a dog- Latin inscription on the fly-leaf, in which it was 
 stated: "Coveres servamus in usum chessboardi pro Helter 
 Skelter Club." The tongue of the Chapel bell was removed; 
 "the seats allotted to the Freshmen were painted green; 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 499. 
 
in. HARVARD COLLEGE. 51 
 
 stripes like those on a barber's pole were painted on the 
 porch of the Chapel." In fact, the Harvard boys behaved 
 just as ill as Christ Church men. The irreverence was no 
 doubt mainly due to the length and frequency of the services. 
 As if they were not trying enough in themselves, theological 
 dissertations by divinity students were frequently read aloud 
 after evening prayers. In a single year the undergraduates 
 suffered under thirty-two such inflictions. 1 It sometimes 
 happened that the minister who conducted the service by his 
 eccentricity provoked mirth. I was told of one old President 
 who, when his mind was failing, one morning astonished the 
 congregation by praying that "their intemperance might be 
 turned into temperance, and their industry into dustry." 
 In Yale far greater decorum seems to have been maintained. 
 Professor Thacher, in his Life of Benjamin Silliman, writing 
 of the years 1831 to 1835, tells how "the students, at the close 
 of the services in the Chapel, always waited respectfully for 
 the Professors to pass between their ranks and leave the house 
 first. Professor Silliman took the lead, receiving the bows 
 of the Seniors and Freshmen successively with all the stateli- 
 ness and easy grace of a man born to head a procession." 2 
 
 A happy chance, wisely turned to account, gave the first 
 blow in Harvard to compulsory attendance at religious ser- 
 vices. In 1872-73, the Chapel was closed for alterations, 
 and morning prayer was discontinued for some months. 
 President Eliot in his report for that year said : — 
 
 "The Faculty thus tried, quite involuntarily, an interesting experiment 
 in College discipline. It has been a common opinion that morning prayers 
 were not only right and helpful in themselves, but also necessary to College 
 
 1 An Historical Sketch, etc., by W. R. Thayer, p. 45. 
 
 2 Vol. II. p. 341. 
 
 U. OF ILL LIB. 
 
52 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 discipline, partly as a morning roll-call and partly as a means of enforcing 
 continuous residence. It was therefore interesting to observe that the 
 omission of morning prayers for nearly five months, at the time of year 
 when the days are shortest and coldest, had no ill effects whatever on Col- 
 lege order or discipline. There was no increased irregularity of attendance 
 at morning exercises, no unusual number of absences, and, in fact, no visi- 
 ble effect upon the other exercises of the College, or upon the quiet and 
 order of the place. The Professors and other teachers living beyond the 
 sound of the prayer-bell would not have known from any effect produced 
 upon their work with the students that morning prayers had been inter- 
 mitted." l 
 
 The President and Fellows, using their common sense, 
 passed a vote that attendance at Chapel should henceforth be 
 voluntary. The overseers, not using theirs, exercised their 
 right of veto. Some relaxation was however made j what is 
 called the thin edge of the wedge by all enemies of liberty 
 and progress was inserted, and, at last, in 1886, every student 
 was left free to worship God when and where he pleased, or 
 not to worship him at all. The result has been all that might 
 have reasonably been expected, and all that could have been 
 desired. "The average attendance at morning prayers is 
 upwards of two hundred. The service is a reverent and de- 
 lightful one." " Students no longer come rushing into Chapel 
 attired only in a mackintosh and rubber boots [goloshes], nor 
 do they finish their breakfast in the pews instead of reading 
 the responses." 2 The service begins with the reading of a 
 psalm by the minister and students, in alternate verses, not 
 unhappily from the beautiful version in our Book of Common 
 Prayer, and is followed by an anthem sung by the choir. 
 " Sometimes a solo or duet is sung instead. After this comes 
 the reading of the Bible, with comments by the preacher and a 
 
 1 An Historical Sketch, etc., p. 46. 
 
 2 Higher Education, etc., p. 148 ; Harvard's Better Self, by W. R. 
 Bigelow, p. 4. 
 
III. HARVARD COLLEGE. 53 
 
 prayer. It is the preacher's share in the exercises that is most 
 unique and most attractive. To listen every morning for two 
 weeks to the eloquent words of Dr. Phillips Brooks, full of the 
 'beauty of holiness ' ; for another two weeks to search out the 
 distinctive features of the Old Testament books, as they are 
 explained by Dr. Lyman Abbott; to hear a glowing eulogy of 
 Moses from the lips of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, and to fol- 
 low him as he points out the greatness of the Bible heroes 
 from morning to morning; — these are high privileges, and 
 they are attractions." * 
 
 In Harvard there is that ignorant dread of sameness in 
 the services of religion which in England, in recent years, 
 has led to the multiplication of hymns and hymn-books. The 
 great masters of our language who gave us the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer had a better understanding of the human heart. 
 They had no fear lest perfect compositions, the ninety- 
 fifth psalm, the Te Deum, the four daily collects should 
 pall by repetition. Cranmer, whose ear for the melody of 
 prose has surely never been surpassed, did not vary the 
 close of matins and vespers. Who could grow weary of 
 that exquisite cadence in which the most beautiful of all 
 liturgies dies, as it were, away — "granting us in this world 
 knowledge of Thy truth, and in the world to come life ever- 
 lasting." However much we suffered in our childhood from 
 the services piled one on the other — Ossa on Pelion and 
 Pelion on leafy Olympus — and from the long and tedious 
 sermons, who ever grew weary of Bishop Ken's morning hymn, 
 with which, in so many churches in the old days, each Sun- 
 day's service always began, and of his evening hymn which 
 brought the afternoon service to a close ? On a winter day, 
 
 1 Harvard's Better Self, by W. R. Bigelow, p. 2. 
 
54 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. hi. 
 
 when the darkness which had fallen on the congregation 
 seemed only the deeper and the more solemn from the two 
 candles which lighted the preacher in the pulpit, how much 
 was the heart touched by the words so beautiful in their sim- 
 plicity, which Sunday after Sunday, and year after year, had 
 been sung by eight generations of men ! In all religious ser- 
 vices, everything that is new is out of place. It is only the old 
 familiar words, the words which we first heard we know not 
 when, that deeply move us. We no more wish for fresh forms 
 of prayer than at the close of each winter we wish for a fresh 
 form of spring. To hear over and over again a beautiful 
 liturgy and the finest passages in the glorious English of our 
 Bible, is in itself the best of all trainings in the use of our 
 noble language. At no time in our history has there been 
 greater need of that constant repetition, that replication of 
 the noblest sounds, which imperceptibly but surely trains the 
 ear to melody. At no time has there been so much varied 
 reading, reading far too often of careless, extravagant, 
 affected, and mongrel English. When books were rare, and 
 newspapers rarer still, a few great authors were read again and 
 again. On great writers our fathers' style became modelled. 
 "Glowing eulogies of Moses" can surely be left to the Rev. 
 Dr. Harwoods df the world, the man who in his Liberal Trans- 
 lation of the New Testament, by expanding Jesus wept into 
 Jesus, the Saviour of the world, burst into a flood of tears, 
 provoked Johnson's indignant outcry of Puppy / Outside of 
 the universities there are Rev. Dr. Harwoods enough in the 
 present day — certainly in England and, I have little doubt, 
 in America. Moses needs no eulogy beyond the English ver- 
 sion of his books. In the first chapter of Genesis, in the 
 story of Joseph, and in the thunders of Sinai, his praises are 
 written for all time. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Punishments and Fines. — "The Ancient Customs." — Fagging and 
 " Hazing." — Tutors and Undergraduates. — Rebellions. 
 
 IN Harvard an undergraduate who has any touch about him 
 of the antiquary or historian finds much to interest him in 
 the usages of the past. He finds a minuteness of discipline 
 which is scarcely excelled by that contained in the book 
 which the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford handed to me and to 
 each of my companions when we matriculated, with the follow- 
 ing address : Scitote vos in matriculant hujus Universitatis 
 hodie relates esse sub hac conditione, nempe ut omnia statuta 
 hoc libro comprehensa pro virili observetis. If we ever examined 
 these statutes, it was certainly not for the sake of keeping them, 
 but of mocking them. At Harvard, where the age of the stu- 
 dents was younger, corporal punishment was kept up for nearly 
 a hundred years longer than in the English universities. I 
 doubt whether at Oxford any was inflicted later than the reign 
 of Charles II. About 1680 " the poor children" — the servitors 
 that is to say, or foundationers of Queen's College — were sen- 
 tenced to be whipped. It does not seem, however, that the 
 punishment was actually executed. 1 In the New England 
 University it was gradually discontinued, and by about the 
 middle of last century came to an end. Its place had been 
 taken by an elaborate system of fines. In them scales, as it 
 
 1 ffist. Comm. MSS Fleming MSS, pp. 166, 168. 
 55 
 
56 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 were, are given by which we can ascertain the comparative 
 
 weight of sins in New England in the first half of the eighteenth 
 
 century. Omitting the fines for regulating conduct at Chapel, 
 
 which I have already quoted, and some others, it stands as 
 
 follows : — 
 
 d 
 " Absence from Professor's public lecture 4 
 
 Profanation of Lord's Day, not exceeding 3.0 
 
 Undergraduates tarrying out of town without leave, not exceeding per 
 
 diem 1.3 
 
 Going out of College without proper garb, not exceeding 6 
 
 Frequenting taverns, not exceeding 1.6 
 
 Profane cursing, not exceeding 2.6 
 
 Graduates playing cards, not exceeding 5.0 
 
 Undergraduates playing cards, not exceeding 2.6 
 
 Selling and exchanging without leave, not exceeding 1.6 
 
 Lying, not exceeding 1.6 
 
 Drunkenness, not exceeding 1.6 
 
 Going upon the top of the College 1.6 
 
 Tumultuous noises 1.6 
 
 Tumultuous noises, second offence 3.0 
 
 Refusing to give evidence 3.0 
 
 Rudeness at meals 1 .0 
 
 Keeping guns, and going on skating 1.0 
 
 Fighting, or hurting persons, not exceeding 1.6" 1 
 
 It is interesting to see that for a graduate to play at cards 
 was three times and a third as wicked as for an undergraduate 
 to lie, and that to go skating was two-thirds as immoral as get- 
 ting drunk. I was told that thirty years or so ago " tumultuous 
 noises " were raised not only in the Yard but even in the classes, 
 while rough horse-play often went on. For some while past 
 all this has been looked on as " bad form," and is no longer 
 practised. " Nothing," says a writer in the Crimson, " could 
 show a greater contrast than the comparative stillness of the 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 499. 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 57 
 
 Yale Campus l and the Harvard Yard. In front of the Harvard 
 buildings no one yells ' Fire,' or blows a horn ; men do not 
 shout for a friend under his room. A Harvard man would not 
 be able to understand the Yale fondness for pure noise." 
 
 The three shillings fine for " refusing to give evidence " per- 
 haps dates back to the rule of the second President, the divine 
 stubborn in the faith of adult baptism by immersion, who, when 
 consulted about the lawfulness of inflicting torture, replied : 
 " But now if ye question be mente of inflicting bodyly torments 
 to extracte a confession from a mallefactor, I conceive yt in 
 maters of higest consequence, such as doe concerne ye saftie 
 or ruine of stats or countries, magistrats may proceede so farr 
 in bodily torments as racks, hote-irons, &c, to extracte a con- 
 cession, especially when presumptions are strounge ; but other- 
 wise by no means. God sometimes hids a sinner till his 
 wickedness is filled up." 2 
 
 " The Ancient Customs of Harvard College established by 
 the Government of it " bore hard on the Freshmen, who were 
 little better than the fags of an English Public School. 
 
 " No Freshmen," we read, " shall wear his hat in the College 
 Yard, unless it rains, hails, or snows, provided he be on foot 
 and have not both his hands full. 
 
 " No Freshman shall speak to a Senior with his hat on. 
 
 " All Freshmen . . . shall be obliged to go on any errand for 
 any of his Seniors, graduates or undergraduates, at any time, 
 except in studying hours, or after nine o'clock in the evening. 
 
 " A Senior Sophister has authority to take a Freshman from 
 
 x The precincts of a university, known as the Yard in Harvard, are in 
 most American universities called the Campus. 
 
 2 Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation (Mass. Hist. 
 Soc. 4th S. III. 396). 
 
58 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 a Sophomore, a Middle Bachelor from a Junior Sophister, a 
 Master from a Senior, and any Governor of the College from a 
 Master. 
 
 " When any person knocks at a Freshman's door except in 
 studying time, he shall immediately open the door, without 
 inquiring who is there. 
 
 " The Freshmen shall furnish batts, balls and foot-balls for 
 the use of the students, to be kept at the Buttery. 
 
 " The Sophomores shall publish these customs to the Fresh- 
 men in the Chapel, whenever ordered by any in the Govern- 
 ment of the College, at which time the Freshmen are required 
 to keep their places in their seats, and attend with decency to 
 the reading." ' 
 
 The unfortunate Freshman with a Senior Sophister calling to 
 him from one quarter, a Sophomore from a second, a Middle 
 Bachelor from a third, a Junior Sophister from a fourth, a Mas- 
 ter from a fifth, a Governor of the College from a sixth, must 
 have been far more distracted even than Francis in Shake- 
 speare's Hen?'\ IV., of whom the stage-direction says : " The 
 drawer stands amazed, not knowing which way to go." 
 
 Others beside the Freshmen were made to show respect for 
 their superiors by going bareheaded in their presence. " No 
 undergraduate shall wear his hat in the College Yard, when any 
 of the Governors of the College are there ; and no Bachelor 
 shall wear his hat when the President is there." 
 
 A Fellow of St. John's College, describing Oxford at about 
 the same period, says : " The principal thing required is ex- 
 ternal respect from the Juniors, however ignorant or unworthy 
 a Senior Fellow may be, yet the slightest disrespect is treated 
 as the greatest crime of which an academic can be guilty." 2 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 539. 2 BosvvelPs Life of Johnson, III. 13, n. 3. 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 59 
 
 For these regulations about hats the republican spirit of Har- 
 vard, quickened, if not called forth by the Revolution, became 
 too strong. About the beginning of the present century formal 
 permission was given to the students to wear their hats in 
 the Yard, no matter who might be present. 1 As regards the 
 custom of going bareheaded, a singular change has taken place 
 in Oxford. In my undergraduate days every one wore his col- 
 lege cap in the quadrangle, even though he had not on his 
 gown. About twenty years ago men began to go about bare- 
 headed inside their college gate, even though their gowns were 
 on their shoulders. Gradually the liberties, if I may use the old 
 term, of each college were curiously extended. One day I 
 noticed an undergraduate in his gown walking bareheaded in the 
 Broad Street. I was told that, beyond all doubt, he was a Bal- 
 liol man ; as Balliol men assume that all the street in front of 
 their College belongs to Balliol, in spite of the impertinence of 
 the citizens who claim and maintain a right of way. In like 
 manner a Queen's College man walks bareheaded across the 
 High Street to the Schools. 2 
 
 The rule at Harvard which required a Freshman at once to 
 open his door on hearing a knock deprived youth of one of its 
 highest satisfactions. How great was our pride when, for the 
 first time in our lives, we felt that in our case an Englishman's 
 house was his castle ; when we closed our inner and our outer 
 door and knew that, whoever might knock, law and custom 
 alike justified us in remaining silent and secluded. 3 It is with 
 regret I learn that this good old custom in some colleges has 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 278. 
 
 2 The building in which the examinations are held. 
 
 8 The outer door is solidly made, and opening outward, and having no 
 handle, cannot be forced without the greatest violence. To close it was, 
 and I suppose is still called in college slang, " to sport one's oak." 
 
60 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 passed away, and that in them no undergraduate, of whatever 
 standing he may be, presumes to close his outer door. Bores 
 and idlers have gained the day. All their tediousness they can 
 now bestow on their neighbours. 
 
 In 1760 the Corporation passed a law which would have 
 greatly limited fagging ; but it was vetoed by the overseers. 1 
 Judge Story says that this bad custom was dying out when he 
 entered Harvard in 1794. "I believe," he adds, "my own 
 Class was the first that was not compelled, at the command of 
 the Senior Class, to perform the drudgery of the most humble 
 services." "My father," writes the Judge's son, "was very 
 active in this reform. He invited his own fag to his room, 
 treated him with cordiality, and made him his friend." 2 Fag- 
 ging subsided into what is known in American colleges as 
 hazing — horse-play, more or less brutal, to which Freshmen are 
 subjected. "President Quincy," :i writes Professor Peabody, 
 " laboured persistently to establish it as a rule that the students 
 of Harvard College should be held amenable to the civil 
 authority for crimes against the law of the land, even though 
 committed within academic precincts. The habits of the 
 students were rude, and outrages, involving not only large 
 destruction of property, but peril of life — as, for instance, the 
 blowing up of public rooms in inhabited buildings — were 
 occurring every year. Mr. Quincy was sustained by the Gov- 
 erning Boards, but encountered an untold amount of hostility 
 and obloquy from the students, their friends, and the outside 
 public. He persevered, and gradually won over the best pub- 
 lic opinion to his view. The principle is still admitted, and I 
 cannot but think that it ought to be practically recognized with 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 134. 2 Life of Joseph Story, I. 49. 
 
 3 President of Harvard from 1829 to 1845. 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 61 
 
 regard to all forms of misconduct that are punishable outside 
 of the college walls. While the detestable practice of hazing 
 was rife, crimes that were worthy of the penitentiary were of 
 frequent occurrence, resulting in some cases in driving a perse- 
 cuted Freshman from college ; in many instances, in serious and 
 lasting injury ; and once, at least, in fatal illness. The usual 
 college penalty punished the parents alone. The suspended l 
 student was escorted in triumph on his departure and his return, 
 and was the hero of his class for the residue of his college life. 
 I remember an instance in which a timid Freshman had his 
 room forcibly entered at midnight, his valuables stolen, and a 
 bucket of cold water poured upon him as he lay trembling in 
 his bed. Had the perpetrators of that crime been certain that, 
 in case of detection, they would be indicted for burglary, and 
 punished by a year or two of imprisonment, they would no 
 more readily have broken into a Freshman's room than into a 
 jeweller's shop." 2 
 
 If this was the treatment that awaited the Freshman, the 
 tears of fathers, mothers, and sisters, in the midst of which he 
 left home, as described in Fair Harvard, are not surprising. 
 It was, with good reason, Launce over again — " my mother 
 weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, 
 our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great 
 perplexity." 
 
 It would not be amiss if in our own universities the worst 
 forms of outrage were made amenable to the civil authority. 
 The drunken boating-men, who, only two summers ago, broke 
 into one of the Oxford colleges, and in a wild riot laid property 
 waste, would have been more fitly punished by a jail than by 
 a money penalty. The heavy fine that was inflicted on the 
 
 1 Rusticated. 2 Harvard Reminiscences, p. 31. 
 
62 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 ringleader was raised by a subscription among the undergradu- 
 ates of the very College which he had outraged. He, not to 
 be wanting in magnanimity, presented its Boating Club with a 
 silver bowl. What but a prison should have been the fate of 
 the Christ Church men, who, some years earlier, broke into the 
 Library, and brought from it an ancient statue which they cast 
 into a bonfire? In another large College, of late years men 
 have more than once shown themselves the fellows of the 
 ruffians who not long ago carried terror into the West End of 
 London. Ruffianism, wherever found, whether in the courts 
 of a college or in the streets of a town, should meet with the 
 same stern treatment. Indulged, or feebly treated, it may, in 
 our ancient universities, lead to some terrible disaster — to loss 
 of life or destruction by fire of some noble and venerable 
 building. 
 
 In Oxford, as in Harvard, " the suspended student " — the 
 rusticated undergraduate — is sometimes escorted in triumph 
 on his departure. A few years ago a ridiculous scene was wit- 
 nessed in Broad Street — a long procession of thirty or forty 
 cabs, following, at a foot-pace, some great but luckless hero, 
 who, for a season, was exiled from his University. 
 
 "Hazing" — to use the American term — in its less brutal 
 form is not unknown at the present day in Oxford. In every 
 college this rude horse-play may break out from time to time, 
 and in some few within the last forty years it has, for short 
 periods, been carried to a shameful height. Those, however, 
 who have suffered from it are few indeed compared with the 
 whole mass of undergraduates. In my own College I can re- 
 call but one solitary instance of persecution. The victim was 
 singularly unfit for a university. Even in a Quakers' College 
 he would have been made a butt. Though " hazing" is still rife 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 63 
 
 in many American universities, it has died out in Harvard. 
 With " window-smashing and disturbing a lecture-room, it is," 
 writes Professor G. H. Palmer, " a thing of the past." l It was 
 in the autumn of 1878 that the last man was hazed. 
 
 During my stay in Cambridge there was a slight revival of 
 a custom which seemed to have almost passed away. On the 
 first Monday of the academic year, known as " Bloody Mon- 
 day " in many American colleges, it has been the habit for the 
 Sophomores — the second year's men — to " rush" the Fresh- 
 men. Between these two classes there exists, why I know not, 
 " an instinctive antagonism." At Oxford there is nothing that 
 exactly corresponds to the American Sophomore, " a being who 
 at best has his peculiarities," and is full of "a sense of self-suf- 
 ficiency." 2 Our second year's men are in no way a peculiar 
 people. The peculiarities and self-sufficiency would be more 
 commonly found in the Freshmen, at all events in their second 
 or third term. So great at Harvard used to be the antagonism 
 between the two classes that to the timid Freshman this first 
 Monday was a night of " terrors and torments." 3 The more 
 daring met their enemies openly in the Yard. Each set formed 
 in ranks, nine rows deep, with arms locked. On the signal 
 being given, they met together in a rush. In the scuffle bloody 
 noses were sometimes given, clothes torn, and hats carried off 
 as lawful booty. The Freshmen were let to know that there 
 was no surer way of gaining admittance into some of the more 
 exclusive clubs than by a display of prowess on this great night. 
 A pair of black eyes, heroically earned, would have made their 
 proud possessor welcomed with acclamation. As the Harvard 
 
 1 The New Education, by G. H. Palmer, Boston, 1887, p. 28. 
 
 2 The iVew Education, p. 88. 
 
 3 An Historical Sketch, etc., by W. R. Thayer, p. 50. 
 
64 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Yard is not enclosed by a wall, rough fellows from outside, 
 when once the tumult began, could easily take part in it. Last 
 year, after a long interval of peace, these hostile lines were 
 once more formed, though neither was the combat waged with 
 the high spirit of old, nor were more than a small number out 
 of the two classes engaged. I was told by a student that a 
 knot of outsiders had been seen waiting, who ho doubt at once 
 joined in. He added that a force of twenty policemen had 
 been present, who had "batoned" the undergraduates. The 
 twenty, I learnt, had grown by rumour out of five. These five 
 had been kept out of sight, but when neither Sophomores nor 
 Freshmen would disperse on the repeated summons of the 
 Proctor who had the charge of order that night, they were 
 called out and were ordered to make some arrests. Two stu- 
 dents were taken to the Police Station, followed by a great 
 crowd. The prisoners, as so often happens in such a case, 
 proved to be very quiet youths and were soon set free. The 
 police had perhaps shown some of that wisdom which Dog- 
 berry enjoins, and had only seized those who would stand when 
 they were bidden. 
 
 The regulations about dress last century, though somewhat 
 minute, were far less troublesome and absurd than those which 
 were enforced at Oxford. There was none of that elaborate 
 dressing of the hair which, in each college, kept the junior 
 members in a constraint almost as ignoble as if they had been 
 set in the stocks. They had to pass under the College barber's 
 hands at least two hours before the early dinner — the Seniors 
 coming last. When once they had been pomatomed and pow- 
 dered exercise was impossible. " A man might be a drunkard, 
 a debauchee, and yet long escape the Proctor's animadver- 
 sion : but no virtue could protect you if you walked on Christ 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 65 
 
 Church meadow or on the High Street with a band tied too low, 
 or with no band at all ; with a pig-tail, or with a green or scarlet 
 coat." 1 In 1786, five years after this description of Oxford 
 life was written, the Governing Boards of Harvard prescribed 
 a uniform. What the colour and form should be was minutely 
 set forth. Classes were to be distinguished by frogs on the 
 cuffs and buttonholes. Silk was prohibited and home manu- 
 factures were recommended. 2 Full forty years later these rules 
 were to some extent enforced. "In 1824 undergraduates were 
 required to wear a uniform consisting entirely of black cloth 
 and a black or white cravat. The coat had an ornament 
 worked on the cuff of the sleeve in black silk braid which 
 was called a ' crow's foot.' A Sophomore wore one of these 
 badges, a Junior two, and a Senior three." 3 In 1829 the 
 waistcoat had to be of " black-mixed or black ; or, when of 
 cotton or linen fabric, of white." Sumner, who, in spite of 
 admonition, persisted in wearing one of buff-colour, " was sum- 
 moned several times to appear before the Parietal Board 4 for 
 disobedience ; but to no purpose. Wearied with the contro- 
 versy the Board at length yielded. There is a memorandum 
 on his College bill for the first term of his junior year — 'Ad- 
 monition for illegal dress.' " 5 It was perhaps in commemora- 
 tion of his triumph over authority that, seventeen years later, 
 when he delivered his famous oration before the Harvard 
 Phi Beta Society, he appeared in a buff waistcoat. 
 
 1 Boswell's LJfe of Johnson, III. 13, n. 4. 
 
 2 Quincy's Harvard, II. 277. 
 
 3 Life ofB. R. Curtis, 1879, I. 23. 
 
 4 "The Proctors, and the officers of instruction who reside in the Uni- 
 versity building, or in buildings to which the superintendence of the Uni- 
 versity extends, constitute the Parietal Board." — Catalogue, p. 32. 
 
 5 Life of Charles Sumner, I. 52. 
 
 F 
 
66 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 In Harvard down to the present time there has been little 
 of that pleasant friendly intercourse between tutor and under- 
 graduate which so commonly exists at Oxford. Much as our 
 two great universities suffer as places of learning and even of 
 instruction from the college system, for most of the purposes 
 of social life they are admirably adapted. The unmarried 
 Fellows living in College, commonly on the same staircases as 
 the undergraduates, are not the strangers to them that the 
 Professors are in Harvard. Even the married Fellows and 
 tutors often retain a set of rooms where they can receive their 
 guests. They have the use also of the Common Room for all 
 purposes of hospitality. The College kitchen is at their service 
 as well as the College cook and the ancient College plate. 
 The Oxford breakfast-parties used to be proverbial for their 
 pleasantness, though in these busier days they are giving way 
 to luncheons. At such gatherings in a Fellow's rooms I have 
 in late years often met with great pleasure half a dozen under- 
 graduates, and in their bright looks recalled " the happy morn- 
 ing of life and of May," when all the world lay at our feet. 
 The friendliness of the relations between tutor and under- 
 graduate has greatly increased of late years. In my time we 
 scarcely came across our tutors save in the Lecture Room. 
 On Degree Days, however, the Dean gave a formal breakfast 
 to all who were taking their degree, and to a few undergradu- 
 ates besides. The meal was abundant and good. For that 
 brief hour our host dropped the don as far as he could, and 
 assumed somewhat of the air of a man of the world. He 
 addressed us with friendly familiarity. " Jones, may I send 
 you some of this chicken? Smith, will you help yourself to 
 some brawn? Oxford, you know, is famous for its brawn." 
 If there were any present who were taking the Master's degree, 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 67 
 
 the party broke up in time for them to read aloud the Thirty- 
 nine Articles of the Church in the presence of the Dean, and 
 to signify their assent and consent to them. Unless this were 
 done the degree could not be conferred. I remember how a 
 friend of mine, now a learned Canon, arrived so late at the 
 breakfast that there was scarcely time for him to read the 
 Articles, and none to swallow a single mouthful. The good- 
 natured Dean bade him begin to read as hard as he could and 
 go on till his breath failed him, when he himself would take up 
 the wondrous tale, to be relieved in his turn. In this way, 
 riding and tying as it were, they scampered through the whole 
 Thirty-nine Articles just in time. When two hours after break- 
 fast we returned to the same room and to the same table, 
 though alas ! very differently spread, for it was covered with 
 books, the change was chilling. " Mr. Smith, you we#e not 
 at my lecture yesterday." " Mr. Jones, I hardly think your 
 rendering of that passage would satisfy the examiners." The 
 Master of the College now and then invited a few favoured 
 youths to breakfast or dinner. I remember how the great 
 man, as some sparkling perry was poured out, impressively 
 told us that her Majesty's judges, whom as Vice-Chancellor he 
 had lately entertained, preferred it to champagne. He was a 
 Canon of Gloucester as well as Master of Pembroke, and in 
 the great orchard country had learnt the excellence of perry. 
 The very best, such as we were drinking, cost him but two 
 shillings a bottle, whereas for his champagne he paid ten. I 
 sincerely hope, out of regard to the character of a man who 
 from a Canon became a Dean, and from a Dean a Bishop, that 
 he did not exaggerate his wine-merchant's prices. He cer- 
 tainly told us that the judges' preference of his perry saved 
 him eight shillings a bottle. 
 
68 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Far more formal were the dinners given in those days by the 
 Provost of Oriel. It was not till the morning of the solemn 
 day that he issued his invitations. All were expected to attend, 
 whatever may have been their engagements. His invitations 
 were of the nature of the Queen's — they were veiled com- 
 mands. The Junior Fellow, who received no longer notice 
 than the undergraduates, took the bottom of the table. When 
 the cloth was cleared away and the dessert set out, the Provost 
 solemnly addressed him. "Mr. Robinson, may I have the 
 pleasure of taking a glass of wine with you, and Mr. Brown 
 [turning to the undergraduate on his right] will you join?" 
 After a pause he challenged in like manner the guest on his 
 left, joining with him the second on his right. In this manner 
 he slowly and solemnly travelled down both sides of the table. 
 In the drawing-room no undergraduate might sit down in his 
 awful presence. One evening a young sprig of the nobility 
 was daring enough to take a chair. The Provost at once came 
 up as if to engage him in conversation, whereupon the youth 
 rose. A man-servant, who had been well-trained in his duty, 
 straightway removed the chair. 
 
 This kind of formality is a thing of the past in Oxford. 
 Some few traces of it may still linger, but for the most part 
 between old and young there is familiarity and friendliness. 
 In one of the Colleges, on a Sunday evening, I have now and 
 then attended a large Literary Society, held sometimes in a 
 tutor's rooms, sometimes in an undergraduate's, where over 
 tea, coffee, and tobacco all meet on friendly terms with no 
 inequality but such as naturally comes from greater age and 
 greater knowledge. How unlike this free and familiar life is 
 to the restrained and distant relations which, too commonly 
 though not always, exist at Harvard between teachers and 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 69 
 
 students is shown by a passage in an article in the Harvard 
 Monthly} Last September, at the beginning of the academic 
 year, the President and the Professors for the first time gave a 
 kind of reception to the Freshmen. 
 
 "The manner in which the Class of '97 2 was received this 
 year [writes the editor] showed very plainly the existence of 
 a new policy in the conduct of the University. Heretofore a 
 Freshman entered college with almost no idea of his responsi- 
 bilities, or, indeed, of his advantages. He did not come into 
 contact with the Faculty, unless, perhaps, it was in consultation 
 with the Dean on some matters of entrance examinations. He 
 had no knowledge of those who directed the academic life of 
 his surroundings. The Faculty was something to be avoided 
 as disagreeable and, in most ways, useless. He knew nothing 
 of the eminent scholars from whom he might derive benefit, 
 since his instructors were simply his taskmasters, who, after all, 
 could do but little if his daily tale of bricks was found incom- 
 plete. Thus he was shut off from one side of undergraduate 
 life. Perhaps it was years before he saw his one-sidedness ; 
 possibly he went on during his entire college career with an 
 idea that courses were bad because they emanated from a 
 Faculty which he had never known except as his stern, and 
 hence disagreeable, censors. All this has of late undergone a 
 radical change. The schoolboy who became a member of 
 Harvard College last month had the privilege of meeting his 
 governors on grounds of social freedom which have been here- 
 tofore unknown. His duties and opportunities were clearly 
 set before him by representative men, scholars, and athletes ; 
 
 1 October, 1893, P- 37- 
 
 2 The Freshmen of 1893 are known as the class of 1897, because it is 
 in that year that they will graduate. 
 
70 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 he was formally welcomed by the President, and started upon 
 his college career with the feeling that the Faculty of Arts and 
 Sciences was composed of most delightful men, neither so stern 
 nor so stupid as he had expected. Authority must be seen to 
 be respected. An emperor ihat absents himself from his peo- 
 ple's sight will find but little loyalty among his subjects when 
 he may be pleased to show himself. In former years the 
 Faculty have held more or less aloof from a visible participa- 
 tion in college interests, and the respect for their authority 
 has declined in proportion as they have so acted. Fortunately, 
 however, we seem to have just witnessed the beginning of a 
 new policy, which will doubtless tend to weld more closely 
 together the various parts of our University." I am told that 
 there is a good deal of exaggeration in this account, and that 
 not a few of the Professors are on terms of friendly social inter- 
 course with many of their pupils. 
 
 Professor Peabody, writing of Harvard as he first knew it sixty 
 years ago, says : " Though no student dared to go to a tutor's 
 room by daylight, it was no uncommon thing for one to come 
 furtively in the evening to ask his teacher's aid in some diffi- 
 cult problem or demonstration. The students certainly con- 
 sidered the Faculty as their natural enemies. There existed 
 between the two parties very little of kindly intercourse, and 
 that little generally secret. It was regarded as a high crime 
 by his class for a student to enter a recitation-room [lecture- 
 room] before the ringing of the bell, or to remain to ask a 
 question of the instructor ; even one who was uniformly first in 
 the class-room would have had his way to Coventry made easy. 
 The Professors performed police duty as occasion seemed to 
 demand." ' For a youth to be intimate with the tutors in 
 
 1 Harvard Reminiscences, pp. 183, 200. 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 71 
 
 Judge Story's time " would have exposed him to the imputa- 
 tion of being what in technical language was called a ' fisher- 
 man ' — a rank and noxious character in college annals." 1 
 That in those days this ill-will existed is not surprising, for the 
 discipline of Harvard, in one respect, was more like that of a 
 French boarding-school than of a university. "The ' grouping ' 
 of students used to be a penal offence, two having been a suffi- 
 cient number to constitute a group ; while in at least one 
 instance an extra-zealous Proctor reported a solitary student 
 as evidently waiting to be joined by another, and thus offering 
 himself as a nucleus for a group." 2 Even in Vienna, under 
 the rule of the Hapsburgs, a group cannot be formed, I believe, 
 unless there are five people gathered together. Four may stop 
 in the street and talk about the weather, without much risk of 
 being meddled with. Professor Peabody describes how in 
 1832 he and another tutor "had the chief charge of the police 
 in the College Yard. The rooms of the tutors and proctors 
 were at that time fully furnished by the College, and dark- 
 lanterns were among the essential items of furniture. Bonfires 
 had been of frequent occurrence in the Yard. The fires were 
 made of wood from the students' own wood-piles. [The bon- 
 fires in an Oxford quadrangle are too often made of chairs 
 and tables not brought from the rooms of those who make the 
 fire.] The chief object of these fires was to bring out the 
 posse of parietal officers in chase of the moving groups, that 
 scattered when they approached, and dodged the dark-lan- 
 tern when the slide was removed. We determined to direct 
 our attention to the fire, and not to the students. We pulled 
 the ignited sticks apart ; and when the fire was thus arrested 
 we conveyed the fuel to our own rooms. After two or three 
 
 1 Life of Joseph Story, I. 50. - Harvard Reminiscences, p. 207. 
 
72 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 experiments, the students grew tired of furnishing kindling- 
 wood to their teachers ; and the wonted blaze and outcry 
 ceased for the rest of the year." 1 
 
 To bridge the distance which even in late years has existed 
 between teachers and pupils, between old and young, one re- 
 ception at the beginning of the academic year can do but 
 little. It is a sign, however, of a better day. I wish some 
 generous and wealthy benefactor would rise, some hospitable 
 man who knows how much a pleasant meal removes awe and 
 gives us " suppler souls," who would provide Harvard with a 
 Hall for the Professors, Assistant- Professors, Tutors, and .In- 
 structors, a noble kitchen, a good cellar, a stock of old wine, 
 and half a dozen Common Rooms. Perhaps, large though 
 the staff is, one Common Room would suffice at first, till the 
 art of using it had been acquired. Two or three of the most 
 promising young men might be sent over to Oxford for a year 
 to study social life. They would see how even the married 
 Professors and tutors share in it, dining at least once a week in 
 College. No man thinks himself too old to dine in hall. The 
 generous hospitality of the place brings the men of the differ- 
 ent colleges together. The stranger too shares in it, and sees 
 a side of academic life which is found only in England. He 
 dines in a noble hall, adorned by the portraits of former 
 students who, in one way or another, had gained distinction in 
 the world ; from the chair on which he sits he looks down upon 
 the rows of tables filled with men all in the freshness of youth ; 
 as all stand up for the Latin grace he notices the picturesque 
 gowns, which by their shape mark the different ranks of those 
 who wear them. After dinner he is taken to a Common Room 
 dark with oaken wainscot — the room perhaps where James 
 
 1 Harvard Reminiscences, p. 170. 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 73 
 
 the Second's arbitrary court was held, and where Addison, per- 
 haps, first learnt to like that wine which shortened his days, 
 and enabled him, at the early age of forty-seven, to show his 
 step-son " how a Christian can die." If it was in Addison's 
 College that our stranger dines, he may have noticed a lad 
 perched on a stool in a corner, close behind the President's 
 chair. It is a little chorister, ready to chant grace if he is 
 called on ; in any case to be rewarded with a slice of pudding. 
 In my College the signal for grace used to be given by three 
 blows struck with one small piece of board on another — three 
 blows, no doubt, in honour of the Trinity. The custom has 
 been allowed to die out. " I have always noticed," wrote the 
 antiquary Hearne, on hearing pan-cake bell on Shrove Tues- 
 day ring at eleven o'clock instead of at half-past ten, " that 
 when laudable old customs are changed learning decays." 
 Happily, in the present case, this observation has not been 
 verified. Everywhere in Oxford the stranger finds something 
 that is curious — something unlike all that he has ever seen 
 before. Such customs cannot be transplanted, they must 
 grow. No university can exclaim " Go to ; I will be venera- 
 ble." Let Harvard once get two or three Common Rooms 
 built, and hospitable customs will begin slowly to form. In 
 these rooms the teachers of the University will be able, not 
 only to entertain their friends and the chance-comer, but also 
 to meet their pupils "sine ulla solemnitate " in friendly gather- 
 ings. In Oxford the Common Room is often borrowed by one 
 of the Fellows for a private party. How pleasant are the 
 breakfasts and lunches that are given ! At one of them I had 
 the honour to meet the widow and the son of President Gar- 
 field. It is nearly sixty years since Longfellow recorded in 
 his Journal : " Exhibition. Everett presides with dignity, but 
 
74 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 cannot always lay hold of his collegiate cap in the right place. 
 Did not dine with the College ; I have not for a long time, 
 and shall not till they have a proper dining-room and service." 1 
 
 The strictness of the discipline, added to the indifferent 
 quality, of the " Commons," often led to rebellions. The rest- 
 less spirit of the age no doubt favoured insubordination ; for of 
 the more famous of these outbreaks the earliest took place in 
 1768, a few years before the Revolution. When once the 
 fashion was established, it was likely to be kept up in time of 
 general tranquillity. It went on at least as late as 184 1. In 
 1768, "the tutors' windows were broken with brickbats 
 and their lives endangered." Three students were expelled. 
 But so weak were both the Corporation and the overseers that 
 within a few months their punishment was remitted, mainly, if 
 not entirely, because " many who have been great friends and 
 benefactors to the Society have condescended to intercede in 
 their behalf." The aged President Holyoke, as- his last official 
 act, entered on the records of both Boards his protest against 
 this unworthy conduct. 2 
 
 At the Harvard rebellion of 1768 " the scholars met in a 
 body under and about a great tree to which they gave the name 
 of the Tree of Liberty." 3 I do not know whether an earlier 
 instance can be found of those Trees of Liberty which, in little 
 more than twenty years, were to become notorious in France. 
 This Harvard tree some years after was either blown down or 
 cut down. Another Liberty Tree was soon chosen ; it is still 
 standing and plays a great part every Class Day. It has long 
 ceased to be revolutionary and is recognized by authority. 
 
 1 Life of IL. W. Longfellow, II. 37. 
 
 2 Quincy's Harvard, II. 116. 
 
 3 An Historical Sketch, etc., by W. R. Thayer, p. 51. 
 
iv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 75 
 
 Professor E. T. Charming, whose admirable lectures in Eng- 
 lish kept his pupils generally free from the extravagances of 
 the Edward Everett School, " was not [we are told] graduated 
 in course, as he was involved in the famous rebellion of 1807, 
 one of the few in which the students seem, on the whole, not 
 to have been in the wrong." On this Professor Peabody re- 
 marks : " I object to this statement as not broad enough. 
 I am inclined to think that in College Rebellions the students 
 were always in the right as to principle, though injudicious in 
 their modes of actualizing principle. There was not one of 
 those rebellions in which the leaders were not among the fore- 
 most in their respective classes, in character no less than in 
 scholarship. There were traditional maxims and methods of 
 college jurisprudence to which the professional mind had be- 
 come hardened, which to unsophisticated youth justly seemed 
 at variance with natural right ; and there was no form of collec- 
 tive protest that they could make which was not deemed rebel- 
 lion in such a sense that they were compelled either to recant 
 or to leave college under censure. College rebellions have be- 
 come impossible because the rights of the students are now 
 fully recognized, their sense of honour held sacred, their protests 
 and complaints considered carefully and kindly." * 
 
 Channing, if as a rebel he was not allowed to graduate, as 
 a man of letters had an honorary degree conferred on him 
 twelve years later. In the cases of other men the College 
 showed its leniency or its penitence. In 1823, thirty-seven 
 students, who had protested against an act of tyrannical disci- 
 pline, were refused their degree. Many years later the ordinary 
 degree was given them. 
 
 There was one rebellion which Professor Peabody must have 
 
 1 Harvard Reminiscences, p. 84. 
 
76 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. iv. 
 
 witnessed in which the students do not seem to have been in 
 the right, even as to principle. Longfellow wrote on July 5, 
 1 84 1 : "You have probably seen by the papers that we have 
 had a rebellion in College. It lasted, however, only two days. 
 All is again quiet and orderly. There was never a more silly 
 and boyish outbreak, nor one with less cause. Two students 
 have been expelled, and six dismissed from College." * 
 
 1 Life of H. W. Longfellow, I. 379. " Dismission closes a student's con- 
 nection with the University, without necessarily precluding his return." 
 — Harvard Catalogue, p. 32. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Odd Characters. — Changes of Names of Places. — Commencement Day. — 
 Lafayette. — Russian Naval Officers. — Oxford Commemoration. — 
 The Association of the Alumni. — The Classes. — The After-dinner 
 Speeches. 
 
 STORIES are handed down, in Harvard, of presidents and 
 professors much as they are in Oxford. I have been told 
 that the late Master of Balliol sometimes unconsciously amused 
 a party of undergraduates whom he was entertaining at break- 
 fast by telling anecdotes of the Master of his early days, which 
 among his young guests were current about himself. An old 
 Fellow of a college, after he had sat musing for a while, said 
 to a friend : " When you and I were young, there were so 
 many odd characters about the University. How is it that 
 there are none now?" "We are the odd characters," his 
 friend replied. I hope that Harvard of the present day can 
 boast of its odd characters. It is only a brand-new university, 
 just turned fresh out of the hands of a millionaire, that should 
 have none. That there were some of old in the American 
 Cambridge is shown by Professor Peabody in his lively 
 Reminiscences. There was Professor Popkin who "was not 
 without a nickname which he accepted as a matter of course 
 from the students; but hearing it on one occasion from a 
 young man of dapper, jaunty, unacademic aspect, he said to a 
 friend who was standing with him, 'What right has that man 
 to call me Old Pop ? He was never a member of Harvard 
 
 77 
 
78 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 College.'" 1 Longfellow, going one clay to the Episcopal 
 Church in Cambridge, the church which Washington at- 
 tended, saw there, " Popkin, standing hoary-headed, red- 
 faced, with a narrow-caped, blue greatcoat, looking very 
 much like a beadle, and dragging along his heavy vocables 
 considerably in the rear of the rest of the congregation." 2 
 Lowell describes his "great silver spectacles of the heroic 
 period, such as scarce twelve noses of these degenerate days 
 could bear." 3 "Imagine," writes Professor Goodwin, "the 
 venerable Dr. Popkin stepping calmly out of his door on the 
 West Cambridge road, and waving his historic umbrella to 
 stop an electric car as it goes whizzing by." 4 There was also 
 Professor Hedge who had written a work on Logic, and, ac- 
 cording to popular report, was in the habit of saying to his 
 class: "It took me fourteen years, with the assistance of the 
 adult members of my family, to write this book; and I am 
 sure that you cannot do better than to employ the precise 
 words of the learned author." 5 
 
 President Kirkland, "a jolly little man," as Longfellow 
 describes him, 6 seems to have been a wit. In his day the 
 dogma of " the perseverance of the saints " was hotly dis- 
 cussed, the dogma, that is to say, that a man who has once 
 been brought to a state of grace can never fall from it. 
 " When a country deacon called on the President for advice 
 about a quarrel that had sprung up in his church concerning 
 
 1 Harvard Reminiscences,^. 45. This same story, I am told, is now 
 current of William Everett while he was Tutor about twenty years ago. 
 His nickname was Piggy. 
 
 *Life of H. W. Longfellow, II. 132. 
 
 3 Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, 1890, 1. 91. 
 
 4 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 6. 
 
 5 Lb. p. $>. 6 Life of H. W. Longfellow, I. 71. 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 79 
 
 this dogma, he replied: 'Here in Boston we have no diffi- 
 culty on that score; what troubles us here is the perseverance 
 of the sinners.'" 1 Lowell, in his Cambridge Thirty Years 
 Ago, 2 gives a pleasant account of the kindly old fellow. "This 
 life was good enough for him, and the next not too good. 
 The gentlemanlike pervaded even his prayers. His were not 
 the manners of a man of the world, nor of a man of the other 
 world either ; but both met in him to balance each other in a 
 beautiful equilibrium. Praying, he leaned forward upon the 
 pulpit-cushion, as for conversation, and seemed to feel him- 
 self (without irreverence) on terms of friendly, but courteous 
 familiarity with heaven." He knew well how to deal with 
 undergraduates. " Hearing that Porter's flip (which was ex- 
 emplary) had too great an attraction for the collegians, he 
 resolved to investigate the matter himself. Accordingly, 
 entering the old inn one day, he called for a mug of it, and 
 having drunk it, said, 'And so, Mr. Porter, the young gentle- 
 men come to drink your flip, do they? ' ' Yes, sir, — some- 
 times.' 'Ah, well, I should think they would. Good day, 
 Mr. Porter,' and departed saying nothing more; for he always 
 wisely allowed for the existence of a certain amount of human 
 nature in ingenuous youth. At another time the ' Harvard 
 Washington [Corps] ' asked leave to go into Boston to a col- 
 lation which had been offered them. ' Certainly, young gen- 
 tlemen, ' said the President, ' but have you engaged any one 
 to bring home your muskets? ' — the College being responsi- 
 ble for these weapons, which belonged to the State." 
 
 Prescott, writing to his father about his matriculation ex- 
 amination, lets us see what a kindly man Kirkland was. 
 
 1 Harvard Reminiscences, p. 71. 
 
 2 Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, 1890, I. 83. 
 
80 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 " When we were first ushered into the presence of the Presi- 
 dent and Professors, they looked like so many judges of the 
 Inquisition. We were ordered down into the parlour, almost 
 frightened out of our wits, to be examined by each separately; 
 but we soon found them quite a pleasant sort of chaps. The 
 President sent us down a good dish of pears, and treated us 
 very much like gentlemen. Professor Ware examined us in 
 Grotius de veritate. We found him very good-natured, for I 
 happened to ask him a question in theology, which made him 
 laugh so that he was obliged to cover his face with his hands." 1 
 The good dish of pears must have been a pleasant break to a 
 long day. Professor Peabody, who entered Harvard twelve 
 years later, says that the entrance examination "began at six 
 in the morning, and, with a half -hour's intermission for din- 
 ner, lasted till sunset. Each of thirteen College officers took 
 a section, and passed it over to the next, and so on, until it 
 had gone the entire round." 2 
 
 Kirkland's memory is preserved in Cambridge by one of 
 those changes which are always to be regretted. " I am come 
 to anchor in Professors' Row," 3 wrote Lowell. It is in vain 
 that the literary pilgrim looks for Professors' Row. This 
 pleasant road has long been known as Kirkland Street. It is 
 not a street according to our use of the word. In America, 
 country roads, though every house along them stands alone in 
 its own grounds, are known as streets. To call them roads, 
 as is now sometimes done, is looked upon as an affected 
 imitation of the English. If any change has to be made 
 avenue is the word. Even Longfellow wanted to give a new 
 name to the pleasant road in which he lived. In his Journal 
 
 1 Life of W. H Prescott, p. 13. 2 Harvard Reminiscences, p. 93. 
 
 3 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 300. 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 81 
 
 he records: "Wrote a petition to have the name of our street 
 changed from Brattle to Vassall." 1 The fine old mansion in 
 which the poet passed the greater part of his life had been 
 built by a stubborn Tory, Colonel John Vassall, who, when the 
 Revolution broke out, went to England, and erased from his 
 coat-of-arms the motto, Semper pro Republica scupe pro rege. 2 
 Had the change been made more would have been lost than 
 gained, for the old name of the street awakens ancient memo- 
 ries. "All old Cambridge people," writes Dr. Holmes, 
 " know the Brattle House, with its gambrel roof, its tall trees, 
 its perennial spring, its legendary fame of good fare and hos- 
 pitable board in the days of the kindly old bon vivant, Major 
 Brattle. In this house, Motley lived during a part of his 
 College course." 3 Still more ancient memories hang round 
 the name. There was a Thomas Brattle who graduated at 
 Harvard in 1676, and by his will left "half a crown to every 
 student belonging to the College who should attend his 
 funeral." He did not share in the Puritans' hatred of instru- 
 mental music in churches; for he bequeathed his organ to the 
 church in Brattle Street, " if it should procure a sober person 
 that can play skilfully thereon with a loud noise." If the gift 
 on this condition were refused, then it was to go to the 
 Church of England in Boston, and if it were again refused, 
 it was to be offered to Harvard. 4 "We change our names," 
 wrote Lowell, "as readily as thieves, to the great detriment 
 of all historical association." 5 
 
 Of President Quincv, who laboured so hard to uphold the 
 discipline of the College, Professor Peabody writes: "He 
 
 1 Life ofH. W. Longfellow, II. 94. 2 lb. I. 259. 
 
 3 J. L. Motley, by O. W. Holmes, p. 13. 4 Quincy's Harvard, I. 411. 
 6 Literary Essays, 1890, I. 54. 
 G 
 
82 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 seldom remembered a face, and when a student — even one 
 sent for but a few minutes before — entered his study, he was 
 encountered by the question, 'What's your name? ' So much 
 was this his habit, that if it so happened in a rare instance 
 that he did recognize a countenance, he was more likely than 
 not to say, 'Well, Brown, what's your name?'" 1 Early in 
 1 86 1, the old gentleman who, yielding to age, had resigned 
 his office sixteen years earlier, in defiance of the severity of 
 a New England spring, and of the eighty-nine winters which 
 he had borne, was a guest of the famous Saturday Club of 
 Boston — the Club of Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Agassiz, 
 Lowell, Motley, Sumner, Dana, and Holmes, the Club of 
 which Lowell wrote from London, at the very time that he 
 was the American Minister to England: "I have never seen 
 society, on the whole, so good as I used to meet at our Satur- 
 day Club." 2 Of this dinner in 1861 Longfellow recorded in 
 his Journal : " At the Club old President Quincy was our guest, 
 and was very pleasant and wise." 3 He lived three years 
 longer. When he died Sumner, who in his undergraduate 
 days had been under him at Harvard, wrote of him : " Few 
 lives have been so completely filled and rounded as his, always 
 industrious, faithful, true, and noble." 4 
 
 That New England was settled by men trained in a univer- 
 sity, and not by a set of eager, pushing adventurers, is shown 
 both by the early foundation of Harvard College, and also by 
 the solemnity with which from the beginning Commencement 
 was kept. Only thirteen years after Boston was settled, and 
 twenty-two years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at 
 Plymouth, the long series of these annual celebrations began 
 
 1 Harvard Reminiscences, p. 33. 2 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 307. 
 
 8 Life of H W. Longfellow, II. 361. 4 Life of Charles Sumner, IV. 202. 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 83 
 
 in the American Cambridge, which, broken only by war and 
 pestilence, still runs on, and is likely to run on "till the 
 stock of the Puritans die." 
 
 Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis cevum. 
 
 Before the close of the seventeenth century the day was kept 
 in all the country round as the great holiday of the Puritan 
 Commonwealth. What was sourly refused to Christmas was 
 willingly granted to Commencement. Every one streamed 
 out of Boston across the Charles River or up it in boats. The 
 Governor, escorted by his body-guard, came in state. On 
 the Common in front of the College, a fair was held. The 
 festivities of the day before long turned to license. Feasts 
 were given by the graduating students in rooms, where " dis- 
 tilled lyquours" were drunk. The use of strong drink was 
 sometimes forbidden by the Governing Bodies, though for- 
 bidden in vain. Sometimes it was tolerated. One easy- 
 going Board, who, perhaps through the unwonted strength of 
 their heads, had mac£i the great discovery " that punch, as it 
 is now usually made, is no intoxicating liquor," allowed the 
 students "to entertain one another and strangers with it," pro- 
 vided it was done "in a sober manner." In the use of 
 "plumb-cake" the excesses were so great that so early as 
 1693 the Corporation passed a vote that, "having been in- 
 formed that the custom taken up in the College, not used in 
 any other universities, for the commencers [members of the 
 graduating class] to have plumb-cake, is dishonourable to the 
 College, not grateful to wise men, and chargeable to the pa- 
 rents of the commencers [the Corporation], do therefore put 
 an end to that custom, and do hereby order that no com- 
 mencer, or other scholar, shall have any such cakes in their 
 
84 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 studies or chambers; and that if any scholar shall offend 
 therein, the cakes shall be taken from him, and he shall more- 
 over pay to the College twenty shillings for each such 
 offence." 
 
 By 1722 a second ordinance was needed; for, so far from 
 " the plumb-cake " having been given up, to it had been 
 added "roasted, boyled, baked meats and pyes." Some art- 
 ful youths "went about to evade the Act by plain cake." A 
 third ordinance was passed five years later, which refused any 
 who should henceforth so transgress their degree. 1 
 
 The disorders both inside and outside the College grew to 
 such a head, that an attempt was made to put a check on 
 them by keeping secret the day on which Commencement 
 should be held. The general outcry was, however, too strong 
 for the Corporation to resist, and the old arrangement was 
 soon resumed. Even the very pulpits must have sounded 
 against them, for, according to Lowell, " the one great holi- 
 day of the clergy of Massachusetts was Commencement, which 
 they punctually attended." 2 "In 1749 three gentlemen who 
 had sons about to be graduated, offered to give the College a 
 thousand pounds 3 provided 'a trial was made of Commence- 
 ments this year in a more private manner.' " The Corpora- 
 tion, mindful of the lack of funds, were for acquiescing, 
 but the Overseers would consent to no breach in the old 
 custom. 4 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 386 ; II. 95 ; An Historical Sketch, p. 54. 
 
 2 Harvard University, 250th Anniversary, 1887, p. 211. 
 
 3 "The currency of account in New England, subsequent to 1652, was 
 termed lawful money. It was one-quarter less in value than English cur- 
 rency of account." Quincy's Harvard, II. 231. One thousand pounds 
 was therefore equal to seven hundred and fifty pounds of English money. 
 
 * Lb. I. 396 ; II. 92. 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 85 
 
 During the War of the Revolution, Commencement was not 
 kept; but when the celebrations were resumed they became 
 more popular than ever. In Boston even the Custom House 
 and the banks were closed on the great day. Professor Pea- 
 body, describing the College as it was when he entered it 
 seventy years ago, says : " The entire Common, then an unen- 
 closed dust-plain, was completely covered on Commencement 
 Day, and the night preceding and following it, with drinking- 
 stands, dancing-booths, mountebank shows, and gambling- 
 tables; and I have never heard such a horrid din, tumult, and 
 jargon of oath, shout, scream, fiddle, quarrelling, and drunk- 
 enness as on those two nights. By such summary methods as 
 but few other men could have employed, Mr. Quincy, at the 
 outset of his presidency [1829], swept the Common clear; 
 and during his entire administration the public days of the 
 College were kept free from rowdyism." 1 That Harvard " in 
 its birth and purpose was a religious institution," strangely 
 enough added to the disorder. "Pious citizens of Boston 
 used to send their slaves to Commencement for their religious 
 instruction and edification. But the negroes soon found that 
 they could spend their holidays more to their satisfaction, if 
 not more to the good of their souls, on the outside than in 
 the interior of the meeting-house. At length Commencement 
 came to be the great gala-day of the year for the coloured 
 people in and about Boston, who were, by no means, such 
 quiet and orderly citizens as their representatives now are, 
 while their comparative number was much greater." 2 It was 
 as if in Oxford, Commemoration and St. Giles Fair — one of 
 the last left us of the great English fairs — were held on the 
 same day. 
 
 1 Harvard Reminiscences, p. 59. 2 lb. p. 26. 
 
86 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Close to the Common where this scene of riot was going 
 on, and facing the College gates, stands the First Parish 
 Church, parted by its graveyard alone from the Episcopa- 
 lian Church where Washington had his pew. 
 
 " Like sentinel and nun they keep 
 Their vigil on the green : 
 One seems to guard and one to weep 
 The dead that lie between." 
 
 In this old church, for a century and a half, the Commence- 
 ment exercises were held and the degrees were conferred. 
 From the College a procession was formed, which is thus de- 
 scribed as it was seen in 1725: "The Bachelors of Arts 
 walked first, two in a rank, and then the Masters, all bare- 
 headed; then followed Mr. Wadsworth alone as President; 
 next the Corporation and Tutors, two in a rank; then the 
 Honourable Lieutenant-Governor and Council, and next to 
 them the rest of the gentlemen." 1 The President sat in the 
 old chair sung of by the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: — 
 
 " One of the oddest of human things, 
 Turned all over with knobs and rings, 
 But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand, 
 Fit for the worthies of the land." 
 
 The exercises were all in Latin. According to the ancient 
 fashion of universities, there was a "syllogistic disquisition. 
 When the disputations were going on the President had often 
 occasion to interpose and set the disputants right. This was 
 always done in Latin." 2 It was not till after the middle of 
 the eighteenth century that "the walls" of the church "were 
 disgraced " by being made to echo English. 3 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 377. 2 Higher Education, etc., p. 36. 
 
 3 " Dr. Johnson said that he would never consent to disgrace the walls 
 of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription." Boswell's Life of 
 Johnson, III. 85. 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 87 
 
 In the year 1824 Harvard, in common with the rest of the 
 country, went wild with excitement over General Lafayette, 
 who had crossed the sea as "the Guest of the Nation." The 
 triumphant progress of "Grandison-Cromwell," the most 
 conspicuous and the most fatal failure of the French Revolu- 
 tion, astonishes an Englishman who knows nothing of the 
 services rendered nearly fifty years earlier by the gallant 
 young Frenchman to the struggling Colonies. When Edward 
 Everett, in his oration at the Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Har- 
 vard, writes one who was present, spoke of " the noble con- 
 duct of our guest in procuring a ship for his own transporta- 
 tion, at a time when all America was too poor to offer him a 
 passage to her shores, the scene was overpowering; every one 
 was in tears." 1 At every town, at every crossway, crowds 
 had been waiting to welcome Lafayette as he passed onwards 
 from New York to Boston. Men pressed forward to shake his 
 hand, and babies were held up for him to kiss, so that if they 
 lived to be old men and women, they might boast that this 
 demigod had touched them with his lips. " If Lafayette had 
 kissed me," said an enthusiastic lady, "depend upon it, I 
 would never have washed my face again as long as I lived ! " ' 2 
 Webster, addressing him on Bunker Hill, exclaimed : " For- 
 tunate, fortunate man ! With what measure of devotion will 
 you not thank God for the circumstances of your extraordinary 
 life ! You are connected with both hemispheres, and with 
 two generations. Heaven saw fit to ordain that the electric 
 spark of liberty should be conducted through you from the 
 New World to the Old." 3 It was perhaps the throng of 
 worshippers, the hand-shakings, and the baby-kissings, that 
 
 1 J. Quincy's Figures of the Past, p. 107. 
 2 lb. p. 153. 3 Webster's Works, I. 70. 
 
88 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 on Commencement Day made the great man and his escort 
 reach the College nearly two hours behind time. At the en- 
 trance, as an eye-witness records, 1 "he was welcomed by 
 President Kirkland in a neat and peculiarly appropriate ad- 
 dress." A neat address to welcome the hero of two worlds! 
 Nothing but a neat address ! Perhaps, however, to be merely 
 neat was the best thing "a jolly little man" could do who 
 knew that there was an Edward Everett with his never- 
 failing eaglet to follow. Josiah Quincy, to whom had been 
 assigned the honour of the Latin "Valedictory," — the speech 
 in which the newly-made Bachelor in the name of his com- 
 rades bids Alma Mater farewell, — has left an account of the 
 day. "The first part of my performance," he writes, "con- 
 sisted of mere phrases of rhetorical compliment, thrown out 
 at creation in general. But the inevitable allusion came at 
 last. I had drifted among the heroes of the Revolution, and 
 suddenly turned to the General with my In te qnoque, Lafay- 
 ette — and then what an uproar drowned the rest of the sen- 
 tence ! The entire audience upon the floor had sprung to 
 their feet, the ladies in the gallery were standing also, and 
 were waving their handkerchiefs with impassioned ardour. 
 It was the last opportunity which the day was to offer to pay 
 homage to the guest of America, and, as if by one consent, 
 it was improved to the utmost." 2 
 
 Such scenes of triumph Lafayette had not witnessed since 
 that memorable Festival of the Federation on the Champ de 
 Mars, when, mounted on his white charger, " il semblait com- 
 mander a la France entiere." A wit, pointing him out to a 
 
 1 The Rev. John Pierce, quoted in W. R. Thayer's Historical Sketch of 
 Harvard University, p. 55. 
 
 2 J. Quincy's Figures of the Past, pp. 55-57. 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 89 
 
 young man who was standing near him, exclaimed : " Voyez- 
 vous M. de La Fayette qui galope dans les siecles a venir! " : 
 Through America in the nineteenth century he was having the 
 first of these gallops. 
 
 The excesses from the too free use of wine and punch at 
 the Commencement dinners began more than fifty years 
 ago to move the friends of temperance. The Rev. John 
 Pierce, one of those useful divines who keep a minute 
 diary, recorded in 1836: "Be it noted that this is the first 
 Commencement I ever attended in Cambridge in which I saw 
 not a single person drunk in the Hall or out of it." Perhaps 
 this most irregular regularity of conduct may be accounted for 
 by the next line in the Diary : " There were the fewest pres- 
 ent I ever remember." Two years later he makes the follow- 
 ing entry: "Notwithstanding the efforts of the friends of 
 temperance, wine was furnished at dinner." 2 But a more 
 sober day was dawning. In 1846 Professor Silliman of Yale, 
 who was one of the guests, recorded: "There was no wine — 
 only lemonade; the very first instance of the kind that has 
 occurred here." 3 
 
 What a change had come over the University since those 
 early days when two undergraduates paid part of their term's 
 charges with a rundlet of sack, and a Bachelor of Arts was 
 "credited with jQi 8s. od. for 'sack that he brought into Col- 
 lege at Commencement, and was charged upon the rest of 
 the Commencement according to their proportion.' " 4 What 
 sound morality the old Puritans could draw even out of strong 
 
 1 Memoir es dn General Baron Thiebauli, p. 261. 
 
 2 Quoted in W. R. Thayer's Historical Sketch, etc., p. 56. 
 
 3 Life of Benjamin Silliman, II. 32. 
 
 4 The Early College Buildings at Cambridge, by A. M. Davis, 1 890, p. 12. 
 
90 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 waters, is shown by the following passage in the Diary of 
 Samuel Sewall, who was Chief Justice of the Commonwealth 
 and an Overseer of Harvard College. "Sixth-day. Oct. i, 
 1697. Had first Butter, Honey, Curds and Cream. For 
 Diner, very good Rost Lamb, Turkey, Fowls, Aplepy. 
 After Diner sung the 121 Psalm. Note. A glass of spirits 
 my wife sent stood upon a Joint-Stool which Simon W. jog- 
 ging, it fell down and broke all to shivers. I said 'twas a 
 lively emblem of our Fragility and Mortality." 1 It was not, 
 we may feel sure, the first glass that had been brought in that 
 day. More than one must have gone to the making of so 
 pious a reflection. 
 
 It is not easy to conceive the still deeper shade of melan- 
 choly which stole over the great Webster's naturally sad face 
 — for he also was a guest at the Commencement dinner re- 
 corded by Professor Silliman — as he contemplated the lem- 
 onade bottle, and thought of the old Madeira in the cellar of 
 his pleasant home at Marshfield. " Dost thou think because 
 thou art virtuous," he might have cried out to the Rev. John 
 Pierce, "there shall be no more cakes and ale?" He was 
 no Dr. Johnson whose face about five o'clock one morning, 
 towards the end of a supper-party, "shone with meridian 
 splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade." A 
 lady at whose house I stayed told me that her father had been 
 a great admirer of Webster. One day he rode fifty miles to 
 hear him speak, but to his grief found that his hero was too 
 far gone in drink to be able to utter a word. 
 
 Since 1846 no liquor stronger than coffee has been provided. 
 The thousand graduates, who every year at this great gathering 
 dine together in Memorial Hall, must pledge one another in 
 
 1 Diary of Samuel Sewall, I. 460. 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 91 
 
 lemonade, iced water, or coffee. At the dinner last summer 
 I sat opposite a foreign professor on whom an honorary de- 
 gree had been conferred. I was struck by "the dejected 
 'haviour of his visage." It might have been due to the 
 speeches, but I would fain hope that it was only caused by 
 enforced temperance. I called to mind how, a year or two 
 earlier, a French Academician, on a visit to Oxford, had burst 
 into the house of one of my friends, and in a parched voice 
 had begged for a glass of wine. Some was given him. As 
 soon as he was sufficiently recovered to speak, he explained 
 that he had been dining with a great scholar but a rigid teeto- 
 taler. It was, he said, the first time within his memory that 
 he had taken his dinner without wine or beer, and he felt 
 well-nigh suffocated. At the Harvard Commencement, the 
 victory of the friends of temperance is not even yet complete. 
 As night draws on there are still occasionally some remnants 
 of drunkenness to be seen. To each class — to the graduates, 
 that is to say, of each year — a room is assigned in the Col- 
 lege buildings, where old friends can meet. It sometimes 
 happens that a wealthy toper, in defiance of the wishes and 
 even of the votes of the abstainers who often form a majority, 
 insists on providing a mighty bowl of punch. I was surprised 
 to learn that no greatly aggrieved teetotaler had ever been 
 known, in his righteous indignation, to throw into the mixture 
 a handful of salt. The Americans, however, are a patient 
 people. Harvard punch-bowls, nevertheless, have had their 
 day, and may now be stowed away in the Archaeological 
 Museum. The President and Fellows have this year voted, 
 that "hereafter no punches nor distilled liquors shall be 
 allowed in any College room on Class Day or Commencement 
 Day." 
 
92 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 When I considered the academic temperance of the place, 
 the impossibility of getting wine or beer in the great Hall 
 of the University, I was astonished at the daring imagination 
 of the Professor of Latin, who, when a great German scholar 
 was celebrating last year the fiftieth anniversary of his doc- 
 torate, assured him in a telegram: — 
 
 " Harvardiani festo gratantes die 
 Salutem plenis tibi propinant poculis." 
 
 What do the Harvardiani know of full cups — the learned 
 Harvardiani I mean, not the dull topers who each Commence- 
 ment flock in from the country? But the Professor has the 
 poet's mind: — 
 
 " And as imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." 
 
 For the great ceremony of Commencement, we assembled 
 in Massachusetts Hall, the oldest building in Harvard. I 
 was first taken by a friend to the gateway to watch the arrival 
 of His Excellency the Governor of the Commonwealth of 
 Massachusetts. Alone among the Governors of the forty-two 
 States does he bear this title of Excellency. He drove up 
 in an open carriage drawn by four horses, himself in plain 
 clothes, but accompanied by a Staff, in their scarlet uniforms 
 more splendid even than the Deputy-Lieutenants of the city 
 of London. A troop of Lancers — citizens playing at sol- 
 diers — escorted him. His train was swelled by the chief 
 officers of two Russian men-of-war. It so happened that on 
 a point overlooking Boston Harbour the statue of Admiral 
 Farragut, the naval hero of the war between the North and 
 South, was next day to be unveiled. The Czar, once more 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 93 
 
 eager to exhibit his Platonic love of republics and liberty, had 
 sent his ships to add to the display. The Lancers halted 
 outside the gates, but the Staff accompanied the Governor as 
 he drove in. One of these gorgeous citizens, anxious for the 
 honour of Boston and Harvard, and unwilling that it should 
 be thought that all this state was a mere passing compliment 
 to the foreign naval officers, assured them that every year 
 there was the same pomp. As they entered the College 
 grounds there was indeed an unwonted sight for the subjects 
 of a despot, — a great crowd and not a single soldier or police- 
 man in sight. As, led by a brass band, we slowly marched 
 in a long procession through the Yard and across the public 
 road beyond to Memorial Hall, the throng of undergraduates 
 and strangers opened of itself to let us pass, lining both sides 
 of the way. At certain points, where there was any "coign 
 of vantage " they gathered together and cheered the popular 
 men as they went by. The Governor seemed a great favour- 
 ite. Just before me in the long line was the Rev. Dr. Everett 
 Hale. As we passed the thronged steps of University Hall, 
 a young man standing at the foot, and looking up to the 
 undergraduates massed above him, cried out "Hale!" and 
 beat time for the "Harvard yell," as they all shouted: Rah- 
 1-ah-rah ; rah-rah-rah ; rah-rah-rah! — Hale, or rather, 
 Ha-al, for they prolonged the note. Dr. Hale lifted his hat 
 in acknowledgment. Just beyond, an absurdly drunken fel- 
 low bestowed on me as deep and as formal a bow as his un- 
 steady legs allowed. He meant well no doubt, and it was a 
 flattering attention to a stranger; but I did not think it need- 
 ful to reply to the compliment. As we drew near Sanders 
 Theatre — the Harvard Sheldonian — we passed between the 
 graduating Bachelors who, in cap and gown, lined both sides 
 
94 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 of the way. They fell in at the end of the procession. In 
 the theatre they occupied the area, and, far better off than the 
 Oxford Masters of Arts to whom the same place is* assigned 
 in the Sheldonian, they were provided with benches. 
 
 I was greatly struck by the difference between a Harvard 
 Commencement and an Oxford Commemoration. In both 
 prize compositions are recited, and in both honorary degrees 
 are conferred. But here the resemblance ceases. At Har- 
 vard the ordinary degrees are also given, the degrees for the 
 whole year. In Oxford, it is the distinguished strangers 
 alone who on the great day are honoured. Even an Oxonian 
 Bishop, who in that capacity is at once made a Doctor of 
 Divinity, is not thought good enough, or at all events great 
 enough, for Commemoration. In Oxford, far greater pomp is 
 aimed at, but owing to the unrestrained folly of the under- 
 graduates far less is achieved. Few ceremonies have been 
 contrived with greater art. To the triumphant notes of the 
 organ, the Vice-Chancellor, preceded by the Bedells with 
 their silver maces, followed by the Doctors in their scarlet or 
 crimson gowns and the two Proctors, enter the Theatre by 
 the great doors, which on this day alone are flung open. He 
 takes his seat in his chair of state, with the Proctors below 
 him and the Doctors on the amphitheatre around him. The 
 names of those who are to be honoured that day are one by 
 one put to the vote of the House, a nominal vote it is true. 
 " Placetne vobis Domini Doctores? placetne vobis, Magistri ? " 
 the Vice-Chancellor asks in each case, he and the Proctors as 
 the question is put raising their caps, which they alone wear 
 during the proceedings. The doors are a second time thrown 
 open, and the Bedells lead in a second procession, composed 
 of those who are to receive the honorary degrees, each wear- 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 95 
 
 ing the crimson gown of a Doctor of Laws. The Regius 
 Professor of Civil Law takes them one by one to the foot of 
 the steps which lead up to the Y ice-Chancellor's chair, and 
 there, in a Latin speech, proclaims each new Doctor's merits. 
 Each is welcomed by the Vice-Chancellor with a grasp of the 
 hand, and then takes his seat among the other Doctors. At 
 my first Commemoration, the Chancellor presided, the Earl 
 of Derby, and on Alfred Tennyson, among others, an honorary 
 degree was conferred. 
 
 All the solemnity and all the pomp of this ancient and strik- 
 ing ceremony disappear beneath the dull buffoonery of the 
 undergraduates, and the incredible weakness of the Univer- 
 sity. The Regius Professor's voice is drowned by silly out- 
 cries, and illustrious strangers are honoured — if honour it 
 can be called — in the midst of an insulting din. " Have I 
 done anything to offend them? " a learned foreigner not long 
 ago anxiously asked, when the speech in which his high merits 
 were described was overwhelmed by the uproar. I have seen 
 few more piteous sights than one I witnessed many years ago, 
 when an aged Vice-Chancellor, repeatedly raising his cap to 
 the undergraduates in the gallery, with beseeching looks, for 
 his voice could not have been heard, pleaded for silence, but 
 pleaded in vain. His humble appeals were answered with 
 jeers and roars of laughter. Men who could thus insult vene- 
 rable old age should have been hooted out of a university. 1 
 How different was the scene at Harvard ! There was no state, 
 but there was perfect decorum — a decorum not once marred 
 by the slightest impropriety, the slightest touch of rude- 
 ness during the whole of the proceedings. Each recipient of 
 
 1 The Commemoration of the present year was conducted with far 
 greater decorum than any I have witnessed. 
 
96 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 an honorary degree rose from his seat as his name was read 
 out by the President, who in a few words in Latin sounded 
 his praises. They exchanged bows, and the newly-made 
 Doctor sat down. Applause followed in each case; the 
 louder, of course, the more a man was a popular favourite, 
 but in no case was it prolonged. A little more ceremony 
 would not have been out of place. 
 
 Of the three hundred and thirty-eight students who took the 
 degree of Bachelor of Arts, only a few of the most distin- 
 guished were called up to the dais. To them were handed 
 by the President bundles of parchment diplomas, which they 
 distributed among their comrades seated in the area. Whilst 
 this distribution was quietly going on, the other degrees in 
 Arts, Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Science were conferred, 
 the recipients coming up in batches. As each batch presented 
 itself, the President, in Latin addressing the Governing Body, 
 stated that the students had been examined and approved 
 by the Professors, and like the Vice-Chancellor at Oxford, 
 asked for their Placet for conferring the degree. 
 
 The six Bachelors who recited the prize-compositions were 
 perfect in their memory; there was not in any one of them 
 the slightest hesitation. They had been carefully trained in 
 elocution. They spoke slowly and clearly. Their action — 
 no doubt the result also of training — was too monotonous. 
 There was a movement of the hand so unvaried and mechani- 
 cal that it added nothing to the force of the words. Perfect 
 rest would have been equally effective. They did not, as at 
 Oxford, speak from pulpits. Each, as he stepped upon the 
 dais, made a low bow to the President, and then, turning 
 round, an equally low bow to the audience. He who spoke 
 the Latin oration introduced first the Governor of the Com- 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 97 
 
 monwealth, to whom he bowed, and next the President of the 
 University. On each successive Governor an honorary degree 
 had for so many years been conferred, that it came to be 
 regarded as an established custom. When, however, Massa- 
 chusetts disgraced herself by the election of the notorious Gen- 
 eral Butler, Harvard refused to be dragged through the mire. 
 That year the Governor was passed over. 
 
 Inside the Theatre as well as outside, there was something 
 in the way of surprise for the Russian officers. One of the 
 young orators was, beyond all manner of doubt, a Jew by race 
 — a Jew, moreover, from the east of Europe. Here he was 
 no outcast, but one of the chosen people, one of " the happy 
 few " on whom high honour was conferred. Another boldly 
 maintained, in defiance of truth, censors, and the Czar of all the 
 Russias, that " the eternal and inalienable rights of man are 
 asserted everywhere." A third attacked the Government of 
 his country. "Out of the present political corruption," he 
 said, "good men have given up the field." No such speech 
 as that, I thought to myself, is happily ever heard in Eng- 
 land. The young orator insisted on their duty to return to 
 the strife, and to make political life once more wholesome 
 and pure. 
 
 In Oxford, at the close of the ceremony, a lunch is given to 
 the newly-made Doctors and to the most important people in 
 the University, in the noble Library of All Souls' College. 
 With a far less splendid meal, the guests of the day are wel- 
 comed at Harvard. The dinner is not under the management 
 of the University, but of the Association of Alumni. Judge 
 Story, who was its founder, had been shocked by the petty 
 jealousies which so often kept men apart who had been bred 
 in the same college. He hoped to do something towards 
 
 H 
 
98 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 bringing them nearer to one another by an association to 
 which every Harvard man should be freely admitted. In the 
 address which he delivered, in 1842, at the first gathering he 
 said: "We meet for peace and for union; to devote one day 
 in the year to academical intercourse and the amenities of 
 scholars." x Every year, on Commencement Day, the Alumni 
 elect their President for the next year, whose chief duty it is 
 to preside at the annual dinner. This gathering of graduates 
 is far beyond anything known in an English university. It is 
 not to witness Commencement that most of them come, for 
 it is by the friends of the youthful Bachelors and by strangers 
 that the Theatre is mainly thronged. The former members 
 of the University flock to Harvard from all parts of the coun- 
 try, not only to meet their old comrades, in accordance with 
 a time-honoured custom, but also to vote at the election of the 
 Overseers. Of the eighteen thousand men who have gradu- 
 ated in the last two centuries and a half, more than one-half, 
 it is believed, are still living. Of these, from one in ten to 
 nearly one in seven vote each year. 2 As proxies are not 
 allowed, the attendance is very large. 
 
 An attempt has recently been made to extend the suffrage, 
 which at present is confined to graduates in Arts and the 
 holders of honorary degrees. "It was not so much," it is 
 said, "the naked right to vote that was sought, as recognition 
 at Commencement, and a right to partake of the hospitalities 
 of the College, and participate in the enthusiasm of the occa- 
 sion." 3 It seems strange that to all who have a Harvard 
 degree, this recognition should not be freely extended, and 
 
 1 Life of Joseph Story, II. 426. 
 
 2 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 4; Harvard Graduates' Maga- 
 zine, J anuary, 1893, P- 2 ^9- 8 -^ 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 99 
 
 this right should not be willingly granted. The Medical 
 School, however, is so loosely connected with the old foun- 
 dation, that it can scarcely share in its spirit. Having its 
 seat three miles away in Boston, it has no part in the aca- 
 demical life and in the social feeling. In Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge there is, happily, no similar local separation of the 
 students. Whatever may be their studies, they are all, not 
 only in name but in reality, members of the same univer- 
 sity. They almost all belong to one or other of the colleges. 
 To complete their education our young physicians and sur- 
 geons must, no doubt, go up to London; for in the small 
 hospital of a country town the "many shapes of death" and 
 disease cannot be thoroughly studied. It is a pity that in the 
 American university all the preliminary scientific instruction, 
 all the instruction which can be given outside a hospital, is 
 not given at Harvard. It would confer a double benefit — a 
 benefit on those who study Medicine and on those who study 
 Arts; for the mingling of men and studies is the very essence 
 of the training of a university. The graduates of the Law 
 School, however, are not under the same disadvantage. To 
 them, for three long years, the Yard had been their pacing- 
 ground. They "ranged that enclosure old" no less than the 
 students in Arts. Nevertheless, I am told that on the hearts 
 of those who, before coming to Harvard, had passed through 
 some other university, their first Alma Mater generally retains 
 by far the stronger hold. It might be otherwise were they 
 not only allowed, but even urged, to share in "the enthusi- 
 asm of the occasion." Then as the year came round, they 
 would help to swell the throng which from North, South, and 
 West, from the Canadian borders, from the pleasant shores of 
 the far-distant Pacific, and from the wilds of "vast, illimita- 
 
100 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ble Texas" gathers in Fair Harvard, "the home of their free- 
 roving years." 
 
 When the writer whom I have quoted above talks of " the 
 right to partake in the hospitalities of the College," he must 
 use the term hospitalities somewhat loosely. It could scarcely 
 be expected that the Corporation should each year feed a 
 thousand self-invited guests. Each alumnus pays for his own 
 dinner. The charge, viewed in the abstract, seems moderate 
 enough — only a dollar. As two o'clock, the hour for the 
 repast, drew near, we were for the second time that day 
 formed in procession in the Yard. At the head came the 
 President of the Association and the guests, and next the 
 graduates according to their standing. They were summoned 
 in their Classes. Classes and the strong Class spirit which 
 springs from them, so familiar a feature of American univer- 
 sities, are unknown in Oxford and Cambridge. Even at 
 Harvard, firmly as this comradeship binds together the older 
 men, among the younger generations it is dying out. "There 
 is no Class spirit at Harvard," a young writer says sadly; "the 
 elective system destroyed that long ago." 1 Much of this 
 spirit was bad, and has deservedly perished. "The different 
 Classes," wrote Judge Story, speaking of his undergraduate 
 days, "were almost strangers to each other, and cold reserve 
 generally prevailed between them." 2 
 
 Just as in the ancient English universities, when any mem- 
 ber of it is mentioned, the question is commonly put, "What 
 is his College?" so in an American university it is asked, 
 "What is his Class? " The course of instruction spreads over 
 four years, and the undergraduates are ranged in four divi- 
 sions, Freshmen, Sophomores, Junior Sophisters or Juniors, 
 
 1 The Crimson, June 23, 1893. 2 Life of Joseph Story, I. 49. 
 
v. HARVARD CO f LEGE. 101 
 
 and Senior Sophisters or Seniors. Each of these divisions, 
 furthermore, is known as the Class of such a year; not of the 
 year in which it begins its studies, but of that in which it is 
 to bring them to a close. For instance, at the beginning of 
 the academic year in September, 1893, there were in resi- 
 dence the Classes of 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897. The Seniors 
 form the Class of 1894, for it is in that year that they are to 
 graduate. The Juniors form the Class of 1895; the Sopho- 
 mores, of 1896; and the Freshmen, of 1897. In the old days, 
 the members of each Class, all following the same course of 
 instruction under the same tutors, being, moreover, compara- 
 tively few in number by the end of their four years, if they had 
 not all become intimate, had, at all events, each acquired a 
 more or less accurate knowledge of the character of every one 
 of his companions. As, in all the anxious timidity of a 
 Freshman, they had on the same day entered College, so on 
 the same day, in all " the towering confidence " of a Bachelor 
 of Arts, had they bidden it farewell. Every year, as Com- 
 mencement has come round, have they revived the old inti- 
 macy and kept the old bond from loosening. Not only do they 
 meet in Harvard, but in Boston also they often have their 
 annual dinner. So, too, do many of the colleges of Oxford 
 and Cambridge have theirs in London. But in these meet- 
 ings of the American university, there is this touching differ- 
 ence. Each year the band grows smaller and smaller as 
 classmate after classmate passes away. There is no fresh 
 swarm of young men to fill up the gaps left by the veterans. 
 In the Harvard Graduates' Magazine for January, 1893, 
 eight or nine pages are given to News from the Classes. The 
 Rev. Samuel May, one of the last survivors of that gallant 
 band of which William Lloyd Garrison was the leader, sends 
 
102 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 in his report as Secretary of the Class of 1829. "There is 
 little," he writes, "that a Class of five men, all past the age 
 of eighty years, can have to report of doings. Yet, when that 
 five includes such names as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Sam- 
 uel Francis Smith, it will be admitted that it is not altogether, 
 even now, an idle class. The ' national song,' written by 
 the latter, has just been sung in union by tens of millions of 
 voices and hearts at the national and patriotic commemora- 
 tion of the four-hundredth Columbus Anniversary." Dr. S. F. 
 Smith is the author also of America, which sixty-two years 
 ago he struck off in half an hour to the tune of God Save the 
 King, "I had no idea," he says, "that I was writing a 
 national hymn." On the eighty-third birthday of his old 
 classmate, Dr. Holmes, he wrote, as Mr. May tells us, to one 
 of the Boston newspapers: "We have but one Oliver Wen- 
 dell Holmes, who is known and loved everywhere in the 
 English-speaking world. . . . Sixty-three years out of col- 
 lege ! The famous Class dinners, uninterrupted in annual 
 recurrence from 1828 to 1890, have been discontinued at a 
 public hostelry; but Dr. Holmes opens his hospitable doors 
 and spreads his table annually for those that remain. Three 
 in 1 89 1, three in 1892, met in memory of the past, in recog- 
 nition of the present, and in anticipation of the future." The 
 Secretary of the Class of 1832 reports that there were only 
 four now available for an anniversary. Of the four, one was 
 the Autocrat's brother, Mr. John Holmes, "the best and most 
 delightful of men," as Lowell many years ago described him. 1 
 The strength of this Class feeling is now and then shown in a 
 union for some good purpose. Thus, the Class of 1856 raised 
 a subscription of six thousand dollars (^1226), as a fund 
 
 1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 173. 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 103 
 
 for defraying the annual publication of Harvard Studies in 
 Classical Philology, while the Class of 1857 put up a window 
 of painted glass in Memorial Hall. 1 
 
 When on Commencement Day in last June, the procession 
 began to form in the Yard, and the Marshal called out, " Class 
 1826," there was great cheering as a solitary old man stood 
 forth. How much that old man had seen! When he left 
 College, there still survived many a gray-headed veteran who 
 had fought in the Revolutionary War. The Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table was just closing his Freshman's year. Motley, 
 Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Lowell, Dana, and Theodore Parker 
 were schoolboys. He was soon supported by a veteran of 
 1827. Of the next three years, there was not a single repre- 
 sentative. From 1 83 1 downwards there was no gap. In the 
 Hall the alumni sat down in their Classes, so that comrade 
 sat by comrade. The Rev. Mr. Pierce records of the dinner 
 of 1829: "I set the tune, St. Martin's, the seventeenth time 
 to the LXXVIII Psalm. I asked the President how much of 
 the Psalm we should sing. Judge Story replied, 'Sing it all.' 
 We accordingly, contrary to custom, sang it through without 
 omitting a single stanza. It was remarked that the singing 
 was never better. But as the company are in five different 
 rooms, it will be desirable on future occasions to station a 
 person in each room to receive and communicate the time." 2 
 To go through the whole of the seventy-three verses of this 
 fine psalm, even though the singers were all in one great hall, 
 would be more than these modern days would patiently bear. 
 We were contented with singing only five. As I thought of 
 the old settlement of the Puritans, and of their noble resolu- 
 
 1 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1893, pp. 279, 322. 
 
 2 Historical Sketch, etc., p. 56. 
 
104 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 tion that whatever dangers and hardships they themselves had 
 to face, their children should not grow up in ignorance; as I 
 called to mind that we were standing on the very spot where 
 they had founded their College, these verses sung by a thou- 
 sand voices of their descendants, removed from them by two 
 centuries and a half, seemed to me unspeakably touching : — 
 
 " Give ear, ye children ; to my law 
 Devout attention lend; 
 Let the instructions of my mouth 
 Deep in your hearts descend. 
 
 "My tongue, by inspiration taught, 
 Shall parables unfold; 
 Dark oracles, but understood, 
 And own'd for truths of old : 
 
 " Which we from sacred registers 
 Of ancient times have known; 
 And our forefathers' pious care 
 To us has handed down. 
 
 " Let children learn the mighty deeds 
 Which God perform'd of old; 
 Which, in our younger years, we saw, 
 And which our fathers told. 
 
 " Our lips shall teach them to our sons, 
 And they again to theirs; 
 That generations yet unborn 
 May teach them to their heirs." 
 
 There is a quaint passage in old Samuel Sewall's Diary, 
 which might not unfitly be read aloud at every Commence- 
 ment in grateful commemoration of the founder of the 
 College. On January 26, 169^- he recorded: "I lodged at 
 Charlestown at Mrs. Shepards', who tells me Mr. Harvard 
 built that house. I lay in the chamber next the street. As I 
 lay awake past midnight, In my Meditation I was affected to 
 
v. HARVARD COLLEGE. 105 
 
 consider how long agoe God had made provision for my com- 
 fortable Lodging that night, seeing that was Mr. Harvard's 
 house : And that led me to think of Heaven the House not 
 made with hands, which God for many Thousands of years has 
 been storing with the richest furniture, (saints that are from 
 time to time placed there), and that I had some hopes of 
 being entertained in that Magnificent Palace, every way fitted 
 and furnished. These thoughts were very refreshing to me." l 
 When the dinner was finished the jugs of coffee were again 
 passed down the tables, and cigars and pipes were lighted. I 
 was surprised to see how few smokers there were, — not, I 
 think, one-fourth as many as there would have been in a simi- 
 lar company in England. The speeches that followed were 
 somewhat disappointing. As a stranger remarked to me: 
 " There was no scholarship in any one of them. They might 
 all have been made by men not educated in a university." 
 Had they been spoken by the representatives whom Oxford 
 generally sends to Parliament, they could not have shown 
 fewer signs of the scholar. There was no wit, and next to 
 no humour. Lowell has passed away, and Holmes was not 
 there. The President, however, spoke well. What he had 
 to say, he said briefly and clearly. His was a speech 
 which would have more than satisfied Carlyle. Had some 
 of the Professors been called on, doubtless an academic 
 flavour would have been given to the meeting. Mr. Robert 
 Lincoln, the son of the great President, when once he had 
 shaken himself free from his jokes, was vigorous enough. He 
 defended the Judge who three years earlier had tried the Chi- 
 cago anarchist from the charges lately brought against him by 
 a man high in authority in the State. The prolonged applause 
 with which Mr. Lincoln was welcomed bore testimony not 
 1 Diary of Samuel Sexually I. 447. 
 
106 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. v. 
 
 only to his own worth, but also to the deep feeling of reve- 
 rence with which his father's memory is cherished, a reverence, 
 I believe, scarcely less than that felt for Washington. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was followed by a Roman Catholic Bishop, on 
 whom that morning had been conferred the degree of Doctor 
 of Laws. He took for the subject of his discourse the lecture 
 which Mr. Huxley had lately delivered before the University 
 of Oxford. For a full half-hour he overwhelmed him and us 
 with his rhetoric. He told an audience of university men 
 the whole story of the death of Socrates, as if not only Plato, 
 Xenophon, Grote, and Jowett were unknown to everybody 
 present, but even Goldsmith's History of Greece were a sealed 
 book. It was amazing to me how this rhetorical sermon, 
 delivered after dinner, — a teetotal dinner, it is true, — was 
 applauded by an audience of university men. I should not 
 forget, however, that when there are a thousand present, if 
 only one in every five claps his hands or beats the table, the 
 tumult is considerable. Americans, I thought, must have an 
 amazing appetite for hortatory rhetoric. Scarcely less amaz- 
 ing was it to hear in this "Godless University" a Roman 
 Catholic Bishop denounce as atheistical, a lecture delivered 
 in the very home and centre of all that is venerable in An- 
 glican orthodoxy. Oxford the culprit, the charge impiety, 
 the accuser a Roman Catholic Bishop, the Court a Unitarian 
 University, the verdict Guilty ! I called to mind how, some 
 thirty years ago, a far more eloquent Bishop, at the meeting 
 of the British Association at Oxford, had scoffed at Darwin 
 and his new teaching, and how, the moment he sat down amid 
 the laughter and the applause of his audience, Mr. Huxley 
 had started up and smitten him heavily. I wished that he 
 had been at Harvard to try another fall with another Bishop. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Phi Beta Day. — Foundation of the Society. — Emerson's Oration in 1837. 
 — Charles Sumner. — The Meeting and the Dinner. 
 
 ON the day after Commencement I attended the yearly 
 meeting of the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa. 
 This Society, to which there is nothing that answers in England, 
 took its rise towards the close of last century in William and 
 Mary College, Virginia. It aims at " the promotion of litera- 
 ture and friendly intercourse among scholars." The Harvard 
 Chapter was founded in 1781, by virtue of an instrument called 
 a " Charter Party," dated December 4, 1779, formally executed 
 by the President, officers, and members of the original Society, 
 issued to Elisha Parmele, of the University of Cambridge, Mas- 
 sachusetts Bay, authorizing him to establish a Chapter there, 
 with all rights and powers. Parmele, no doubt, had been 
 initiated in Virginia. For many years the Phi Beta was every- 
 where a secret Society, with a formal initiation, of an oath of 
 secrecy, and certain mysteries, such as a peculiar way of shak- 
 ing hands and of knocking at the door. The knock was an 
 anapest — two light knocks followed by one hard. The name 
 in full, <£iAoo-o(£ia Blov Kv(3epvrjTr)s (Philosophy, the guide of 
 life) , was kept a secret ; the Society was known to the outside 
 world by the three initial letters. I do not know whether at 
 any time any connection was kept up between the Harvard 
 Chapter and the Mother Society. Charter Party, Johnson de- 
 fines as a paper relating to a contract, of which each party has 
 
 107 
 
108 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 a copy. Whatever the contract was, if ever there was one, it 
 has long ceased to be enforced. The Harvard Phi Beta is 
 much more than a Chapter ; it is a Society in itself, with its 
 own independent constitution and government, and with scarcely 
 any connection with the other Chapters but in name. No new 
 Chapter, however, can be founded without the consent of a cer- 
 tain number of the older Chapters. When in the same State 
 a second is founded, the first has added to its name the first 
 letter of the Greek alphabet, and the second, the second, and 
 so on. Thus, the Harvard Chapter is the Phi Beta Kappa, 
 Alpha of Massachusetts. In all alike scholarship is made the 
 chief ground of admittance. The Society is everywhere re- 
 garded with jealousy by that large body of university men who 
 have not been able to win their way into it. It is a kind of 
 aristocracy in a democratic country. Within eight years of its 
 formation " a Committee of the Overseers reported to the 
 Board ' that there is an institution in the University with the 
 nature of which the Government is not acquainted, which tends 
 to make a discrimination among the students,' and submitted 
 1 the propriety of inquiring into its nature and design.' " x The 
 Chairman of this Committee was that "famous rebel," John 
 Hancock. It seems strange that the man who had once been 
 the President of the Continental Congress which published the 
 Declaration of Independence should now be troubling his head 
 about a small secret society got up by a knot of students. 
 
 The Phi Beta was caught in the great wave of popular rage 
 against Free Masonry which swept over the land — a wave in 
 which were overwhelmed Henry Clay's hopes of arriving at the 
 Presidency of the United States. There was not a secret 
 society that was not attacked as opposed to the spirit of de- 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 398. 
 
vi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 109 
 
 mocracy. In 1831 John Quincy Adams, the ex-President, and 
 Judge Story, after a long and angry discussion, induced their 
 "brethren " of the Harvard Phi Beta to throw open its secrets 
 to the world — to throw them open formally, that is to say, for 
 by this time there was nothing left to divulge. Everybody 
 knew what the name meant. Everybody could give the Phi 
 Beta shake of the hand and the Phi Beta knock at the door. 
 
 For about forty years the Harvard Phi Beta was a College 
 Society, holding frequent meetings in men's rooms, where 
 essays and poems were read. Each year it had one public 
 performance on the morning after Commencement — an anni- 
 versary always known as Phi Beta Day. As time went on the 
 terminal meetings became less and less frequent, till they 
 ceased altogether, while the annual meeting steadily grew in 
 importance. On this great day an oration is delivered and an 
 original poem is recited. At first the Orators and Poets were 
 chosen from among the young Bachelors of Arts. In 1788 
 John Quincy Adams, the year after he had taken his degree, 
 gave the oration. Gradually older men were selected, while 
 the choice was not confined to the "brethren." At the pres- 
 ent time, when on the " bead-roll " are " filed" the names of 
 men eminent by genius, scholarship, and literature, or by the 
 post which they have filled in the world, to be invited to 
 address the Society is a mark of high distinction. The Presi- 
 dent, that eminent Greek scholar, Professor Goodwin, in an 
 address which he delivered before it in 1891, speaking of 
 Harvard said : " The Phi Beta is the only society whose right 
 to examine the condition of our scholarship is unquestioned. 
 She is the only society here which represents College scholar- 
 ship pure and simple. All her children either have achieved 
 distinction for scholarship in College, or have shown in after 
 
110 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 life that they might have achieved it if they had wanted to, 
 or if the College had let them distinguish themselves in their 
 own way. But although Phi Beta keeps in her own hands the 
 wholesome power of correcting the mistakes of the College 
 authorities, when they either overwork genius or allow it to 
 blush unseen, she still accepts without question the body 
 of recruits who are sent to her each year as ' distinguished 
 scholars.' nl Every Phi Beta Day a certain number of hono- 
 rary members are elected. It is then that " the mistakes of 
 the College authorities " are corrected. In earlier years only 
 sixteen ordinary members were admitted, but with the growth 
 of the College the number has been raised to twenty-five. 
 The election is curiously contrived. In each year the electors 
 are eight in number, all Seniors, who in the previous year had 
 been themselves elected from the Juniors, not only to act as 
 electors next year, but to be members of the Society. They 
 had been chosen, not out of the whole body of Juniors, but 
 out of the twelve who stood highest on the list for scholarship. 
 From among the twenty-five who stand highest in their own 
 Class they now choose seventeen, who, added to themselves, 
 form the twenty-five new members. " No honour that Pres- 
 cott received at College," writes his biographer, " was valued 
 so much by him, or had been so much an object of his ambi- 
 tion, as his admission to the Society of the Phi Beta Kappa. 
 As the selection was made by the undergraduates themselves, 
 and as a single black-ball excluded the candidate, it was a real 
 distinction ; and Prescott always liked to stand well with his 
 fellows, later in life, no less than in youth." 2 For Motley, 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. I. 
 
 2 Life of Prescott, ed. 1864, p. 24. By the present rule, a candidate 
 must obtain a three-fourths vote. 
 
vi. HARVARD COLLEGE. Ill 
 
 who had entered Harvard when he was but thirteen, and who 
 " did not aim at or attain a high College rank, the rules were 
 stretched so as to include him." : The Society was indeed 
 quick to detect the genius of his bright and promising youth. 
 The correction generally comes many years later. A year 
 earlier Charles Sumner had been passed over. Though he 
 was a good classical scholar and of wide reading, his neglect 
 of mathematics had kept him down in his Class. Seven years 
 later he was chosen an honorary member. 2 Had such a 
 society existed in the English Cambridge, Wordsworth and 
 Charles Darwin would most certainly have been refused admit- 
 tance as distinguished scholars. How soon the poet's genius 
 would have been discovered it is not easy to say ; probably 
 not till many years after he had written his great Ode on the 
 Intimations of Immortality. The naturalist would have won 
 the honour by his Voyage of the Beagle. In like manner an 
 Oxford Phi Beta would have had " to correct the mistakes of 
 the University authorities " by the admission of Mr. Ruskin 
 and Mr. William Morris. Landor, Shelley, Sir Edward Burne- 
 Jones, and Mr. Swinburne would also have had to be admitted ; 
 but as they all left without taking a degree, in their cases it 
 cannot be said that, so far as examinations went, any mistake 
 was committed. 
 
 George Ticknor describes a dinner in 1823 at which the chief 
 guest was Chancellor Kent, " superannuated by the Constitution 
 of the State of New York, because he is above sixty years old, 
 and yet, de facto, in the very flush and vigour of his extraordinary 
 faculties." Judge Story and Daniel Webster were present. 
 " Story gave as a toast, ' The State of New York, where the 
 
 1 J. L. Motley, by O. W. Holmes, 1889, p. 15. 
 
 2 Life of Charles Sumner, I. 55. 
 
112 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 law of the land has been so ably administered that it has become 
 the land of the law,' to which the Chancellor instantly replied, 
 ' The State of Massachusetts, the land of Story as well as of 
 song ' j and so it was kept up for three or four hours, not a soul 
 leaving the table. It was the finest literary festival I ever wit- 
 nessed." l 
 
 In 1834 Emerson was the Poet, and in 1837 the Orator. 
 " This grand oration," writes Dr. Holmes, " was our intellectual 
 Declaration of Independence. No listener ever forgot that 
 address, and among all the noble utterances of the speaker it 
 may be questioned if one ever contained more truth in language 
 more like that of immediate inspiration." 2 " His oration," 
 said Lowell, " was an event without any former parallel in our 
 literary annals, a scene to be always treasured in the memory 
 for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and 
 breathless aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, 
 what enthusiasm of approach, what grim silence of foregone 
 dissent ! It was our Yankee version of a lecture by Abelard, 
 our Harvard parallel to the last public appearance of Schelling." 
 Lowell was an undergraduate when he witnessed this scene, and 
 " not yet among the ' Transcendentalists.' " A year later his 
 Class Day Poem shows " that he was untouched by the new 
 intellectual spirit, of which Emerson's was the clearest voice." 3 
 " Lighten their darkness and ours too," some must have ex- 
 claimed, if the other voices were all less clear than Emerson's. 
 Perhaps among the audience was the great advocate, Jeremiah 
 Mason, who gave Webster his first lesson in the art of 
 
 1 Life of George Ticknor, I. 340. 
 2R. W. Emerson, by O. W. Holmes, 1885, p. 115. 
 
 3 Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, 1890, I. 366; Letters of J. R. 
 Lowell, I. 31. 
 
vi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 113 
 
 talking to a jury. Longfellow records how a few months after 
 the famous Phi Beta Oration some one ''asked Mason whether 
 he could understand Mr. Emerson. His answer was, ' No, I 
 can't; but my daughter can.'" 1 Longfellow himself a little 
 later said of Emerson : " He is one of the finest lecturers I 
 ever heard, with magnificent passages of true prose-poetry. 
 But it is all dreamery \ after all." 2 If Prescott heard the Address, 
 it is likely that he was one of those who listened in " grim silence 
 of foregone dissent." In November, 1838, he wrote : "I have 
 read as much of Carlyle's French Revolution as I could stand. 
 His views certainly, as far as I can estimate them, are trite 
 enough. And in short, the whole thing in my humble opinion, 
 both as to forme and to fond, is perfectly contemptible." 3 He 
 who despised Carlyle was little likely to esteem Emerson. An 
 eminent American scholar, writing to me of Emerson's Oration 
 and of his Address before the Divinity College in the following 
 year, says : " Nothing shows the progress of thought in the 
 last sixty years more than the undoubted fact that these two 
 Addresses were laughed at and even vituperated by men who 
 still live to be ashamed of themselves." 
 
 In 1846 the Orator was Charles Sumner. In a blue dress- 
 coat with gilt buttons, buff waistcoat, white trousers and gaiters 
 — "a new Demosthenes, or Cicero, even like a Grecian god as 
 he stood on the platform " — so he seemed to a young lady in 
 the audience — for two hours, without the aid of a single note, 
 he poured forth in defence of peace and liberty his stream of 
 learned but far too copious oratory. " A grand, elevated, elo- 
 quent oration from Sumner," Longfellow recorded in his Diary. 
 " He spoke it with great ease and elegance ; and was from 
 
 1 Life ofH. W. Longfellow, I. 277. * lb. I. 301. 
 
 3 Life of W. H. Prescott, p. 339. 
 
114 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 beginning to end triumphant." 1 Even Edward Everett was 
 carried away by the young speaker's enthusiasm. " He said," 
 as Professor Felton wrote to Sumner, " that it was an amazingly 
 splendid affair. ' I never heard it surpassed. I don't know 
 that I ever heard it equalled.' Now, Charley (Felton con- 
 tinued), you may well be proud of having drawn forth from 
 these stony lips such human tones of speech." The vener- 
 able ex-President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, 
 who attended the Society for the last time, — he was in 
 his eightieth year, — thinking how his part was nearly played in 
 the struggle for the freedom of the slave, said to the Orator : " I 
 look from Pisgah to the Promised Land j you must enter upon 
 it." 2 
 
 A curious fact is recorded of the poem which, under the title 
 of Reveille, was recited before the Society in the summer fol- 
 lowing the revolt of the Southern States. " It was reprinted in 
 the South during the war, with such changes as made it serve 
 the Confederate cause. It was afterwards reprinted in England 
 as evidence of the spirit which animated the Confederacy." 3 
 
 Ticknor, writing in 1863, and looking back fifty years, says : 
 " The <1> B K, it should be remembered, was at that period a 
 Society of much more dignity and consequence than it is now. 
 It had an annual public exhibition, largely attended by such 
 graduates as were its members, and indeed, by the more culti- 
 vated portion of the community generally." 4 He must surely 
 have had something of the old man's failing in the slight which 
 he thus cast on modern days, and something, moreover, of the 
 
 l Life ofH W. Longfellow, II. 55. 
 
 2 Life of Charles Sumner, III. 15-20. 
 
 3 Library of Harvard University: Bibliographical Contributions, No. 
 42, by W. H. Tillinghast, p. 7. 
 
 4 Life of W. H Prescott, p. 24. 
 
vi. HARVARD COLLEGE, 115 
 
 old man's ignorance of what was going on almost under his 
 very nose. At all events, if the Society was for a brief period 
 under an eclipse, it soon shone forth in all its brightness. Be- 
 tween i860 and 1880 it numbered among its Presidents, Vice- 
 Presidents, Orators, and Poets, Emerson, Sumner, Dana, Lowell, 
 Holmes, G. W. Curtis, and Bret Harte. Lowell, who was Presi- 
 dent from 1863 to 187 1, describes how, in 1865, he had sat up 
 late the night before Phi Beta Day with a few friends who had 
 been with him at the Commencement dinner. " Per Bacco 
 and tobacco, how wisely silly we were ! I forgot for a few 
 blessed hours that I was a Professor, and felt as if I were some- 
 thing real. But Phi Beta came next day, and wasn't I tired ? 
 Presiding from 9 a.m. till 6.30 p.m. is no joke ! " 1 He had de- 
 tected a certain sameness in the inspiration of the Poets of the 
 Society. In a letter to Professor Child he says : " I have 
 noticed that Class and Phi Beta poems almost always begin 
 with an ' as ' — at any rate they used to in my time, before a 
 certain Boylston Professor took 'em in hand. 2 E.g. — 
 
 As the last splendours of expiring day 
 
 Round Stoughton's chimneys cast a lingering ray, 
 
 So — 
 
 And sometimes there was a whole flight of 'dtf-es' leading 
 up to the landing of a final so, where one could take breath and 
 reflect on what he had gone through." 3 
 
 In 1867 Emerson was for the second time appointed Orator. 
 " His oration," wrote Lowell, " was more disjointed than usual, 
 even with him. It began nowhere and ended everywhere, and 
 
 1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 389. 
 
 2 Professor Child was at that time the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric 
 and Oratory at Harvard. 
 
 3 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 237. 
 
116 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 yet, as always with that divine man, it left you feeling that 
 something beautiful had passed that way — something more 
 beautiful than anything else, and like the rising and setting of 
 stars. Every possible criticism might have been made on it 
 but one — that it was not noble. There was a tone in it that 
 awakened all elevating associations. He boggled, he lost his 
 place, he had to put on his glasses, but it was as if a creature 
 from some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and it was 
 our fault, not his. It was chaotic, but it was all such stuff as 
 stars are made of, and you couldn't help feeling that, if you 
 waited awhile, all that was nebulous would be whirled into 
 planets, and would assume the mathematical gravity of system. 
 All through it I felt something in me that cried, ' Ha, ha, to the 
 sound of the trumpets.' " 
 
 In 1 88 1 the Society celebrated the hundredth anniversary of 
 its foundation. Delegates were present from all parts of the 
 country, each representing a Chapter of the Phi Beta. The 
 Orator was Wendell Phillips. It was his last great speech and 
 was worthy of the occasion. He took for his subject the 
 Cowardice of Educated Men. 
 
 Though the Phi Beta is not a part of the University, is in no- 
 wise under its government, and is not even mentioned in the 
 Catalogue, nevertheless it is recognized by the College authori- 
 ties. It is in the University Theatre that the Oration is deliv- 
 ered and the Poems recited, and in Massachusetts Hall that the 
 dinner is held. In the Yard the procession is formed in which 
 the Orator and Poet are conducted to the Theatre. I did not 
 discover so much state as I had seen on Commencement Day. 
 Gowns were not worn and there was no Governor of the Com- 
 monwealth with his gorgeous Staff. Nevertheless there was a 
 long and imposing line, and what was wanting in show was, no 
 
vi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 117 
 
 doubt, made up in intellect. The guests, instead of being in 
 front as on the day before, now brought up the rear. Last of 
 all came the President of the Society, with the Orator, General 
 Walker, who is renowned, not only as a soldier who did good ser- 
 vice in the war with the Southern States, but also as a Political 
 Economist. He is, moreover, President of the Boston School of 
 Technology. In front of them walked the Poet, Mr. Maurice 
 Thompson, accompanied by the Roman Catholic Bishop. The 
 last time, perhaps, that the Orator and Poet had met was face to 
 face on some battle-field in the Civil War, for Mr. Thompson, too, 
 had played his part in it in the army of the South. In the The- 
 atre, the President of the University, who had walked with the 
 guests, took his place in the area among the ordinary members. 
 The roomy dais was occupied by the President and Chaplain 
 of the Society, the Orator and the Poet. They looked some- 
 what forlorn in the midst of so large and vacant a space. They 
 should have had, by way of support, all the past Orators, Poets, 
 and Chaplains who could be got together. Doubtless there 
 were not a few of them in the audience. The Chaplain, who 
 ought to have opened the proceedings with a prayer, through 
 the forgetfulness of the President, was not called upon. How- 
 ever, the prayer was not lost, for the venerable man gave it us 
 by way of grace at the dinner, and a very good prayer it was — 
 at least for these modern days, when the art of praying seems 
 well-nigh forgotten. As a grace it did not do quite so well. 
 The oration was an able and soldierly defence of athleticism. 
 There were some high in authority at Harvard who thought 
 that in a university, when athleticism seems running mad, such 
 a defence was altogether out of place. They maintained, more- 
 over, that the subject was ill-suited for a learned society. The 
 Poet had taken for his theme Lincoln's grave. In his verses 
 
118 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 he let his hearers know that he had fought for the South. He 
 was, he said, a Georgian, and when Georgia had called him he 
 had not hesitated to obey. Nevertheless, avowed and impeni- 
 tent rebel that he was, he carried his audience of Northerners 
 with him by his reverence for Lincoln. He sat down in the 
 midst of loud applause, which seemed to me his due j though 
 it was by no means easy to judge of the real merits of a poem 
 that was recited in so strange a scene. My thoughts would 
 wander to f 
 
 " Old, unhappy far-off things 
 And battles long ago," 
 
 as I contrasted his frail body with the General's strong and 
 commanding form, and thought of all that the two men had 
 done and undergone. In the audience was many a man who 
 had fought in the Northern armies ; the Theatre in which we 
 were sitting had been built as a memorial to the Harvard men 
 who had fallen in the great war j and here, in this very spot, in 
 the very home of all that is now strongest in Northern senti- 
 ment and conviction, was this Southern rebel speaking tenderly 
 and reverently of the great President, and touching these New 
 Englanders to the heart. 
 
 In more than one way did this Southerner show his magna- 
 nimity. He had this great audience of Northerners at his 
 mercy — a poet's mercy; and nevertheless he was brief. His 
 recitation did not last fifteen minutes. I was told of a recent 
 occasion when the bard had six times paused in his inspiration 
 to drink iced water, and only paused every time the clock 
 sounded the hour or the quarters. 
 
 We sat down to dinner at least two hundred in number ; 
 all the members ranged according to their seniority. At the 
 high table were the President of the Society, the Orator, the 
 
vi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 119 
 
 Poet, and the guests. The President of the University sat 
 among his old comrades, the men of his Class. The kindly 
 Roman Catholic Bishop, having despatched Mr. Huxley the 
 day before, being the second time called on for a speech, took 
 nearly half an hour to kill him again. Perhaps, however, his 
 discourse should rather be looked upon as a funeral sermon, 
 such as in the good old days an Inquisitor might have preached 
 over the ashes of a heretic whom he had first sent to the stake. 
 I thought regretfully of the after-dinner speech which Bishop 
 Blougram would have made, if indeed that Right Reverend 
 Prelate would have been capable of speaking inspired by noth- 
 ing stronger than iced water and coffee. 
 
 In the speech which I was called on to make I brought for- 
 ward the claims of my own University to a share in the great 
 honour of founding Harvard. It was, I admitted, to Cam- 
 bridge that all my hearers looked up as their ancient Alma 
 Mater. To Oxford, however, scarcely less gratitude was due. 
 To her might be justly applied the lines which the poet used of 
 the great English statesman : — 
 
 " Nor mourn we less his perished worth 
 Who bade the conqueror go forth." 
 
 Oxford had educated Laud, and Laud had driven the Puri- 
 tans across the seas. When all the orators had had their say 
 the whole company rose, and linking hands so as to form a vast 
 chain, sang Aidd Lang Syne. Thus an interesting day and a 
 pleasant gathering were brought to a close. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Class Day. — Its Origin and Growth. — Orators, Poets, and Odists. — 
 The New England Summer. — The " Spreads." — The Exercises at the 
 Tree. 
 
 OF the three great days of Commencement week I had 
 seen two. I had seen the University in all its state 
 conferring honours and degrees, and I had seen the gathering 
 of a Society composed of the most distinguished graduates. 
 One day, and by no means the least curious and interesting of 
 the three, I had missed seeing through the inclemency of the 
 weather. The festivities of Commencement week begin with 
 the Seniors' Class Day — a day as unlike anything we have in 
 England as Phi Beta itself. On it the undergraduates, or 
 rather the Seniors, reign supreme. The Yard, the Theatre, 
 Memorial Hall, I might almost say the College itself, are all 
 under their rule. It is the first but the great day of the Feast, 
 "the greatest day," according to The Crimson, "in a Harvard 
 student's career." "The old-time glory of Commencement," 
 we are told, " has departed." To a stranger, however, a good 
 deal of it seems left. Class Day, which gathers as great a 
 crowd of the young and happy as even Eights' Week or 
 Commemoration at, Oxford, has taken more than two centuries 
 to attain its present importance. Almost from the first it was 
 the custom for the Seniors each year to choose one of their 
 number who, in the name of all, should take leave of the 
 
chap. vii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 121 
 
 College in a Valedictory Oration in the Latin language. Who 
 but the philosophic student would believe that out of this 
 humble beginning could have sprung all the gay costumes, the 
 feastings, the dancing, the music, the illuminations, and the 
 wildest of struggles ? In somewhat early days the Valedictory 
 was accompanied by a large consumption of strong liquors. 
 In 1 760 each Senior brought his bottle of wine to the meeting. 
 Josiah Quincy, describing a dinner some seventy years ago, 
 says : " Caleb Cushing came in, and gave for a toast, ' The 
 bands of friendship, which always tighten when they are wet.' 
 When we had all drunk our skins full, we marched round to 
 all the Professors' houses, danced round the Rebellion and 
 Liberty Trees, and then returned to the Hall. A great many 
 of the Class were half-seas over." x In 1834 " iced punch was 
 brought in buckets. 2 Colonel T. W. Higginson of the Class of 
 1 84 1 " can remember when the Senior Class assembled annu- 
 ally round ' Liberty Tree ' on Class Day, and ladled out bowls 
 of punch for every passer-by ; — till every Cambridge boy saw 
 a dozen men in various stages of inebriation about the College 
 Yard." 3 Perhaps the Colonel describes not the scenes of his 
 undergraduate days but of his boyhood, for it was in 1838, we 
 are told, that " President Quincy encouraged the conversion of 
 the Day into the respectable celebration which it has since 
 been." 4 To the class of 1838 " Lowell, and the sculptor Story, 
 and other congenial souls belonged." To them the main 
 credit of this conversion has been given. 5 Lowell's influence, 
 
 1 Figures of the Past, p. 49. 
 
 2 Historical Sketch, etc., by W. R. Thayer, p. 57. 
 
 3 Harvard's Better Self, by W. R. Bigelow, p. 7. 
 
 4 Historical Sketch, etc., p. 58. 
 
 5 By Henry Ware, in Appleton's Journal for March, 1870; quoted in 
 History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, by G. G. Bush, p. 197. 
 
122 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 whatever it was, must have been exerted from a distance, for 
 all the spring and summer he was in a state of " suspension" 
 some miles away. His neglect of his prescribed studies — a 
 neglect in which perhaps, like him who was bidden to " let 
 Euclid rest and Archimedes pause," he was " not unwise" — 
 had been visited by the Harvard form of rustication. " Suspen- 
 sion," as we read in the Catalogue, " is a separation from the 
 University for a fixed period of time. It may be accompanied 
 with a requirement of residence in a specified place, and of 
 the performance of specified tasks." Lowell had been sent 
 to the pleasant village of Concord " to carry on his studies 
 under the charge of the Minister." He was not as yet an 
 Emersonian, or he might have sought for consolation from the 
 Philosopher of Concord under the disappointment that came 
 upon him. Though he had been chosen Class. Poet, he was 
 not allowed to be present to read his poem to his classmates. 
 " It was printed for their use, and the little pamphlet, his first 
 independently printed production, has become one of the 
 desiderata of bibliomaniacs." l 
 
 As a necessary part of the modern refinements, by whomso- 
 ever they were introduced, the friends of the Seniors were 
 invited to the ceremony. Wine and punch soon fell into the 
 background as sisters and cousins came to the front. For the 
 ladies elegant collations — "Spreads," to use the Harvard 
 term — were provided by the wealthier members of the Class 
 or by a subscription. There was dancing in the open air in 
 the Yard and under cover in the Hall. In 1846 Longfellow 
 records in his Journal: "July 16, Class Day. In the after- 
 noon a dance in Harvard Hall ; then the farewell shouts at the 
 doors of the several Colleges, and the wild ring around the old 
 
 1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 27, 31. 
 
VII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 123 
 
 ' Liberty Tree.'" 1 In 1850 the following account was writ- 
 ten: " Cotillons and the easier dances are performed in the 
 Yard, but the sport closes in the Hall with the Polka and other 
 fashionable steps. The Seniors again form, and make the 
 circuit of the buildings, great and small. They then assemble 
 under the Liberty Tree, around which, with hands joined, they 
 dance after singing the students' adopted song, Auld Lang 
 Syne. At parting, each member takes a sprig or a flower from 
 the beautiful ' Wreath ' which surrounds the ' farewell tree,' 
 which is sacredly treasured as a last memento of College scenes 
 and enjoyments." 2 Adopted, in this quotation, must be, I 
 think, a misprint for adapted, for Burns's song has been fitted 
 to Harvard after the following fashion : — 
 
 " Ye rooms, ye halls, ye rough old bricks, 
 Ye trees, ye walks of mine ! 
 How are ye hallowed by the dreams 
 Of ' auld lang syne.' " 3 
 
 Every year the gathering grows larger and larger, and the 
 " Spreads " become more numerous and more elaborate. In 
 the Class Day Supplement to the Harvard Crimson, I found a 
 column headed : " A List of the men who will spread, with the 
 places where the Spreads will be given." There were eighty- 
 eight hosts in all, but as they had clubbed together in smaller 
 or larger groups, there were only fourteen places where their 
 hospitality was dispensed. At. the end of the list were such 
 announcements as the following : " The Pi Eta Spread is in 
 the Hemenway Gymnasium on Friday in the middle of the 
 day." " The Spread in Lower Massachusetts is on Friday at 6. 
 
 1 Life of H. W. Longfellow, II. 50. 
 
 2 College Words and Customs, quoted in An Historical Sketch, etc., p. 58. 
 
 3 Quincy's Harvard, II. 672. 
 
124 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 After the Spread the hosts will receive their friends in their 
 rooms." So extensive have become the preparations that " the 
 constant services of a hired manager are required." In the 
 early part of the century it was often on Commencement Day, 
 and not on Class Day, that the young Bachelor entertained his 
 friends. When Prescott took his degree, his father, proud of 
 his son's having a part assigned to him in the Exercises, gave 
 a sumptuous dinner to over five hundred guests in a great 
 marquee. The day ended with " dancing and frolicking on 
 the green." 1 
 
 The simple ceremony of the " Valedictory " had expanded 
 on more sides than one. To the Orator a Poet, as has been 
 seen, had been added ; and later on an Odist, an Ivy Orator, 
 a Chorister, a Hymnist, and a Chaplain. The Chaplain, the 
 Hymnist, the Orator, and the Odist represented the sober side 
 of life j the Poet and Ivy Orator its humorous. The Ivy Orator 
 took his name from the custom that once prevailed of each 
 Class planting an ivy-shoot on Class Day. At the place where 
 it was put into the ground, he delivered his oration ; but as 
 the plant never grew, no doubt because it could not stand the 
 summer heats, so the custom was abandoned. He answers to 
 the Terra Filius of the Oxford Commemoration in the old 
 days, but he never goes to the lengths on which that gross, 
 though licensed, buffoon used to venture. There are no scurri- 
 lous jests uttered by him against the President and the Pro- 
 fessors. About the beginning of the present century the 
 Orator ventured to give his Valedictory in English. This 
 innovation the Faculty resisted, as "it gives," to quote their 
 words, " more the appearance of a public Exhibition designed 
 to display the talents of the Performers and entertain a mixed 
 
 1 Life of W. H. Prescott, p. 25. 
 
vii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 125 
 
 audience than of a merely valedictory address of the Class to 
 the Government, and taking leave of the Society and of one 
 another, in which Adieu Gentlemen and Ladies from abroad 
 are not particularly interested." l In the end the Faculty gave 
 in, as Faculties almost always do give in, and Latin disappeared 
 from Class Day. The Odist composes an ode to be sung to 
 the tune of Fair Harvard. The Chorister had to write the 
 music for the Class Song and conduct the singing at the Tree. 
 For the Song, by a vote of the Class of 1891, Fair Harvard was 
 substituted ; so that one-half of the Chorister's task has been 
 swept away. The Chaplain and Hymnist have disappeared. 
 The management of the day is under the control of a Secretary, 
 three Marshals, and three Committee-men. Every October, 
 soon after the beginning of the Academic Year, the Seniors 
 meet to elect their Orators, Poets, and the rest. Those only 
 have votes who are candidates for the Bachelor's degree at the 
 next Commencement. The voting is by secret ballot. In the 
 list of the Poets are found the names of Story the Jurist, 
 Palfrey and Bancroft the historians, Emerson, Holmes and 
 Lowell. It is more by chance than by the discernment of his 
 classmates that Emerson appears in this goodly company, for 
 he was not chosen till seven of his comrades had refused to be 
 inspired. 2 Among the Orators less distinguished names are 
 found. In 1846, however, Longfellow recorded in his Jour- 
 nal" : "Class Day. The Oration by Child, extremely good; 
 one of the best — on the whole the best — I have heard on 
 such occasions." Child is Professor F. J. Child, the learned 
 editor of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. On the 
 
 1 An Historical Sketch, etc., p. 57. 
 
 2 R. W. Emerson, by O. W. Holmes, p. 45. 
 
 3 Life o/LL IV. Longfellow, Vol. II. p. 50. 
 
126 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 publication of the first part Lowell wrote to him : "You 
 have really built an imperishable monument, and I rejoice as 
 heartily as the love I bear you gives me the right in having 
 lived to see its completion." ] A few years ago the choice of 
 the class for Orator fell on a negro, in whom there was not a 
 drop of white blood. That a negro can be a fine speaker had 
 been shown long before by Frederick Douglass. Whether this 
 young man was chosen solely for his merits or as a noble 
 expression of sympathy for a despised race, I do not know. 
 Perhaps in the choice there was a touch of kindly humour. 
 
 The Orators and Poets of 1893 all distinguished themselves 
 in the examinations. To two of them parts were assigned in 
 the exercises at Commencement. In the Class Day election the 
 balance, it seems, is held true between mind and body ; the 
 four who had been selected for their gifts of oratory and poetry 
 were balanced by four who were selected for their services in 
 athletics. The Marshals were the Captains of the Baseball and 
 Football Teams and of the Boat ; the Secretary was the Man- 
 ager of the Football Eleven. 2 The three Committee-men 
 were, no doubt, if not Orators, Poets, or Athletes, at least 
 good fellows. 
 
 The greatest day in a Harvard student's career is surely also 
 the longest day. On rising, he puts on evening dress, and he 
 does not take it off till midnight, and often till long after. 
 There is, however, for a brief interval an easier costume worn 
 by those who take part in the exercises at the Tree. According 
 to the old custom, to the evening dress a tall silk hat was added, 
 but by the recent vote by which cap and gown have been made 
 part of the costume of the day, the hat is no longer needed. 
 
 1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 304. 
 
 2 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1893, p. 306. 
 
vii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 127 
 
 How much is done in the course of this midsummer's day is 
 shown by the following official Programme : — 
 
 " 9 A.M. The Senior Class will assemble in front of Holworthy and 
 march to Appleton Chapel, where prayer will be offered by Rev. William 
 Lawrence, S.T. D. 1 
 
 " 10.45. The Senior Class will assemble in front of Holworthy and march 
 to Sanders Theatre. 
 
 " 2 to 5 p.m. Music in the Yard. 
 
 " 3 to 5. Dancing in Memorial Hall. 
 
 " 5. The Senior Class will assemble in front of Holworthy, cheer the 
 College buildings and march to the Tree. 
 
 " 8 to 11. Dancing in the Gymnasium and Memorial Hall. Music and 
 Illumination in the College Yard. 
 
 " 8.0. The Glee Club will sing in front of Holworthy. 
 
 " 9.0. The Banjo Club and the Mandolin and Guitar Club will play on 
 the Law School steps." 
 
 Even when the last dance has come to an end and the last 
 guest has left, sleep, I am told, does not fall upon the College. 
 The Seniors spend the few hours of night in talking over the 
 stirring doings of the great day and in fond memories of their 
 student life now so rapidly drawing to its close. 
 
 " Et jam nox humida cselo 
 Praecipitat, suadentque cadentia siderasomnos," 
 
 " Nature's soft nurse " bids, but bids in vain. 
 
 The weather, which I am told almost always favours Class 
 Day, this year showed it no indulgence. I have heard Ameri- 
 cans on our side of the Atlantic complain of the changeable- 
 ness of the climate, not only of England, but of Europe. It 
 was a disappointment to me to find how uncertain a New Eng- 
 land June can be. There was a variety in it that was worthy 
 
 1 Dr. Lawrence last year succeeded Phillips Brooks as Bishop of 
 Massachusetts. 
 
128 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 of Cumberland or Devonshire. On the afternoon of the seventh 
 of the month the thermometer in my room in Cambridge 
 stood at 91, though the Venetian shutters had been kept closed. 
 On the thirteenth, at a little village on the sea-coast we were all 
 sitting round a blazing log fire. On the seventeenth fires were 
 kept burning all day. On the twenty-fourth, calling at two houses 
 in Cambridge, in both I found my friends sitting round the fire. 
 In the southern parts of England I had never seen a fire so late 
 in the summer, and yet Boston is in the same latitude as Rome. 
 If the summer is late in coming and is uncertain even when it 
 has come, in the clearness of the air and the blueness of the 
 sea, on fine days, it displays the charms of the Mediterranean 
 shore. Hawthorne was disappointed by the Italian skies. They 
 were, he said, what he had been used to all his life in New 
 England. In the exaggerated expectations which he had formed 
 of them, he had been misled by the English poets, who had 
 judged them by the quiet colours of cloudy England. It was 
 with no Italian sky, but with cold and heavy rain that Class Day 
 set in. The break in the weather that we anxiously looked for 
 never came, and I was kept a prisoner to the house the whole 
 day. The following description of all that went on I quote 
 from a letter written by my wife : — 
 
 " Class Day this year broke wet and stormy, much to our 
 disappointment. Great trouble had been taken to secure for 
 us tickets for everything worth seeing. Without these tickets 
 no one can gain admission. The Graduating Students are the 
 hosts, and issue them to all as their guests. At ten we had 
 to be in our places in Sanders Theatre. The whole place 
 looked very much like the Sheldonian at Commemoration, 
 crowded with mothers and sisters and cousins in gay sum- 
 mer dresses, a good many of the Professors and a fair 
 
vii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 129 
 
 sprinkling of young men. We missed, however, the gowns, 
 Professors looking only like ordinary mortals; and there was 
 no Undergraduates' Gallery and no noise such as we are used 
 to at home. Imagine, if you can, a Commemoration at which 
 all was done ' decently and in order,' no uproar, no foolish 
 jokes ; but that is a flight beyond the imagination of any one 
 who has seen and heard Oxford men on such an occasion. 
 
 " The body of the Hall was reserved for those students who 
 were to receive their degree, and at eleven they marched in, 
 two and two, in cap and gown. The Bishop-elect followed 
 with the students who are the office-bearers of the year ; they 
 took their seats on the dais on chairs placed in front of palms 
 and flowering shrubs, with a gigantic '93 in flowers fastened 
 to the gallery over their heads. In this gallery was an excel- 
 lent string band which played between the various exercises. 
 The meeting began with prayer, the Bishop praying in the 
 name of the Class of 1893 ; and then the Senior Marshal 
 called upon the Orator to begin his Oration. The Orator, 
 who was a member of the graduating Class chosen for the 
 office by his classmates, stepped to the front of the dais and 
 began. He had learned his oration carefully by heart, and 
 had been trained in the method of delivery; he spoke it 
 well ; matter and style were good, but they lacked fire and 
 spontaneity. He was followed in turn by the Poet, the Ivy 
 Orator (whose business it is to make a comic speech full of 
 allusions to what has lately been happening in the University) , 
 and the Odist, who repeated a short ode of his own composi- 
 tion. It was then sung by every one to the tune of Fair Har- 
 vard, i.e. ' My lodging is on the cold ground,' which may be 
 called the national air of Harvard. After this we were dis- 
 missed by the Bishop-elect with his blessing. 
 
130 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 "The one distinguishing feature of the gathering was its 
 completely democratic nature. The President of the Uni- 
 versity sat there with his wife in the central seat of the Audi- 
 torium ; but he was nothing more than one of the many 
 spectators. The Dons, as Dons, were non-existent. The 
 men of '93 were everything. They had chosen the spokes- 
 men of the day ; orations, poem, and ode were all addressed 
 to them ; every arrangement had been made by them, and 
 was carried out by them as supreme. Even in what was said 
 and sung there was not the slightest reference to any other 
 authority. Harvard took form in one's mind as a large 
 democracy, the students governing themselves in all things. 
 
 " Our next duty was to attend one of the ' Spreads.' Spread 
 is the name given to a meal provided by the students, and 
 means lunch or supper, or still more often one that goes on 
 a great part of the day. It is of the nature of a ball supper ; 
 salads, sandwiches, and ice-creams, with many varieties of 
 cake, being what is usually provided. Strawberries and cream 
 are usually added during the summer. One of the largest and 
 gayest of the Spreads on Friday was held in the great Gym- 
 nasium. Here the large hall had been adorned with a pro- 
 fusion of flowers and evergreens, and with garlands hung from 
 side to side of the high roof. Again a great '93 in flowers 
 was conspicuous in front of the gallery. When we arrived 
 there about half-past three o'clock, dancing was going on 
 vigorously. The Class of '93 looked very droll dancing in 
 cap and gown. Many of the girls had pretty dresses and 
 pretty faces, too, the exercise giving them just that touch of 
 colour which American girls so often lack. The chaperones 
 sat round the room, and the long refreshment-table was down 
 one side ; the band in the gallery above. The expense of the 
 
vii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 131 
 
 whole was borne by a small party of young men of the Gradu- 
 ating Class. 
 
 " By half-past four the ball was over, the Gymnasium deserted, 
 and we were once more plodding through the rain and mire, in 
 goloshes and waterproofs, to the quadrangle in which were to 
 take place the Tree Exercises, the thing I was especially anxious 
 to see. This part of Harvard Class Day is always considered 
 the most important, as well as the prettiest sight for visitors to 
 see. The tree, a tall and stately American elm, stands in the 
 centre of a wide lawn with College buildings on three sides. 
 For Class Day the lawn is enclosed by tiers of wooden raised 
 seats, and the tree is garlanded by a long wreath of flowers 
 wound many times closely round the trunk about ten or twelve 
 feet above the ground ; while the date of the year in crimson 
 and white flowers is placed some eight feet higher still. Above 
 this again the branches spring, the bark below being quite un- 
 broken and offering a difficult task enough to climbers. The 
 rain continued as pitilessly as ever. The seats had been 
 covered with awnings, but not to much effect. When we 
 arrived they were all shining with water, and every here and 
 there a small stream descended from some hole, or drop by 
 drop fell upon some devoted bonnet from a thinner spot in the 
 canvas. At five o'clock the Class of '94 marched in under 
 umbrellas ; followed by more of '95 and '96 ; then all in turn 
 seated themselves on carpets which had been hurriedly spread 
 upon the grass. A large group of Graduates took up their 
 position near them ; when all were settled, to the sound of a 
 band in marched the men of '93. First came the three marshals, 
 then the band, and then some seventy or eighty young fellows 
 in football dress, stout jerseys, buff knickerbockers, long stock- 
 ings and buff shoes, and all bareheaded. They came in two by 
 
132 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 two; the men behind with their hands on the shoulders of those 
 in front, making a long, continuous winding chain, which wound 
 round and round the tree, and finally formed a compact mass 
 encircling it and the Senior Marshal, who stood at its foot in 
 cap and gown. Those of the Class who were not to take part 
 in the struggle, also in cap and gown, took up their position 
 near. 
 
 " And now began the cheering. Led by the Marshal they gave 
 the Harvard yell — Rah-rah-rah ; Rah-rah-rah ; Rah-rah-rah ; 
 Hair — vard ! rising in a sort of yell and repeated over and over 
 again in perfect time. It was begun first by '93, and then taken 
 up by '94, '95, '96, and the Graduates in regular succession. They 
 cheered the Classes; they cheered the Halls; they cheered the 
 President and a few favourite Professors, and then they cheered 
 the Ladies ; each body cheering alone and in regular order. 
 Finally all joined in cheering Harvard, and then the whole mass 
 standing, visitors and students together, sang Fair Harvard. 
 As we came to the last line of the song the first marshal gave a 
 signal to the athletes, and at once a tussling began ; each one 
 of them trying to get at the trunk of the tree and to mount 
 high enough on the shoulders of the man in front to be within 
 reach of the garland. The struggle was tremendous, like a 
 gigantic scrimmage at football ; the mass seemed at one time 
 all legs and arms, at another a furious combat in which some 
 one must lose life or limb. First one and then another rose 
 high on the backs or shoulders of those below, only to fall back 
 and be lost in the crowd. The spectators cheered and shouted 
 and screamed with laughter. When at last the first bunch of 
 flowers was successfully torn away, we all cheered as if some 
 great and glorious victory had been gained. It took about ten 
 minutes to gain possession of the long wreath ; bit by bit it was 
 
vii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 133 
 
 clutched away, and flung among the men below. But there 
 still remained the crimson '93 high above, and I dare say 
 another ten minutes were spent before the frantic efforts to 
 reach it were crowned with success. Only two or three men were 
 brave enough to attempt the feat ; the famous gymnast of the 
 year was the one finally to achieve it. Again and again he was 
 dragged down ; again and again we saw him engaged in a free 
 fight with obstinate opponents from the vantage ground of the 
 shoulders of his supporters ; his jersey was torn, his body must 
 have been covered with bruises and his nails all in pieces ; but 
 in the end the rosy '93 fell amid the shouts of everybody, and 
 the fun was over. 
 
 " But only for a time. The crowd dispersed to rest and eat, 
 and dress for the various balls and receptions which closed this 
 busy day. Those students who were lucky enough to have 
 rooms looking on the College Yard had them thronged with 
 guests by eight in the evening. From wide-open windows every 
 one was looking down on the coloured lamps hung from the 
 fine trees and listening to the Harvard Glee Club, who, in spite 
 of the heavy rain, sang manfully under their umbrellas the songs 
 that have been sung for so many years. But we were too wet 
 and too tired to go out again, and we feel that we shall have to 
 come back some day to Cambridge to see Class Day under a 
 blue sky and learn what it really is." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Undergraduates. — Harvardians and Oxonians contrasted. — The Ath- 
 letic Craze. — A Baseball Match. — Games regulated by the Governing 
 Body of the University. — President Eliot's Report. 
 
 OF my first impressions of the undergraduates, I made the 
 following record in my journal : "They are shorter and 
 slighter than our Oxford men, with much less colour; a year or 
 two older, I think, unless the hot climate makes them look 
 older. I do not see so many gross, stupid faces, but, on the 
 other hand, I have not as yet noticed any of those fresh-col- 
 oured, pleasant, innocent faces which are so attractive at Ox- 
 ford." On seeing more of the men, I came to doubt whether in 
 appearance they were older than our undergraduates. Near the 
 end of my residence in Cambridge, I thus sum up my obser- 
 vations: "How few are the signs here of university life com- 
 pared with those seen in Oxford ! In Oxford, a real town 
 though it is, and not a suburban village like Cambridge, the 
 presence of the students, nevertheless, is much more conspi- 
 cuous. No one can walk about its streets and roads without 
 noticing the large number of young men — often moving in a 
 long stream — young men, moreover, who, as their very ap- 
 pearance, their dress, their manner of walking, their features 
 show, are not in business. In the afternoon their suit of 
 flannel makes it clear that they are bent on pleasure, or, at 
 all events, on exercise; in the morning and evening the cap 
 and gown indicate the student. The style, the very make of 
 
 i34 
 
chap. VIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 135 
 
 their clothes, are not those of the young business man. Their 
 easy, confident step distinguishes them from the ordinary youth 
 of a town. The separation of the Colleges distributes this life 
 over the city, so that undergraduates and graduates are con- 
 stantly passing along the streets from College to College, or 
 from College to the University buildings. The Parks, the 
 upper river, the lower river, and the Cherwell increase this 
 diffusion. It is increased, moreover, by the Englishman's 
 love of walking and riding." 
 
 In the American Cambridge there is very little of this open 
 and palpable university life. The College buildings, which 
 are numerous, are mostly in one enclosure, the Yard. Those 
 which are not there — the more modern additions — are sepa- 
 rated from them only by a road. The students, therefore, in 
 going to and from lectures, do not cross the town. Outside 
 the Yard I have never seen them moving in a stream, except 
 on the days of some great baseball or football match, and 
 then they have but a few yards to traverse. Beyond the im- 
 mediate surroundings of the College they are scarcely noticea- 
 ble. A stranger, whose walks did not lead him past the Yard, 
 might for some time live within a quarter of a mile of the 
 College, without discovering that he was in a University 
 town. Boston attracts the students in large numbers, and to 
 Boston they go, not on foot but on the tram-cars. In their 
 dress, their general appearance, their gait, I discover little 
 of the undergraduate. In England and Germany this clan 
 does not hide itself. An Oxford man lets the world know 
 that he is an Oxford man. His self-satisfaction gives an 
 assurance, sometimes even a kind of swagger, to his whole 
 behaviour. He walks along the High Street as if it belonged, 
 not to the Corporation, but to himself. His apparel too oft 
 
136 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 proclaims the man. There is nothing of this here. The 
 Harvard undergraduate talks of himself and his comrades as 
 boys. He has not learnt to swagger. Probably it takes many 
 years at a great English public school to acquire the true 
 manner. Like the art of beating the French at Waterloo, it 
 is best learnt on the Playing Fields of Eton. His dress, too, 
 is much less costly and showy; for the most part it is of a 
 dark cloth. I notice none of those waistcoats with which an 
 Oxford man dazzles the poorer scholars of his college and 
 startles his friends at home. The ordinary Harvard man 
 might have stepped out of a city office or a Normal School for 
 Teachers. He belongs to a poorer class. Clothing, more- 
 over, is so expensive that many have to be content with one 
 suit a year. An undergraduate who had visited Europe in the 
 previous Long Vacation, told me that the clothes he was wear- 
 ing, for which he had paid three pounds in England, in Cam- 
 bridge would have cost him six. Every afternoon there are 
 no doubt men to be seen in the dress of young athletes; but 
 though there is the greatest possible interest taken in the 
 yearly boat-race with Yale, and in the baseball and football 
 matches, nevertheless, those who share in these sports are 
 far fewer than we should find in an English university. It 
 is, I am sure, a picked few rather than the mass of men who 
 play. Nowhere is there such a sight as is to be seen any 
 afternoon at Oxford on the river and in the Parks on the days 
 when there is no great race or match. The build of the men 
 proves, moreover, that they have not gone through that long 
 course of rough games which has formed the active and 
 powerful frames of the young English undergraduates. I am 
 told, however, that during the winter half of the year, North 
 Avenue is a training-ground for runners, who in the afternoon 
 
viii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 137 
 
 and evening sweep along the "sidewalks," as if the smooth 
 pavement had been laid down for them, and not for quiet, 
 decent Christians. A noble gymnasium, moreover, has been 
 lately built, which is much frequented. "The fever of re- 
 nown," gained not by the brain, but by the body, is spreading 
 rapidly through the veins of young America. By its "strong 
 contagion " Harvard has been badly caught. One of my 
 friends, whose three sons have recently graduated, lamented 
 to me the excessive interest they all took in the contests of 
 athletes. How different it was when he was young! In those 
 happy days his brother, when home from College, used to talk 
 of books. His sons' talk was of running and jumping, of 
 rowing, baseball, and football. The change is great, indeed, 
 since the time when Dr. Wendell Holmes lamented the gen- 
 eral indifference of the youth of New England to bodily 
 exercise. In the seventh chapter of The Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table, he wrote in the year 1858: "I am satisfied 
 that such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, 
 paste-complexioned youth as we can boast in our Atlantic 
 cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. 
 . . . We have a few good boatmen, — no good horsemen that 
 I hear of, — I cannot speak for cricketing, — but as for any 
 great athletic feat performed by a gentleman in these lati- 
 tudes, society would drop a man who should run round the 
 Common in five minutes." 
 
 Emerson, nearly thirty years ago, speaking of Harvard, 
 "compared later times unfavourably with his own. 'The 
 Class,' he said, 'thought nothing of a man who did not have 
 an enthusiasm for something. ' " 1 There is enthusiasm enough 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, by Professor W. W. 
 Goodwin, 1891, p. 11. 
 
138 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 at the present day, but far too much of it is enthusiasm of a 
 baser sort. The hero of to-day is the captain of a "team." 
 If a man should now be dropped because he ran round the 
 Common in five minutes, he would be dropped because a 
 lighter-footed rival had run round it in four minutes, fifty-nine 
 seconds and four-fifths. On the last Saturday in June I wit- 
 nessed the fag-end of the baseball match between Harvard 
 and Yale. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, kindliest and, 
 I trust, happiest of old men, in his long life has seen many 
 revolutions, political, social, literary, and scientific. Has he 
 ever sat upon the benches of the lofty stands on this great day 
 of the Harvard year? If he has, he would have had to own 
 that few revolutions had been more rapid, and none more 
 thorough, than that whose effects he was witnessing. Society 
 drop a man who should run round the Common in five min- 
 utes ! Why, here was society, unprotected by its parasols, for 
 three hours enduring the blaze of a New England midsummer 
 sun, now carried high upon the wave of triumph, now sunk 
 low down in the trough of despair, as victory or defeat alter- 
 nately hovered over the nine chosen heroes of Harvard. The 
 Autocrat has known and has outlived many famous men. He 
 himself was not the least of that group of men — that Satur- 
 day Club — which gave Boston a fresh renown. His friends 
 were Prescott, Emerson, Motley, Hawthorne, Agassiz, Dana, 
 Lowell. What triumph of the most triumphant of these men 
 could compare with that in which, on this June afternoon, in 
 the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, 
 
 the immortal Jack H was borne along and aloft by those 
 
 few, those happy few, who had got hold of one of his glorious 
 limbs, amid the shouts and the replication of the shouts of 
 surrounding thousands? It was indeed a great day. Yale 
 
vin. HARVARD COLLEGE. 139 
 
 had been at last overcome — Yale, whose long line of victo- 
 ries, not only at baseball, but at football and on the river, 
 inflicts on Harvard its solitary shame. It had been overcome, 
 too, by the mighty strength and the "sage command" of the 
 
 glorious Jack H , of Jack H , who for many a day, 
 
 like Achilles, had not mingled in the fray. It was no fit of 
 the sulks which had restrained his ponderous arm and fettered, 
 as it were, his huge leg. It was to fate, not to caprice, that 
 he had yielded. For five long weeks he had been " on pro- 
 bation." A man gets "on probation " by his devotion to the 
 nobler side of university life, and by his spirited neglect of 
 his lectures and his lecturers. While he is on it, he is de- 
 barred from taking part in all matches with outsiders. A 
 blow, it was felt, was impending over the whole Common- 
 wealth of Massachusetts, with which the glory of Harvard is 
 inseparably bound up; but the stern President did not yield 
 to the indignant outcry. There was to be no Rex Supra- 
 grammaticus in the College, and the hero, if he had not to 
 swallow the leek, at all events had to swallow the needful 
 amount of knowledge. He did it, and he did it in time. 
 His brain, happily, was unaffected by the unwonted strain; all 
 that weight of learning he bore lightly as a flower, and his 
 unrivalled skill as a pitcher he displayed in its fullest extent. 
 The honour of Harvard, of Cambridge, of Boston, and of 
 Massachusetts was saved, and the pride of Yale, of New 
 Haven, and of Connecticut was laid low. . • 
 
 The last act in this "swelling pageant" I had, as I have 
 said, myself witnessed. "Fag-end," I called it; but when I 
 used that word, I but imperfectly recalled to my mind the 
 hero and the triumph. My journal has refreshed my memory. 
 The following is my record : " On the way to lunch with Pro- 
 
140 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 fessor , as I passed the entrance to the baseball ground, I 
 
 saw a body of police, twenty-eight in number, marching in to 
 keep order. The American policemen are much less stolid- 
 looking than our men; they do not seem part of a machine. 
 They have been but little drilled. No mischievous under- 
 graduate, by thrusting his walking-stick between the feet of 
 the front man, could lay low a whole file of them, as a whole 
 file was once laid low in the High Street of Oxford. They 
 have not the air of men who are ever looking over somebody's 
 head. Their appearance is that of "good householders." 
 Falstaff would have pressed them without a moment's hesita- 
 tion. Bardolph would speedily have had "four Harry ten 
 shillings in French crowns " to set them free. Their work 
 must be light, to judge by a certain comfortable rotundity of 
 that part of the body which the English policeman confines 
 with a belt. Their tunic hangs loosely. "Unbuttoning thee 
 after supper " could never be uttered by way of reproach 
 against one of them. I had scarcely seen the last of these 
 easy-going constables, when there drove up in procession four 
 two-horse flies, containing the Yale team, and some of their 
 chief supporters. On this fine summer day they came in 
 closed carriages, as if they were too delicate to stand the air. 
 Such "drags" as I have seen in Oxford I never see here. I 
 was late in getting back to the ground, so hard had I found it 
 to tear myself away from the good talk of my friend, the most 
 cheery of learned Professors. A vast gathering had been fol- 
 lowing the changing fortunes of the game for full two hours. 
 Round half the field stands had been raised for the reserved 
 seats, sloping upwards to the height of nearly twenty feet. 
 They all seemed full. The very roofs of the neighbouring 
 buildings were crowded, while on the level ground, and up the 
 
vin. HARVARD COLLEGE. 141 
 
 sloping bank at one end many thousands were massed to- 
 gether. A dollar (four shillings and a penny) was more than 
 I cared to pay for a seat; for half a dollar I got standing- 
 room. The people were orderly and good-humoured, though 
 very many, like myself, got but glimpses of the game over the 
 heads of those who stood in front. There were not a few 
 negroes in the crowd, who elbowed their way like the rest. 
 It was surprising to see how many of the working class could 
 afford so large a sum as half a dollar for admittance. A com- 
 mon labouring- man, however, could earn it by two and a half 
 hours' work. 
 
 The game, so far as I could see it, is but a poor one com- 
 pared with cricket. It is the old baseball of my boyhood 
 expanded and refined. It is almost as much below cricket 
 as skittles is below billiards. It is, however, far more easily 
 understood and followed by the ordinary spectator. Its alter- 
 nations of triumph are sudden. It is not an affair of days, 
 but of hours. A match can be played between lunch and 
 afternoon tea; but what do these benighted heathen cousins 
 of ours know of afternoon tea? As fortune began to incline 
 towards Harvard, the din of applause became oppressive. 
 The cheering — the "Harvard Yell," as it is called — being 
 mechanical, led by conductors, and kept up for many minutes 
 together, is tiresome. The undergraduates sat all together, 
 massed in rows, one above the other. At the foot of each 
 block of seats stood the leader of the cheering, facing the 
 spectators, and giving the time by waving both his hands, the 
 men responding, not only with their voices but with the move- 
 ment of the upper part of the body. The Harvard "yell" 
 I have already described. Yale responds with rah nine 
 times repeated, but without any pause at the third and sixth 
 
142 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 repetitions, followed by Yale, also drawn out and in an as- 
 cending scale. Even Wellesley, the Ladies' College, has 
 its gentle "yell" — W-e-1; 1-e-s; 1-e-y; Wellesley. This 
 cheering, it seemed to me, went on all the time some great 
 player was in, or else when the fortune was so evenly balanced 
 that friends needed encouragement and foes depression. 
 It was just as if at a cricket-match the clapping was kept 
 up through many "overs" together. Being so mechanical, 
 it had none of that exhilarating effect of the loud but brief 
 applause at one of our matches after a great hit, which at 
 once subsides into a dead silence as the bowler takes the ball 
 and prepares to deliver it. It must surely mar the pleasure 
 of the lookers-on, and, moreover, unfairly depress the oppo- 
 sing nine, who have to play in the continuous din that is raised 
 against them. In the slang of the field this is known as "rat- 
 tling the team." It is foes, not friends, who are rattled. In 
 this match it was, I am told, carried to a height never before 
 known, to the great indignation of many of the older men. 
 Earlier in the season the Crimson had mourned over the decay 
 of "the old Harvard spirit," due, they maintained, to the 
 rapid increase in the number of undergraduates. This spirit 
 was one of "gentlemanliness." A Harvard man, it used to be 
 said, could never understand " the Yale fondness for pure 
 noise." Their understandings must have been a good deal 
 enlightened by this match, though perhaps it might be ob- 
 jected that the noise was anything but pure, having in end 
 victory through intimidation. 
 
 At the end of the game, when Harvard was victorious, the 
 crowd rushed to the goal. It was a strange sight this throng, 
 till this glorious moment so closely packed, so easily kept in 
 by the barrier of a single cord, on a sudden streaming in 
 
viii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 143 
 
 dense masses towards one point. The victors were hoisted 
 on men's shoulders and carried round the field at a running 
 pace. The hero of the day, borne before all the rest, was 
 
 Jack H , a huge mass of bone, flesh, and muscle, unwieldy 
 
 but immortal. When at length he and his eight great breth- 
 ren reached the Pavilion, they went up to the balcony and dis- 
 played themselves to the admiring and shouting host below. 
 Whether in England, in the yearly matches at cricket and 
 football between Oxford and Cambridge, such wild scenes of 
 triumph are now to be witnessed I do not know. It is many 
 a year since I was a spectator; in the days when Plancus was 
 consul there was sobriety at all events in our games. If in 
 the idolatry of bodily strength and bodily skill our American 
 cousins are carrying craziness beyond even the point to which 
 we have advanced it, they are but bettering our instructions. 
 Let them remain where they are; in a year or two we shall 
 catch them up in the mad race. 
 
 I could wish that at Harvard they had been content to fol- 
 low us in our athletic frenzy, and had stopped short of our 
 slang. Even the humblest of " the ten leading Universities " 
 of some Western State ought to feel degraded should it be 
 spoken of and written of as the 'Varsity. Thirty-five years 
 ago in Oxford this vile pronunciation was confined to the 
 men who hung about the cricket-grounds and the College 
 barges, ready to pick up a chance sixpence by rendering 
 some trifling service, or to drink a gentleman's health without 
 rendering any service at all. Even a junior scout would have 
 disdained to use it. From these idlers it passed to the 
 cricketers and boating-men, and so gradually onwards to the 
 whole body of undergraduates. Now it is familiar as a house- 
 hold word in the mouths of Fellows of Colleges and Tutors. 
 
144 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Grave Proctors have not been kept by the velvet sleeves of their 
 gowns and their dignity from employing it, and from the 
 lips of Professors in their lighter moods it occasionally drops 
 when they wish to show that they are not unacquainted with 
 the modes of the modern world. Major Pendennis caught 
 from the young men the fashion of speaking of his card as 
 his "pasteboard." Degradation has not as yet spread so far 
 as this at Harvard. No Professor, no Assistant Professor, I 
 verily believe, has as yet lost so much of " the old Harvard 
 spirit" as to call his beloved Alma Mater the 'Varsity. 2 - 
 
 Matches are regulated by the governing bodies in Harvard 
 in a way which is altogether unknown in Oxford. There the 
 control, such as it is, is exercised by each College. The 
 Uniyersity, beyond giving over part of the Parks to the cricket 
 and football clubs, knows nothing of games. At Harvard, up 
 to the year 1882, there had been but one restriction imposed 
 on the athletes. No match or race could take place till after 
 the last recitation 1 hour on Saturday (one o'clock), or after 
 four o'clock on other days. This rule shows how great is the 
 difference in the daily life of the two Universities. At Oxford 
 the common hours for exercise are between half-past one and 
 half-past four. In the winter half of the year, by four o'clock 
 or a little later all the games at football are over, and men 
 stream homewards from the Parks, in all the glory of mud 
 and sweat, not yielding the path to any. About the same 
 time the boating-men are nocking in from the river. In 
 summer, when there is no match, the cricketers return by half- 
 past four. They all come back in time to change their 
 
 1 That which we call a college lecture, that is to say, a class taken by a 
 college tutor, as distinguished from a public lecture delivered by a uni- 
 versity professor, is at Harvard known as a recitation. 
 
 ..J 
 
vni. HARVARD COLLEGE. 145 
 
 clothes and take a cup of tea before the reading-men get to 
 work with their tutors. This kind of work goes on till nearly 
 seven — the general hour for dinner — and is often resumed 
 after a two hours' interval. In my time at Oxford, "the 
 rather luxurious practice," with which President Eliot charges 
 the Law School, " of using for lectures chiefly the hours from 
 nine to one," 1 was, I believe, very general. With the stroke 
 of one we had done with lecturing and the tutors had done 
 with us — the rest of the day was ours, to dispose of as we 
 pleased. I remember the kind of shock it gave me when, on 
 a visit to Oxford, two or three years after I had taken my 
 degree, calling in the evening on a young and zealous tutor I 
 found him engaged with a small class of reading-men. There 
 used to be, and no doubt there still is, a great difference, not 
 only among different Colleges, but among the tutors of the 
 same College, in the strictness with which attendance at lect- 
 ures is enforced. One of my tutors, who was described in 
 the Cricketers' Guide as "the remains of a fine player," was 
 full of indulgence when a match was coming off. As Master 
 of the College, he still kept up his interest in games. The 
 last time I saw him was one day in the late autumn when he 
 was drawn in his Bath Chair to the Football Field. A great 
 match was to be played, and though he had nearly reached 
 the limit of fourscore years, he would not miss it. A pleasant 
 story is told of the kind old man which shows the tact with 
 which he governed the undergraduates. The College boat was 
 one year at the head of the river. The eight, in their pride 
 at seeing one of the smallest of the Colleges in this great posi- 
 tion, invited the University crew to dine with them in Hall. 
 
 1 Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 
 1891-92, p. 25. 
 
146 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 There is a limit in the cost of the dinner beyond which no 
 one is allowed to go. This they would have exceeded by the 
 haunch of venison which they ordered. The manciple, not 
 caring to face the wrath of headstrong youth, instead of refu- 
 sing to provide it, consulted the Master. He sent for the Cap- 
 tain of the Eight, and told him that by a regulation of the 
 College which was not to be set aside, the venison could not 
 be had. As the young man, full of vexation, was leaving the 
 room, the old man called him back. "You are going," he 
 said, "to entertain the University crew. It is a great day for 
 you and the College, and I am sorry that any of our regula- 
 tions, excellent though they may be in themselves, should 
 stand in your way. I think I see a way out of the difficulty. 
 There is no rule of the College which forbids the Master to 
 ask you to accept a haunch of venison, and I shall have great 
 pleasure in sending one for you and your friends." 
 
 In Harvard, in the spring of 1882, one of the Professors, 
 who had none of the tastes of my old Master, drew the atten- 
 tion of the Faculty to the list of matches of the Baseball Club 
 for the coming season. Out of twenty-eight, nineteen were to 
 be played away from Cambridge. "Could the members of 
 the teams," he indignantly asked, "be said to be fulfilling 
 the purpose for which they came to College?" A Standing 
 Committee on the Regulation of Athletic Sports was ap- 
 pointed. It was composed of three members, all of the Fa- 
 culty. They had the good sense to begin their work by taking 
 the leading athletes into their counsels. "The attitude of the 
 young men was one of friendly tolerance. They evidently 
 feared that in the main the Members of the Committee 
 were practically too inexpert to be safely intrusted with legis- 
 lation on such important matters. . . . The Faculty received 
 
viii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 147 
 
 from them a remonstrance, in which it was skilfully but 
 clearly intimated that they should hesitate to pass laws in 
 regard to a game which they did not understand. This gave 
 rise to the celebrated mot of one of the older members, a man 
 of gentle spirit but then thoroughly roused, who said that he 
 and his colleagues, it was true, might not know when the 
 ball was kicked properly, but they certainly did know when a 
 man was kicked improperly. The game was at this time 
 notoriously rough. During this discussion a new definition 
 of the Rugby game was given by a Cambridge wit. ' The 
 games,' she said, 'in which they carry the ball and kick one 
 another.' " 
 
 After the first Committee had sat for three years, its place 
 was taken by a second composed of five members, two of 
 whom were undergraduates. All five were selected by the 
 President of the University. Like its predecessor, " it regu- 
 lated athletic contests as friends and not as enemies. Mean- 
 while trouble was brewing in a new and unexpected quarter." 
 The Board of Overseers took alarm " at the abuses, excesses, 
 and accidents incident to athletic exercises. In 1886-87 
 there had been, on the average, more than one intercollegiate 
 contest each week of the College year." The elderly men 
 who sat on the Board looked back to those uncontentious 
 days, when the annual boat-race with Yale alone disturbed the 
 smooth current of university life. The race with Oxford, 
 which in the summer of 1869 lined the banks of the Thames 
 with a dense crowd, being rowed in the Long Vacation, was 
 not an exception. "I did not expect our crew to win," wrote 
 Lowell to the author of Tom Brown, " though I hoped they 
 would. Especially I hoped it because I thought it would do 
 more towards bringing about a more friendly feeling between 
 
148 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 the two countries than anything else. I am glad to think 
 that it has had that result as it is." 1 I watched the race from 
 a point about half-way along the course. The Harvard boat 
 was leading by nearly half a length. The result we did not 
 learn till the umpire's steamer came down the river with the 
 Oxford flag flying at the top. Some minutes before the news 
 of victory reached us the result was known in all the chief 
 cities of the United States. 
 
 The alarm of the Overseers in 1888 led to the appointment 
 of a newly modelled Committee. It consisted of three mem- 
 bers of the Faculty and three graduates of the College, ap- 
 pointed by the President and Fellows with the consent of the 
 Overseers, and of three undergraduates chosen by indirect 
 election. It is subject to the authority of the Faculty; but 
 during the last four years this authority has not once been 
 exercised. Saturday, as far as possible, has been made the 
 day for all kinds of contests. On no other day of the week 
 can any take place outside Cambridge, "unless permission is 
 first obtained from the Committee in writing." Articles of 
 agreement have been drawn up by it between Harvard and 
 Yale, by which a dishonest practice is stopped which had 
 crept into some of the contests. In the eagerness for victory, 
 "men who were not bona fide students and who were not 
 amateurs" had been taken into the "teams." Harvard and 
 Yale agreed that henceforth no one should be allowed to play 
 who had ever engaged for money in any athletic competition. 
 By another rule, intercollegiate matches have almost wholly 
 been confined to New England. As Massachusetts, one only 
 of the six New England States, is one hundred and sixty 
 miles long and one hundred broad, the confinement does not 
 
 ^Letters of J. R. Lowell, ed. 1 893, II. 46. 
 
viii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 149 
 
 seem excessive. President Eliot, in his Report to the Board 
 of Overseers for last year, points out the evils which arise 
 when the match takes place near one of the great towns. 
 " The public interest in baseball and football has made it easy 
 to collect large sums of gate-money, both on College grounds 
 and on public grounds convenient to New York and other 
 cities. The money thus easily got is often wastefully and 
 ineffectively spent. There is something exquisitely inappro- 
 priate in the extravagant expenditure on athletic sports at such 
 institutions as Harvard and Yale — institutions which have 
 been painfully built up by the self-denial, frugality, and pub- 
 lic spirit of generations that certainly did not lack physical 
 and moral courage, endurance, and toughness, yet always put 
 the things of the spirit above the things of sense. At these 
 Universities there must be constant economy and inadequacy 
 in expenditure for intellectual and spiritual objects; how re- 
 pulsive then must be foolish and pernicious expenditures on 
 sports." * This collection of gate-money on College grounds as 
 surely admits of an easy remedy as it needs one. The charge 
 of a dollar for a seat at the baseball match seems to me exces- 
 sive; but this was surpassed at the football match played last 
 year between Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania on 
 Thanksgiving Day, when the lowest price for a seat was a 
 dollar and a half (six shillings and two pence), while so much 
 as two dollars and even two dollars and a half was charged. 
 In Oxford almost all the matches, both of cricket and foot- 
 ball, are played in the University Parks, which are open to all, 
 gown and town alike. There, without any payment, I have 
 watched even the great Grace play — that summer hero, per- 
 haps the most famous man in England from May till August. 
 
 1 Annual Reports^ 1892-93, p. 14. 
 
150 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 In the remaining eight months he and his fame hibernate. 
 New playing-fields are shortly to be opened at Harvard. They 
 should be kept pure from this contamination of gate-money. 
 "It is not," to quote the President's words, "an appropriate 
 function for a College or University to provide periodical 
 entertainments during term-time for multitudes of people 
 who are not students." 1 These multitudes would not attend 
 if, as in the Parks at Oxford, the spectators had nothing but 
 standing-room provided, and that free of charge. It is the 
 high prices which make the spectacle fashionable. 
 
 In the last ten years the four great sports, baseball, boating, 
 football, and athletics, have grown so fast " that undergradu- 
 ates are now unable single-handed to manage them success- 
 fully." To "assume the office of intimate advisers to the 
 officers of each of the athletic organizations " was more than 
 the Committee chose to do. They proposed that a permanent 
 Graduate Advisory Committee should be appointed by each 
 association, composed of three graduates "who in their own 
 College days had been leaders in athletics." The plan was 
 approved of by the undergraduates, and the Committees have 
 been established. 
 
 The training of the athletes has not been neglected by the 
 President and the Fellows. So early as 1883 the Committee 
 on Athletics " recommended that there should be attached to 
 the staff of the Gymnasium a person of good education and 
 breeding, with the qualifications requisite to enable him to 
 advise students as to the best modes of training and practice 
 in Track Athletics and Field Sports." 2 The following year 
 
 1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 12. 
 
 2 The word Field Sports at Harvard does not mean " the diversions of the 
 field, as of fowling, hunting, fishing" (to use Johnson's definition). It 
 means, I think, such exercises as jumping, leaping, etc. 
 
m 
 
 /^i 
 
 v- 
 
viii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 151 
 
 an Assistant m the Department of Physical Training was 
 accordingly appointed. " He is an officer of the College and 
 is paid from its funds. Under his skilful training Harvard 
 has had teams which have met with only two defeats in the 
 intercollegiate contests with Yale in Track Athletics and Field 
 Sports." Nothing better shows the strong hold that races 
 and matches have taken of Young America than an offer made 
 three years ago by some graduates of Harvard of " ten thou- 
 sand dollars to be paid to Mr. Bancroft, who was then engaged 
 in the practice of his profession in Boston, for three years' 
 service as coach simply of the University and Freshman crews." 
 The offer was declined by the officers of the Boat Club — why, 
 we are not told. 1 
 
 I have often thought, in walking by the river at Oxford and 
 watching the training of the crews, that the labour they under- 
 went, the strictness of the discipline to which they were ex- 
 posed, and the abuse which they had to suffer in silence, 
 made the life of a boating-man harder than that of a young 
 soldier, and almost as hard as the criminal's on the treadmill. 
 But their lot is freedom itself when measured by the standard 
 of Harvard and Yale. They breathe, at all events, the air of 
 heaven, and are not made, during the winter months, to tug at 
 the labouring oar in a dismal vault. In the long frosts of 
 New England the rivers are frozen hard and boating becomes 
 impossible. At such times the crews are exercised in a great 
 tank, covered in and kept unfrozen by the heat of a furnace. 
 There, under the eye of their trainer, they pull their oars 
 
 1 These facts I have extracted from an article entitled The Committee on 
 Athletics, published in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine for January, 1893. 
 In the number for March, 1894, it is stated thus: "Thousands of dollars 
 are now paid for the services and expenses of graduate ' coaches.' " 
 
152 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 through the water without moving the boat, for it is fastened 
 to the side. Had Dante seen them at work, he would have 
 added one more torment to his Hell. 
 
 President Eliot in his Report 1 deals at some length with 
 the great and rapidly growing evil of this excessive devotion 
 to athletic sports. He is fully aware of the good that has 
 been done by the growth of manly exercises in American 
 Colleges. "There has been," he says, "a decided improve- 
 ment in the average health and strength of Harvard students 
 during the last twenty-five years." " Athletic sports," he adds, 
 "have supplied a new and effective motive for resisting all 
 sins which weaken or corrupt the body; they have quickened 
 admiration for such manly qualities as courage, fortitude, and 
 presence of mind in emergencies and under difficulties; they 
 have cultivated in a few the habit of command, and in many 
 the habit of quick obedience and intelligent subordination; 
 and finally, they have set before young men prizes and dis- 
 tinctions which are uncontaminated by any commercial value, 
 and which no one can win who does not possess much pa- 
 tience, perseverance, and self-control, in addition to rare 
 bodily endowments." But, on the other hand, carried as they 
 so often are to excess, they do not " permit the main end of 
 College life — hard study. No student can keep up his 
 studies, and also play his full part in any one of these sports 
 as at present conducted. The faithful member of a crew or 
 team may, perhaps, manage to attend most of his lectures 
 or other College exercises; but he rarely has any mind to 
 give to his studies." As I read this passage I called to mind 
 how nearly forty years ago one of my tutors at Oxford pointed 
 out to me — not that any pointing out was needful — the 
 
 1 Annual Rep oris > 1892-93, pp. 12-22. 
 
viii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 153 
 
 drowsy state in which a great oarsman — the chief glory of 
 our College — always came to lectures. Over his Greek and 
 Latin he rested from the real labours of the day. He was as 
 sleepy over his book as he was wakeful over his oar. His 
 vast muscles seemed to have invaded his brain. "Wantonly 
 exaggerated athletic sports," continues the President, "con- 
 vert the student into a powerful animal, and dull for the time 
 his intellectual parts; they present the Colleges to the public, 
 educated and uneducated, as places of mere physical sport, 
 and not of intellectual training; they make familiar to the 
 student a coarse publicity which destroys his rightful privacy 
 while in training for intellectual service, and subjects him to 
 insolent and vulgar comments on his personal qualities; they 
 induce in masses of spectators at interesting games an hysteri- 
 cal excitement which too many Americans enjoy, but which 
 is evidence, not of physical strength and depth of passion, 
 but of feebleness and shallowness; and they tend to dwarf 
 mental and moral pre-eminence by unduly magnifying physi- 
 cal prowess." 
 
 In Harvard Stories there is set before us this scene of 
 "hysterical excitement." The football match with Yale is 
 described, where the friends and supporters of each Univer- 
 sity muster nearly ten thousand strong, among them "Gov- 
 ernors, Congressmen, Judges, Architects, and Clergymen." 
 After a long struggle, the ball is at length carried over the 
 Yale line. "Then did all the Harvard hosts shout with a 
 mighty shout that made the air tremble. For five minutes 
 dignified men, old and young, cheered and hugged each other, 
 and acted as they never do on any other occasion, except. 
 perhaps, a College boat-race." 1 
 
 1 Harvard Stories, by W. K. Post, 1893, p. 23. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Caps and Gowns. — Harvard College and University. — The Dormitories. 
 — Room Rents. — Students' Life Seventy Years Ago. — Memorial Hall. 
 
 THE Harvard men in their imitation of the English uni- 
 versities are doing better in their attempt to introduce 
 the cap and gown. In America, republican simplicity has 
 gone too far in abolishing state and in discarding robes. 
 Nowhere but in the Supreme Court at Washington is so much 
 even as a gown worn by the Judges. Barristers everywhere are 
 robeless and wigless. Yet, if " robes and furred gowns hide 
 all," in the courts of more than one City and perhaps of more 
 than one State the temptation to wear them must surely some- 
 times be very strong. In New York, in no remote antiquity, 
 there have been Judges known who, it might have been ex- 
 pected, would have kept them on term time and vacation, day 
 and night. Among all the Bishops of the Episcopal Church, 
 I am told, there is but one apron and but one pair of gaiters 
 to be seen. What are they among sixty millions of people ? 
 In Appleton Chapel at Harvard, where every Sunday evening 
 the university sermon is preached, no seats are set apart for the 
 Professors. The President even elbows in his way with the 
 rest, and takes a place wherever he may find one unoccupied. 
 
 He and the immortal Jack H , if that hero ever brings 
 
 down his mighty soul to the low level of a sermon, might sit 
 shoulder to shoulder. On the evening when I attended the 
 
 '54 
 
chap. ix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 155 
 
 service, I chanced to sit just behind a dignitary of the Univer- 
 sity. When, on standing up for the opening hymn, I discovered 
 that he was wearing a dark grey coat and a pair of brown shoes, 
 and when I thought of our Vice-Chancellor in the red and 
 black gown of a Doctor of Divinity, or in the crimson gown of 
 a Doctor of Civil Law, marshalled to his chair of state by the 
 Bedells with their silver maces, and supported by the long line 
 of Doctors, Proctors, and Heads of Houses in their gowns 
 and hoods, the organ pealing forth, and the whole congregation 
 — Masters, Bachelors, and undergraduates — rising to do them 
 honour, my mind was greatly troubled. Lost in thought, it was 
 some time before I could give my attention to the preacher. 
 
 The need of ceremony is gradually becoming felt. On Com- 
 mencement Day, when all the degrees of the year are given, the 
 gown has for some while been commonly worn by " the Graduat- 
 ing Class." On this great day, and on this alone, the President 
 and the Professors wear their gowns. The bright adornment 
 of the hood was for the most part wanting. Nevertheless, on 
 the shoulders of a great classical scholar, over his Harvard 
 gown, I saw the blue hood of a Doctor of Laws of Edinburgh ; 
 and on the shoulders of one of the youngest of the Professors, 
 the red and black hood of a Master of Arts of Oxford. Some 
 fifty or sixty years ago, Professor Ticknor — so the story runs — 
 brought back from Oxford, where he had received an honorary 
 degree, a gown which was, he said, that of a Doctor of Civil 
 Law. This he wore at Harvard on solemn occasions. On re- 
 signing his professorship, he bequeathed it to Longfellow, who 
 succeeded him in his chair, who in his turn wore it, and in his 
 turn, on his resignation, bequeathed it to his successor Lowell. 
 In its faded glories the author of the Biglow Papers delivered 
 his opening address, troubled though he was by a doubt that it 
 
156 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 was not really the gown of a Doctor of Oxford. In the year 
 1873, when Oxford conferred on him an honorary degree, 
 he looked round the Sheldonian Theatre for a robe of the 
 same kind as his venerable relique. After a long search he 
 discovered a single specimen. It was, he was told, the gown 
 of an Archdeacon ! 
 
 Prescott, if in his later years he was ever present on Com- 
 mencement Day, must, I should think, have worn the Doctor's 
 gown which was conferred on him at Oxford. " He had," says 
 his biographer, " already received more than one honorary 
 degree at home ; but, with his accustomed ingenuousness and 
 simplicity, remembering how lavishly and carelessly such dis- 
 tinctions are conferred by most of our American Colleges, he 
 could not repress his satisfaction that he was " now a real 
 Doctor." 1 
 
 The square cap has been but lately introduced — not, I 
 believe, before the summer of 1892. Till then the tall silk hat 
 had been always worn with the gown. Nowhere is this hat 
 much seen in New England. In the streets of Boston I doubt 
 whether it is worn by one man in a hundred. It is not there, 
 as it is in the city of London and in the Temple and Lincoln's 
 Inn, the very badge of commercial and professional respecta- 
 bility. Neither is it seen on the broad Avenues to the west of 
 Boston, where are the houses of the fashionable world. On 
 Sunday, however, I am told, before and after church it is com- 
 monly worn by highly respectable people. For Commence- 
 ment the graduating Bachelor bought one for the first and last 
 time. A young man of a frugal mind was content with hiring 
 one for the day. At Oxford the gown of the honorary Doctor 
 is, in like manner, commonly hired, and perhaps sometimes 
 
 1 Life of IV. H. Prescott, by George Ticknor, p. 293. 
 
ix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 157 
 
 the cap. In the Crimson, a little while before the great day of 
 last year, " a Member of the Graduating Class who loves con- 
 gruities " complained of " the incongruity of the action when the 
 Seniors removed their caps in entering the auditorium of 
 Sanders Theatre. It jarred a little upon one's sense of fitness. 
 The cap, indeed, is not a hat to be removed during exercises, 
 but On the contrary to be worn. In Cambridge and Oxford 
 its place is thus understood. The unique effect of both is quite 
 lost when one is taken away ; especially when the cap is of the 
 peculiar form." The unique effect of a large body of under- 
 graduates wearing their caps on Degree Day in the presence of 
 the President — the Vice-Chancellor, that is to say, and more 
 than the Vice-Chancellor — of this American University, was 
 prevented by a letter from a better informed correspondent. 
 
 Americans, like all other foreigners, do not easily understand 
 the mixed government of Oxford and Cambridge, each with its 
 numerous Colleges, self-governing and independent corpora- 
 tions, and its one University. In the Crimson, in an article 
 headed The Oxford Student, I find it stated that " no Oxford 
 student is allowed to enter or leave the University after nine 
 o'clock. The gates are shut at that time.' 7 An Oxford man, of 
 course, enters the University on the day he matriculates, and 
 leaves it when he goes out of residence. Many never leave 
 it till they leave life. It is no more capable of having gates 
 than a Federal Government, or any other metaphysical body. 
 In the New England Cambridge, College and University seemed 
 to me interchangeable terms. For instance, in Professor Good- 
 win's Present and Future of Harvard College, though the learned 
 author mainly considers the Arts Course, the Course, that is to 
 say, which has its seat in the College, nevertheless he also deals 
 with the whole system of a University. No one, so far as I 
 
158 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 heard, speaks of Harvard University, but always of Harvard 
 College. It was not till I turned over the pages of the Cata- 
 logue 1 that I discovered the difference. " Harvard University," 
 as there I read, " comprehends the following departments : 
 Harvard College, the Lawrence Scientific School, the Graduate 
 School, the Divinity School, the Law School, the Medical School, 
 the Dental School, the School of Veterinary Medicine, the Bussey 
 Institute (a School of Agriculture), the Arnold Arboretum, the 
 University Library, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the 
 University Museum, the Botanic Garden, the Herbarium, and 
 the Astronomical Observatory." The President of the College 
 is the President of every Faculty and President of the whole 
 University. The Professors of the College are Professors of the 
 University, but not all the Professors of the University are Pro- 
 fessors of the College. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
 for instance, is Emeritus Professor not of Harvard College, but 
 of Harvard University. The accomplished editor of Lowell's 
 Letters is a Professor of Harvard College and also of Harvard 
 University. It was, writes Mr. W. R. Thayer, " the Presidency 
 of Kirkland," who held office from 1810 to 1829, " that wit- 
 nessed the expansion of Harvard from a College into a Uni- 
 versity by the creation of several departments or schools, in 
 addition to the Academic department." Mr. Thayer never- 
 theless entitles his work, An Historical Sketch of Harvard 
 University from its Foundation to May, i8go. He thus seems 
 to confuse the University with the College, going back for 
 its foundation nearly two centuries before, according to his 
 statement, it was created. Harvard, however, in the ordinary 
 sense of the word was a University from the beginning, for it 
 has always been a corporate body giving instruction in " polite 
 
 1 The Calendar of the University. 
 
ix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 159 
 
 learning," and conferring degrees. So early as 1657, in An 
 Appendix to the College Charter, I find it stated that " the Corpo- 
 ration and the Body of Overseers remain to the present time 
 the governing powers of the University." Up to the time then 
 that the new Schools were added, somewhat early in this century, 
 the College was the University and the University was the 
 College. Its founders, who were mainly graduates of our Eng- 
 lish Cambridge, had hoped, we may feel sure, that as wealth 
 increased, pious founders would arise, by whose munificence 
 new Colleges would cluster round Harvard, as they had clus- 
 tered round the earliest foundations in the old country, each 
 a corporation in itself, and all forming one great University. 
 Here, as the years went by, should some wanderer come from 
 the banks of the English Cam, he would, they dreamt, in very 
 
 truth find 
 
 " Parvam Trojam, simulataque magnis 
 Pergama." 
 
 If such were their hopes and such their dreams, these hopes 
 and these dreams have this very year in part come true ; but 
 in a way which would have startled these old Puritans, if not 
 dismayed them. By a vote of the Governing Bodies of Har- 
 vard University and by an Act of the Legislature, an institu- 
 tion in Cambridge in which women students have for some 
 years received an academical education, has been united to 
 the University, while it still remains an independent corpora- 
 tion. Radcliffe College, the college of the " sweet girl-grad- 
 uates," is the second founded in the American Cambridge. 
 May it not be the last ! 
 
 Till this year the University had followed a course of its 
 own. Of the new "Departments" which had gathered round 
 it, the Divinity School alone bears any likeness to one of our 
 
160 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Colleges. Like them it has its Chapel, Library, and rooms 
 for residence, but it has no separate Corporation, no common 
 kitchen and no common dining-hall. The students, who are 
 scarcely forty in number, board where they please. They are 
 all Bachelors of Arts of Harvard or of some other University, 
 or graduates of a Theological School. The members of the 
 Lawrence Scientific School can have rooms in College. The 
 students in the Law School have only the privilege, shared in 
 by all the Departments, of having their meals in Memorial 
 Hall. For their instruction they have indeed a stately Hall 
 and a noble Library. The Graduate School, as its name im- 
 plies, is composed of men who have already taken their degree. 
 They have no local habitation. The three Medical Schools are 
 situated in Boston, three miles or so from Cambridge. These 
 students live in lodgings. The School of Agriculture is on a 
 farm. There is, therefore, excluding Divinity Hall, but one 
 College in Harvard in the Oxford and Cambridge sense of 
 the word. 
 
 To the Americans, our peculiar Academic system can be 
 made clearer than to the French or Germans by Professor 
 Freeman's ingenious comparison of their forty-two States, each 
 self-governed, but held together by a Federal Government. 1 
 They are familiar, moreover, with the notion of students re- 
 siding in collegiate buildings, under a discipline more or less 
 strict. " Harvard," writes Professor Goodwin, " began as an 
 
 1 Milman, in his History of L^atin Christianity, ed. 1858, Vol. VI., 
 p. 102, writing of the time of Wycliffe, says : " The English Universities 
 had already begun to take their peculiar character, a league, as it were, of 
 separate, independent Colleges, each a distinct republic, with its endow- 
 ments, statutes, internal government; though the University was still para- 
 mount, and the Chancellor, with his inferior officers, held the supreme, 
 all-embracing authority." 
 
ix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 161 
 
 English college of the Cambridge type, and it remained essen- 
 tially an English college down to the early years of this cen- 
 tury. ... It has always had the traditional freedom of an 
 English college, and none of the smaller discipline of a Ger- 
 man gymnasium ; but it has never had any of the very different 
 freedom of a German university." x More than half of the 
 students of the College live in great blocks of buildings known 
 as Dormitories, mostly standing in the Yard. These Dormi- 
 tories may be likened to the different quadrangles of a large 
 Oxford College, such as Christ Church, or, better still, to the 
 New Buildings of Magdalen — still known as New, though it 
 was in that "stately pile " that Gibbon had his rooms. Each 
 Dormitory stands apart. Round the Yard there is no lofty 
 enclosure with its single gateway, its great doors thrown open 
 in the daytime and closed after dark, its little wicket, and 
 its porter's lodge. There is, to be sure, at the main entrance 
 a gateway of fine proportions, built a few years ago by a former 
 student, but it stands there for state, not for use. The Yard is 
 almost everywhere enclosed by nothing more than a low rail- 
 ing, with numerous openings. Undergraduates can leave their 
 rooms and return to them at all hours. Nodes atque dies 
 patet janua. There is no "gateing" here. 2 
 
 The twelve Dormitories of the College " have accommoda- 
 tions for 973 students, provided all double rooms are occupied 
 by two persons." In the oldest buildings the occupant has but 
 a single room, in which he lives by day and sleeps by night. 
 Many of the apartments consist of one sitting-room and two 
 bed-rooms. Two students often join together in taking one of 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 21. 
 
 2 At Oxford an undergraduate is said to be gated when he is forbidden 
 to leave the College after the dinner hour. 
 
 M 
 
r 
 
 162 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 these, for the expense of the sitting-room is shared. " I shall 
 chum next year with Dorr," wrote Emerson, " and he appears 
 to be perfectly disposed to study hard." 1 Chumming was of 
 old common enough in Oxford ; the evidences of it were left 
 less than forty years ago. When I entered Pembroke Col- 
 lege in 1855, there did not happen to be a set of rooms vacant. 
 By a University statute an undergraduate was at that time re- 
 quired to sleep within his College during his first three years of 
 residence. Another Freshman and I had each to find a sitting- 
 room in a neighbouring street. For a bedroom I had to 
 choose between "a double room," or a hole under a staircase 
 which was commonly used as a " scout's " pantry. With an 
 Englishman's love of independence, I chose the pantry. In 
 Harvard it often happens that a double room has but a single 
 tenant, when it is occupied by a student who is rich enough to 
 pay the full rent. The rents range from $25 (,£5.2.0) to $350 
 (,£71.10) a year. There are, however, only eighteen rooms for 
 which the charge is so low as $56 (^n.9.0). 2 In the Oxford 
 Colleges the lowest rent is ^4 ($19.56). At Oriel the average 
 is^£n ($53.80) ; at New College, ^14 ($68.46) ; at Balliol, 
 ^15 ($73.35). In Christ Church the lowest rent is £8 
 ($39.12), and the highest ^28 ($137). In Magdalen, even 
 in Gibbon's "stately pile," not more than ^20 ($98) is 
 charged ; in the other Colleges the rents are below this sum. 
 In Harvard 292 rooms are rented more highly than the dearest 
 
 1 Emerson in Concord, ed. 1889, p. 23. 
 
 2 " The occupants of the only low-priced rooms in the College Yard 
 dormitories received in March the following notice : ' By vote of the 
 Corporation, February 26, 1894, the scale of prices of rooms in Hollis and 
 Stoughton is to be increased from the beginning of the academic year 
 1894-95.' The new rates are from 50 to 75 per cent, higher than the 
 old." Harvard Graduates' Magazine, June, 1894, p. 604. 
 
IX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 163 
 
 in Oxford. As a considerable set-off against this higher charge, 
 the residence is longer by eleven weeks in each year. 
 
 In Oxford, when I was an undergraduate, the furniture was 
 always the property of the occupant, who took it, or as much 
 of it as he pleased, at a valuation from his predecessor. What- 
 ever additions he made were in like manner valued. For the 
 furniture of my rooms, which were in the Attics, I was charged 
 on entrance about ^14 ($68.50). I laid out £4 ($19.56), 
 and received on leaving nearly as much as I had paid at first. 
 At the present time in many Colleges the furniture is owned 
 by the Corporation, who charge for it in a higher rent. In 
 Harvard the rooms are let unfurnished. Professor Peabody, 
 in his lively Reminiscences, thus describes the furniture as he 
 had known it nearly seventy years ago : " In my time a 
 student's room was remarkable chiefly for what it did not 
 have — for the absence, I might almost say, of all tokens of 
 civilization. The feather-bed was regarded as a valuable 
 chattel; but ten dollars [^2.1] would have been a fair auc- 
 tion-price for all the other contents of an average room. I 
 doubt whether any fellow-students of mine owned a carpet. A 
 second-hand dealer had a few threadbare carpets, which he 
 leased at an extravagant price to certain Southern members of 
 the Senior Class. The rooms were heated by open wood-fires. 
 Almost every room had among its transmittenda a cannon-ball, 
 which on very cold days was heated to a red heat, and placed 
 on a skillet ; while at other times it was often utilized by being 
 rolled down stairs at such times as might most nearly bisect a 
 tutor's night-sleep." 1 
 
 The late Master of my College, who died less than three 
 years ago, told me that, when he was a Junior Fellow, the 
 
 1 Reminiscences of Harvard College, p. 196. 
 
164 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 floor of the Common Room, which was carpetless, was 
 sprinkled with fine sand every morning. An ancient Fellow of 
 Exeter College, who is still remembered by one or two of the 
 Seniors, angrily resisted the proposal to introduce a carpet into 
 their Common Room. If one were laid down, he said, he 
 would never set foot on it. It was laid down, and he kept to 
 his word. 
 
 Mr. Frank Bolles, late Secretary of Harvard University, 
 whose untimely death is greatly deplored, recently published a 
 curious collection of letters from forty students of the College, 
 — all " very poor, earnest, scholarly, eager to secure remunera- 
 tive work, and likely to be methodical and accurate in money 
 matters," in which " are described in detail their necessary ex- 
 penses." 1 Some of these men lived in furnished lodgings; 
 others have not separated their room-rent from their outlay for 
 furniture. In the sixteen letters where the charges are kept 
 apart, the lowest expenditure in a year on furniture was $5 
 (,£1.0.5) > tri e highest $48 (,£9.16.0) ; the average being 
 $20 (,£4.1.8). Some of this outlay would, no doubt, be re- 
 covered by each student as he went out of residence, but the 
 sale is not managed by the College as it is at Oxford. There 
 is no transference from the out-going to the in-coming tenant. 
 Every man before leaving sells his furniture as best he can, 
 piece by piece. It sometimes happens that a rich student, 
 in all the carelessness which comes from a full purse, leaves his 
 furniture behind as a present to his fortunate but unknown 
 successor. 
 
 A Loan-Furniture Association has lately been founded, 
 " which lends students sets of furniture at a price just sufficient 
 to replace the property as it is worn out. The charge for a 
 
 1 Students' Expenses, by Frank Bolles, 1893, P- 9« 
 
ix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 165 
 
 set is $5 G£ 1.0.5) a year." It is managed by a Board of 
 Directors chosen by ballot from among the officers and stu- 
 dents of the University. 1 
 
 The students who do not " room " in College — to use a 
 word in common use in America — reside in " private Dormi- 
 tories," in boarding-houses, in private families, or in ordinary 
 lodgings. The University Committee on the Reception of 
 Students, at the opening of each year, publishes a descriptive 
 list of rooms to let, with the rents asked for the academic year. 
 "This grouping of facts and figures," writes the Secretary, 
 " has tended to establish uniformity and stability in rates. By 
 covering a large residence area, the list has extended competi- 
 tion and made rates more moderate than they might otherwise 
 have been." 2 The following entries which I have selected from 
 this list show both the character of the lodgings and the fulness 
 of the information : — 
 
 " Rent $50 [^10.4.6], one-eighth of a mile from the College, one room 
 on the fourth flour [the third according to our reckoning, for in America the 
 ground floor is the first], twelve feet by eleven, with one window to the 
 south, furnished; stove; light ; fuel not provided; no bath-room." 
 
 " Rent $200 [^40.18.0], suite of two rooms on the second floor, one six- 
 teen feet and a half square, the other sixteen by eleven, with four win- 
 dows to the south and west, unfurnished; stove ; no fuel or light." 
 
 " Rent $500 [^102.4.0], half a mile from the College; suite of two rooms 
 on the second floor, one twelve feet by fourteen, the other eleven feet by 
 thirteen, with five windows to the north and west; stove; bath-room; 
 no fuel or light." 
 
 Many of the lodgings consist of only one room. In Oxford, 
 in the lodgings licensed by the University, in which alone under- 
 graduates are allowed to lodge, a separate bedroom must be 
 
 1 Students' Expenses, p. 5 ; Harvard University, by Frank Bolles, p. 5. 
 
 2 Students' Expenses, p. 5. 
 
166 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 provided. It is, however, sometimes little better than a closet. 
 " Good order is maintained in College and private Dormitories 
 by graduates or instructors holding appointments as Proctors. 
 Proctors are under the direction of the Regent. At the dis- 
 cretion of the Regent, a Proctor may be placed in any private 
 house where students lodge, if the maintenance of good order 
 in the house seems to require it." 1 This is a heavy, though a 
 just tax on the householder, who has to provide a room for 
 the Proctor free of charge. A studious set of men living in 
 College have been known to ask that a more rigorous Froctor 
 might be sent to reside on their staircase. 
 
 The students board where they please. There is no buttery- 
 hatch or kitchen-hatch, whence breakfasts, lunches, and suppers 
 are sent out to men's rooms. They had both existed in old 
 days, for they were not among the institutions from which the 
 Puritans had fled, who, with all their strictness, were by no 
 means careless of the creature comforts. In the early days 
 each student " received his sizing of food upon a pewter plate 
 and his beer in a pewter mug. They were delivered by the 
 butler to the servitors," who would carry them into the Hall. 2 
 The buttery-hatch fell first. In the first year of this century it 
 was closed forever. The kitchen-hatch struggled on for a few 
 years longer, but it, too, was at length closed. " Commons," 
 the meals provided by the College and eaten in the Hall, 
 continued till 1849. 3 Professor Peabody gives the following 
 
 1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 5. "The Regent is a University 
 officer who exercises a general supervision over the conduct and welfare of 
 the students." Catalogue, p. 32. 
 
 2 The Early College Buildings at Cambridge, by A. M. Davis, p. 22. 
 
 3 An Historical Sketch of Harvard University, by W. R. Thayer, 1890, 
 p. 42. 
 
ix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 167 
 
 description of a student's fare and daily life, as he had known 
 it seventy years ago : — 
 
 " The student's life was hard. Morning prayers were in sum- 
 mer at six ; x in winter about half an hour before sunrise, in a 
 bitterly cold chapel. Thence half of each Class passed into 
 the several recitation-rooms, and three-quarters of an hour 
 later the bell rang for a second set of recitations, including the 
 remaining half of the students. Then came breakfast, which, 
 in the College Commons, consisted solely of coffee, hot rolls 
 and butter, except when the members of a mess had succeeded 
 in pinning to the nether surface of the table, by a two-pronged 
 fork, some slices of meat from the previous day's dinner. Be- 
 tween ten and twelve every student attended another recitation 
 or a lecture. Dinner was at half-past twelve. There was another 
 recitation in the afternoon, except on Saturdays ; then evening 
 prayers at six, or in winter at early twilight ; then the evening 
 meal, plain as the breakfast, with tea instead of coffee, and 
 cold bread for the hot rolls. After tea the Dormitories rang 
 with song and merriment till the study-bell, at eight in winter, 
 at nine in summer, sounded the curfew foi fun and frolic, pro- 
 claiming dead silence throughout the College premises. On 
 Sunday all were required to attend worship twice each day in 
 the College Chapel. . . . The charge for Commons was a 
 dollar and seventy-five cents a week [seven shillings and two 
 pence] . The food had not been deficient in quantity, but it 
 was so mean in quality, so poorly cooked and so coarsely served 
 as to disgust those who had been accustomed to the decencies 
 of the table, and to encourage a mutinous spirit, rude manners, 
 
 1 Dr. Johnson, writing from University College, Oxford, on June I, 1775, 
 says: "I went this morning to the chapel at six." Letters of Samuel 
 Johnson, I. 323. 
 
168 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 and ungentlemanly habits ; so that the dining-halls were seats 
 of boisterous misrule and nurseries of rebellion." l 
 
 It was in coming from Hall that Prescott the historian was 
 struck in the eye by a piece of hard crust thrown by a disor- 
 derly student, and half-blinded for life. Like Milton, he was 
 supported in his task — supported by a deep love of learning 
 and an unconquerable spirit. 
 
 In defiance of rules, the undergraduates began to take their 
 meals outside the College. It was in vain that President 
 Quincy, 2 who came into office in 1829, purchased in England 
 for the use of the Hall a handsome service of plate stamped 
 with the College seal. During the war between the North and 
 the South it was all sold. For some time, however, it had been 
 lying idle, for " Commons " had been abolished a few years 
 earlier. When the kitchen was closed, " the half-score or more 
 of swine," no doubt, disappeared ; in Professor Peabody's time 
 they had been kept in sties close to the back of the Hall. 
 
 For fifteen years the students boarded where they pleased — 
 singly or in clubs. According to the American custom, even 
 those who lived in lodgings must have gone out of the house 
 for their meals. Our lodging-house system, where each lodger 
 provides his own food and has his meals in his own room, and 
 where the landlady supplies the cooking and the service, is un- 
 known in New England. All who occupy rooms in a house 
 either take their meals at one common table or go abroad for 
 them. There could be no Autocrat of the Breakfast Table with 
 us. Our Autocrat would be a king without subjects. In 1865, 
 
 1 Reminiscences, pp. 29, 197. 
 
 2 The name of this distinguished New England family is always pro- 
 nounced Quinzy. The English author De Quincey is in like manner by 
 Americans called De Quinzey. 
 
ix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 169 
 
 the Corporation fitted up an old railway station for a dining- 
 club. As they had met with no success as caterers, they put it 
 mainly under the management of the members. How far had 
 "Fair Harvard" sunk beneath its English model — " but oh 
 how fallen ! " — with its undergraduates dining, not in a noble 
 hall, but in a renovated " depot." x The age of meanness was 
 soon to pass away. In the Civil War twelve hundred and thirty- 
 nine Harvard men served in the army and navy of the North. 
 Ninety-five fell fighting on the side of liberty. To their mem- 
 ory a noble building has been raised under the name of 
 Memorial Hall. 
 
 In it more than a thousand students take their meals. As 
 they pass in through the spacious transept, they see inscribed 
 before them on the walls the names of those who fell. Few 
 more touching records are anywhere to be read than the long 
 list of these men who died for their country, most of them in 
 the very prime of their youth. Here in a few simple lines, 
 without one wasted word of praise, are given each man's name, 
 his birthplace, his age, his standing in the University, and the 
 battle in which he fell. Dull, indeed, must be the heart of the 
 young American who does not here feel his love strengthened 
 for that Union and that liberty which these men died to save. 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
 The youth replies, L cany 
 
 The dining-hall is hung round with the portraits of Harvard 
 worthies, old Presidents, Judges, and Governors of the Common- 
 
 1 A railway station — or rather I should say a railroad station — is com- 
 monly called a depot. Though in trait and restaurant the final t is 
 sounded by Americans, in depot it is left silent. 
 
17 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. ix. 
 
 wealth ; soldiers and builders-up of Constitutions ; Story the 
 great jurist ; Prescott, Emerson, Motley, Longfellow, and Lowell. 
 Here stands the bust of Charles Russell Lowell ; " the perfec- 
 tion of a man and a soldier," as Sheridan said of him. Fifteen 
 years before the battle at Cedar Creek, in which he fell, his 
 uncle had urged the lad " to pay his way honourably in life by 
 being of use." x He paid his way full royally. 
 i Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 181. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 A Visit to Three Dormitories. — Dining Clubs. — The Liquor Law. — 
 Baths. — Signs and " Shingles. " — Clubs. — Politics. — Christmas. — A 
 Student's Library. 
 
 ON a pleasant afternoon in June a friendly undergraduate 
 showed me three sets of rooms ; the first in a lodging- 
 house, the second in Hastings, the most modern of the Dormi- 
 tories, and the third in Matthews, a Dormitory built twenty-one 
 years ago. In the lodging-house he himself lived with three 
 friends, each having a separate bedroom, but all sharing in a 
 common sitting-room. I might almost have thought myself in 
 a comfortable lodging in Oxford. In the sitting-room there 
 was a piano and a couch or two, but none of those absurdly 
 deep and low chairs in which the English undergraduate 
 delights, though, if his room is small, a single one nearly blocks 
 it up. On the walls hung engravings and photographs, mostly 
 gathered by my undergraduate friend in a recent tour in 
 Europe. There is, I am told, a small knot of men which 
 affects engravings after Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and their school 
 of painters. On the shelves there was a large and well-chosen 
 set of books, most of them historical, for he was studying his- 
 tory. I asked him how with his three chums — " room-mates," 
 to use the American term — he managed to secure a quiet 
 time for study. He replied that he mostly read in the Library 
 — in a room set apart for students of history, and well stocked 
 with all the works they can need. Of the authors most in 
 
 171 
 
172 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 request there are several copies kept. His meals he took in 
 Memorial Hall. He complained much of the quality of the 
 food and the cookery. Though in his own home a plain table 
 was kept, nevertheless the fare always seemed to him luxurious 
 after Harvard. Some allowance must probably be made for 
 the ordinary discontent of an undergraduate. I remember 
 how in my college days some of my fellow-students grumbled 
 over their dinner — "it was not fit," they said, " for a gentle- 
 man to eat " ; though it was quite as good as any young fellow 
 with a healthy appetite could require, and much better than 
 many got at home. From a late number of the Crimson I 
 have extracted the following information about the meals in 
 Memorial Hall : " There have been on the average one thou- 
 sand and eighty-five students per meal, half at the club tables 
 and half at the general tables. The price of board has aver- 
 aged for the past year three dollars ninety-two cents [16s.] 
 a week. The bread is baked in the kitchens. The food left 
 over is never served again in any form, but is sold daily to 
 the poor people of Cambridge. Among the items of expendi- 
 ture are 756 boxes of oranges, 13,680 pounds of grapes, 
 590 pounds of honey, 306 tons of ice, and 534 tons of 
 coal." The consumption of ice seems enormous ; in an 
 Oxford College I doubt whether in my time a single pound 
 was bought for use at the table, and even now it is very rarely 
 seen. Ices, if we indulged in any, were ordered from the 
 confectioner's. In America ice is everywhere used at almost 
 every meal, at all events in the summer. If they ever come 
 to take afternoon tea like other good Christians, they will, I 
 verily believe, begin it, and perhaps end it, with a glass of iced 
 water. Ice-cream — ice-milk would, I suspect, more accurately 
 describe the dish — is twice a week served instead of pudding 
 
x. HARVARD COLLEGE. 173 
 
 to the one thousand and eighty-five students in Memorial Hall, 
 and is served plentifully. Americans who have travelled com- 
 plain of the niggardliness of the helping of ices in England. At 
 my first evening party at Cambridge I was so much astonished 
 at the size of the piece that was brought me that I asked the 
 servant to let me have only half the quantity. Even then I 
 had at least three times as much as I was used to at home. 
 Everything is on a great scale in the United States — even 
 ices. After this experience I had no difficulty in understand- 
 ing how one thousand and eighty-five students required three 
 hundred and six tons of ice for thirty-six weeks of residence. 
 After all, it only gives them a weekly allowance of seventeen 
 and a half pounds for each man, and a great deal of it they 
 take in icing their water. 
 
 The charges of Memorial Hall were too high for the poorer 
 students, who, in 1889, founded a Club of their own, under the 
 name of the Foxcroft. It opened with sixty members, but in 
 less than three years it numbered over two hundred. It pro- 
 vides no common meal, but every one orders what he pleases, 
 as at a tavern. The average expenditure is less than two 
 dollars eighty cents a week (eleven shillings and six pence), 
 while some members bring theirs as low as two dollars (eight 
 shillings and two pence). 1 A student gives the following 
 curious account of a club on a much smaller scale : — 
 
 " I have tried boarding in several ways and find the most pleasant and 
 economical, as well as healthful, to be a club of about twenty-five men, 
 which we manage ourselves. We have an organization under the man- 
 agement of a board of three Directors, who oversee matters, recommend 
 members, and decide other questions. We hire a lady who furnishes 
 dining-room and everything, except dishes, and prepares the food. A 
 Steward collects the board, buys provisions, and manages the finances for 
 
 1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 5 ; Students' Expenses, p. 4. 
 
174 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 his board. Monthly statements show the financial standing, and we live 
 as well as possible upon $2.50 \_\os. 3^/.] per week. We have good food 
 and plenty, as attested by the fact that each of our men has gained in 
 weight each year. Many wiser heads have predicted our failure, but by 
 close economy and a general feeling of co-operation, we are this year 
 more prosperous than ever." 1 
 
 It is in vain for any young scapegrace of a student at dinner 
 in an American University " to remember the poor creature, 
 small beer." To desire it would show as vilely in him as in 
 Prince Hal. My friend, the undergraduate, told me that this 
 prohibition had, he thought, a bad result. It was better for 
 those who liked a glass of beer to take it at their meals, and 
 not, as they now do, in their rooms. It cannot be bought in 
 Cambridge, which, with its widely-scattered population of 
 seventy thousand thirsty souls, has put itself under the prohi- 
 bition law ; but it is got in casks or in bottles from Boston, 
 and is offered to callers as wine used to be offered at Oxford. 
 After a great victory at baseball or football, men are known to 
 go all the way to Boston to drink, and often drink heavily. 
 
 Under the guidance of my friend, I passed from his lodgings 
 to Hastings Dormitory, where the accommodation is excellent. 
 Like the other dormitories, it is built with separate staircases, 
 on much the same plan as an Oxford College. There were, 
 moreover, bath-rooms for common use, and a water supply to 
 each floor. In all the other dormitories the water has to 
 be carried up in cans from the ground floor, as is still the 
 case in most Oxford Colleges. Every staircase has its por- 
 ter and " goody." The "goody" corresponds to our bed- 
 maker. "Tenants who desire to employ any one to make 
 fires, black boots, etc., must arrange with the porters of the 
 buildings in which they live." So says the University Catalogue. 
 
 1 Students' Expenses, p. 35. 
 
X. HARVARD COLLEGE. 175 
 
 The porter is not required to carry up fuel or water, to light 
 the fire, to carry down the ashes,, or to take care of the lamps. 
 For each of these services there is a separate charge. The 
 poorer students save their money by doing some or all of these 
 duties themselves. My guide hoped that a wealthy benefactor 
 would, before long, be found, who would lay a supply of water 
 on every floor of every dormitory. The use of the bath in the 
 bedchamber is, I was informed, not common. Less than sixty 
 years ago it was scarcely known at Oxford. The Head of one 
 of our Colleges, who, on Sunday evenings when he is in the 
 vein, charms the Common Room with his stories of past days, 
 told me that soon after he entered, an aggrieved " scout " com- 
 plained to one of the tutors of an undergraduate on his staircase, 
 who required him every day to carry all the way up to his room 
 a can of cold water for his morning bath. The tutor replied 
 that he could not interfere, and that his master's orders must 
 be obeyed. At the same, time he sent for. the youth, who, like 
 Swift, " washed himself with oriental scrupulosity," and remon- 
 strated with him on the needless trouble he was giving. " I 
 myself," he added, "take a hot bath once a week, and no 
 gentleman need take more." When I entered Oxford in the 
 year 1855, the morning bath had become somewhat general. 
 At Harvard, the River Charles which flows hard by, into which 
 Longfellow, Lowell, and the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 
 used to plunge, is now too foul for bathing. There are no 
 public baths in the town. The Gymnasium has a few, but a 
 very few. In the Crimson I have seen more than one com- 
 plaint of their deficiency. In this respect Harvard is far 
 behind Yale, whose noble gymnasium is amply supplied. It 
 has been said, and with some reason too, that Harvard has 
 only to make its wants known, when a benefactor speedily 
 
176 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 arises. I trust that the voice of a stranger may reach a rich 
 man's ears, and remove this reproach from a great University. 
 The rooms we visited in Hastings were on the top floor. 
 They were pleasant and comfortable — very like the rooms in 
 one of our Colleges, only the bedchamber was far better. 
 There was the wide window-seat with its red cushions and out- 
 look over the tops of the graceful American elms. Above the 
 two doors of the sitting-room were hanging one or two printed 
 notices, which had been appropriated or misappropriated by 
 some means or other. It is the pride of a Freshman to have 
 his walls adorned with signs and " shingles " which he has 
 "ragged." 1 An oblong piece of wood called a shingle takes 
 the place in America of the brass plate on the outside door. 
 It is not fastened to the door, but is hung near it on the wall. 
 These shingles, and in fact all kinds of announcements and 
 notices, the adventurous Freshman delights to carry off, sur- 
 veying his room with just pride, when he sees on the walls 
 such inscriptions as : " Jones & Co., Civil, Sanitary, and Land- 
 scape Engineers"; "Thomas Smith, M.D., Office Hours 2-4; 
 7-9 " ; " Hair-dressing and Complexion Parlors " ; " Under- 
 takers. Locker's Casket Warehouse " ; " The College Dining 
 Rooms and Ice Cream Parlors." These trophies correspond 
 to the door-knockers which have been known to adorn the 
 rooms of a Christ Church undergraduate. One kind of shin- 
 gles is won by easier, but, perhaps, no less glorious means. 
 
 " Peace hath her victories no less renowned 
 Than war." 
 
 Harvard abounds in clubs, and each club has its own shingle. 
 
 1 "Ragging simply means stealing" — Harvard Stories, by W. K. Post, 
 p. 66. 
 
X. HARVARD COLLEGE. 177 
 
 These are not looked upon as lawful trophies of war. There 
 is honour among thieves. Shame and not glory would be the 
 lot of him who should hang on his walls the shingle of a club 
 to which he did not belong. So nice is the point of honour 
 that, much as admission into some of these clubs is coveted, 
 when the period of election is drawing near, a youth of a deli- 
 cate mind, if he has a friend among the members, shuns his 
 rooms for fear he should be suspected of improperly canvassing 
 him for his vote. With the cavalier poet he would say, — 
 
 " I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 Loved I not honour more." 
 
 Some clubs, it should seem, are started only to increase the 
 display of shingles. A student told me that he belonged to 
 more than one which, to the best of his knowledge, had never 
 met since the day of their creation. Undergraduate-nature 
 seems to be the same on both sides of the Atlantic, however 
 much it may vary in its manifestations. In America it is per- 
 haps a little more transparently boyish. Some of these clubs 
 imitate the follies of Freemasonry in their secret rites of initia- 
 tion. Their very names they try to conceal, letting themselves 
 be known to outsiders only by one or two letters of the Greek 
 alphabet. The most famous of all the clubs, the Phi Beta 
 Kappa, — "our beloved Phi Beta Kappa," as Professor Good- 
 win justly calls it, — which was founded in 1779, remained a 
 mystery for more than fifty years. It was not till 1831 that 
 "the veil of secrecy was withdrawn, and the mystic letters 
 3>. B. K. were found to stand for QiXoao&a Blov KvfiepvrJTrjs — 
 Philosophy the guide of life. The A. K. E. is now the most 
 harmful society in the College ; its regular meetings resemble 
 the Kneipe of German students ; its neophytes are subjected to 
 
178 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 silly and injurious hazing, under the guise of initiation." These 
 three letters stand for the Dickey Club, a society. conspicuous 
 for its brutality and its folly. 1 A few years ago it carried 
 matters to such a pitch that its barbarous rites of initiation 
 were made known by the father of a student whose health had 
 suffered under them. A strong and general feeling of indigna- 
 tion was roused. Fortunately the members are often satisfied 
 with merely bringing down the neophyte to their own level, by 
 compelling him publicly to make a fool of himself. He is 
 forced to dress himself in a ridiculous costume, and either in 
 the streets or at some great baseball or football match to strut 
 about. So much is this the practice, that if any young man is 
 seen in the neighbourhood conspicuously making a fool of him- 
 self, without the justification of being drunk, he is at once set 
 down as a candidate for the Dickey Club. The members 
 would do well to change their name to the Dogberry Club, and 
 to take as their motto, — " But, masters, remember that I am 
 an ass." Nevertheless, so strange is the timidity of youth in 
 the presence of their own set of companions, that not many 
 men, as I am informed, when elected to these clubs dare to 
 decline the dishonour. Timid though some of these youths 
 may be, nevertheless, if the need arose, they would show, I 
 have little doubt, that though they dared not face the scoffs 
 of the Dickey Club, they were not unworthy sons of the men 
 who faced death on the bloody battle-fields of Virginia. 
 
 In our universities such follies are unknown ; they have even 
 well-nigh died out in our public schools. We are not indeed 
 
 1 "The A. K. E. (I am informed), like <J>. B. K., is a fraternity having 
 branches in many colleges; the Harvard society started as a branch of this, 
 but has long since ceased to recognize any connection with the general 
 society." 
 
X. HARVARD COLLEGE. 179 
 
 free from a certain kind of tyranny even in Oxford. The 
 undergraduate, poor though he may be, who does not pinch 
 himself to subscribe to the boat-club is too often looked upon 
 askance. I remember hearing one of my companions spoken 
 ill of on this account. He was very poor, but when the Flor- 
 ence Nightingale Fund was raised his subscription was the 
 largest in the College. 
 
 Not a few of the Harvard Clubs have shaken themselves free 
 from these follies of initiation and secrecy. It is not easy to 
 believe that in some of them they had ever existed. Emerson 
 was elected to a club, and became thereby, as he wrote to his 
 brother, " one of the fifteen smartest fellows." It is incredible 
 that the New England philosopher, even when in a short 
 jacket, ever consciously made a fool of himself. " There are," 
 said Burlingame, the first American Minister to the Court of 
 Pekin, " there are twenty thousand Ralph Waldo Emersons in 
 China." We could as easily picture to ourselves Confucius 
 submitting to being " hazed " as the sage of Concord. 
 
 The Medical Faculty Club deserves immortality for one of 
 its pranks. " It conferred its honorary degrees liberally upon 
 conspicuous persons at home and abroad. Not only did it 
 raise Chang and Heng, the Siamese twins, and Day and Martin, 
 the proprietors of the celebrated blacking, to the rank of 
 Doctors of Medicine, but it had the audacity to send a di- 
 ploma to Alexander, Czar of all the Russias. The Emperor, 
 not to be left behind in the race of honour, sent to the Medical 
 Faculty Club a valuable case of surgical instruments, which by 
 a fortunate mistake was delivered to the Medical School of the 
 University." x It is perhaps by no means wonderful that the his- 
 torian Motley, himself a Harvard man, many years later writing 
 
 1 An Historical Sketch of Harvard University, by W. R. Thayer, p. 61. 
 
180 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 of " the affection which is supposed to exist between Russia 
 and America," said : "At any rate it is a very platonic affec- 
 tion ; being founded, however, on entire incompatibility of char- 
 acter, absence of sympathy, and a plentiful lack of any common 
 interest, it may prove a very enduring passion." 1 The wit of 
 the Medical Faculty Club has long been a matter of the past. 
 " Its proceedings have been kept so secret for so many years 
 that only on Class Day are even the Seniors who belong to it 
 known, from their wearing a black rosette with a skull and 
 bones in silver upon it." When these clubs first took their rise 
 Harvard was. little more than a great school. The students 
 were mostly mere lads, and the discipline was strict, as it had 
 been of old in Oxford and Cambridge. It is no longer a 
 school. It is a university and a great university. It is time 
 for it to put away childish things. 
 
 The strife of the last Presidential election led to the forma- 
 tion of two political clubs — The Harvard Republican Club 
 and The Democratic Campaign Club. Under their manage- 
 ment a vote was taken of the whole body of undergraduates. 
 It showed that if the choice of President had been in their 
 hands, General Harrison would have carried the day over 
 Mr. Cleveland by 1114 votes to 851. The learning of the 
 University went the other way. Of the Professors whose 
 views could be ascertained, a very large majority indeed were 
 for Mr. Cleveland. The Democratic Club came to an end 
 with the election, but not before, to quote the Harvard Grad- 
 uates' Magazine, "it had strengthened the feeling that there 
 is no incompatibility between one's membership in a univer- 
 sity like Harvard and a dignified participation in political 
 affairs, even in a strictly partisan way." What a curious in- 
 1 Correspondence of J. L. Motley, New York, 1889, II. 336. 
 
x. HARVARD COLLEGE. 181 
 
 sight is given by such a passage as this into the vast difference 
 between England and America in the great field of politics ! 
 In England, at all events outside London, a man who should 
 altogether refuse to play his part in political life, would be 
 much less respected. However dignified he might be, if he 
 stood quite aloof from public affairs, he would be looked upon 
 as a bad citizen. Day has dawned in the United States, and 
 good men are seeing that the more corrupt party-life may 
 be, the more it is each man's duty to do his best to work its 
 purification. 
 
 The Harvard Republican Club, numbering about six hundred 
 active members, still carries on its operations. During the 
 Presidential election it far outdid any Society that ever existed 
 for the Diffusion of Knowledge — or Ignorance. More than 
 thirty thousand speeches, documents, and circulars were sent to 
 the students in Cambridge. In the great Republican torch-light 
 procession in Boston " over six hundred Harvard Republicans 
 marched, wearing crimson gowns and white caps, the Law 
 School being distinguished by the barrister's wig." The wig, 
 a compliment, we may take it, to the English Bar, is some slight 
 compensation for the general aim of the Republican party to 
 ruin our trade. For the first time, we are told, in American 
 political history " College speakers " (thank heaven, they are 
 not called orators !) were sent about to public meetings. At 
 Oxford, in my time, the speeches of undergraduates were 
 confined to the narrow limits of the College Debating Societies 
 and of the Union. They never overflowed into the town and 
 the neighbouring villages. I remember how much surprised 
 I one day was on learning that some of my friends — two of 
 them now famous as writers on constitutional history, one a 
 Liberal and the other a Liberal-Unionist — were going all the 
 
182 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 way to Birmingham to hear John Bright make one of his great 
 speeches. Had we ever thought of speaking, in those days 
 of a narrow franchise our eloquence would have been of little 
 avail. It was not till working-men got a vote that youthful 
 speakers bestirred themselves. In the old days in -a corrupt 
 constituency such as Oxford then was, and among the squires 
 and farmers in the surrounding counties, no undergraduate 
 would have got a hearing. 
 
 Harvard boasts of three Musical Clubs, The Glee Club, The 
 Pierian Sodality, and The Banjo and Mandolin. Of their skill 
 I know nothing, but in their dealings with each other they 
 seem to be unusually harmonious. In the short Christmas 
 vacation of the winter before last, uniting in one body, they 
 made a musical tour throughout the country. The first per- 
 formance they gave on December 22, at New York, and the last 
 at Albany on January 2, having in the meantime travelled as far 
 west as Milwaukee, a great city on the shore of Lake Michigan. 
 I doubt whether a Club of Oxonians would traverse a longer 
 distance than these wandering musicians, were they in a like 
 tour to begin their performances in Brussels and end them in 
 Paris, having in the short interval of eleven days given them 
 also in Venice, Genoa, and Naples. The trip was taken in the 
 midst of the American winter. So much were the trains 
 delayed by the snow that once at least, if not twice, the musi- 
 cians were prisoners in a snow-drift at the very time that they 
 ought to have been in the Music Hall. It seems strange to 
 us that so large a party of young men should be willing to be 
 away from their homes at Christmas. Longfellow recorded in 
 his Journal on December 25, 1856 : " Not a very merry 
 Christmas. We are in a transition state about Christmas in 
 New England. The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being 
 
x. HARVARD COLLEGE. 183 
 
 a cheerful, hearty holiday, though every year makes it more 
 so." 1 Samuel Sewall, one of the cruel judges who sent the 
 Salem witches to the gallows, more than once records in his 
 Diary, with great satisfaction, the utter disregard of the festival, 
 in spite of the efforts of a Church of England governor. Time, 
 no doubt, has done much to loosen the bonds of Puritanism, 
 and to give a cheerfulness and a heartiness to the holiday in 
 lands where once it was strictly not kept ; but the genius of one 
 man has done even more than time. Neither New England 
 nor Scotland has been able to withstand the kindly influence of 
 Charles Dickens. In the diffusion of the Christmas spirit his 
 Christinas Carol has done more than all the Societies and all 
 the preachers. I remember a story of a poor half-witted fellow 
 who lived in a village in Scotland. When the yearly fast came 
 round, which was kept on different days in different parishes, 
 oppressed by the gloom of his own village he was heard to 
 say, " I'll just go across the burnie and hear them whistle." 
 The Scotch and the New Englanders, now that the general 
 joy of Christendom has been brought home to their hearts, 
 have become in like manner oppressed by the gloom in which 
 they were spending the great yearly festival. They have done 
 much to scatter it; but "the rear of darkness " still seems to 
 overhang them, or we should not have seen these lads, far 
 from their homes, spending so much of Christmas-tide in a 
 Pullman car. 
 
 This digression about Clubs has led me far away from my 
 friendly undergraduate and from my visit to students' rooms. 
 He next led me to Matthews — one of the Dormitories in the 
 Yard. Here, too, I could almost have thought that I was in an 
 Oxford College, and here, too, I found shelves well stocked 
 
 1 Life of H. IV. Longfellow, II. 290. 
 
184 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 with books. I was not to infer, I was told, from what I had 
 seen that afternoon, that the ordinary undergraduate owns a 
 library. I have examined the expenses of the forty poor stu- 
 dents published by the Secretary of the University, and find 
 that their average yearly expenditure on books and stationery 
 — for these two items are not kept apart — was about nine- 
 teen dollars and a half (^3.19.8.). One man one year 
 raised his outlay to fifty dollars (^10.4.0.), and one brought 
 his as low as four and a half (18s. 5d.). As I looked over 
 my host's collection I called him " an honest man," think- 
 ing how Johnson, when he was shown Dr. Burney's collec- 
 tion, said to him : " You are an honest man to have formed 
 so great an accumulation of knowledge." He replied that 
 from childhood he had been brought up to think that he 
 ought to have books of his own. I wish wealthy Englishmen 
 could have had this wholesome belief given them from their 
 cradle. It would be a blessed time for authors. Even re- 
 spectability, the god at whose altars we offer up our most 
 costly sacrifices, no longer requires that the home of an English 
 gentleman should have a decent library. So far as books go 
 he is naked and not ashamed. 
 
 My host showed me a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress which 
 he had lately had splendidly bound. It was, he said, the first 
 book that he had ever loved ; most of it he knew by heart. 
 He quoted Johnson's saying to Percy's little daughter, when 
 the great man found that she had not read it : " No ; then I 
 would not give one farthing for you " ; but by a slip of memory 
 he confused Bishop Percy with Bishop Butler. I told him how 
 the only time I had the honour of meeting Mr. Gladstone, he 
 had insisted on the pre-eminent place Butler held among the 
 great writers of the eighteenth century, and how I had re- 
 
x. HARVARD COLLEGE. 185 
 
 marked how strange it was that the author of the Analogy is 
 nowhere mentioned either in Johnson's recorded talk or in his 
 writings. Our host knew enough of English ways to give 
 us afternoon tea. He flavoured it with slices of lemon instead 
 of cream, after the Russian fashion. He had invited one or 
 two of his friends to meet us, and the time slipped pleasantly 
 by in a talk about authors and books. 
 
 Had I visited a room in one of the more ancient Dormi- 
 tories, I might have been shown names and dates carved in 
 the woodwork by earlier occupants. These short and simple 
 annals have not been written in the light of day. They are 
 cut in some secret place, behind the wainscot or under the 
 floor. The new-comer oft-time has a long search before he 
 can discover them. He adds his name and preserves the 
 mystery. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 Harvard "Boys." — "Harvard Indifference." — Harvard and Yale. — 
 Honest Poverty. — Oxford Servitors. — Poor Students. — " Money 
 Aids." 
 
 AN anecdote which I have from a Senior — a man, that is 
 to say, in his fourth year — seems to indicate a certain 
 modest timidity in the American undergraduate. Nowhere in 
 the United States, I am told, does a young man carry a walking- 
 stick. It belongs there to the evening of life, as it belonged 
 in ancient Greece. That it was used half a century ago is 
 shown by a regulation of 1849 forbidding a student to take 
 his cane into Chapel. An attempt has been lately made to 
 reintroduce it into Harvard, probably by some undergraduate 
 who has been to England, and noticed how in our Universi- 
 ties it has become as indispensable a part of the outfit for 
 walking as a hat. My friend the Senior says that hitherto it 
 has only been under the cover of night that he and his friends 
 have ventured to carry a cane. 1 I hope, by the way, that they 
 do carry it, and do not commit the vulgarity of letting it 
 touch the ground, as if it were of any manner of use to them. 
 I am not sure, on second thoughts, that an English under- 
 graduate has any more courage in doing what is unusual. In 
 
 1 A friend who has read my proof-sheets writes to me : "I am afraid this 
 man was playing on your credulity. Almost every student carries a cane, 
 except when going about in Cambridge for exercise, or to lecture." If the 
 story is not true, it ought to be; so I leave it in. 
 
 186 
 
chap. XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 187 
 
 my day we never, when in cap and gown, carried an umbrella, 
 however heavily it might rain. We used to wrap our gowns 
 round our shoulders and run. This point of etiquette no 
 longer exists. It has yielded, I conjecture, to the large in- 
 crease in the number of undergraduates not lodging in Col- 
 lege. Even at the present day, a man carrying a walking- 
 stick when he is in cap and gown is a sight never seen in 
 either graduate or undergraduate. A cripple alone can vent- 
 ure to use one without blushing. It is only a few years ago 
 that a Master of Arts, a Fellow and Tutor of his College, 
 gravely pointed out to me the impropriety of which I was 
 guilty in using a walking-stick when in my Academic costume. 
 I have never repeated the offence, except once when I was 
 lame. On the other hand, an undergraduate, and perhaps 
 even a Junior Fellow, would have a feeling of uneasiness, if 
 not of positive shame, if he were caught walking about in his 
 ordinary costume without a cane in his hand. A cane, I have 
 been told on very good authority, is the distinguishing sign 
 of the University man when not in cap and gown. Without 
 it a "man " may be mistaken for an errand-boy. The use of 
 the word man, not only in our universities, but even in our 
 schools, nay, in our preparatory schools, where boys are no 
 more to be found than the pinafores which were worn in my 
 young days, is a sign, however, of the greater confidence of 
 the English youth. In America, boys are still boys, at all 
 events in name; for often they are forward enough in con- 
 duct. Even in Harvard there are no men among the under- 
 graduates; they always speak of themselves as boys. 1 
 
 Harvard has not been quite free from a certain kind of 
 
 1 The same friend writes to me : " This is chiefly among the students 
 from the West; not at all so in the case of the typical student, least of all 
 
1SS HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 affectation which is only too common in the English Universi- 
 ties, but which is known in America as " Harvard indiffer- 
 ence." It was not from their forefathers that the New Eng- 
 enders got this poor quality. It was never carried across the 
 sea in the ships of the early settlers. It is the very opposite 
 of that stubborn strength of character, and of that burning 
 zeal which sent them to the wilderness, and their descend- 
 ants, "the embattled farmers," to Concord, Lexington, and 
 Bunker Hill. It is the contempt for all that eagerness of 
 heart and thought and life which inspires " the young enthu- 
 siast " when first "he quits his ease for fame." "I do not 
 love a man," said Goldsmith, "who is zealous for nothing." 
 These lovers of indifference he would have shunned. Long 
 indulged, it becomes ingrained in the character. It is a great 
 maker of bad citizens. In a young man it almost always 
 begins with affectation, and happily often dies an early death. 
 It is killed by his nobler qualities, or by some strong influ- 
 ence from without. 
 
 More than sixty years ago Channing rebuked it. When 
 the Revolution of 1830 broke out in France, he was "asto- 
 nished that the freemen of America, especially the young, 
 should be so moderate in their expressions of joy. He went 
 back in memory to his boyish days, when the Cambridge col- 
 legians had processions, speeches, and bonfires. Now all was 
 still. One evening a graduate called upon him. ' Well, Mr. 
 
 ,' said he, 'are you too so old and so wise, like the 
 
 young men at Harvard, as to have no foolish enthusiasm to 
 throw away upon the heroes of the Polytechnic School ? ' ' Sir, ' 
 answered , ' you seem to me to be the only young man I 
 
 one who has social training." I was, however, much struck with the use of 
 the term boy ; so I leave the text unchanged. 
 
xi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 189 
 
 know. ' ' Always young for liberty, I trust, ' replied Dr. Chan- 
 ning with a bright smile and a ringing tone, as he pressed 
 him warmly by the hand." 1 Thirty years had to pass, and 
 then this Harvard indifference was swept away by the South- 
 ern revolt. In the presence of that dreadful strife, indiffe- 
 rence would no longer have been ridiculous, it would have 
 become hateful. 
 
 Professor Goodwin thinks that it was by "the equable 
 pressure " of a revised system of instruction and examina- 
 tion that " the older enthusiasm " of the place was mainly 
 repressed, and this indifference was encouraged. 2 Free play 
 was no longer given to the student's mind. He was forced 
 to attain to mediocrity in many subjects, and was not en- 
 couraged, and was scarcely allowed to secure excellence in 
 one or two. There had been students who had refused to 
 cramp themselves in the narrowness of the prescribed course. 
 Lowell read widely, and was rusticated in consequence. 
 Motley escaped this disgrace, but not the reproach of his 
 tutor, who one day " remonstrated with him upon the heaps of 
 novels upon his table. ' Yes, ' said Motley, ' I am reading 
 historically, and have come to the novels of the nineteenth 
 century. Taken in the lump, they are very hard reading.' " 3 
 At the present day the author of The Biglow Papers and the 
 historian of the Dutch Republic could have indulged their 
 tastes to the full. This "Harvard indifference " cannot surely 
 long survive the great reforms in education which have already 
 done so much to transform the University from a mere place 
 of teaching to a place of learning. 
 
 1 Memoir of W. E. Channing, 1848, III. 304. 
 
 2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 13. 
 
 3 Holmes's Memoir of J. L. Motley, ed. 1889, p. 13. 
 
190 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 There is another fault for which Harvard men are reproached 
 by their rivals and enemies. They are distinguished, it is 
 said, by a certain priggishness, a certain consciousness too 
 openly shown that they are not only the salt, but the superfine 
 salt, of the earth — a priggishness and a self-consciousness 
 which, it is said, sometimes cling to them throughout life. 
 What Boston is to Masachussetts, what Massachusetts is to 
 New England, what New England is to the United States, 
 what the United States are to the Universe, that Harvard is to 
 Boston. Among " the five points of Massachusetts decency " 
 laid down by Wendell Phillips, to be a graduate of Harvard 
 College holds the second place. The "old Harvard spirit" 
 on which they prided themselves, was thought by some to be 
 the spirit of a gentleman carried to preciseness. They are 
 fond of telling a story of a man who had twin sons, one of 
 whom he sent to Harvard, and the other to Yale. Before 
 they entered College, no one, not even their father, could tell 
 them apart; but after graduation the difference was plain. 
 One was a Harvard gentleman, the other a Yale tough. Wealth 
 and family are said to count for much at Harvard. The New 
 Englander is as proud of his pedigree, and often with as 
 much reason, as any English nobleman or squire. A Bache- 
 lor of Arts of Yale, who recently spent two years at Harvard, 
 the first as a graduate-student, and the second as an instruc- 
 tor, — evidently a fair-minded man, — writes: "I have lived 
 long enough at Yale to know that Yale students are not com- 
 monly ruffians; and I have seen enough of Harvard to know 
 that Harvard students are not as a class snobs. Yet there is 
 a slight element of truth even in these gross caricatures; it is 
 the difference between 'Fair' Harvard and 'Dear Old' Yale. 
 The Harvard atmosphere occasionally produces ' an affectioned 
 
XL HARVARD COLLEGE. 191 
 
 ass/ and the Yale spirit sometimes turns out an insolent 
 rowdy." 1 
 
 I have been told by one familiar with the Continental Uni- 
 versities that, measured by their standard, the Harvard stu- 
 dents are deficient in those graces which were so dear to Lord 
 Chesterfield's heart. In formal politeness, in the lesser 
 morals, the students in their behaviour towards a Professor 
 fall short of the standard which is observed in Germany and 
 France in their behaviour towards each other. Nevertheless, 
 beneath this somewhat unpolished outside much real kindness 
 lies hidden. A young Professor, who had but recently joined 
 the University, told me that in the midst of the work of his 
 first term he had been struck down by diphtheria. His pupils 
 not only every day sent flowers and fruit, but begged that one 
 of them in turns should always sleep in his house as long as 
 the illness lasted, so that in case of sudden need there might 
 be a swift messenger close at hand to summon the doctor. 
 He had won their hearts, as I learnt from another source, by 
 his courage and his devotion to his work. As soon as he 
 knew the nature of his illness, he had sent them word that he 
 was attacked by a dangerous malady, which would very likely 
 carry him off; but that he hoped that they would go on with 
 the experiments on which he had left them engaged. To 
 such students as these might be applied Goldsmith's saying 
 about Johnson : " He has nothing of the bear about him but 
 the skin." 
 
 Whatever pride of wealth and birth may exist in Harvard 
 or in Yale, no student in either of these great Universities 
 need hang his head for honest poverty. Many of them gain 
 their own living more or less, and gain it by bodily labour. 
 
 1 The Harvard Crimson, June 23, 1893. 
 
192 . HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Wages are so much higher in America than in the old country 
 that it takes far less time, and draws far less on a man's 
 strength for him to earn money by the use of his arms and 
 legs. Bodily work, happily, is not commonly looked upon 
 as anything degrading. To gain his livelihood by the sweat 
 of his brow is not disgraceful even in an undergraduate. 
 Emerson, when a student in Divinity Hall, after he had taken 
 his degree as a Bachelor of Arts, falling ill, went to his uncle's 
 farm for a change. The Emersons were too poor for idle- 
 ness, so he helped to till the ground. "Working here in the 
 field with a labourer, they fell a-talking, and the man, a 
 Methodist, said that men are always praying, and that all 
 prayers are answered. This statement struck Emerson, and 
 upon this theme he wrote his first sermon, which he preached 
 that summer in Waltham in the church of his uncle Ripley. 
 Next day in the stage-coach a farmer said to him, ' Young 
 man, you'll never preach a better sermon than that.' Ml Not 
 only will students work on a farm, for which they might as 
 Republicans plead, if they were weak-minded enough to need 
 a plea, the example of the ancient Romans, but they work as 
 servants. They have not that miserable shame of "doing any- 
 thing menial " which so often besets needy people in the old 
 country, who would think it less dishonourable to live on alms 
 than by honest service. When I was at Yale, I was told that 
 the poorer students of that University, without any loss of 
 general estimation, help to gain their livelihood by bodily 
 work. Some of them in the winter tend house-furnaces, which 
 only need looking after early every morning and late every 
 evening. In America, the whole house is often 'warmed by a 
 single furnace in the cellar, whence hot-water pipes are carried 
 
 1 Emerson in Concord, 1889, p. 31. 
 
XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 193 
 
 to the hall and all the rooms. The maid-servants never 
 attend to it, for it is not thought to be fit work for a woman. 
 Wages are so high that it is only the wealthy who can afford to 
 keep a man-servant, so that the furnace must be tended by 
 the master of the house and his sons, or by an odd-job man. 
 Such a man is said "to do the chores." 1 A student tries to 
 get two or three houses to look after in the same part of the 
 town, so that he may not lose time in going from one to the 
 other. Some give their services as waiters at the clubs where 
 their comrades take their meals, receiving in return their 
 board free of charge. I was assured by an undergraduate 
 that no one is thought worse of for doing such work as this. 
 Emerson, in his first year at Harvard, had a room rent-free in 
 the President's house, by holding the post of President's 
 Freshman. He had to carry official messages to the students 
 and officers of the College. 
 
 It was common enough in Oxford till early this century 
 for undergraduates to wait at table. Dr. Johnson repre- 
 sented to Lord Macaulay's great-uncle, a Scotch minister, the 
 advantages of a servitorship, by which a poor scholar earned 
 his living and his education by menial services given during 
 part of every day. Two servitors of his own College attained 
 great eminence last century, though an eminence of a very 
 different kind. One was Whitefield, the famous Methodist 
 preacher, and the other Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 1 Chore, which is of the same root as char in charwoman, is used to 
 describe the odd jobs about a house which are properly done by a man. 
 It is never applied to the work done by a charwoman. By Shake- 
 speare (I follow Johnson's edition) chore is used of woman's work : — 
 "The maid that milks and does the meanest chores." Anthony and 
 Cleopatra, Act IV., Sc. 15. 
 
194 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Each of them might proudly have said with the King's 
 
 son: — 
 
 " Some kinds of labour 
 
 Are nobly undergone, and most base matters 
 
 Point to rich ends." 
 
 I was told in my undergraduate days, but I do not know 
 whether there is any truth in the story, that it was the Earl 
 of Derby, afterwards Chancellor of the University and Prime 
 Minister, who gave the system of servitorships the blow of 
 which it died. When he was a gentleman-commoner of 
 Christ Church he refused, it was said, to be waited on by 
 his fellow-undergraduates. Dean Liddell informs me "that 
 in 1830, when he first went up to Christ Church, the Junior 
 Servitor used, immediately after grace had been said, to walk 
 up to the High Table with a sauce-boat. This was of course 
 a relic of the old custom." In Exeter College, less than half 
 a century ago, the Bible-clerk 1 dined off the leavings of the 
 Fellows' Table. He used to come late to dinner, hitting off 
 the time when the joint was likely to be done with, and 
 could be sent down to him. 
 
 Goldsmith, who had too often suffered humiliation, and who 
 felt its bitterness to the full, had raised his voice against the 
 system. "Surely," he wrote, "pride itself has dictated to the 
 Fellows of our Colleges the absurd passion of being attended 
 at meals, and on other public occasions, by those poor men 
 who, willing to be scholars, come in upon some charitable 
 
 1 " The Bible-clerk had the duty of reading the lessons in chapel and of 
 saying grace in Hall." Dr. Murray's Dictionary. In my College the 
 Bible-clerks — there were two of them — did not read the lessons. In 
 Chapel they kept the list each service of those who were present. In Hall 
 they said grace. They were on an equality with the rest of the under- 
 graduates. 
 
XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 195 
 
 foundation. It implies a contradiction for men to be at once 
 learning the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves ; 
 at once studying freedom and practising servitude." 1 He 
 forgot that often it was the case, if not indeed always, that the 
 charitable foundation in itself was not sufficient to support 
 and educate these poor men. Like many a needy student 
 outside a university, for part of each day they had to work for 
 their living. Whitefield had been a servant in his 'mother's 
 inn at Gloucester — the inn whose praises are sounded in 
 Tom Jones. When he came to Pembroke College he was 
 still a servant, but he was a student also. It is doubtful 
 whether poor scholars were not greatly wronged by a change 
 which was meant to give them freedom. The funds which 
 supported them, now that the badge of servitude was re- 
 moved, were far too commonly competed for in examina- 
 tions by all alike, and far too often fell to the lot of the 
 well-to-do. In the long training needed for the athletics 
 of the class-room, money is of great service, for by money 
 the services of the most skilful trainers are secured. The 
 poor man fighting with difficulties may get the better edu- 
 cation for the great main of life; but through the narrow 
 straits of the examination-room the son of the rich man, 
 unless his industry has been sapped by wealth, is often borne 
 along in triumph. "As many a poor man has worked his 
 passage over the sea to some settlement where a freer and 
 a larger life awaited him, so by a servitorship has many a 
 man worked his way from a life of low drudgery to some high 
 and honourable calling. The student-servant is no longer to 
 be found at Oxford. But the poor student who, in his eager-^ 
 
 1 An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe^ 
 Chap. 13. 
 
196 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 ness to fight his way by his learning, is ready for any duty, 
 however humble it may be, finds one way barred to him that 
 was open to the men of former generations." 1 I knew a young 
 man who supported himself and his widowed mother by the 
 humblest kind of work in a large factory. By great self-denial 
 he had got together a well-selected library of five or six hun- 
 dred volumes. In philosophy his knowledge was surprisingly 
 great, considering the difficulties against which all his life he 
 had struggled. In some parts of the Natural Sciences he was 
 deeply interested. When, on a visit to Oxford, he was taken 
 into one of the lecture-rooms at the Museum, he sat down on 
 a bench, and looking about him, after a pause said that there 
 was no sacrifice that he would not make could he sit there as 
 a learner. "How gladly," he exclaimed, "would I sweep 
 out these rooms, if I could thereby get a right to sit on these 
 benches." There was indeed no honest service that he would 
 not cheerfully have rendered could he thereby have supported 
 himself as an Oxford student. "Gladly wolde he learne." 
 Inquiry was made on all sides, but with all the wealth of the 
 University there was no opening for such a man. 
 
 At Yale I was told of a fund of money which, not many 
 years ago, had been placed in the hands of one of the Pro- 
 fessors by a wealthy man, as a memorial to a son who had died 
 in his undergraduate days. It was to be used in the relief of 
 needy but meritorious students. The Professor sent for one 
 of the most promising of his men, an Irishman and a Roman 
 Catholic, who was, he knew, very poor. The young man, 
 when assistance was offered him, nobly replied that there were 
 others who stood in greater need than he did, for he had regu- 
 
 1 I am quoting a book which I published in 1878 under the title of Dr. 
 Johnson : His Friends and His Critics, p. 30. 
 
XL HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 197 
 
 lar employment,— enough to make the two ends meet. He 
 rose every morning at four o'clock, and went to a newspaper 
 office, where he was engaged in the delivery of the papers. 
 The Professor pointed out to him that such work as this 
 lessened his strength for his studies, and so at last he induced 
 him to take the money. At the end of his University course, 
 he came out the first man of his year. The same Professor, 
 who had spent part of the summer vacation in an hotel on the 
 mountains, told me that one morning rising early he came 
 across a youth who was the night-watchman and shoe-black of 
 the house. Falling into talk with him, he learnt that he was 
 a student of one of the Western colleges. On being asked 
 for the first line of the AZneid, he readily gave it. The first 
 line of the Iliad he did not know, for as yet in his Greek he 
 had not gone beyond the New Testament. In his night-watch 
 he had his hourly rounds to make, one or two furnaces to look 
 after; in the morning he had the shoes to clean. In the 
 intervals of work he had time enough left for the vacation task 
 which had been set his class — the perusal of four novels, two 
 of which were Esmond and Dombey and Son. At the Chicago 
 Exhibition my friend the Professor found out that a Bath- 
 chairman whom he employed was a university student. An- 
 other Yale Professor told me that in his undergraduate days 
 "ability and good-fellowship were the qualities which did 
 most to make a student generally popular. There was a small 
 set of poor men, distinguished by their ability, into which the 
 richest men would have been proud to enter." At the pre- 
 sent time I fear 4hat both at Yale and Harvard excellence in 
 athletic sports would outweigh with many of these men even 
 ability and good-fellowship. 
 
 Out of regard to the convenience of the poor students, the 
 
198 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Long Vacation down to the year 1869 came in the winter. 
 "The longest vacation," wrote Ticknor, in 1825, "should 
 happen in the hot season, when insubordination and miscon- 
 duct are now most frequent, partly from the indolence pro- 
 duced by the season. There is a reason against this, I know, 
 — the poverty of many students who keep school for a part of 
 their subsistence." 1 It was in the winter that the children 
 attended school. In the summer they were, no doubt, em- 
 ployed on the farms. Even at the present day, in New Eng- 
 land, the village schools are commonly closed from about the 
 middle of June to the middle of September. A Pla?i for the 
 Distribution of the Tutors' Work and Service, drawn up in 
 1766, gives a curious insight not only into the poverty of some 
 of the students, but into a mode of life altogether different 
 from that which now prevails. It was proposed "that, to 
 prevent the great inconvenience attending some of the scholars 
 going home at one time and some at another, in the spring 
 and fall, to procure clothing, there shall be a short vacation in 
 the spring and fall." 2 The clothing which they went to pro- 
 cure no doubt had been spun and woven on their fathers' 
 farms. 
 
 By the substitution in recent years of the summer for the 
 winter as the time of the Long Vacation, the poor but indus- 
 trious student has gained more than he has lost. I was one 
 day taken by a friend into a large hotel on the southern coast 
 of Cape Cod where the maid-servants and the waiters were 
 mostly school-teachers or university students. Many of the 
 women belonged to one of the Colleges where women- 
 students are admitted, and four of the waiters were Harvard 
 undergraduates. The shoeblack of the year before had 
 
 1 Life of George Ticknor, I. 358. 2 Quincy's Harvard, II. 498. 
 
xi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 199 
 
 been a medical student from New York. This season he 
 had earned his promotion, and was now the bath-room stew- 
 ard. These young people did their work well, my friend 
 told me, and were courteously treated by the guests. They 
 would not, he added, have tamely submitted to rudeness. 
 They all took their meals together, apart from a lower class 
 of servants who did the rough work of the kitchen and scul- 
 lery. An American lady told me that sometimes at a winter 
 dance in Cambridge or Boston a girl would meet among the 
 guests a Harvard undergraduate who had been a waiter in 
 the hotel where she had passed the summer. I asked her 
 what reception he would have. It depended, she said, on 
 the character of the girl. Most, having sense and good feeling 
 enough to respect him for his courage in earning his living, 
 would be pleased; some few would be offended. 
 
 When I was staying in a seaside village, I four times took 
 a drive in a hired carriage. One day my driver was an 
 undergraduate home for the vacation, and another day a youth 
 who next term was to enter college. On the third day I was 
 driven by a man who worked in a large shoe-factory, and who 
 was taking a week's holiday. His uncle, he said, had been a 
 Senator of Massachusetts. One of his nephews had just entered 
 Brown University, and he hoped in time to send his own son 
 there also. With one of my companions, who was a Harvard 
 Professor, he discussed the advantages and disadvantages of 
 some of the New England Universities. 
 
 In the Harvard Crimson, as the Long Vacation was draw- 
 ing near, there appeared from time to time advertisements by 
 business firms offering employment, such as the following : — 
 
 "Houghton, Mifflin and Co. are desirous of corresponding 
 with College men who like employment through the summer." 
 
200 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 " A large manufacturing house wishes a brainy [sic] young 
 man for its office." 
 
 Students, moreover, who were already acting as agents, put 
 forth their advertisements. 
 
 "Yale's disadvantages. — She has not eight quick sail or rail-and- 
 
 water routes to the World's Fair, as I have. Stop at Washington, D.C., 
 
 Niagara Falls, White Mts. #13.60 saved. Tickets to all points West. 
 Please call before I leave, June 20." 
 
 " HOTEL SORRENTO, Sorrento, Me. — First-class in every re- 
 spect — has a beautiful location, on Frenchman's Bay, seven miles from 
 Bar Harbor. SPECIAL RATES for July. Charles V. Carter, Mang. 
 Illustrated pamphlet and terms of . . . " J 
 
 The Governing Body of Harvard, in their desire to bring 
 the University within the reach of poor scholars, seven years 
 ago opened "an Employment Bureau in the University Office. 
 All needy students are encouraged to seek through this 
 agency for opportunities to earn money. As the Bureau 
 extends its services to those who are about to take degrees 
 in Arts and Sciences, and as it is able to secure permanent 
 positions for the great majority of those who are graduated 
 with good standing, men of small means feel more confidence 
 in their future, and less dread of being unable to repay loans 
 and advances to those who are encouraging them in securing 
 a College education." 2 
 
 There are usually about two hundred names on the books of 
 the Bureau. From the letters of the poor students I have 
 extracted the following account of the ways by which money 
 is earned : — 
 
 "Teaching a private school and giving lessons in German to students in 
 the College." 
 
 1 1 have suppressed the names and addresses of these two advertisers. 
 2 Students' Expenses, p. 5. 
 
xi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 201 
 
 " Officiating in a small congregation." 
 
 " Lecturing and writing for papers." 
 
 " Waiting on table, 1 teaching night-school, tutoring, singing, and by at 
 least a dozen other business schemes." 
 
 " Tending the furnaces in the house where I roomed." 
 
 " Gardening." 
 
 " Index-making." 
 
 " Laboratory assistant." 
 
 "Clerk in a summer hotel." 
 
 "Clerk in Memorial Hall." 
 
 " Porter in a summer hotel." 
 
 " Publishing notes, waiting on tables, type-writing, outside jobs, as post- 
 ing bills, copying, etc." 
 
 " Odd jobs, publishing placards, advertising scheme, teaching school, 
 publishing books." 
 
 The notes which one of these students published were no 
 doubt those which he had taken down in the lecture room. 
 The Dean of the College in his Report for 1892-93, speaking 
 of that temptation which besets lazy students everywhere to 
 do no work until just before an examination, says: "If they 
 were then left to themselves, they might learn the consequence 
 of idleness and teach it to their successors; but, unhappily, 
 their demands have created a supply of wage-earners who sell 
 notes, make a careful study of the questions likely to occur 
 and recur in large elementary courses, hold, on the night 
 before an examination, ' seminars' in which they review, at 
 one, two, or three dollars a ticket, the work of a half-year, 
 and in general abet idle students in shirking their daily duty." 
 At Harvard, as at Oxford and Cambridge, the orthodox race 
 of "crammers " or "coaches " flourishes, composed entirely of 
 graduates who have acquired a great dexterity in driving know- 
 ledge into heads not always intended by nature to receive it. 
 
 1 In America the servant waits on table; in England, at table. 
 
202 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 The following advertisement I cut out of the Harvard Crim- 
 son : — 
 
 " History 12 Review. — The course will be reviewed in Manter [a 
 Block of Rooms] at 2 to-day as follows: English History from 1760 to 
 1837, at 2 p.m.; English History from 1837, anc ^ Continental History at 
 7.15 p.m. Fee for each review, $4 [16s. 4^.]. Gentlemen will confer a 
 favour by not opening accounts for reviews." 
 
 In the last paragraph it is delicately implied that the four 
 dollars must be paid before the "review" begins. With such 
 men as these the Dean does not attempt to deal. Indeed, he 
 admits that in certain cases they have their use. The under- 
 graduates who traffic in notes he would suppress so far as he 
 can. " Students engaged in illegitimate coaching," he says, 
 "should receive no scholarship or other pecuniary aid; for, 
 however studious they may be, however resolute in educating 
 themselves, however temperate in their private life, they are 
 — directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously — 
 enemies to College learning, College morality, and College 
 honour." 1 
 
 One of the poor students, describing his trials as a Fresh- 
 man, says : " Part of this year I was very poor. My washing 
 I did myself. About mid-year I was so short of money that 
 for nearly two months I ate but one or two meals a day. This 
 was the hardest period of my course, but rather incited than 
 discouraged me." In spite of all he went through, he ends 
 by saying : " My health, when I entered, was very poor. I 
 left College strong in body, better than at any time for ten 
 years. I have no hesitation in saying that an economical 
 student can get through honourably and happily for three 
 hundred dollars a year [^"6 1.6.0]." 2 "A poor student's 
 
 1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 103. 2 Students' Expenses, p. 43. 
 
xi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 203 
 
 berth," writes another man, "is not exactly a bed of roses, but 
 I know that a sober-minded, industrious man can study in 
 Harvard College, and not only exist, but have an enjoyable 
 time on four hundred dollars a year [,£81.15.0]." x A third 
 writer says: "A bright scholar or a shrewd business fellow 
 can entirely pay his expenses at Harvard; but it is no place 
 for a poor scholar or a lazy man." 2 
 
 There is a danger lest, in this sharp struggle for existence 
 in a university, somewhat too much of " the shrewd business 
 fellow " may be brought out in a youth's character. Almost all 
 these ways of earning money are honourable; but the adver- 
 tising scheme is unworthy of a student. I do not like the puff 
 of the young man who heads his advertisement, "Yale's Dis- 
 advantages." Such a heading would, no doubt, catch the eye 
 of a Harvard man; but it would little please him to know 
 that in his own University a race of young Barnums is grow- 
 ing up. 
 
 In the Bosto7i Sunday Globe for December 31, 1893, "a 
 Poor Student at Harvard " published his Memoirs. He is 
 apparently still at College, so that a supplementary chapter 
 will some day have to be added. His father works in a fac- 
 tory, earning about nine dollars (£1.16.9) a week. The 
 son entered Harvard with a capital of twenty-seven dollars 
 (£"5.10.3), all that was left over, after he had paid his debts, 
 of his earnings in the summer as a waiter in a mountain hotel. 
 He hired a room thirteen feet long by seven wide. At first 
 he spent on his food no more than one dollar and fifteen 
 cents a week (4s.io^d.). "I remembered," he writes, "how 
 Garfield had lived for thirty-three cents [is.^d.] a week on 
 milk. I felt sure if he could, I could." He soon found that 
 
 1 Students' Expenses, p. 22. 2 lb, p. 26. 
 
204 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 his health was sinking under the spare diet, and that he was 
 becoming unfit for work. He took a better dinner, and so 
 raised his expenditure to two dollars and sixty-five cents a 
 week [ios.iojd.]. "It kept me well; only I would get awfully 
 hungry every night at about ten o'clock. I used to drink 
 water for that." He at once set about earning money, and 
 before long was made one of the waiters at the Foxcroft Club. 
 He suffered from the humiliation of his position. " I felt 
 that there was a sort of feeling against me by many, and it 
 grated against my pride to be at the absolute mercy of some 
 of the men there. I have always thought that some knew just 
 how I felt, and rather added to my discomfort in all the ways 
 they could." He does not, however, give any instance of 
 insolence or unkindness. A man in such a position as his 
 is apt to see "the proud man's contumely" even where there 
 is none. He was too poor to pay for a laundress, and had to 
 keep his soiled linen till Thanksgiving Day, when he took it 
 home and had it washed there. When his clean clothes came 
 to an end he wore a jersey. "This, of course, caused re- 
 marks, which I felt very deeply, but I went on my way with a 
 heightened colour, but still with a feeling that I was doing 
 what was right." 
 
 In his vacations he got work as a druggist's assistant, as 
 head-waiter, and afterwards as manager in a summer hotel, 
 and as bookkeeper in a shoe-factory. He and one of his 
 comrades were engaged one summer by a firm of publishers 
 to sell books. "We were given a large city several hundred 
 miles away. We started in high feather; we walked and 
 tramped the streets for a week, and I never sold one. My 
 partner sold three, but two days later they all countermanded 
 their orders. That was the last straw, — we quit." It was, I 
 
XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 205 
 
 suspected, an undergraduate who, one day when I was sitting 
 under the veranda of a house at a seaside village on Cape 
 Cod, asked me to buy, first some books and then some scents. 
 He asked but once, and went away the moment I refused. 
 By his looks and his gentle manners, he seemed far too good 
 for so bad a trade. A man can pay too dearly even for a 
 university education. The " Poor Student " in term-time got 
 various kinds of employment. He canvassed for more than 
 one election; he worked in a lawyer's office; he read proofs, 
 and he was an author's copyist. This last piece of work 
 extended into the vacation, In term-time he used to begin 
 work with the author at ten at night, and kept on at it till an 
 hour and a half after midnight; all through the vacation he 
 was employed from twelve to fifteen hours a day. When this 
 heavy task came to an end he got an engagement on a news- 
 paper as the Harvard correspondent. "It was the busiest 
 time of the year. Two things had to be followed daily, — base- 
 ball and rowing. It really took all my day from three in the 
 afternoon. It was just the time of the year when I needed 
 every hour on my College work. The examinations were at 
 hand. But there was no help for it." He has gone through 
 the main part of the struggle, he says, and now makes enough 
 money to be able to indulge in a few comforts. He has no 
 longer to try to endure a New England winter in a tireless 
 room. When the thermometer fell below zero he had been 
 forced to order a supply of coal. He laments that his studies 
 have suffered greatly from the need that he has always been 
 under to give so much of his strength and time to earning 
 his bread. "But," he adds, "I have more than ten times 
 overbalanced that by the practical knowledge that comes 
 only by actual personal experience. When I get through 
 
206 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Harvard there'll be no such thing as my 'going out into the 
 world.' " 
 
 Many of the wealthy students are ready enough to help their 
 needy comrades. "Rich men," wrote the Dean of the Col- 
 lege in 1892, "even rich undergraduates, answer cheerfully a 
 call for money; but generosity of this sort tends to pauperize 
 such students as take kindly to pauperizing. Something has 
 been accomplished by a sort of floating loan-fund. Money 
 for the student is put into the hands of the Dean, who gives 
 the student to understand that, as soon as it is returned, it 
 will be lent to some other student equally in need. The 
 obligation thus involved is thought to be more effective than 
 a written promise to pay, which seems of itself a sort of quid 
 pi'o quo." 1 
 
 It is not only on his earnings that the poor scholar has to 
 depend. Just as we have in Oxford and Cambridge endow- 
 ments for scholarships and exhibitions, so Harvard is in pos- 
 session of large funds for distribution as "money-aids to 
 students. Merit and need are the elements which determine 
 distribution." 2 No money is given, as it is so abundantly 
 given in the great English Universities, to merit alone, how- 
 ever great it may be. The merit of the wealthy student is at 
 Harvard rewarded only by honour; but even honour will not 
 always stir him up. "It is an interesting inquiry," writes the 
 President, "how the College can supply the rich young man 
 with an appropriate stimulus to do his best. The problem, 
 however, is one which does not vex Harvard College alone; 
 it has long vexed rich parents and civilized society." 3 When 
 
 1 Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 88. 
 
 2 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 7. 
 
 3 Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 21. 
 
XL HARVARD COLLEGE. 207 
 
 Lord Southampton asked Bishop Watson of Llandaff, "how 
 he was to bring up his son so as to make him get forward in 
 the world, ' I know of but one way, ' replied the Bishop; ' give 
 him parts and poverty. ' ' Well, then, ' replied Lord Southamp- 
 ton, ' if God has given him parts, I will manage as to the 
 poverty.'" 1 Poverty at Harvard, however great, without at 
 all events some parts, is not looked upon as a title to relief. 
 Those only are to be helped who are worthy of receiving a 
 liberal education. In 1887 about fifty thousand dollars 
 (^10,225) were thus distributed; by 1893 the fund had in- 
 creased to eighty-nine thousand (^18,200.) By such leaps 
 and bounds does munificence advance in the United States. 
 Even this large sum can scarcely suffice for all the demands 
 of studious poverty. "One-half the students," writes a Har- 
 vard Instructor in Philosophy, "must be conceived as very 
 poor, brought to College by intellectual and practical ambi- 
 tion, working hard at their books and for their maintenance, 
 and without time or money for much recreation, exercise, or 
 society. This class, from which the best scholars generally 
 come, is dubbed ' the grinds. ' " 2 They are like the men whom 
 Arthur Pendennis despised, who every afternoon were to be 
 seen in their hob-nailed shoes trudging along the Trump ing- 
 ton Road. 
 
 Of the well-to-do students the expenses seem to be higher 
 even than at Oxford. How much they have risen in the last 
 fifty years is shown by the following passage in the Life of 
 Charles Sumner* " His College bills did not exceed the 
 average bills of his Class. Including instruction, board in 
 commons, rent and charge of room, fuel, use of class-books 
 
 1 H. C. Robinson's Diary, I. 337. 
 
 2 Educational Review, April, 1894, p. 322. 3 Vol. I., p. 53. 
 
208 HARVARD COLLEGE. CHAP. xi. 
 
 and other fees, they amounted for the four years to less than 
 eight hundred dollars [,£163], which is now quite a mode- 
 rate expenditure for a single year." An undergraduate may 
 still live in great comfort at Oxford on two hundred pounds 
 a year, even though out of this sum he has to defray his out- 
 lay on clothes, amusements, and travelling. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 From a College to a University. — George Ticknor. — Influence of Ger- 
 many. — Oxford Colleges Forty Years Ago. — Provincialism. — Founda- 
 tion of New Schools at Harvard. — Duties of Professors. 
 
 THOUGH Harvard College had from the beginning been 
 a university, in that it was a place where the arts and 
 sciences were studied and where degrees were conferred, yet 
 it was a university after the later English, and not after the 
 continental manner. It did not freely impart knowledge to all 
 who sought it in all the great departments of learning. It 
 bound down the students to a certain limited course ; it con- 
 fined them to a four years' track to be beaten by all alike. 
 Along this track all moved at the same pace — the quick kept 
 back by the slow, the hard workers by the idlers. There was 
 not that choice between classics and mathematics which, even 
 under the early examination schemes at Oxford, was allowed 
 to a certain extent ; neither was there that separation made 
 between passmen and classmen 1 in the college lectures by 
 which the abler students were carried over a far wider field. 
 Everywhere there was a dead level, a dreary uniformity. Down 
 to the year 1767 each tutor had taught every subject to the 
 Class assigned to him, throughout the whole course. In 
 that year a change was made, and henceforth Greek, Latin, 
 
 1 Classmen or Honours-men at Oxford correspond to those who at Har- 
 vard take their degree cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude. 
 P 209 
 
210 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 philosophy and mathematics were assigned each to a single 
 teacher. 1 The tutors were no doubt for the most part sound 
 scholars of the old narrow school — much the same kind of 
 men as the masters of the English grammar schools and the 
 Fellows of the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. Among them, 
 however, had never risen a Bentley or a Porson, not even a 
 Markland or a Parr, to set and to keep the standard of scholar- 
 ship high. Greek must have been but little studied, for, accord- 
 ing to Ticknor, in the early years of the present century, " a 
 copy of Euripides in the original could not be bought at any 
 bookseller's shop in New England." 2 He had been educated 
 at Dartmouth College — Daniel Webster's College. " It is, 
 Sir, a small College ; and yet there are those who love it," said 
 that great advocate, with his eyes full of tears, when upholding 
 its charter before the Supreme Court. Ticknor had afterwards 
 studied privately under a good scholar, an Englishman, who 
 had been taught by Dr. Parr. On leaving him, he entered a 
 lawyer's office, but his heart was not in his work. In the year 
 1 8 14, when he was two and twenty, he chanced to read a 
 defence of the University of Gottingen that had been written 
 " against the ill-intentions of Jerome Bonaparte." He had 
 never before known the true nature of a university. " My 
 astonishment at these revelations," he writes, " was increased 
 by an account of its library, given by an Englishman who had 
 been there. I was sure that I should like to study at such a 
 university, but it was in vain that I endeavoured to get further 
 knowledge upon the subject. I would gladly have prepared 
 for it by learning German, but there was no one in Boston who 
 could teach me. Nor was it possible to get books. I bor- 
 rowed a Meidinger's Grammar, French and German, from my 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 132. 2 Life of W. H. Prescott, p. 8. 
 
xii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 211 
 
 friend, Mr. Everett, and sent to New Hampshire, where I 
 knew there was a German Dictionary, and procured it. I also 
 obtained a copy of Goethe's Werther (through Mr. Shaw's 
 connivance) from amongst Mr. J. Q. Adams's books deposited 
 by him, on going to Europe, in the Athenaeum." 1 Neverthe- 
 less, in all this dearth of Greek and German books Boston was 
 known as "The Literary Emporium." 2 Judge Story, writing 
 of Harvard as he had known it in the last years of the eigh- 
 teenth century, says : " The intercourse between us and foreign 
 countries was infrequent ; and except to English literature and 
 science, I might almost say, we had no means of access. Even 
 in respect to them we had little more than a semi-annual 
 importation of the most common works. Two ships only plied 
 as regular packets between Boston and London, one in the 
 spring and the other in the autumn, and their arrival was an 
 era in our college life." 3 Ticknor's father, a well-to-do Boston 
 grocer, who, like Ticknor himself, had passed through Dart- 
 mouth College and had a respect for learning, allowed his son 
 to give up the law and to go and study at Gottingen. 
 
 It was a great day in the history of Harvard when this young 
 Bostonian set out to explore a German university. On Novem- 
 ber 10, 1815, he wrote to his father from Gottingen of his 
 Greek tutor, Dr. Schultze : " Every day I am filled with new 
 astonishment at the variety and accuracy, the minuteness and 
 readiness, of his learning. Every day I feel anew, under the 
 oppressive weight of his admirable acquirements, what a morti- 
 fying distance there is between a European and an American 
 
 1 Life of George Ticknor, I. II. 
 
 2 At all events, a few years later it was frequently so called. Life of 
 H. W. Longfellozv, I. 37. 
 
 3 Life of Joseph Story, I. 48. 
 
212 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 scholar ! We do not yet know what a Greek scholar is ; we do 
 not even know the process by which a man is to be made one. 
 Dr. Schultze is hardly older than I am. It never entered into 
 my imagination to conceive that any expense of time or talent 
 could make a man so accomplished in this forgotten language 
 as he is." * For the first time in his life, something beyond a 
 mere collection of books, a library fit for scholars was opened 
 to the young American. He had, moreover, at his service a 
 large staff of able and learned Professors. " At least seventy 
 or eighty different courses of lectures," he wrote, " are going on 
 at the same time." Some of the Professors were poor enough, 
 for the miseries caused by the great wars still overhung the 
 land. One of them told him " that when Germany was thus 
 impoverished, if a Professor at Jena appeared in his lecture- 
 room with a new waistcoat, the students applauded him ; 
 being asked what occurred if a new coat made its appearance, 
 he exclaimed : ' Gott bewahre ! such a thing never hap- 
 pened.' " 2 Ticknor was struck with " the accuracy with which 
 time is measured and sold by the Professors. Every clock that 
 strikes is the signal for four or five lectures to begin and four 
 or five others to close. In the intervals you may go into the 
 streets and find they are silent and empty ; but the bell has 
 hardly told the hour before they are filled with students, with 
 their portfolios under their arms, hastening from the feet of one 
 Gamaliel to those of another — generally running in order to 
 save time, and often without a hat. As soon as they reach the 
 room they take their places and prepare their pens and paper. 
 The Professor comes in almost immediately, and from that 
 time till he goes out the sound of his disciples taking notes 
 does not for an instant cease." 3 
 
 1 Life of Ticknor, I. 73. * lb. I. 280. 3 Lb. I. 82. 
 
XII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 213 
 
 Ticknor had been studying at Gottingen little more than a 
 year when he received from Harvard the offer of the Smith 
 Professorship of the French and Spanish Languages and Litera- 
 ture, and the College Professorship of the Belles-Lettres. 1 He 
 was to stay on in Europe for some time longer to complete his 
 education. He stayed four years in all, studying in Germany, 
 France, Italy, and Spain. One lesson the future Professor 
 learned in a talk with Goethe, on whom he called when passing 
 through Weimar. " Once Goethe's genius kindled, and in spite 
 of himself he grew almost fervent as he deplored the want of 
 extemporary eloquence in Germany, and said that the English 
 is kept a much more living language by its influence. ' Here,' 
 he said, ' we have no eloquence — our preaching is a monoto- 
 nous, middling declamation — public debate we have not at 
 all, and if a little inspiration sometimes comes to us in our 
 lecture-rooms, it is out of place, for eloquence does not teach.' " 2 
 Ticknor was but eight and twenty when he returned to America, 
 and entered on his new duties at Harvard. On August 10, 
 1819, he delivered his opening address in the Old Church of 
 Cambridge before " a cultivated audience " which came together 
 " to listen to the utterance of the ripest scholarship America 
 could then boast." 3 These are the words of Ticknor's bio- 
 grapher, George Hillard, himself no mean scholar. America 
 surely can look back with some complacency on the advance 
 she has made in learning since those days. 
 
 Ticknor, though he was by far the most important, was not the 
 first student sent from the United States to qualify himself for 
 a Professor's chair. In 1802, Benjamin Silliman at the age of 
 twenty-two had been appointed Professor of Chemistry and 
 Geology at Yale. Of neither science had he any knowledge, 
 
 l Life of Ticknor, I. 1 1 6, 32 1 . 2 lb. I. 1 14. 3 lb. I. 320. 
 
214 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 but he had distinguished himself in his mathematical studies. 
 Such appointments are not unknown in the history of English 
 Universities. Last century Watson, afterwards Bishop of Llan- 
 daff, was appointed to the Chair of Chemistry at Cambridge. 
 He was as ignorant of the science as young Silliman. Never- 
 theless, of his Chemical Essays Sir Humphry Davy said that 
 " he could scarcely imagine a time in which they would be 
 superannuated." 1 From the Chair of Chemistry he was trans- 
 ferred to the Chair of Divinity, of which he knew no more 
 than an ordinary parson — that is to say, very little. By his 
 industry, however, he filled the post not without distinction. 
 In the same University seventy-six years ago, Adam Sedgwick 
 was made Professor of Geology, though he was as ignorant of 
 that science as Watson had been of Chemistry. He, too, justified 
 the appointment. In like manner in modern days Oxford has 
 seen a retired naval captain appointed to a Professorship of 
 History over the heads of Dr. Stubbs, Mr. Freeman, Mr. 
 Froude, Mr. Church, and Mr. Pearson. No doubt it was 
 thought that with time he would add to his first class and his 
 orthodoxy a competent knowledge of the subject which he 
 was advanced to teach. This, I believe, he has succeeded in 
 doing. The late Professor of Arabic in Oxford, who had been 
 appointed with the same ignorance and the same expectation, 
 never took the trouble to dispel the one and to satisfy the other. 
 Silliman made but a short stay in Europe. For the winter 
 session he studied in the University of Edinburgh. On his 
 return to America he wrote : " A much higher standard of 
 excellence than I had before seen was presented to me, espe- 
 cially in Edinburgh." 2 
 
 1 De Quincey's Works, II. 106. 
 
 2 Life of Benjamin Silliman, I. 195. 
 
xii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 215 
 
 In 1825, six years after Ticknor entered on his duties at 
 Harvard, Longfellow graduated at Bowdoin College — the 
 Alma Mater not only of him but of Hawthorne. It so hap- 
 pened that at the Commencement at which he took his degree, 
 the Board of Trustees voted to found a Chair of Modern Lan- 
 guages. The young Bachelor of Arts, who was but eighteen, 
 had, it is said, in his examination pleased one of the Trustees 
 by his elegant translation of an Ode of Horace. An informal 
 proposal was made by the Board to his father that the youth 
 " should visit Europe, for the purpose of fitting himself for his 
 position, with the understanding that on his return he should be 
 appointed to the Professorship." x Accordingly, he spent three 
 years in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Like Ticknor, he 
 studied in Gottingen. On his return at the age of two and 
 twenty he received the appointment. Five years later, on 
 Ticknor's resignation, he was offered his Professorship at Har- 
 vard ; but it was suggested to him by the President that he 
 would do well " to reside in Europe, at his own expense, a year 
 or eighteen months for the purpose of a more perfect attain- 
 ment of the German." For eighteen months he studied the 
 Northern languages in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Hol- 
 land, and on his return at the age of twenty-nine was made 
 Professor. 2 
 
 It was " with the vision of a real University, where all the 
 great divisions of human knowledge should be duly repre- 
 sented and taught," that Ticknor "returned fresh from a two 
 years' residence at Gottingen." 3 He was before his time, 
 and he saw the vision "fade into the light of common day." 
 "When I came home from Europe," he writes, "not having 
 
 1 Life ofH. W. Longfelloiv, I. 68. 2 Lb. I. 203, 243. 
 
 3 Life of G. Ticknor, II. 422. 
 
216 » HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 been educated at Cambridge [Massachusetts], and having 
 always looked upon it with great veneration, I had no misgiv- 
 ings about the wisdom of the organization and management of 
 the College there." l He soon discovered how great were the 
 changes which were needed in Harvard. He set about one 
 of the hardest of tasks that a young man can take upon him- 
 self — to teach teachers, to instruct instructors, to convince a 
 University that its time-honoured system needs a thorough 
 reform. The President was against him; almost all the Pro- 
 fessors were against him; even the students were against him. 
 The President was Kirkland, whom Lowell has so pleasantly 
 described. " He was a man of genius, but of genius that 
 evaded utilization. . . . There was that in the soft and 
 rounded (I had almost said melting) outlines of his face 
 which reminded one of Chaucer. . . . He was one of those 
 misplaced persons whose misfortune it is that their lives over- 
 lap two distinct eras, and are already so impregnated with one 
 that they can never be in healthy sympathy with the other." 2 
 Ticknor appealed to the Corporation, who consulted the whole 
 body of teachers about his proposals. A large majority of 
 them steadily resisted any change of importance. 3 Among 
 the Professors was Edward Everett, "whose coming from 
 Germany," Emerson said, "was an immediate and profound 
 influence in New England education." 4 It does not appear, 
 however, that he supported Ticknor in his great reformation. 
 Some years later, when he was President of the College, "he 
 threw his weight against the system." 5 
 
 1 Life of G. Ticknor, I. 354. 
 
 2 Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, ed. 1890, I. 83. 
 
 3 Life of Ticknor, I. 356. 
 
 4 Higher Education, etc., p. 215. 
 6 Annual Reports, 1883-84, p. 16. 
 
XII. HARVARD COLLEGE. % 217 
 
 In July, 1823, nine men, of whom Judge Story was one, 
 met at Ticknor's house to consider what steps should be taken 
 to reform Harvard. The faults which he found with the sys- 
 tem he stated both in a paper which he laid before them, and 
 also in a pamphlet which he subsequently published. "All 
 our Colleges," he said, "have been long considered merely 
 places for obtaining a degree of Bachelor of Arts, to serve as 
 a means and certificate whereon to build the future plans and 
 purposes of life." No change had been made in the old 
 system by which every student was taught by every tutor, 
 receiving exactly the same instruction, neither more nor less, 
 as the rest of his classmates. But at Harvard "there are 
 now," he continues, "twenty or more teachers and three 
 hundred students, and yet the division into Classes remains 
 exactly the same, and every student is obliged to pass through 
 the hands of nearly or quite every instructor. The recita- 
 tions [the lectures of an Oxford College] become mere enu- 
 merations. The most that an instructor now undertakes is to 
 ascertain, from day to day, whether the young men who are 
 assembled in his presence have probably studied the lesson pre- 
 scribed to them. . . . We are neither an University — which 
 we call ourselves — nor a respectable High School, which we 
 ought to be. . . . As many years are given to the great 
 work of education here as are given in Europe, and it costs 
 more money with us to be very imperfectly educated than it 
 does to enjoy the great advantages of some of the best univer- 
 sities on the Continent. And yet who in this country, by 
 means here offered him, has been enabled to make himself a 
 good Greek scholar? Who has been taught thoroughly to 
 read, write, and speak Latin? " 1 Nearly half a century later, 
 
 1 Life of G. Ticknor, I. 356-363. 
 
218 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 as one of the Trustees of the Zoological Museum at Harvard, 
 Ticknor had to address a Committee of the Legislature of 
 Massachusetts. Speaking of the great work done by Professor 
 Agassiz in the University, he said that by making Natural 
 Science "move," he had made languages, history, and liter- 
 ature follow. "Natural Science has tended to open Harvard 
 College; to make it a free University, accessible to all, 
 whether they desire to receive instruction in one branch or 
 in many." l 
 
 The whole work of the College was not, however, confined 
 to "recitations" at the time when Ticknor was trying to 
 introduce his reforms. Professor Peabody writing of those 
 days says: "The recitations were mere hearings of lessons, 
 without comment or collateral illustrations. The leading 
 feature of the College was the rich provision made for 
 courses of lectures. It may be doubted whether so many 
 lecturers of an exceptionally high order have ever, at any one 
 time, been brought together in the service of an American 
 College. By far the largest part of our actual instruction was 
 that of the lecture-room, where it was our custom to take 
 copious notes, which were afterwards written out in full. The 
 amount of study and actual attainment was, I think, much 
 greater with the best scholars of each class, much less with 
 those of a lower grade than now. The really good scholar 
 gave himself wholly to his work. He had no distractions, no 
 outside society, no newspapers. Consequently there remained 
 for him nothing but hard study; and there were some in every 
 class whose hours of study were not less than sixty a week." 2 
 Ticknor, it must be remembered, wrote as a young man, with 
 
 1 Life of G. Ticknor, II. 423. 
 
 2 Reminiscences of Harvard College, p. 202. 
 
xii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 219 
 
 his mind full of the evils which thwarted him at every step; 
 Professor Peabody as an aged man, complacently surveying a 
 happy and a studious youth. What he tells us of the study of 
 German shows how limited was the range of knowledge in 
 New England. It was in the year 1825 that he joined the 
 first German class ever formed in Harvard. " We were looked 
 upon with very much the amazement with which a class in 
 some obscure tribal dialect of the remote Orient would be 
 now regarded. There were no German books in the book- 
 stores. A friend gave me a copy of Schiller's Wallenstein, 
 which I read as soon as I was able to do so, and then passed 
 it from hand to hand among those who could obtain nothing 
 else to read." * 
 
 In many respects a member of one of the smaller Oxford 
 Colleges forty years ago was quite as ill-provided with instruc- 
 tion as a Harvard undergraduate. In my own College, for 
 instance, during the greater part of my residence, there were 
 but three tutors, among whom were divided all the depart- 
 ments of learning that were taught. The Master, it is true, 
 every Sunday lectured on the Epistles of St. Paul. Of the 
 three, one taught mathematics, and mathematics alone. Happy 
 was the youth who had a taste for that science, as he met with 
 all the encouragement that can be given by a most able teacher. 
 The other two took between them the rest of the sciences that 
 were recognized in the College — Latin, Greek, metaphysics, 
 ethics, logic, ancient history, and divinity. One of them was 
 a sound, old-fashioned scholar, but a somewhat ponderous 
 teacher; the other was a man of amiable character, but of 
 very moderate attainments. In later years he one day mod- 
 estly owned to me that he had never cared for books. For- 
 
 1 Reminiscences of Harvard College, p. 117. 
 
220 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 tunately for us, we were able to obtain a certain amount of 
 instruction outside the College. The end was at length com- 
 ing to that long and shameful succession of University Pro- 
 fessors who, to quote Gibbon's words, "well remembered that 
 they had a salary to receive, and only forgot that they had a 
 duty to perform." Some still survived — one or two even 
 now are extant — men who, if they did anything, did noth- 
 ing more than year after year offer to read aloud the same 
 course of lectures. An ardent and ingenuous youth of my 
 time, or a little earlier, attended the first lecture of the yearly 
 course of the Camden Professor of Ancient History, and 
 formed the whole audience. The venerable Professor sat 
 silent in his chair for some ten minutes; then addressing him, 
 he said: "Sir, it seems that you alone wish to hear my lect- 
 ure. Perhaps it will do you quite as much good if you take 
 it to your rooms and read it there to yourself; but if you 
 desire it, I will, as I am bound by the statutes of the Univer- 
 sity, deliver it orally." The youth politely assented to his 
 suggestion. He read it, found it pleasingly written, returned 
 it, but did not venture to form the audience for the second 
 lecture. To some of the Chairs younger men had been ap- 
 pointed. Mansell was lecturing on Aristotle, Jowett on Plato, 
 and Conington on Latin composition. Their lectures were 
 open to the undergraduates of every college. So many men 
 attended Conington' s lectures on Latin prose composition 
 that he ceased giving them. The College tutors, he said, 
 were throwing their work on him. It seems incredible that 
 less than forty years ago a course of public lectures in the 
 University of Oxford was brought to a close because it was so 
 largely attended. Conington, no doubt, was indignant at being 
 drawn away from his higher work as a scholar by the drudgery 
 
XII, HARVARD COLLEGE. 221 
 
 of correcting twice a week some hundred exercises. That he 
 should be provided with an assistant professor did not seem 
 to have occurred to anybody's mind. Natural Science was at 
 this time just beginning to be recognized — crouching like a 
 second Cinderella among the scornful sister sciences. In my 
 first term I saw the foundation stone laid of the New Museum 
 by the Chancellor, the Earl of Derby. One of my college 
 friends was placed in the first class in the first examination 
 ever held in Natural Science. His high position had cost him 
 but a few months' study. I remember his telling us one even- 
 ing at dinner how that day in the Schools 1 he had gone up 
 to an examiner and pointed out an error in the paper of 
 questions. The poor man nervously maintained that he was 
 right, and offered to show his authority. He produced some 
 learned work ; but, as my friend convinced him, he had alto- 
 gether misread it. Oxford, in many of the great branches of 
 learning, and in some respects in all, was indeed far distant in 
 those days from that " real university " of which Ticknor had a 
 vision. There is still not a little for her to do before it shall 
 be completely realized, but in the last forty years, much, very 
 much, has been done. How much, too, has been done in 
 Harvard ! 
 
 It was in the spring of 182 1 that Ticknor, by an appeal to 
 the President, made his first attempt to transform the College. 
 By June, 1825, though he had failed to convince either him or a 
 large majority of the Professors, he had brought over the Cor- 
 poration and the Overseers to many of his views. They were 
 willing to do as much as perhaps it was wise to attempt. They 
 divided the College into departments, in which the under- 
 graduates were to be classified according to their proficiency ; 
 
 1 The examination-rooms. 
 
222 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 they allowed a limited choice of studies, and they admitted to 
 special studies students who had no intention of taking a 
 degree. l The reform failed, as reforms almost always do fail 
 when they are under the management of those who do not 
 wish well to their success. There are few bodies of men who 
 cling more to old ways and old customs than teachers, unless 
 perchance it be their pupils. The undergraduates — at all 
 events the dull and indolent majority — raised the standard of 
 revolt. They, it seemed, liked the good old system by which 
 quick and slow, well-taught and ill-taught, jogged along at the 
 same even pace. Their acts of disorder were so frequent 
 that in less than two years the old system was resumed to 
 nearly its full extent, everywhere but in the Department of 
 Modern Languages. There Ticknor, working his own scheme, 
 met with great success. He describes how in January, 1826, 
 fifty-five Freshmen entered for French, of whom forty-eight 
 were wholly ignorant of the language. The seven who knew 
 something of it he put into an advanced class by themselves ; 
 the rest he broke up into five alphabetical divisions. In 
 March he rearranged them all according to their proficiency. 
 By the end of the year " there were more than five hundred 
 pages between the highest and the lowest divisions, besides a 
 great difference in grammatical progress." Of the seven who 
 had the lead on entering, not a single one kept it. The system 
 succeeded, he maintained, because " the law was administered 
 according to its spirit and intent, by officers who approved it, 
 and it was, from this administration of it, felt by the students to 
 be useful, just, and beneficial." 2 Perhaps, after all, the acts of 
 disorder in the other departments were due more to the preju- 
 dices of the Professors than to the obstinacy of the pupils. 
 
 1 Life of G. Ticknor, I. 362. 2 Lb. I. 367. 
 
xii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 223 
 
 Ticknor's biographer tells us that " he often dwelt with satis- 
 faction on the fact that, in the fifteen years during which he 
 was Professor, he was never obliged to apply to the College 
 Faculty on account of any misdemeanour in the recitation- 
 rooms under his charge, or in his lecture-room ; nor did he 
 ever send up the name of any young man for reproof." The 
 constant opposition which he encountered, whenever he tried 
 to realize his vision of a great university, at last wore out his 
 patience. "As long as I hoped to advance these changes," 
 he wrote, " I continued attached to the College ; when I gave 
 up all hope I determined to resign." 1 
 
 Harvard was impeded in its progress, not only by that 
 inherited narrowness which is common to so many universities, 
 but also by an excessive provincialism unknown in England 
 and Germany. Between Oxford and Glasgow a close connec- 
 tion has existed for nearly two centuries. Adam Smith spent 
 six or seven years of his youth at Balliol College. When 
 Motley followed his countrymen to Gottingen, the Hanoverian 
 University, he had for his fellow-student that Prussian of Prus- 
 sians, Bismarck. But Harvard, so far from being the University 
 of the United States, was not even the University of New Eng- 
 land, and scarcely of Massachusetts. In 1831, B. R. Curtis, 
 writing to Ticknor from Northfield, in the northwest of that 
 State, about the causes of dissatisfaction with Harvard in that 
 part of the country, mentions as " the last, but far from least 
 cause, that it is the College of Boston and Salem, and not of 
 the Commonwealth." 2 Thirteen years later, in 1844, Mr. D. 
 A. White, in an address to the Alumni, maintained that " Har- 
 vard is fast becoming simply a High School for a portion of 
 
 1 Life of G. Ticknor, I. 368, 400. 
 
 2 Life of B. R. Curtis, I. 50. 
 
224 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 our youth of Boston and its vicinity." 1 Even at the present 
 time, with all the width of its studies and the liberality of its 
 government, it has scarcely succeeded in becoming the great 
 National University. A writer in the Hai'vard Graduates 1 
 Magazine for January, 1893, 2 says : "The frequent remark is 
 true, that Harvard is a Massachusetts and New England Col- 
 lege. Although the whole number of Harvard men [he is 
 speaking of graduates] is greater by 800 than the whole num- 
 ber of Yale men, yet in the Middle States Harvard has only 
 1303 and Yale 1986. In the State of New York Harvard has 
 976 graduates and Yale 141 7. In sixteen Western States 
 Harvard has 669 graduates and Yale 915." It was mainly 
 Harvard's Unitarianism which made the outlying States 
 unfriendly towards her. " The West is Orthodox. The States 
 of the West are filled with Congregational, Presbyterian, Bap- 
 tist, Methodist, and Episcopal Churches. To certain Western 
 men the word Unitarian means something almost as harrow- 
 ing as the word Indian meant to their children of forty years 
 ago. Harvard is no longer a Unitarian College, but the repu- 
 tation of Harvard as a Unitarian College still lingers." 3 Even 
 the attempt to free it from religious domination of any kind 
 gave a shock. In 1846, B. R. Curtis, who had been a Judge 
 in the Supreme Court of the United States, and who was a 
 member of the Corporation, wrote : " I am pained to learn, 
 even imperfectly as yet, how lax Mr. Quincy's administration 
 has been of late years, and how lazy many of the Faculty have 
 become. What do you think of a New England College where 
 most of the teachers do not go to church at all, and next to 
 none go in the afternoon ? " 4 This laziness was not due to Presi- 
 
 1 History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, p. 82. 
 
 2 Lb. p. 194. 3 Lb. p. 200. 4 Life of B. R. Curtis, I. no. 
 
xii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 225 
 
 dent Quincy's example, for " during the sixteen years of his 
 administration he was absent from prayers twice only, and then 
 he was detained in Court as a witness." 1 It was, as I have 
 shown, in the hope of overcoming all prejudices connected 
 with religion, that nearly forty years ago the attempt was made 
 to lop off the Divinity School from the University. It is, no 
 doubt, the same hope that so liberally opens the College 
 Chapel and the Lecture Room to divines of every denomina- 
 tion, and that last Commencement conferred the honorary 
 degree of Doctor of Divinity on the Bishop-elect of Massa- 
 chusetts and of Doctor of Laws on a Bishop of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. The prejudice happily seems to be weak- 
 ening. In 1886 only sixteen in every hundred students came 
 from the West and South; by 1892 the proportion of sixteen 
 had risen to over nineteen. Nevertheless, " Massachusetts 
 alone furnishes considerably more than half the total num- 
 ber." 2 
 
 By the foundation of the School of Medicine in 1783, of 
 the School of Law in 181 7, and of the School of Theology in 
 1 8 19, much had been done towards preparing the way for a 
 real University. " In the establishment of our Schools of The- 
 ology, Law, and Medicine," writes Professor Goodwin, 3 " which 
 largely follow German precedents, we made the greatest depart- 
 ure from our English antecedents." It was not so much in 
 their first establishment as in their later modifications that 
 "these three professional Schools have," to use his words, 
 "fairly represented three of the Faculties of the German 
 
 1 An Historical Sketch, etc., p. 45. 
 
 2 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1893, p. 248. There are 
 more than three hundred Catholic students in the University. Lb. June, 
 1894, p. 531. 
 
 3 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 22. 
 
 Q 
 
226 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xii. 
 
 University." The Faculty of Arts and Sciences had, moreover, 
 been greatly widened and strengthened. In the first fifty years 
 of the present century more than twenty professorships in 
 the different schools were established. The work generally 
 demanded of the Professors, new and old alike, was excessive 
 in amount and far too mechanical in quality. They sat behind 
 a schoolmaster's desk many more hours every week than they 
 filled a Professor's chair. While in term time their whole 
 strength was used up, not so much in lecturing as in hearing 
 lessons, their vacations were not long enough to allow of much 
 scholarly work. Longfellow, soon after his appointment, began 
 to complain bitterly of his position, as the following entries in 
 his Journal show: "March 6, 1839. I am weary and sick 
 to-night. College duties called me from my bed before day- 
 light. I hate such over- early rising. The apparition of a tall 
 negro with a lanthorn in my bedroom at such a holy hour dis- 
 turbs the morning vision. Breakfast at six is intolerable." 
 "March 18, 1839. I nave three lectures a week and recita- 
 tions without number. Three days in the week I go into my 
 class-room between seven and eight, and come out between 
 three and four — with one hour's intermission." "September 
 21, 1839. My work here grows quite intolerable, and unless 
 they make some change I will leave them — with or without 
 anything to do. I will not consent to have my life crushed out 
 of me so." 1 He asked for an assistant in the French courses. 
 The Corporation in reply voted : " The Smith Professor ought 
 to continue to give all instruction required in the French 
 language." He refused to submit, and in the end was allowed 
 " a French instructor." 2 
 
 1 Life of H. W. Longfellow, I. 315, 316, 332. 
 
 2 lb. pp. 330, 336. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Elective System. — American Schools. — The Study of Greek at Oxford 
 and Cambridge. — Examinations and Prizes. — The Graduate School. 
 
 THOUGH Ticknor's great scheme of reformation failed 
 for the time, yet the seeds were sown. Retrograde Presi- 
 dents might be appointed such as Jared Sparks, of whom Long- 
 fellow recorded in his Journal : "June 20, 1849. Mr. Sparks's 
 inauguration. His Address very substantial, but retrograde. 
 He spoke of the College only, and not of the University." 1 
 Nevertheless, as time went on, and the men who had been bred 
 under the old system dropped off one by one, their successors, 
 many of whom had studied in Germany, revived the scheme 
 and slowly but steadily carried it forward into every depart- 
 ment. Harvard grew more and more unlike its mother Uni- 
 versity, showing, to use Professor Goodwin's words, that its 
 "chief reforms in teaching and in organization have been in- 
 spired from Gottingen and Berlin rather than from Cambridge 
 and Oxford." 2 It was at something more than the perfection 
 of Harvard as a place of instruction and education that the 
 young reformers aimed. They were bent on making it a great 
 seat of learning, where not only men should be taught all that 
 is already known, but where teachers and students should join 
 in advancing the boundaries of knowledge. 
 
 It was not till the year 1867 that the first great step was taken 
 
 1 Life of H. W. Longfellow, II. 142. 
 
 2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 22, 
 
 227 
 
228 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 towards this noble end. " It was in that year," writes Professor 
 Goodwin, " that the elective system of studies was introduced. 
 It gave a great, even an unexpected, stimulus to freedom of 
 every kind both in teaching and in studying. 1 " The Faculty," 
 to quote President Eliot's words, " set out upon a road which 
 they have steadily followed ever since." 2 It was not till seven- 
 teen years later that the victory was won all along the line. 
 
 The faults of the old system are nowhere more clearly shown 
 than in the following anecdote told of Prescott's College days 
 by his biographer, George Ticknor. " Mathematics seemed to 
 constitute an insurmountable obstacle. He became desperate 
 and took to desperate remedies. He committed to memory, 
 with perfect exactness, the whole mathematical demonstration 
 required of his class, so as to be able to recite every syllable 
 and letter of it as they stood in the book, without comprehend- 
 ing the demonstration at all, or attaching any meaning to the 
 words and signs of which it was composed." At length " he 
 went to his Professor and told him the truth ; not only his 
 ignorance of geometry, and his belief that he was incapable of 
 understanding a word of it, but the mode by which he had 
 seemed to comply with the requisitions of the recitation- 
 room, while, in fact, he evaded them; adding, at the same 
 time, that as a proof of mere industry, he was willing to persevere 
 in committing the lessons to memory." The Professor was a 
 sensible man. " He merely exacted his attendance at the 
 regular hours, from which, in fact, he had no power to excuse 
 him ; but gave him to understand that he should not be troubled 
 further with the duty of reciting. The solemn farce, therefore, 
 of going to the exercise, book in hand, for several months, 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 6. 
 * Annual Reports, 1883-84, p. 21. 
 
xni. HARVARD COLLEGE. 229 
 
 without looking at the lesson, was continued, and Prescott was 
 always grateful to the kindly Professor for his forbearance." 1 
 
 Charles Sumner had no more taste for the study than his 
 friend Prescott. " With downright frankness he said one day 
 in the recitation-room to the Professor who was pursuing him 
 with questions : ' I don't know, you know I don't pretend 
 to know, anything about mathematics.' Quickly, but good- 
 humouredly, the Professor replied, getting the laugh on 
 the pupil, ' Sumner ! Mathematics ! mathematics ! Don't you 
 know the difference? This is not mathematics. This is 
 physics: " 2 
 
 One of the most eminent mathematicians at Oxford told me, 
 that in the days when for the final examination for the Bach- 
 elor of Art's degree some mathematics were required, he had 
 before him an undergraduate who professed to know the first 
 six books of Euclid. Whatever proposition he was called upon 
 to do, he at once without a moment's hesitation drew the fig- 
 ure ; then, leaning back in his chair and fixing his eyes on the 
 ceiling, he rapidly and without error went through the whole 
 demonstration. He had done all that was required of him, 
 and he took his degree ; nevertheless, it was as clear as day 
 that he was as ignorant of Euclid as he had been the day before 
 he was first made to take his stand on this huge tread-mill. 
 I remember how one of the friends of my undergraduate days 
 — a man who has since made a mark in literature — tri- 
 umphantly in the presence of two or three of us committed 
 his copy of Colenso's Arithmetic to the flames the moment he 
 had passed his examination. 
 
 Emerson's ideal university was a place " where attendance 
 at lectures should be voluntary, and where the students' conduct 
 
 1 Life of W. H. Prescott, ed. 1864, p. 21. 2 Life of Sumner, I. 47. 
 
230 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 should be in the hands of the ordinary city police." * As re- 
 gards the attendance at lectures, the approach that has already 
 been made towards his ideal would perhaps have satisfied the 
 philosopher, at least for a time. Professor Goodwin, in his 
 Address to the Phi Beta in 1891, said : " It is perfectly possi- 
 ble (though I sincerely hope it is not probable) that some 
 whom we welcome here to-day for the first time have never 
 studied a word of Greek or Latin, a line of Mathematics, or a 
 page of Philosophy, Logic, or History, during their under- 
 graduate course. And yet these were almost the only studies 
 by which a student could gain admission to our Society fifty 
 years ago." 2 
 
 Before they entered the College they must have studied, at 
 all events, the elements of some of these subjects. But even in 
 the examination which they had to pass for admission 3 a con- 
 siderable freedom of choice is allowed. Elementary Greek, 
 Latin, French, and German are among the subjects required in 
 the ordinary course ; but one of the ancient and one of the 
 modern languages may be omitted by those who pass in a 
 certain number of more advanced subjects. For instance, for 
 Greek and German might be substituted Physics and Chemistry, 
 and a higher knowledge in Latin, French, and Mathematics. 
 A candidate who has failed in some of the subjects, but who 
 has distinguished himself in others, might nevertheless be ad- 
 mitted, on the condition that he makes up his deficiencies 
 during his college course. Till he has done this he cannot 
 advance beyond the Sophomore Class. 4 The candidate, for 
 
 1 Educational Review for April, 1894, p. 317. 
 
 2 The Present and Future of Harv a7- d College, p. 5. 
 
 3 Matriculation is a word not apparently in use in Harvard. 
 
 4 Catalogue, p. 189. 
 
xin. HARVARD COLLEGE. 231 
 
 entrance into the Medical School, must pass in English, Latin 
 (the translation at sight of simple Latin prose), Physics, Chem- 
 istry, and in any one of the following subjects : French, Ger- 
 man, Algebra (through quadratic equations), Plane Geometry, 
 Botany. Those who have taken a degree in any recognized 
 college are examined only in Chemistry. 1 
 
 In the College the only " prescribed studies" — studies in 
 which all alike must share — are for Freshmen, Rhetoric and 
 English Composition (three times a week) ; Chemistry (lect- 
 ures, once a week first half-year) ; German or French for 
 those who do not present both for admission (three times a 
 week) ; for Sophomores and Juniors, Themes and Forensics. 2 
 Seniors (the men in their last year) are left unconstrained. 
 With all this freedom of choice, from every student in every 
 year a certain amount of work is required. The studies are 
 divided into courses and half courses, according to the estimated 
 amount of work in each, and its value in fulfilling the require- 
 ments for the degree of A.B. or A.M." In each of his four 
 years a student must pass through four of these elective courses, 
 receiving instruction three hours a week in each. Instead of 
 one course he may take two half-courses. 3 Besides his " pre- 
 scribed studies," therefore, he attends lectures twelve hours a 
 week during thirty-six weeks of the year for four years in 
 succession. 4 He is not left free to rove from study to study 
 among the three hundred and thirty courses which, in their 
 
 1 Catalogue, p. 373. 
 
 2 " Twelve themes. — Lectures and discussions of themes. — Forensics. 
 
 — Lectures on argumentative composition. — A brief based on a master- 
 piece of argumentative composition. — Four forensics preceded by briefs. 
 
 — Discussions of briefs and of forensics." lb. p. 75. 
 
 3 Catalogue, pp. 64, 205. 
 
 4 Some part of the time each year is occupied in examinations. 
 
232 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 tempting varieties, are spread before him, taking a sip at each, 
 and then leaving it on the morrow " for fresh woods and past- 
 ures new." "The elective system," writes President Eliot, 
 " is not an abandonment of system. It is emphatically a 
 method in education, which has a moral as well as an intel- 
 lectual end, and is consistent with a just authority, while it 
 grants a just liberty." l " The Freshman Class is placed under 
 the special charge of a Committee of the Faculty," composed 
 of twenty-one members, " each member of which acts as adviser 
 to a certain portion of the class. Every Freshman is required 
 to submit his choice of studies to his adviser at or before the 
 beginning of the year ; and his work is to be carried on under 
 the supervision of that officer." Even when the student is out 
 of his Freshman year, " his choice is limited to those studies 
 which his previous training qualifies him to pursue." When 
 once his choice has been made at the beginning of each aca- 
 demic year, he can make no change without permission. 2 In 
 the college slang, a Freshman's adviser is known as his nurse. 
 
 After I had written this chapter I received the following 
 letter from a young Bachelor of Arts, who took his degree last 
 summer magna cum laude. He says : — 
 
 " As you will doubtless have heard and read pretty much all that can 
 be said in favour of the elective system, I shall try to show you a little bit 
 of the other side. 
 
 " A considerable number of men, in choosing their courses, look only to 
 the convenience of the hour set for the recitations [lectures], and select 
 a course because it chances to fall in with their arrangements, without any 
 regard to its subject. Fellows have often come to me and said : ' Tell 
 me a good course in the second half year, I do not want a nine o'clock or 
 an afternoon lecture.' This naturally does not apply to Freshmen, whose 
 choice is limited and directed by advisers. 
 
 1 Annual Reports, 1884-5, P- 4- 2 Catalogue, pp. 206-8. 
 
xin. HARVARD COLLEGE. 233 
 
 " Again, a great many fellows take pains to look for courses known in the 
 College slang as snaps — that is, easy courses. These are now far more 
 difficult to find than they were even when I came to College, five years ago; 
 for it very soon comes to the ears of an instructor, that his course has the 
 reputation of being a snap, and he takes steps to correct the impression. 
 
 " In default of a snap an easy-going fellow will often choose a very 
 largely attended course, knowing that convenient arrangements for cram- 
 ming can be made before examinations. There are a number of men in 
 Cambridge, who make it their business to do such work, either by private 
 instruction, or at rather high rates — generally two dollars [eight shillings 
 and two pence] an hour — or by seminars, that is, a general review of the 
 course, given in the form of a lecture the night before the examination. 
 I have repeatedly seen cases of men receiving a respectable mark, after no 
 further preparation than attendance at a seminar. At these, I am told, 
 the instruction is very efficiently given. 
 
 " There are a certain number of courses, which are taken by a very 
 large majority of every class at some time or other. Men are attracted to 
 them by the personal reputation of the Professor, and by a sort of tradi- 
 tion: every one has taken them, and it is the proper thing to do. Such 
 courses are those given by Professors Norton 1 and Shaler. 2 The exagger- 
 ated attendance at these courses reacts unfavourably upon them; notably 
 those of Professor Norton, where the class is so large that no suitable room 
 can be found to accommodate it. 
 
 " On the other hand, there are certain courses which are taken, I sus- 
 pect, largely from a sense of duty. The best examples of these are the 
 courses in the United States History and elementary Political Economy. 
 These, without being exceedingly difficult, are by no means snaps. I fancy 
 that they are largely taken by the advice of fellows' fathers; not unfre- 
 quently, however, because a man wants to read the newspapers intelli- 
 gently and the like. 
 
 " A great danger of our system, even to industrious fellows, is the ten- 
 dency to early specialization. A boy comes to college with a strong dis- 
 like for, say Mathematics, and is not likely ever to take any courses in that 
 department. On the other hand, he may be rather good at the Classics and 
 fond of general reading, and so he drifts into Greek and Latin, or Litera- 
 ture, and finds on graduation that he has a quantity of special information 
 in one line, that may, or may not, be of use to him, and is wofully de- 
 fective in general information. The burden of the lamentation of all my 
 
 1 Professor of the History of Art. 2 Professor of Geology. 
 
234 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 classmates during their Senior year was, ' Oh, that I had my college 
 course to arrange over again ! ' 
 
 " In spite of all the evil I have said of the elective system, it still appears 
 to me to be infinitely better than that followed in our other universities." 
 
 Professor G. H. Palmer, who was a somewhat late convert 
 to the merits of this system, who in advocating it, describes 
 himself as " that desirable persuader, the man who has himself 
 been persuaded," put the following question "to some fifty re- 
 cent graduates : ' In the light of your present experience, how 
 many of your electives would you change ? ' I seldom," he con- 
 tinues, " find a man who would not change some ; still more 
 rarely one who would change one-half. As I look back on my 
 own college days, spent chiefly on prescribed studies, I see that 
 to make these serve my needs, more than half should have been 
 different. There was Anglo-Saxon, for example, which was re- 
 quired of all, no English literature being permitted. A course 
 in advanced chemical physics, serviceable no doubt to some of 
 my classmates, came upon me prematurely, and stirred so in- 
 tense an aversion to physical study that subsequent years were 
 troubled to overcome it. One meagre meal of philosophy was 
 perhaps as much as most of us Seniors could digest, but I went 
 away hungry for more. . . . Prescribed studies may be ill- 
 judged or ill-adapted, ill-timed or ill-taught, but none the less 
 inexorably they fall on just and unjust. The wastes of choice 
 chiefly affect the shiftless and the dull, men who cannot be 
 harmed much by being wasted. The wastes of prescription 
 ravage the energetic, the clear-sighted, the original — the very 
 classes who stand in greatest need of protection." 1 
 
 At the Commemoration in 1886, the President of the Alumni 
 Association indulged in a boast which, well-founded though it 
 
 1 The New Education, by G. H. Palmer, pp. 14, 37. 
 
xiii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 235 
 
 was, has of late years been a source of mischief to the cause 
 of education in America. Self-complacency is none the less 
 dangerous when it is found in a whole nation. Speaking of the 
 first settlers; he said : " One great principle they contributed 
 to the science of government, and the greatest of states and 
 statesmen might well be proud of the contribution. That the 
 education of the people is a public duty ; that there is a right 
 in every child and youth in the land to its rudiments, and to 
 the opportunity for a larger and more liberal culture ; that the 
 provision for this is a legitimate public expenditure, — are 
 principles of the greatest importance, and for these the world 
 is indebted to them. The monuments to their own just fame 
 which they reared by the establishment of this College and 
 their provision for public schools are not to be found alone in 
 these halls, . . . but equally in the humblest village schoolhouse 
 wherever in the broad land it nestles in the valley or by the 
 wayside." 1 
 
 If it is true that America in public education was once ahead 
 of all the nations, that lead she has lost. Cobden and Bright, 
 were they living, would no longer point to her as an example 
 for England to follow. In elementary education, in which we 
 were so backward, we have now not only caught her up, but 
 outstripped her. In the secondary schools, moreover, where 
 university students receive most of their early training, she lags 
 still farther behind. Instead of advancing, as we have greatly 
 advanced of late, she has not, we are told, even maintained her 
 former standard. 
 
 " It is a notorious and discreditable fact," writes Professor 
 Goodwin, " that our students now come to college at the age 
 of nineteen with no more knowledge than an English, French, 
 
 1 Harvard College, 250th Anniversary, p. 251. 
 
236 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 German, or Swiss boy has at seventeen, and — what is more 
 discreditable still — with no more than our own New England 
 boy had at seventeen fifty or sixty years ago. One of the 
 greatest of the many great services which the President of the 
 University has rendered to the cause of education is the com- 
 plete demonstration which he has given, not only of these facts, 
 but also of their causes. . . . The real waste of time seems 
 to be effected chiefly in schools of the lower grades, where the 
 skill sometimes shown in spreading the elements of learning 
 thin would be laughable were it not pathetic. . . . Boys enter 
 Exeter Academy now older than they once left it for college ; 
 and at this age (sixteen or seventeen) they are required merely 
 to ' have some knowledge of Common School Arithmetic, writ- 
 ing, spelling, and the elements of English Grammar.' I select 
 Exeter as an example, not by way of censure, but hono?-is causa. 
 We are sure that she does her best with the material which 
 comes to her from the lower schools. And this is the best 
 which one of the oldest and most ambitious New England 
 academies can now demand from boys of sixteen and seven- 
 teen, hardly as much as she could once have demanded and 
 obtained from boys of twelve and thirteen." 1 
 
 Two years ago a Committee on Secondary School Studies 
 was appointed by the National Education Association. The 
 Chairman was President Eliot. The Committee nominated 
 nine " Conferences," each composed of men of great experience 
 in the subject which it was to investigate. In the nine reports 
 which they issued, one common desire was found running 
 through all : "That the elements of their several subjects should 
 be taught earlier than they now are." 2 The Latin Conference 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, pp. 36-39. 
 
 2 Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, Washington, 
 1893, P- 14- 
 
xiii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 237 
 
 reported : " In the United States the average age at which the 
 study of Latin is begun is about fifteen years, and probably 
 above the number rather than below it. In England and on 
 the Continent the study is seldom begun so late as at the age 
 of twelve, and much oftener between the ages of nine and eleven ; 
 in other words, from four to six years earlier than with us." x In 
 a footnote on this passage there is seen the curious change 
 which has come over the words Grammar School in America. 
 "In Michigan," we read, "successful experiments have been 
 made in introducing the study of Latin into the Grammar 
 School ; and the trial is also being made in certain Grammar 
 Schools in Massachusetts." In England, Grammar School 
 almost everywhere retains the sense in which Johnson defines 
 it : "A school in which the learned languages are grammatically 
 taught." Such a school no doubt once was "The Faire Gram- 
 mar School" in the American Cambridge, now, by an unhappy 
 change, known as the Washington School. So much has even 
 the tradition of the older education passed away, that " in a 
 recent Convention of Teachers, not far from Boston, a story of 
 some English schoolboys, who appeared to be as far advanced 
 in their studies as most Sophomores or Juniors in New England 
 colleges, was received with many expressions of astonishment 
 and with some of incredulity." 2 
 
 Of this general neglect to lay the foundations of the higher 
 learning at an early age, there are doubtless many causes of which 
 I know nothing. I have been told that many an American 
 father, whose youth had been one hard struggle, is bent on 
 letting his children have what he calls " a good time." " There 
 
 1 Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, Washington, 
 1893, P- 60. 
 
 2 School and College, February, 1892, p. 99. 
 
238 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 must," writes Professor Goodwin, "be a thorough awakening 
 and change of heart on the part of indulgent parents, so that 
 they shall no longer consent to the long periods of idleness 
 which now interrupt their children's study, or, at least, shall no 
 longer encourage and seek to extend them." x Schoolmasters 
 seem almost as weak as parents are indulgent. "Another evil, 
 one peculiar to this country, but a most unnecessary one, is the 
 constant interruption of study by calls of society, and by a 
 thousand other distractions which in other countries would 
 never be allowed to break in upon study in school." 2 But 
 who can look for strictness in schoolmasters, who hold their 
 office by an uncertain tenure, and who might be cast adrift by 
 the votes of a few touchy parents ? " Some of the conditions 
 of the public school service in this country," writes President 
 Eliot, "particularly the uncertain tenure of office, and the fluc- 
 tuating quality of school committees or boards, are unfortunately 
 averse to the creation of a class of highly educated and ex- 
 perienced schoolmasters ; but custom, if not statute, makes 
 some public school offices fairly permanent, the endowed 
 schools of the country already offer a considerable number of 
 desirable posts, and the large cities support many profitable 
 private schools of great merit." 3 That hateful system of "the 
 spoils to the victors," has been allowed, it seems, to cast its 
 taint even on the education of children. 
 
 The money which is laid out freely on schools is not always 
 laid out wisely. " The same profuse liberality which spends a 
 quarter or a half million of dollars on a schoolhouse would be 
 equally ready to equip the school within on a corresponding 
 
 1 School and College, February, 1892, p. 104. 
 
 2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 37. 
 
 3 Reports, 1891-92, p. 16. 
 
xiii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 239 
 
 scale, if it only knew how this could be wisely done." l Bad 
 systems of teaching, moreover, " which are imposed on the 
 teachers by standing rules, and often compel a good teacher to 
 waste nearly as much time as a poor one," are answerable for a 
 great part of the general backwardness. The quick and eager 
 boy is sacrificed to the dull and sluggish, the hard worker to the 
 idler. "Classes often have an amount of work given them 
 for a year which any bright boy or girl can do in three months, 
 while there is no regular provision by which those who can do 
 it in less time shall as a matter of course go on to other work." 2 
 It is this dead level at which the pupils are kept, added to the 
 extraordinary delay in setting them to study Greek and Latin, 
 which brings the most promising lads to the University so far 
 behind our highest standard. There are no scholars of Balliol 
 or of Trinity, Cambridge, to be found among them. "It is 
 now a familiar truth to most of us," writes Professor Goodwin, 
 " that students come to Harvard College at nineteen, in most 
 cases badly prepared to pass an examination which boys of 
 sixteen or seventeen would find easy work in England, Germany, 
 France, or Switzerland. Most of these young men have spent 
 the preceding three, four, or five years in doing boys' work, 
 which should all have been finished before they were sixteen. 
 At their age time is precious, at least in their parents' eyes, and 
 there is generally a struggle to finish their work in the shortest 
 possible time. The preparatory schools, therefore, devote their 
 chief energies to ' fitting ' candidates for the examination, which 
 the College mercifully divides between two years to temper its 
 severity. It is, after all, a mere ' pass ' examination, which 
 seldom gives any opportunity to display real scholarship ; and 
 
 1 School and College, February, 1892, p. 100. 
 
 2 Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 37. 
 
240 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 yet it is held to be a distinction to attain three-quarters of the 
 mark in any subject ; and this attainment is paraded as an 
 * honour/ which reflects glory on the pupil and on the school 
 which sent him." l After giving an account of the classical 
 authors studied in the higher forms at our Westminster School, 
 Professor Goodwin continues : "These boys need very little of 
 this to enter either Cambridge or Oxford, where, in most colleges, 
 hardly as much is required for admission as at Harvard or Yale ; 
 but they know that those who bring only the absolute require- 
 ments for admission are practically excluded from all the better 
 instruction at both Universities, where no scholar of distinction 
 gives his time to ' pass men.' " How little the highest kind of 
 instruction is generally given in the American High Schools is 
 shown by the fact that, u although Harvard draws rather more 
 than one-third of her students from States outside New Eng- 
 land, the whole number of students who have come to her from 
 the High Schools of these States during a period of the last 
 ten years is but sixty-six. Fitting for college is becoming an 
 alarmingly technical matter, and is falling largely into the hands 
 of private tutors and academies." 2 
 
 It is not the duller students at Harvard, or even perhaps the 
 average students, who are below the standard of the same two 
 classes of men at our Universities. Nothing could surpass the 
 grossness of the ignorance of many of the undergraduates who 
 come from our most famous schools. I used to hear one of the 
 first mathematicians in Oxford piteously lament the hard fate 
 which condemned him to try to put a little arithmetic into 
 the heads of young men whose understandings had been hope- 
 
 1 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1893, p. 190. 
 
 2 The New Education, by G. H. Palmer, Professor of Philosophy in 
 Harvard University, p. 75. 
 
xni. HARVARD COLLEGE. 241 
 
 lessly disordered by bad teaching. " Why, sir, do you not use 
 your common sense?" he one day impatiently asked one of 
 his pupils. " I did not know that common sense had anything 
 to do with arithmetic," was the reply. We are not, however, 
 quite so bad as we were. We have made some advance since 
 the day — forty years or so ago — when a promising classical 
 scholar, fresh from Eton, was seen by his tutor adding up a 
 column in which he had entered is. 6d. six times over. He 
 was thus laboriously arriving at the cost of half a dozen pairs of 
 stockings which he had just bought. "Why do you not do it 
 by multiplying? " asked the tutor. " I do not know what you 
 mean," the youth modestly answered. When he was shown the 
 process and had had explained to him all the mystery of the 
 multiplication table, he was so much taken with the extraordi- 
 nary facilities which it afforded, that in less than a week he had 
 it by heart. 
 
 In America, it is clear, a better classification is needed both 
 in the schools and in the Universities. Democratic equality has 
 been allowed, it seems, to invade even the province of the mind. 
 All the realm of learning is in common. It is felony, not to 
 drink small beer, but to ask for stronger ale than most heads 
 can stand. In the school there should be that sixth form which 
 the dull and backward are never suffered to encumber ; and even 
 in this sixth form there should be no absolute equality of study. 
 The ablest scholars, while they did all that was done by the 
 others, should have a wider range of subjects. In the University 
 there should be established that division between " passmen " 
 and " classmen " which is for the benefit of the slow and 
 ignorant almost as much as of the well-trained scholar. He 
 must no longer be made to work on the same lines as the dunce 
 and the idler, merely doing well what they do ill. It is on a 
 
242 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 higher level he should study, and at a greater pace that he should 
 advance. At Harvard, as I am informed by one of the most 
 eminent of the Professors, " it is perfectly possible for the best 
 scholars (in rank) to earn their rank and their scholarships too 
 in courses of study in which the lowest in rank can pass without 
 censure. This is intolerable ; and yet it would require a severe 
 wrench to break us off from it. Our higher courses, it is true, 
 give students an opportunity to study on a higher level ; but we 
 still give our rank and our scholarship to those who stand 
 highest in the general competition ; and it is much easier to 
 stand high in a lower course than in a higher." To attain the 
 highest success the student has to reach the top in each one of 
 the sixteen courses through which he has passed in his four 
 years at College. Whether he has stood on the summit of 
 sixteen mole-hills or sixteen mountains matters not a whit. 
 
 These evils, great as they undoubtedly are, have happily 
 been lessened by the elective system. Real scholars would not 
 sacrifice rank to knowledge, but would choose the higher courses. 
 Thus by a natural process they would classify themselves. It is 
 in the Graduate School, however, free as it is from all artificial 
 rewards, that the Professor who has the cause of learning deeply 
 at heart finds his greatest comfort and hope. In it, I am told, 
 there are students as good as the best in Oxford and Cambridge 
 — not perhaps so ready and versatile, for they have not passed 
 through a long and often harmful course of systematic training, 
 but nevertheless nowise inferior to them in knowledge and in 
 a love of learning. 
 
 In our ancient Universities, though of late years far greater 
 freedom has been given than of old, nevertheless, the battle of 
 " elective studies " — to use the American term — is still going 
 on. At Oxford and at Cambridge no one can take his degree 
 
xiii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 243 
 
 who has not some knowledge of Greek and Latin. At Oxford 
 he can bid farewell to the classics when he has passed his first 
 examination • x but without some Greek and Latin, enough to 
 be a worry, but scarcely enough to be an advantage, the Uni- 
 versity is barred even to the most ardent learner. It is but a 
 short while since, at Cambridge, the attempt to make Greek an 
 optional study was defeated by an overwhelming majority. In 
 neither University does the widest knowledge in one depart- 
 ment make up for total ignorance in another. A student 
 might write as good Latin as Erasmus ever wrote, and might 
 in Mathematics give the promise of a second Newton, or in 
 Natural Science of a second Darwin, — unless he knows his 
 Greek irregular verbs, Oxford and Cambridge will have none of 
 him. Many years ago I had a pupil who was painfully carried 
 on in Latin to the edge of the subjunctive mood. Over it he 
 could never advance one step without coming to the ground. 
 To attempt to force him to learn Greek would have been an 
 act of wanton cruelty. At the end of one summer holidays 
 his mother wrote to tell me that she had met the Honourable 
 
 Mr. W , who was astonished at finding that her son did not 
 
 learn Greek. " Every English gentleman," he said, " learnt 
 Greek." She wished, therefore, that her son should at once 
 begin. Most unwillingly I set the poor dullard to work at the 
 grammar. When he had struggled on as far as the end of the 
 nouns, I told him that he need go no further ; for that now, 
 quite as much as a great many of these English gentlemen, he 
 could say that he had learnt Greek. His mother was, I 
 believe, satisfied. At all events, I heard no more of the 
 
 Honourable Mr. W . It is much to be wished that our 
 
 universities, if they cannot make up their minds to altogether 
 
 1 Responsions, once vulgarly known as the little go, but now as smalls. 
 
244 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 abandoning compulsory Greek, should get over the difficulty 
 by some ingenious fiction. They might, for instance, decree, 
 that in the case of a student who shows unusual proficiency in 
 any great branch of learning, it shall be taken for granted that 
 he does know Greek, and that the examiners shall no more pre- 
 sume to test his knowledge of that language than Don Quixote 
 presumed to test the strength of his patched-up helmet. 
 
 The advantage of this system of elective studies, not only in 
 other branches of learning, but even in Greek, is set forth 
 by a man whose name on such a point carries great weight on 
 both sides of the Atlantic. The Professor of Greek Literature 
 in Harvard University, Dr. Goodwin, the man who, of all 
 others, should have mourned over the change, is loud in its 
 praise. It was in 1856 that he began to teach at Harvard. 
 " In that year, when Greek and Latin were both required until 
 the end of the Junior [third] year, all the work in them was 
 done by five teachers. Now [in 1891], when both are entirely 
 elective from the beginning, eleven or twelve teachers are 
 fully employed. It need hardly be said that the standard of 
 scholarship in every department was at once raised by this 
 reform. It sprang up of itself the moment the old pressure 
 was taken off. . . . I cannot emphasize too strongly that the 
 chief merit of the present elective system is not that it lets 
 students study what they like and avoid what they dislike, but 
 that it opens to all a higher and wider range of study in every 
 field ; in short, it has made really high scholarship possible." l 
 President Eliot, speaking of the system generally, says that " it 
 gives every teacher the precious privilege of having no student 
 in his class who has not freely chosen to be there." 2 This 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 14. 
 
 2 Annual Reports, 1884-85, p. 46. 
 
xin. HARVARD COLLEGE. 245 
 
 privilege, as I have shown, is too often abused by the idlers 
 and the indolent, who at Harvard, just as it happens at Oxford, 
 as far as they can, follow those studies in which, with the least 
 trouble to themselves, they can take their degree. In Harvard 
 the degree is not won, as in the English Universities, by suc- 
 cess in three or four public examinations, conducted by Boards 
 of Examiners, but by the student satisfying his instructor in each 
 one of the eighteen courses through which he passes in his 
 four years. 1 The instructor, I was told, does not altogether go 
 by the answers in the examinations which he himself com- 
 monly holds, but he takes into consideration the difficulties 
 which may have arisen through such circumstances as illness or 
 the death of a near relative. He considers, moreover, a stu- 
 dent's habits — whether of idleness or industry. One of the 
 Professors whom I consulted thought the standard too low; 
 another said that the system works well if each Professor 
 examines his own class. He alone, who had taught them, was 
 competent to test the student's knowledge of what they had 
 been taught. At the end of each course " the standing of each 
 student is expressed, according to his proficiency, by one of 
 five grades." He who, at the close of his career, is found to 
 have attained the highest grade in fifteen courses, takes his 
 degree summa cum laude. The highest grade in nine courses, 
 or the highest or second in fifteen, confers a magna cum 
 laude ; and the highest or second in nine courses confers a 
 cum laude, The summa cum laude, moreover, is conferred 
 on any one who, in a special examination, conducted by a com- 
 mittee of the Faculty, near the close of the Senior year, has 
 shown great proficiency in any department. 2 
 
 Such a system of examinations as I have described does not 
 
 1 Catalogue, p. 209, 2 Lb. pp. 210-215. 
 
246 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 put the students through that severe course through which the 
 highest students of Oxford and Cambridge pass — a course 
 which, so long as it has not strained the mind or weakened the 
 body, admirably fits a man for the severest toil of professional 
 life. He who, with health unimpaired, is placed at Oxford in 
 the First Class in the School of Literoe Humaniores, or at 
 Cambridge high among the Wranglers, is not very likely in 
 after life to be daunted or baffled by any kind of work, how- 
 ever hard or dry it may be. It does to perfection that which 
 it was meant to do. It fits men for the great world — for suc- 
 cess at the Bar and in public life. It turns out great lawyers 
 and great statesmen. It keeps up a constant supply of lead- 
 ing-article writers — men who can rapidly make themselves 
 masters of facts and as rapidly set them forth in a clear and 
 able form. It confers infinite dexterity and readiness. On 
 the other hand, it breaks down a certain number — perhaps 
 not many — by the excessive strain it puts upon them, and it 
 unfits still more for the scholar's life. It is for success, not 
 for knowledge, that the struggle has been, and it is success 
 and not knowledge that far too often is its great reward. " Do 
 not spoil your careers," the late Master of Balliol used to say 
 to his undergraduates. He was the last man to have agreed 
 with Mr. Lowell's notion of a University, that it is " a place 
 where nothing useful is taught." l I have heard of a humorous 
 saying of the Master's that " Diogenes Laertius was a learned 
 man in the worst sense of the word." There are learned men 
 even worse than Diogenes Laertius — men gifted with great 
 powers, who, having by their learning won a high reputation, 
 then turn traders, and instead of increasing knowledge, traffic 
 in it. The Oxford and Cambridge scholars are far less likely 
 
 1 Harvard College, 250th Anniversary, p. 216. 
 
xiii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 247 
 
 than the scholars of a German University to spoil their careers 
 by giving themselves up to the noble, but ill-requited life of a 
 man of learning. It is not in the Schools of either of our 
 great Universities that is awakened that ardent spirit of research, 
 that love of knowledge for its own sake, which is the glory of 
 Germany. Finis coronat opus. The First Class, or the 
 Wranglership, is achieved, and the goal is won. In a way as 
 strange as it is absurd, these high distinctions sometimes chill 
 aspirations. I have heard a great Greek scholar at Oxford 
 pleasantly describe how a First Class man often becomes afraid 
 of his own reputation — the reputation which he gained before 
 his moustache was fully grown. Throughout life he will not 
 give to the world any piece of learned work, lest it should not 
 be found up to the high-water mark of his two and twentieth 
 year. In Harvard there is none of this blaze of glory that 
 comes at the end of a strain prolonged through many years. 
 It is no training-place for mental athletes. But while some- 
 thing thereby is lost, much is gained. There are no false 
 suns to dazzle the scholar's eyes. It is not the goal of a 
 four years' course, with its shining pillars, that lies before 
 him, but the boundless horizon of the great ocean of truth 
 all undiscovered. 
 
 The Fellowships which the University offers to graduates are 
 not prizes for what they have already learnt, but means of sup- 
 port while they learn more. No young Bachelor of Arts is 
 splendidly rewarded for his success in examinations by an 
 annual allowance of two hundred pounds for the next seven 
 years. There is no Derby Scholarship that adds one hundred 
 and fifty-seven pounds to the youth who, in all probability, 
 has already won more money prizes than any man of his stand- 
 ing. There is no Tom Tiddler's ground where the " brilliant " 
 
248 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 men l pick up gold and silver. All the money that is given, is 
 given not to reward students, but to support them in further 
 studies. They either go to work in some foreign university, or 
 far more commonly, they stay on to work in the Graduate School 
 — that School in which Ticknor's vision of the real university 
 is fast taking a substantial and a noble form. It was founded 
 in 1872; but "for many years its development was retarded 
 by illiberal and artificial rules of admission. . . In the 
 meanwhile other universities, unhampered by inconvenient tra- 
 ditions, working on freer lines, and amply provided with fel- 
 lowships of considerable value, with free tuition added, in 
 many cases, to their stipend, outstripped us in the path we were 
 entering." 2 "The enthusiasm," writes Professor Goodwin, 
 " with which our best Universities are now organizing studies 
 for Bachelors of Arts, and the increasing resort of graduates to 
 these centres of learning, show the power of this movement 
 towards true university education, a power which is just begin- 
 ning to be felt. We owe special gratitude to the Johns Hop- 
 kins University at Baltimore, which called public attention to 
 the importance of this movement by its bold experiment of 
 establishing its Graduate School before any other department 
 was organized, and by devoting its chief energies to this from 
 the beginning. In these new Graduate Schools we see the 
 brightest hope for the future American University." 3 
 
 It is in this school that the best of the students not only 
 
 1 At Oxford, and perhaps also at Cambridge, a " brilliant " man is an 
 undergraduate who does " brilliant " work and writes " brilliant " essays. 
 It not unfrequently seems that brilliant must have much the same deriva- 
 tion as lucus — a non lucendo. 
 
 2 From a Circular of Ten of the Me??ibers of the Administrative Board 
 of the Graduate School, dated November 20, 1893. 
 
 3 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 16. 
 
xin. HARVARD COLLEGE. 249 
 
 gather knowledge but help to increase it. Here it is that is 
 done " that work which is the highest duty of every university, 
 without which no institution has ever been called a university by 
 men who weigh their words with full intelligence, — the work of 
 advancing the boundaries of knowledge by the original researches 
 and the joint labours of its professors and its students." 1 
 Graduates of other Universities are flocking to it from all sides ; 
 nay, even Professors, who, having obtained a year's leave of 
 absence, descend from their chairs to take their seats once more 
 on the scholars' bench. Among these ardent students I had the 
 pleasure of meeting the President of one of the smaller Western 
 Universities. Such a body of men as this gives a higher tone 
 and a more vigorous life to the whole University. It inspirits 
 the work of the Professors, who no longer have to travel year 
 after year the same round. It sets a higher standard before 
 the undergraduates, who have in their midst " men full of the 
 spirit of independent work, and of a sense of the value and 
 meaning of learning." It opens up to them other and nobler 
 fields of fame than the baseball and football grounds, and a 
 greatness immeasurably above the greatness of the mightiest 
 of athletes. The rapid growth of this school shows how much 
 it was needed and how excellent are its methods. In 1886 it 
 numbered but sixty-four resident students, and in 1889 ninety- 
 six. It can now boast of two hundred and forty-five. Besides 
 these it has eleven non-resident Fellows, of whom eight are 
 studying in Germany and two in France. " It is already larger 
 than Harvard College was fifty years ago." 2 One thing is want- 
 ing. It has none of that social life which not only throws a" 
 charm over the years spent in a great University, but which 
 
 1 A Circular, etc. 
 
 2 Annual Reports, 1892-93, pp. 28, 1 10 ; Catalogue, p. 287. 
 
250 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 teaches a lesson which cannot be got out of books. "The 
 majority of the students in the Graduate School," writes an 
 Instructor in Philosophy, " are forlorn atoms, and their con- 
 course is too fortuitous ever to make a world. A man who has 
 been only at the Graduate School is not a Harvard man." 1 
 This statement, I am told, is somewhat overdrawn. Groups 
 are formed of the men of each district of the country. The 
 Californians, for instance, would hang together, and so would 
 the students from the maritime provinces. The day, it is to be 
 hoped, will come before long when, in some noble building, 
 they will all share in a common life. 
 
 It was not till 1886 that admission to the school was put on a 
 sound footing. It was in that year that the governing bodies 
 at last shook themselves free from the conviction that none must 
 come to study at a University but those who are candidates for 
 a degree — a conviction which still constrains Oxford. They 
 rose to the thought that at a University it is knowledge which 
 should be sold and not distinctions, and that for all who thirst 
 for it the gates of the fountains of learning should be opened 
 wide. Every one is freely admitted who can show that he has 
 already learnt enough to be able to follow the higher studies. 
 In this school he finds " perfect freedom both in teaching and 
 in learning. It has no degree in course for which all students 
 are candidates, and consequently no paternal supervision of each 
 student's daily work." 2 Many indeed aim at the higher degrees 
 of Master of Arts or of Doctor of Philosophy or Science, for no 
 longer are the higher degrees conferred without examination. 
 Up to 1872, as is still the case in Oxford and Cambridge, the 
 Master's degree had been given after a certain lapse of time 
 
 1 Educational Review, April, 1894, p. 320. 
 
 2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 23. 
 
xiii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 251 
 
 as a matter of course. Now it is only awarded after a further 
 study of one year at the College — a study which may be con- 
 fined to a single department. 1 The Doctor's degree is given 
 " on the ground of long study and high attainment in a special 
 branch of learning, manifested not only by examinations, but by 
 a thesis, which must be presented and accepted before the can- 
 didate is admitted to examination, and must show an original 
 treatment of a fitting subject, or give evidence of independent 
 research." 2 
 
 In America it has hitherto been more difficult even than in 
 England to give men the love of the scholar's life — the life of 
 "plain living and high thinking." On that vast continent the 
 great and rapid conquests of man over wild nature, with the 
 splendid rewards that followed in their train, tempt almost all 
 the ablest men away from the world of thought to the world of 
 action. Even some of the lately-founded universities seem 
 not unlikely, by the aid of their noble endowments, to bear 
 their part in corrupting pure learning. In their eagerness to 
 secure, perhaps not so much the ablest Professors as the fame 
 of having them, they offer needlessly high salaries. During 
 the academical year 1891-92, "seven universities and colleges 
 made ineffectual efforts to draw teachers of Harvard into their 
 service. Four Professors, four Assistant-Professors and six 
 Instructors declined offers of higher pay and higher titles at 
 other institutions." Among the causes "which bind its teach- 
 ers to the University," President Eliot reckons "the dignity 
 and stability of the institution ; the perfect liberty of opinion ; 
 the freedom in teaching — every teacher teaching as he thinks 
 best, except as the more experienced teachers may persuade 
 and inform the less experienced ; the great resources of the 
 
 1 Higher Education, etc., p. 160; Catalogue, p. 297. 2 Lb. p. 299. 
 
252 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xiii. 
 
 University in books and collections, and the fact that any 
 teacher can at any time cause books desirable in his depart- 
 ment to be bought by the Library ; the separation of Cam- 
 bridge from the luxurious society of great cities, etc., . . . 
 and lastly, the consideration which learning and high character 
 traditionally enjoy in Eastern Massachusetts, independent of 
 pecuniary condition." l 
 
 1 Annua/ Reports, 1891-92, p. 8. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Law School. — Nathan Dane. — Joseph Story. — Professor Langdell. 
 — The Law Library. — The Law Review. 
 
 OF her Law School Harvard can be prouder even than of 
 her Graduate School ; for, great as are the hopes given 
 by one, scarcely less great are the performances of the other. 
 In it is done that which in some happier day in our own coun- 
 try will be done, not in the Solicitor's office and in the Barris- 
 ter's chambers, but in Oxford and Cambridge. It is here that 
 the young American receives his legal training. No lawyer of 
 any standing, I was told, would admit into his office a pupil 
 who had not been through the regular course of a University 
 Law School. My legal friends were astonished when I spoke 
 of the fee of three hundred guineas paid in England to a 
 solicitor by his articled clerk, and of one hundred guineas paid 
 to a barrister by his pupil for leave to work in his chambers 
 for a year. In America, so far from there being a fee paid, 
 there is often from the first a salary given, however small. The 
 Harvard Law School, so President Eliot reported eight years 
 ago, " for several summers past has been unable to fill all the 
 places in lawyers' offices which have been offered it for its 
 third-year students just graduating. There have been more 
 places offered, with salaries sufficient to live on, than there 
 were graduates to take them." 1 In these offices there is, of 
 course, none of that license allowed which is the ruin of so 
 
 1 Quoted in The Green Bag for January, 1889, p. 22. 
 253 
 
254 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 many of our students of law at home. The same punctuality 
 and industry are required of the young lawyer as of the com- 
 mon clerks. Not a few graduates in law, on taking their 
 degree, at once begin to practise on their own account. 
 Those, however, who are going to settle outside New England 
 and New York, would have first to master the practice and 
 statute law of the State in which they intend to establish them- 
 selves. " Honour graduates are certain to receive invitations 
 to enter leading law offices in various parts of the country." ' 
 "The citizens of the United States," writes Professor Dicey, 
 " are certainly neither pedants, nor, in general, theorists ; but 
 at the present moment English law is taught, and admirably 
 taught, in the colleges of America. . . . The practising counsel 
 of Massachusetts would undoubtedly tell you that the best 
 preparation for practice in court is study in the lecture-rooms 
 of Professor Langdell and his colleagues of Harvard Uni- 
 versity." - 
 
 The Law School was founded in 1817, but down to 1829 it 
 was little more than a shadow. In that year Nathan Dane 
 endowed a new professorship from the money which he had 
 made by his " once famous Abridgment of American Law." 
 Forty-two years earlier he had drafted that beneficent Ordi- 
 nance by which the whole of the great Northwest was kept 
 free from the taint of slavery. In his old age he not only 
 founded the professorship, but he founded it on the condition 
 that Judge Story first filled the chair. Even he, full of hope 
 though he was, could hardly have foreseen the full measure of 
 the benefit of this foundation and this condition, which were 
 
 1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 68. 
 
 2 Can English Law be Taught at the Universities ? by A. V. Dicey, 
 Vinerian Professor of English Law in the University of Oxford, 1883, p. 28. 
 
xiv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 255 
 
 to turn an eminent judge into a great jurist. If Story had 
 never filled a Professor's chair, in all likelihood we should never 
 have had his Conflict of Laws, his Equity Jurisprudence, and 
 his Law of Agency, — that " series of works which are the best 
 of their kind in the English language." 1 During the whole of 
 the year before his appointment " there had not been," I quote 
 Story himself, "a single student. There was no Law Library ; 
 but a few and imperfect books being there." One long vaca- 
 tion he wrote to the most brilliant of his pupils, Charles 
 Sumner : — 
 
 " I have given nearly the whole of last term, when not on 
 judicial duty, two lectures every day, and even broke in upon 
 the sanctity of the dies non juridicus, Saturday." Of this 
 daring innovation we have an account from the author of Two 
 Years before the Mast. The judge used to make his " boys " 
 — " ' my boys ' he always called his pupils " — argue cases 
 before him. " To compel a recitation on Saturday afternoon," 
 writes Dana, " would have caused a rebellion. If a Moot-court 
 had been forced upon the Law School, no one would have 
 attended. At the close of a term there was one more case than 
 there was an afternoon to hear it in, unless we took Saturday. 
 Judge Story said : " ' Gentlemen, the only time we can hear this 
 case is Saturday afternoon. This is dies non, and no one is 
 obliged or expected to attend. I am to hold Court in Boston 
 until two o'clock. I will ride directly out, take a hasty dinner, 
 and be here by half-past three o'clock, and hear the case, if you 
 are willing.' He looked round the school for a reply. We felt 
 ashamed, in our own business, where we were alone interested, 
 to be outdone in zeal and labour by this aged and distinguished 
 
 1 Can English Lazv be Taught at the Universities? by A. V. Dicey 
 Vinerian Professor of English Law in the University of Oxford, 1883, p. 29. 
 
256 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 man, to whom the case was but child's play, a tale twice told, 
 and who was himself pressed down by almost incredible labours. 
 The proposal was unanimously accepted. The judge was on 
 the spot at the hour, the school was never more full, and he sat 
 until late in the evening, hardly a man leaving the room." l 
 
 Among the pupils in 1838 was Lowell. " I am reading Black- 
 stone," he wrote, "with as good a grace and as few wry faces as I 
 may." Eight months later he could write more cheerfully. "I 
 begin to like the law. And therefore it is quite interesting. I am 
 determined that I will like it, and therefore I do" 2 On Story's 
 death, in 1S45, tne school numbered one hundred and sixty- 
 five students, who had flocked to his teaching not only from 
 New England, but from almost every State in the Union. 
 During the sixteen years in which he filled the chair he gave 
 to the world all his treatises on the law, filling no less than 
 thirteen volumes. He had hoped that his vacant chair would 
 be filled by Charles Sumner ; but that young orator had shown 
 far too radical a spirit to be acceptable to Harvard as it was in 
 those days. 3 Story's colleagues and successors were many of 
 them men of great eminence. Among them were Simon Green- 
 leaf, Joel Parker, Benjamin R. Curtis, Theophilus Parsons, and 
 Emory Washburn. Nevertheless, in 186.9, twenty- four years 
 after Story's death, the number of students had fallen to one 
 hundred and fifteen. In January, 1870, a man was appointed 
 to the chair which Story had first filled, who has made as deep a 
 mark as the great jurist himself, not only on the Harvard Law 
 School, but on the theory and practice of legal education 
 generally. He was one of the great lawyers, who, either by the 
 
 1 Life of Joseph Story, II. 38, 299, 320, 554. 
 
 2 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 33, 45. 
 
 3 Life of Charles Sumner, III. II. 
 
xiv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 257 
 
 tmkindness of fortune or by the want of one or more of the 
 lower qualities of the mind, had never been a great advocate. 
 " At the bar of New York, of which for more than fifteen years 
 he had been a member, not many could be found who had even 
 heard of him ; he had rarely been seen in the Courts." 1 Presi- 
 dent Eliot, in his address on the Law School Day at the great 
 Commemoration in 1886, gives the following account of his 
 appointment : " I remembered that when I was a Junior in 
 College, in the year 1851-52, and used to go often in the early 
 evening to the room of a friend who was in the Divinity School, 
 I there heard a young man who was making the notes to 
 Parsons on Contracts talk about law. He was generally eating 
 his supper at the time, standing up in front of the fire and eating 
 with good appetite a bowl of brown bread and milk. I was a 
 mere boy, only eighteen years old ; but it was given to me to 
 understand that I was listening to a man of genius. In the 
 year 1870 I recalled the remarkable quality of that young man's 
 expositions, sought him in New York, and induced him to be- 
 come Dane Professor. So he became Professor Langdell. He 
 then told me, in 1870, a great many of the things he has told 
 you this afternoon. He told me that law was a science ; I was 
 quite prepared to believe it. He told me that the way to study 
 a science was to go to the original sources. I knew that was 
 true, for I had been brought up in the science of chemistry 
 myself; and one of the first rules of a conscientious student of 
 science is never to take a fact or a principle out of second-hand 
 treatises, but to go to the original memoir of the discoverer of 
 that fact or principle. Out of these two fundamental propo- 
 sitions — that law is a science, and that a science is to be 
 studied in its sources — there gradually grew, first, a new 
 
 1 The Green Bag, January, 1889, p. 17. 
 
258 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 method of teaching law ; and, secondly, a reconstruction of the 
 curriculum of the school." 1 
 
 The method of construction pursued by Story and Greenleaf 
 and their successors had been " oral lectures illustrating and 
 explaining a previously prescribed text-reading, with more or 
 less examination thereon." No care had ever been taken at 
 any time to exclude those whose ignorance unfitted them for 
 the teaching of a university. 2 There was only one course of 
 studies, and it lasted two years. The students, therefore, of 
 every second year entered on it when it was half-way through. 
 " This system," writes President Eliot, " was only justified by 
 poverty, and the convenient, though unsound, theory that there 
 is neither beginning nor end to the law, neither fundamental 
 principles nor natural development." 3 The ignorant students 
 were henceforth to be excluded by an entrance examination in 
 Latin or French, in Blackstone's Commentaries (exclusive of 
 editor's notes) , and in English spelling and composition. Those, 
 however, who had taken the degree of Bachelor of Arts at any 
 recognized university were admitted without any test. The 
 course of instruction was lengthened from eighteen months, first 
 to two years and later on to three. No one can enter on the 
 studies of the second year who has not passed his examinations 
 in the studies of the first year, or on the studies of the third 
 year who has not passed in the studies of the second year. 
 Nevertheless, the degree of Bachelor of Laws is conferred after 
 a two years' residence on those who pass in the entire course of 
 three years. Cum laude is added to the degree of all who 
 show " distinguished excellence." Twelve such distinctions are 
 
 1 Harvard University, 250th Anniversary, p. 97. 
 
 2 The Green Bag, pp. 17, 18. 
 
 8 Higher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 135. 
 
xiv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 259 
 
 on the average gained each year. In 1893, seventy-three 
 students in all graduated. 1 
 
 Far beyond all the other changes which followed on Pro- 
 fessor Langdell's appointment, was the revolution made in 
 the method of teaching. What this revolution was we have 
 described in his own words. In his address at the Commemo- 
 ration of 1886, he said : — 
 
 " It was indispensable to establish at least two things : first, that law is 
 a science; secondly, that all the available materials of that science are 
 contained in printed books. If law be not a science, a university will 
 best consult its own dignity in declining to teach it. If it be not a 
 science, it is a species of handicraft, and may best be learned by serving 
 an apprenticeship to one who practises it. If it be a science, it will 
 scarcely be disputed that it is one of the greatest and most difficult of 
 sciences, and that it needs all the light that the most enlightened seat of 
 learning can throw upon it. Again, law can only be learned and taught 
 in a university by means of printed books. If, therefore, there are other 
 and better means of teaching and learning law than printed books, or if 
 printed books can only be used to the best advantage in connection with 
 other means, — for instance, the work of a lawyer's office, or attendance 
 upon the proceedings of Courts of Justice, — it must be confessed that 
 such means cannot be provided by a university. But if printed books are 
 the ultimate sources of all legal knowledge; if every student who would 
 obtain any mastery of law as a science must resort to these ultimate 
 sources; and if the only assistance which it is possible for the learner to 
 receive, is such as can be afforded by teachers who have travelled the same 
 road before him — then a university, and a university alone, can furnish 
 every possible facility for teaching and learning law. I wish to emphasize 
 the fact that a teacher of law should be a person who accompanies his pupils 
 on a road which is new to them, but with which he is well acquainted from 
 having often travelled it before. What qualifies a person, therefore, to teach 
 law is not experience in the work of a lawyer's office, not experience in deal- 
 ing with men, not experience in the trial or argument of causes, — not ex- 
 perience, in short, in using law, but experience in learning law; not the 
 experience of the Roman advocate or of the Roman praetor, still less of the 
 Roman procurator, but the experience of the Roman juris-consult." 2 
 
 1 Catalogue, pp. 346-49, 5 1 1. 
 
 2 Harvard University, 250th Anniversary, p. 85. 
 
260 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 From an article on the Harvard Law School, by Mr. Louis D. 
 Brandeis, one of the foremost among the younger lawyers of 
 Boston, I extract the following account of the method by 
 which Professor Langdell " teaches the student to think in a 
 legal manner in accordance with the principles of the particu- 
 lar branch of the law." Mr. Brandeis begins by quoting the 
 following passage from the Professor's Select Cases on Con- 
 tracts, the first of a series published for the use of the School. 
 
 " Law, considered as a science, consists of certain principles or doc- 
 trines. To have such a mastery of these as to be able to apply them with 
 constant facility and certainty to the ever-tangled skein of human affairs, 
 is what constitutes a true lawyer; and hence to acquire that mastery 
 should be the business of every earnest student of the law. Each of these 
 doctrines has arrived at its present state by slow degrees; in other words, 
 it is a grow tli, extending in many eases through centuries. This growth is 
 to be traced in the main through a series of cases; and much the shortest 
 and best, if not the only way of mastering the doctrine effectually is by 
 studying the cases in which it is embodied. But the cases which are use- 
 ful and necessary for this purpose at the present day bear an exceedingly 
 small proportion to all that have been reported. The vast majority are 
 useless and worse than useless for any purpose of systematic study. More- 
 over, the number of fundamental legal doctrines is much less than is com- 
 monly supposed; the many different guises in which the same doctrine is 
 constantly making its appearance, and the great extent to which legal 
 treatises are a repetition of each other, being the cause of much misap- 
 prehension. If these doctrines could be so classified and arranged that 
 each should be found in its proper place, and nowhere else, they would 
 cease to be formidable from their number." 
 
 "These books of cases," Mr. Brandeis goes on to say, "are the tools 
 with which the student supplies himself as he enters upon his work. 
 Take, for instance, the subject of 'Mutual Assent' in contracts. A score 
 of cases covering a century, contained in about one hundred and fifty 
 pages and selected from the English reports, the decisions of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, and the highest courts of New York, Pennsyl- 
 vania, and Massachusetts, arranged in chronological order, show the devel- 
 opment of its leading principles. Before coming to the lecture-room, the 
 student, by way of preparation, has studied — he does not merely read — 
 say from two to six cases. In the selection of cases used as a text-book. 
 
xiv. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 261 
 
 the head notes appearing in the regular reports are omitted, and the 
 student, besides mastering the facts, has endeavoured for himself to deduce 
 from the decision the principle involved. In the class-room some student 
 is called upon by the Professor to state the case, and then follows an 
 examination of the opinion of the court, an analysis of the arguments of 
 counsel, a criticism of the reasoning on which the decision is based, a 
 careful discrimination between what was decided and what is a dictum 
 merely. To use the expression of one of the Professors, the case is " evis- 
 cerated." Other students are either called upon for their opinions or 
 volunteer them, — the Professor throughout acting largely as moderator. 
 When the second case is taken up, material for comparison is furnished; 
 and with each additional authority that is examined, the opportunity for 
 comparison and for generalization grows. When the end of the chapter 
 of cases is reached, the student stands possessed of the principles in their 
 full development." 1 
 
 Mr. Brandeis describes "the ardour of the students. Pro- 
 fessor Ames, writing of the School ten years ago, said : ' Indeed, 
 one speaks far within bounds in saying that the spirit of work 
 and enthusiasm which now prevails is without parallel in the 
 history of any department of the University.' What was true 
 then is at least equally true now. The students live in an 
 atmosphere of legal thought. Their interest is at fever heat." 
 One of the Professors informed me that nine out of ten of his 
 pupils study hard. If they had had a period of idleness at the 
 University, it was in their Arts course. The entrance into the 
 Law School they looked upon as the entrance into the real 
 work of life. The idlers are weeded out each year by an 
 examination ; but of these there are always very few. 
 
 There is the freest access to a noble Law Library of thirty- 
 three thousand volumes. On it in each year between 1870 and 
 1890 about three thousand dollars (^613) were spent. Great 
 as this annual expenditure was, it has not been found sufficient. 
 In the last three years it has been nearly doubled. 2 In 1892 
 
 1 The Green Bag, January, 1889, p. 19. 2 Catalogue, p. 351. 
 
262 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 it was thought needful to add " another copy of every set of 
 English and American reports which is used to any consider- 
 able extent." In the summer vacation of that year the Libra- 
 rian took a trip to England and purchased nearly fourteen 
 hundred volumes of English reports. Before long "the Library 
 will have three copies of all the more important sets of English 
 and American reports, and of several sets it will have four 
 copies." 1 "We have constantly inculcated the idea," said 
 Professor Langdell, "that the Library is the proper workshop 
 of Professors and students alike ; that it is to us all that the 
 Laboratories of the University are to the chemists and physi- 
 cists, all that the Museum of Natural History is to the zoolo- 
 gists, all that the Botanical Garden is to the botanists." 2 
 
 In two different courts the students are trained both in law 
 and in arguing, — in Moot Courts held by the Professors, and 
 in Club Courts conducted entirely by the students. "The 
 Club Courts have generally two sets of members — the Junior 
 Court consisting of eight members selected from the first-year 
 Class, and the Senior Court consisting of nine members selected 
 from the second-year Class. At each sitting a case is argued 
 by two of the members as counsel, the rest sitting as judges. 
 In the Junior Court a member of the Senior Court sits as Chief 
 Justice. The cases are regularly presented upon the pleadings ;. 
 briefs are prepared, arguments made, and opinions — some- 
 times in writing — delivered by each of the judges. The cases 
 are prepared with quite as much thoroughness as any work 
 that is done at the School." 3 
 
 Nothing better shows the excellence of the teaching than the 
 
 1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 143. 
 
 2 Harvard University, 250th Anniversary, p. 86. 
 
 3 The Green Bag, p. 23. 
 
xiv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 263 
 
 position held by the Harvard Law Review. It is managed 
 wholly by the students ; their notes on legal topics are, I am 
 told, some of its best features. Among its contributors it 
 reckons not a few of the foremost legal thinkers both of Eng- 
 land and America. It is about to enter on its eighth volume ; 
 it has accumulated a reserve fund, and is in a perfectly sound 
 financial condition. 
 
 The Faculty is composed of six Professors, two Assistant- 
 Professors, two Lecturers and one Instructor, by whom forty- 
 eight lectures are delivered every week. They are not men 
 engaged in other occupations, who dwell at a distance, and 
 hurry down from time to time to give one or two hasty lect- 
 ures. They all live close to the College, and " they almost 
 without exception devote their entire time to the work of the 
 School, and the personal needs of the students." " I have 
 seen," said President Eliot, " four Professors added to the 
 Faculty of Law since Professor Langdell's accession ; if genius 
 be a remarkable capacity for work, they are all men of 
 genius." l 
 
 It is the great desire, not only of the Governing Bodies in 
 general, but also of the Faculty of the Law School, that all 
 who study in it should first have graduated in Arts. In Oxford 
 so strongly is it felt by some of the Law Professors that the 
 School of Literal Humaniores best disciplines the mind, that, 
 if a man destined for the Bar has to choose between it and the 
 Law School, they always advise him to follow the wider instead 
 of the narrower course. He had better, they think, learn all 
 his law in a barrister's chambers than miss the best part of a 
 liberal training. Professor Goodwin, with all his admiration 
 of the learning and the research of German universities, yet 
 
 1 Harvard University, 250th Anniversary, p. 98. 
 
264 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 sees how in regard to " a purely liberal education " they are 
 surpassed by those of England and America. " A German," 
 he writes, " passes by a single leap from the life of a school- 
 boy to that of a man who is (or ought to be) beginning the 
 serious work of life. He knows no period of transition such 
 as is open to the English and American youth, when his ship is 
 loosed from shore but is still in harbour, when he is in the 
 world but not exactly of the world, when he has a right to 
 spend his time in becoming acquainted with the great heritage 
 which has been bequeathed him before he is called to admin- 
 ister it and improve it for his successors. To this habit of our 
 English race of taking a period of rest combined with most 
 active work, of active work free from the responsibilites of real 
 life, between boyhood and manhood, we owe much that gives 
 the English and American college-bred man his distinct char- 
 acter, which often makes him a more cultivated man than one 
 of a different stamp with perhaps far greater learning." 1 
 
 True as this is, unless our students who are intended for the 
 Bar or the Solicitor's Office stay on at our universities and 
 study law as a science, their education will always be maimed 
 and imperfect. We must follow in Professor Langdell's steps, 
 and establish a School in which that natural impatience which 
 comes over the best minds, by the end of their undergraduates' 
 course, to enter on the real work of life, shall be satisfied. To 
 do this, our short terms and frequent vacations must come to 
 an end. The real work of life is not carried on in twenty-five 
 weeks of each year divided into three periods, separated by 
 vacations, the shortest of which lasts at least a month. There 
 must be, as at Harvard, the long sweep of work from the end 
 of September to the end of June, broken only by a few days' 
 
 1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 33. 
 
xiv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 265 
 
 rest at Christmas and Easter. The gain will be twofold — a 
 gain in the steadiness of work and in its amount. By the end 
 of his three years' course the student will have had, not 
 seventy-two weeks of study broken up into nine periods, but 
 one hundred and eleven weeks divided into three. When 
 once we have a well-organized School and a large staff of Pro- 
 fessors all inspired with that spirit which animates these New 
 England teachers, and all gifted with that genius which consists 
 in a remarkable capacity for work, we shall soon have a body 
 of students equally inspired and equally gifted. The School 
 will grow with the rapidity of which Harvard boasts ; in the 
 ten years between 1882 and 1892, it saw its students of law 
 increase in number from one hundred and thirty-one to three 
 hundred and ninety-four. Stricter measures which were taken 
 two years ago to exclude incompetent men have, for a time, 
 caused a slight check ; in the present year there are but three 
 hundred and fifty-three on the list. Of these rather more than 
 seven in every ten have taken a degree in Arts. In 1891-92, 
 for the first time, the Harvard graduates were outnumbered 
 by the graduates of all the other universities combined. Yale 
 sent twenty-one. The average age at entrance was a few weeks 
 under twenty-three. 1 In America, as in England, youths at the 
 present day make too long a stay at school, entering upon 
 their university life at least a year too late. 
 
 Daniel Webster, in one of his speeches, looks forward to the 
 time when America shall repay to Europe the great debt of 
 learning which she owes her. The repayment to England has 
 already begun ; all that we have to do is to stretch out our 
 hands and to gather in the fruits of Harvard's experience in 
 the method of teaching law. 
 
 1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 69. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Lawrence Scientific School. — Special Students. 
 
 THE growth of the Scientific School has been more rapid 
 even than that of the Law School. " It has to-day 
 twenty times as many students as it had seven years ago." In 
 1886 they were but fourteen in number; now they are two 
 hundred and eighty. 1 It was founded in 1847 by a noble gift 
 of Mr. Abbott Lawrence, but it was long in taking root. It 
 was in the department of Natural History that it made its first 
 great start. "Nothing," says Professor Goodwin, "rouses a 
 stronger opposition to any scheme for university reform than 
 the charge that it is foreign." 2 Happily there is not appa- 
 rently the same jealousy of foreigners ; for it was the Swiss 
 Agassiz, who had been trained in the best methods of the great 
 German universities, who by his genius, his ardent love of 
 knowledge and his persuasive eloquence, stirred up the citizens 
 of Boston and the Legislature of the Commonwealth to found 
 the University Museum. It would have been in itself a noble 
 monument to his memory, but to render it still worthier his son, 
 Professor Alexander Agassiz, has laid out on it at his own cost 
 more than a quarter of a million of dollars. "There is," says 
 President Eliot, " no institution in the world which offers richer 
 and more varied opportunities for the study of Natural History 
 
 1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 7. 
 
 2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 21. 
 
 266 
 
CHAP. XV. HARVARD COLLEGE. 267 
 
 than the Lawrence Scientific School." x Nevertheless, owing 
 apparently to defects in organization, the number of students 
 had of late years fallen away. Up to 1890 it had been " as 
 distinct a professional school as the Law School or the Medical 
 School. Since its consolidation with the other two depart- 
 ments under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, it has grown 
 with great rapidity. Its students work side by side under one 
 Faculty, play on the same teams, row in the same boats, and 
 mingle freely in the same societies." 2 Of the two hundred 
 and eighty students, one hundred and forty-two entered with 
 the intention of taking the degree of Bachelor of Science, 
 while the rest either resorted to the School for the sake of 
 pursuing some particular study, or did not propose to go 
 through the four years' course. 3 The entrance examination is 
 easier for the young students of Science than for one who 
 intends to take his degree in Arts. On the other hand, when 
 he is once in, more work is required of him, and more is freely 
 done. " As a rule," says the President, " there is more of the 
 spirit of hard work in the Scientific Schools or Courses than 
 in the Colleges or College Departments of Universities. The 
 motive of earning a livelihood presses more constantly, and 
 the students feel more distinctly that they are beginning their 
 life work." 4 The candidates for a degree work at one of 
 "seven compactly arranged groups of subjects." All either at 
 entrance or, if they prefer, at the end of their course must 
 pass an examination in English. Those taking their degree 
 this year have to satisfy the examiners that they have "read 
 
 1 History of Higher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, pp. 1 17-18. 
 
 2 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 59. 
 
 3 Catalogue, p. 246; Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 104. 
 
 4 Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 22; lb. 1892-93, p. II. 
 
268 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 intelligently Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar and Merchant of 
 Venice, Scott's Lady of the Lake, Arnold's Sohrab a?id Rustum, 
 the " Sir Roger de Coverley Papers " in The Spectator, Macau- 
 lay's Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham, Emerson's Ameri- 
 can Scholar, Irving's Sketch-Booh, Scott's Abbot, Dickens's 
 David Copperfeld." 1 
 
 This School is open to undergraduates in general ; some of 
 the courses counting for the degree, either of Bachelor of Arts 
 or of Bachelor of Medicine. Dr. Goodale, Professor of 
 Natural History, told me that last year two hundred students 
 in all attended his classes on Botany. His lecture-room is 
 admirably fitted up. In one part of the Museum he showed 
 me long cases full of wonderful imitations of plants in glass, 
 so perfect that they stand the test of the microscope. They 
 are the productions of a father and son named Blaschka, who 
 belong to a family long settled in Germany, which for many 
 generations has produced skilful workers in glass. I was told 
 that when the son paid a visit to America, and saw in the Har- 
 vard Museum these flowers thus displayed, and his name and 
 his father's inscribed on the walls, the tears came into his eyes. 
 One of the Professor's pupils had lately made a minute exami- 
 nation of the weeds on a small plot of ground. Scarcely a 
 single one of nearly seventy varieties was of American origin. 
 The European seeds get as great a mastery over the native 
 seeds as the white men got over the red. 
 
 For the last twenty years, during six weeks of the Long 
 Vacation, the College has been open to students, whether they 
 are members of the University or outsiders. The Summer 
 Courses, as they are called, include instruction in German, 
 French, English, Anglo-Saxon, engineering, physics, chemistry, 
 
 1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 58; Catalogue, p. 247. 
 
xv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 269 
 
 botany, geology, mathematics, and physical training. In the 
 Medical School, moreover, "courses in many branches of 
 practical and scientific medicine are given." Last year three 
 hundred and forty-six students in all attended, of whom a large 
 proportion were teachers. The summer school vacation, it 
 must be remembered, is much longer in the United States than 
 in England. Of these three hundred and forty-six, two hun- 
 dred and forty-three were men and one hundred and three 
 were women. 1 I doubt whether at Oxford, in the Long Vaca- 
 tion Extension Lectures, the men form a tenth part of the 
 whole number. The work done at Harvard spreads over a 
 much longer time and is more serious. There is nothing of a 
 literary picnic about these Summer Courses. The teaching is 
 mainly done by " the younger instructors and assistants who 
 have become familiar with the ground covered during their 
 regular labours in term-time under the guidance of the older 
 teachers in the same department. A few Assistant- Professors 
 take part in the work ; but no Professors — except perhaps by 
 giving a few lectures during the progress of some course in which 
 they are interested." Some of the instruction given is of a 
 high order. Thus in history this year one of the Courses " is 
 open only to experienced teachers and students already well 
 prepared in American History. They will do daily work in 
 the Library on a special subject under the direction of the In- 
 structor." The ordinary fee for each Course is twenty dollars 
 {£4. t. 8.), but for one or two of the subjects so much as thirty 
 or even thirty-five dollars (£6. 2. 6. ; £>?. 3- o.) is charged. 2 
 
 1 Of the 354 names in the Catalogue, 249 are those of men and 105 of 
 women. Eight are inserted in more than one list. I have assumed that 
 of these eight six were men and two women. Catalogue, pp. 446, 538. 
 
 2 Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 39 ; Catalogue, pp. 118, 401, 445. 
 
270 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Harvard, in her eagerness to promote learning, freely receives 
 students who for want of means or time cannot go through the 
 ordinary four years' course, but who, nevertheless, wish to pursue 
 some particular study at a university. These men are known 
 as Special Students. Before admittance they must give proof 
 that they have learning enough to profit by the teaching. In 
 their work they are under the control of the Committee of 
 Advisers, and in respect to discipline they are on the same 
 footing as the ordinary undergraduates. A watchful eye has to 
 be kept over this department lest it should be used by those 
 who look upon a university as a great and glorious play-ground. 
 Idlers are sent away. To those who do well Certificates of 
 Proficiency are given on Commencement Day. This year there 
 are one hundred and sixty-two of these students. 1 I hope that 
 the day will shortly come when in our English Universities also 
 we shall freely admit in every department the eager learner, 
 however great may be his ignorance of certain subjects. When 
 I consider the scores and scores of young men who throng the 
 Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, who are no more fit to be 
 in a university than a cow is fit to be in a garden, I am amazed 
 at the care which is taken to bar out many a promising student. 
 This barrier is raised by those who have never looked upon a 
 university but as a place where a degree is earned, and on a 
 degree but as a distinction inseparably connected with some 
 knowledge of Greek and Latin. In their eyes education is 
 nothing but a narrow and well-beaten track which all men have 
 followed or ought to have followed. Those who have travelled 
 along it, whether freely or cudgelled at every step, are alone fit 
 for the liberal studies of a university. They may be dull, gross, 
 lazy, haters of knowledge, scorners of learned men ; their chief 
 
 1 Catalogue, pp. 187, 207; Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 75. 
 
xv. HARVARD COLLEGE. 271 
 
 delight may be in the strength of their own or of other men's 
 legs ; they may, unless under compulsion, read nothing but the 
 sporting newspapers ; they may be ever startling the studious 
 cloisters by their boisterous ignorance ; " flown with insolence 
 and wine," they may do shameful wrong to ancient seats of 
 learning, nevertheless before them the barriers have been 
 rightly lowered, because in the ten long years spent at school 
 they have been birched into Greek and Latin enough to carry 
 them, with the help of the " crammer," through their examina- 
 tions. While such men not only disgrace the university but 
 lower the general standard, others are shut out who would have 
 brought to it new interests and modes of life and fresh thoughts. 
 How often does it happen that a young man who, like Gold- 
 smith, flowers late, suddenly wakens up to all the delight and 
 hopefulness of knowledge ! Some one study above all he longs 
 to pursue. He seeks such aid as he can get, and learns all that 
 he can from books and chance instructors. The time comes 
 when he feels the need of all the means of learning which a 
 great university alone can give. He strives to enter, but he is 
 coldly repulsed. He is told that if in his ignorance of Greek or 
 Latin, or perchance of our English arithmetic with its ridiculous 
 tables of weight and measures, he were let in, a blow would be 
 struck at the whole system of public education, over which the 
 University presumes to watch with all the conceit of a hen over 
 a brood of ducklings. Surely it will be time enough to exclude 
 those who only wish to learn something and not everything 
 when all have been excluded who so far from wishing to learn 
 everything learn nothing. Let every one who wishes to enter 
 the University satisfy the Faculty of any single department that 
 he has knowledge and capacity enough to profit by the teaching, 
 the door should at once be flung open to him. If he shows him- 
 
272 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xv. 
 
 self unworthy of his great opportunities, let him be quickly sent 
 packing. When once he is inside, mixing with men of great 
 and varied knowledge, he will see his sky widening on all sides 
 and will find fresh longings for knowledge springing up in him. 
 He should be placed on the same footing as the other under- 
 graduates — entitled to enjoy the same privileges and advant- 
 ages, and subject to the same discipline. If the course of 
 studies that he pursues is too narrow, let no degree be con- 
 ferred upon him. Nevertheless, as at Harvard, he should re- 
 ceive a certificate of proficiency, which should testify, not only 
 that he has acquired a certain amount of knowledge, but 
 — which is of scarcely less importance — that he has acquired 
 it during his residence in a learned society. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Radcliffe College. — The Harvard Annex. 
 
 ON April 23, 1849, Longfellow recorded in his Journal: 
 " We have had at Faculty meeting an application from 
 a young lady to enter College as a regular student." l Who 
 she was, and what answer was sent to her request, we are not 
 told. In some remote day the antiquary will search the 
 archives of the College in the hope of discovering her applica- 
 tion, and of making known to the world the name of the girl, 
 who, a full half century in advance of her time, took this 
 daring step. Even now, much as has been done, no woman 
 can enter Harvard as a regular student. This young lady will 
 be looked on as the Pilgrim Mother of Radcliffe College, or 
 rather, perhaps, as one of the daring adventurers from Norway, 
 who first tried to settle on the inhospitable shores of New Eng- 
 land. Nearly thirty years later a second young lady came to 
 Cambridge, and was fortunate enough to get instruction in 
 Greek, Latin, and English from three sound scholars, Professors 
 Goodwin, Greenough, and Child. " By her ability and enthusi- 
 asm for learning, she aroused in her teachers great interest in 
 the whole subject of woman's education." 2 By Mr. Arthur 
 Gilman, neither a teacher nor a graduate of Harvard, the sug- 
 
 1 Life ofH. W. Longfellow, II. 138. 
 
 2 See an article on " Radcliffe College " in the Harvard Graduates' 
 Magazine for March, 1894, of which I have made much use in writing 
 this chapter. 
 
 T 273 
 
274 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 gestion was thereupon made " that instruction should be sys- 
 tematically and publicly, though unofficially, offered to women 
 by the College teachers." He was supported in his proposal 
 by the example which had been recently set in England by the 
 foundation of Girton College. To the English Cambridge 
 the New England Cambridge once more turned her eyes. 
 "The proposition," we are told, "might well have seemed 
 impracticable, but it was not without the countenance of foreign 
 example." A second College for women was soon founded on 
 the banks of the Cam, and Oxford quickly followed with her 
 two Halls. Not to be left behind in the race, a few ladies of 
 the New England Cambridge published a circular in which 
 they unfolded their plan for the " Private Collegiate Instruction 
 of Women." A sum of fifteen thousand dollars (^3066), 
 far too small to found a College, but large enough to try a 
 great experiment in education, was subscribed by a few friends. 
 The instruction that was offered was not to be " of a lower 
 grade than that given to the College," and the entrance exami- 
 nation was to be the same as that through which the under- 
 graduates had to pass. The teaching of the two sexes was 
 to be kept apart. " Thirty-seven Professors and Instructors 
 offered courses, and among them many of the most distin- 
 guished teachers of the University." In September, 1879, 
 twenty-seven students began their work in rooms hired in a 
 dwelling-house on the Appian Way. "An extra room was pro- 
 vided where students could spend the intervals between reci- 
 tations, and in that room some of the Instructors left books 
 of reference for their use." 
 
 In the second year the number of students rose to forty- 
 seven ; by the third year the Managers felt that they were 
 strong enough to form themselves into a Corporation under 
 
xvi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 27 5 
 
 the title of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women. 
 Mr. Gilman was appointed Secretary, and Mrs. Agassiz, the 
 widow of the great naturalist, President. To their wise zeal, 
 kept at the same even height from year to year, the success of 
 this great cause is largely due. It was not by the long name 
 which the Society had chosen for itself that the institution was 
 to be known. A nickname sprang up, as nicknames always do 
 spring up where brevity has been neglected. The Society for 
 the Collegiate Instruction of Women, and the building in 
 which its work is done, have long been everywhere known as 
 the Harvard Annex, or more briefly as the Annex. By the 
 end of the first four years three of the students had finished 
 the complete undergraduate course "parallel to that of the 
 College, directed by the same teachers, and tested by identical 
 examinations. They received, instead of degrees, the certifi- 
 cates of the Society, which stated that the holder ' has pur- 
 sued a course of study equivalent in amount and quality to 
 that for which the degree of Bachelor of Arts is conferred in 
 Harvard College, and has passed in a satisfactory manner 
 examinations on that course, corresponding to the College 
 examinations.' The graduate certificate has ever since been 
 in that form." 
 
 By this time the Society had successfully gone through its 
 first period of probation, and could now appeal for support to 
 the country at large. The appeal should have met with a 
 liberal reply, for the need of a higher education of women 
 ought to be more strongly felt in the United States than per- 
 haps in any other country of the world. The great majority 
 of American teachers are women ; in the larger cities, in every 
 hundred scarcely ten are men. It is, no doubt, not a little 
 owing to this fact, and to the imperfect education which 
 
276 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 women have hitherto received, that the American schoolboy is 
 behind the schoolboys of England, France, and Germany in 
 book-learning. In answer to the appeal, not more than sixty- 
 seven thousand dollars (.£13,700) was raised — a small sum 
 compared with the splendid donations made year after year to 
 Harvard for the education of men. Donors and bequeathers 
 follow the general fashion and move in one long rut \ giving 
 and bequeathing where gifts and bequests have always been 
 made. May some millionaire, for once, be touched with orig- 
 inality, and make his great gift to this College for Women. 
 
 The students soon became too numerous for the few hired 
 rooms in which their work was done. In 1885 an old mansion 
 was bought, facing the pleasant Common and close to the 
 Washington Elm. Washington's Birthday had been the date of 
 the first circular issued six years earlier by the Managers. In 
 one of the rooms of this house the poet of the two hundredth 
 anniversary of the College had written his Fair Harvard. 
 Hitherto the students had had no life in common; they had 
 come together to be taught, and had separated when once the 
 lesson was over. In their new home, with the great additions 
 which before long were made, they were to have an accommo- 
 dation not unworthy of a small college. They were still, how- 
 ever, to lodge as before, scattered about in private families. 
 Their number has grown in fifteen years from twenty-seven to 
 two hundred and fifty ; of whom one hundred are taking the 
 full undergraduate course of four years. The Academic Board 
 is composed of eight of the principal Professors of Harvard, 
 together with the President and Secretary of the Society. The 
 work of instruction is done by sixty-nine of the Harvard 
 teachers, of whom twenty-one are full Professors and fifteen 
 Assistant- Professors. 
 
xvi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 277 
 
 Much as the University has done, it is a pity that it has not 
 had the courage to do still more. From all the lecture-rooms, 
 from almost all the Laboratories, and from the Medical School 
 the women are still excluded. The exclusion from the lecture- 
 rooms tells not only against the pupil but against the teacher, 
 who has felt the weariness of repeating before a class of young 
 women the lecture which perhaps that same morning he had 
 delivered before a class of young men. Harvard has not even 
 the timid courage which the Managers of our Oxford Halls 
 showed from the first. They allowed their girls to enter the 
 lecture-rooms of the University Professors and of the College 
 Tutors, so long as each set was accompanied by a chaperon. 
 It was not the University of Oxford which made this regulation, 
 though it is still sometimes enforced by nervous Professors. 
 The University, as such, had no fear of its young men as the 
 Corporation and Overseers of Harvard apparently have of theirs. 
 It was the young women who were watched over, and watched 
 mainly by the anxious Boards of their own Halls. To the 
 Laboratories in the Oxford Museum they have gone unat- 
 tended. This indulgence, I conjecture, was granted because 
 no chaperon could be found for love or any reasonable sum of 
 money, who would sit patiently in unbroken silence for three or 
 four hours together by the side of a young enthusiast, while 
 under a microscope she examined the leg of a frog. In the 
 last two years there has been a relaxation in these rules, at all 
 events in one of the Halls. Two girls or more can now attend 
 a lecture without a chaperon. It is only for solitary students 
 that a companion must be provided. The need of such com- 
 panionship is far greater in Oxford where the lecture-room often 
 opens out of the same staircase as the rooms of undergraduates. 
 In University College, London, the girls go unchaperoned to the 
 
278 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ordinary classes. Three years ago I attended a few of the 
 lectures in the University of Geneva, and found the young men 
 and women studying together and sitting on the same benches. 
 I did not notice the slightest indication of giddiness on the part 
 of a single student. What is refused at Harvard with one hand 
 is often given with the other. To the College Library the 
 women have no admittance ; nevertheless, they have brought 
 to the Annex any book which they may need. From the work 
 of the Graduate School they are too much cut off; in some 
 departments, however, provision has been made for them. 
 " The attitude of the students of Harvard College towards the 
 Annex students, and of the latter towards the former, appears," 
 we are told, "to be that of unconcern." Whatever unconcern 
 there may be in the attitude of the young people, and however 
 admirable this unconcern may be, I trust that the unconcern of 
 the Overseers and Corporation and of every member of the 
 Faculty will before long entirely disappear, and that the whole 
 of the noble foundation will be thrown open to men and women 
 alike. Above all, may the women be admitted to the Medical 
 School, from which, by an illiberality unworthy of the age, they 
 seem to be entirely shut out. 
 
 A great advance has this year been made — an advance 
 which before long must sweep away all these idle distinctions. 
 Hitherto the Annex has in no way been officially recognized by 
 the University. No mention of it is made in the Catalogue ; 
 none even in those two pamphlets on life at Harvard by the 
 late Secretary to the University, from which I have frequently 
 quoted. The President and the Deans of the Faculties know 
 nothing of it in their Reports. The good they do, they do by 
 stealth and blush to have it fame. Henceforth the Annex is 
 openly and avowedly to be attached to the University, though 
 
xvi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 279 
 
 by a bond somewhat loose in appearance, but which will most 
 certainly gradually tighten and be made indissoluble. It will 
 be a corporation in itself, thus holding the same position as one 
 of our Oxford or Cambridge Colleges. It will have the entire 
 control of its funds and of the discipline of its students. The 
 instruction, the examinations, and the conferring of degrees will 
 be in the hands of the President and Fellows of the University. 
 They will be " the Visitors of the Corporation. No instructor 
 or examiner will be appointed, employed, or retained with- 
 out their approval." The diplomas of the degrees that are 
 conferred will be the diplomas of the Corporation, approved of 
 by the Corporation of Harvard, countersigned by the President 
 with the seal of the University affixed. It is not avowedly the 
 University degree that the Corporation and Overseers are yet 
 prepared to offer. They have not been able to screw their 
 courage up to that point ; but they are much more than half- 
 way across the stream, and onwards they must go. There is 
 fear, we are told, that the full Harvard degree would attract so 
 large a number of women that the new College would be over- 
 whelmed. I am reminded how nearly sixty years ago our 
 Postmaster-General opposed the scheme of penny postage be- 
 cause the number of letters would be so large that the walls 
 of the Post-Office would burst. The letters, he seemed to think, 
 should be kept down to the size of the building, and not the 
 building enlarged to the number of the letters. In the present 
 case where can the danger lie? These young women whom 
 the fearful eye of authority sees flocking in from every State in 
 the Union would have no power to force admittance. A moder- 
 ate increase in the difficulty of the entrance examination would, 
 as effectually even as a pestilence, thin their ranks. No more 
 need be received each year than the buildings can conveniently 
 
280 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 hold. A second objection is raised that "to make anything 
 like an impartial sharing of the resources of the University 
 would cripple the present work for men." The mere act of 
 conferring the full Harvard degree would not cripple the 
 resources, neither would they be crippled if the women were 
 to attend the lectures. Whenever there is not room for them, 
 in those few cases the lecture would have to be repeated, as 
 indeed it is repeated for them now. Generally, however, they 
 would only help to fill empty benches. In the Laboratories 
 there might be greater difficulties, but in 1892, of which year I 
 have the Report of the Society, there were but four students in 
 Chemistry and three in Advanced Zoology. The third objec- 
 tion has far more force. " It is not clear that the opinion of the 
 graduates and friends of the University is yet so settled as to 
 justify this departure from the established constitution of the 
 University." The Corporation and the Overseers cannot safely 
 move much faster than is approved of by the general sense of 
 that part of the community which is most highly educated. If 
 the country is not yet ripe for the change, the sure course of 
 events must be patiently awaited. At the same time, in hasten- 
 ing in the coming of this good time the University should take 
 the lead. This hitherto she has not done. She is behind many 
 of the leading American Universities. She is far behind almost 
 all the countries of the Old World. Even Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, weighted as they are with the conservatism of six centu- 
 ries, have outstripped her. Germany alone is surpassed by her 
 in her unwillingness to let women enjoy the same opportunities 
 as men, not only in the great race of life, but in the far nobler 
 but uncontentious struggle to win that knowledge and those 
 qualities of the mind which give life its fulness and perfection. 
 Who can wonder that this new constitution, when it was 
 
xvi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 281 
 
 promulgated, met with strong opposition? All those who will 
 not allow that half a loaf is better than no bread, were in arms. 
 Petitions were presented to the Legislature of the Common- 
 wealth of Massachusetts against the bill, by which the new 
 powers were to be conferred. In the State House, on February 
 28 of this year, both parties appeared before the Committee on 
 Education. Happily, in the interval, much had been done by 
 discussion in the newspapers to show that, though not a little 
 was left to do, a great advance had been made. The way to 
 conciliation was opened. Some concession was made, and the 
 opposition was withdrawn. Woman's reason triumphed over 
 woman's rights ; with time the rights will be granted to the 
 last jot. Let those who are still doubtful and unsatisfied, 
 take courage from the words spoken at the great Harvard Com- 
 memoration, nearly seven years ago, by a graceful writer, the 
 late George William Curtis : " Whoever is happy enough to be 
 here to-day, must acknowledge that to all other good fortunes 
 must now be added, not only the felicity of coming here to 
 salute the Mother upon her two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versary, but of finding her two hundred and fifty times fairer 
 and stronger and more beloved than ever before. Still more, 
 while he walks about this Zion, telling her towers, marking her 
 bulwarks, and counting her palaces, if he catches a glimpse of 
 the modest Annex, he is still happier in knowing that as his 
 ever-young Mother starts to complete her third century, the 
 spell of old tradition which commanded her to bring forth 
 men-children only, is broken forever." 1 
 
 For the new College a name had to be sought. The full 
 title was far too long and the Annex was without dignity. A 
 friend of mine overheard an argument carried on in a train by 
 
 1 Harvard University, 250th Anniversary, p. 309. 
 
282 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 two girls about the merits of Wellesley College and the Annex. 
 Wellesley College stands in a park of three hundred acres on the 
 edge of a small lake. When it was opened, its generous founder, 
 Mr. H. F. Durant, a New England lawyer, said that his three 
 hundred women students should each one have an acre of 
 ground to herself to dance on. So rapidly has the College 
 grown, that with much less than half an acre they would now 
 have to be content. With all its great superiority of grounds 
 and buildings, it is at present behind the humble Annex in the 
 instruction which it imparts. Its teachers, with scarcely an 
 exception, are women, few of whom can have had the full 
 advantages of a University education, while the students at 
 Cambridge are taught by a body of University Professors, who, 
 for ability, learning, and zeal, are unsurpassed by any in 
 America. It was not, however, in these matters that the 
 champion of Wellesley in the train tried to strike the balance. 
 It was the name of the Annex, that by its lightness turned the 
 scales as she held them up. She was not going to be " Nico- 
 demused into nothing." She thought, no doubt, of the 
 Wellesley " Yell." An Annex " Yell " would be an absurdity. 
 It would die away in the throat and mock the young enthusiast 
 who should try to raise it. 
 
 Some of the friends of the infant College that was awaiting its 
 christening would have called it Martha Washington, after the 
 great Washington's wife. But to a "Yell," Martha Washing- 
 ton is not easily harmonized. Moreover, the very name 
 Martha does not come with the right association of ideas. It 
 does not awaken the right thoughts and recall the right 
 memories. It raises before the mind the picture of a College 
 of Housewifery ; it tells nothing of that good part which the 
 real student chooses, which shall never be taken away. What 
 
xvi. HARVARD COLLEGE. 283 
 
 had Martha Washington to do with learning ? Her skill in 
 making a goose-pie was, I dare say, as indisputable as the skill 
 of the wife of the Vicar of Wakefield ; but education, like 
 argument, she left to others. While all the "gossips" were 
 ransacking their heads for a suitable name, it fortunately hap- 
 pened that an antiquary, Mr. A. M. Davis, in his researches 
 into the beginnings of Harvard, discovered that one of the 
 earliest benefactors of the infant College was Lady Mowlson, 
 the widow of Sir Thomas Mowlson, Lord Mayor of London 
 in 1634. Her maiden name was Ann RadclifTe. About the 
 year 1643, " out °f Christian desire to advance good learning, 
 she gave one hundred pounds to be improved in New England, 
 in the best way for the help of some poor scholar or scholars in 
 the College, and to be settled for that use." 1 How staunch a 
 Puritan she was, is shown by her subscribing in May of the fol- 
 lowing year no less than six hundred pounds towards the sum 
 of twenty thousand pounds sent to the Scottish army which 
 had marched into England in support of the Parliamentary 
 forces. 2 It is after this woman, animated as she was by a love 
 of liberty and of learning, that the College for Women is to be 
 called. Like the names of Harvard and Cambridge, it binds 
 the great New England University to the old country by a 
 fresh link. To the Oxonian it comes with a peculiarly pleasant 
 sound, recalling, as it does, his own Radcliffe Library. 
 
 Radcliffe College is far from being even now on a perfect 
 equality with Harvard. She is not as yet one of the members 
 of the great University. She no longer indeed gathers up the 
 
 1 Quoted from a letter by the Rev. Thomas Weld, dated Gates Head, 
 Jan. 2, 1649, given in Ann Radcliffe — Lady Mowlson, by A. M. Davis. 
 Reprinted from the New England Magazine, February, 1894, p. 773. 
 
 2 lb. p. 780. 
 
284 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xvi. 
 
 crumbs that are thrown to her. She has her seat at the well- 
 furnished table, but it is below the salt. She has time on her 
 side. Her full day will come when she is ripe for it. Mean- 
 while she must turn to the old foundation, as Portia turned to 
 her Lord Bassanio, and with her say that she 
 
 "Is an unlesson'd gid, unschool'd, unpractis'd; 
 Happy in this, she is not yet so old 
 But she may learn; happier than this, 
 She is not bred so dull but she can learn; 
 Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit 
 Commits itself to yours to be directed, 
 As from her Lord, her Governor, her King." 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Library. — Gifts from England. — The Fire of 1764. —Gore Hall. — 
 The Bequests of Prescott, Sumner, and Carlyle. — J. L. Sibley. — Dr. 
 Justin Winsor. 
 
 THE Library of Harvard College, of which the foundation 
 had been laid in the bequest of John Harvard's books, 
 grew slowly but steadily during the seventeenth century, mainly 
 by gifts from England. It was largely increased by the Tar- 
 gums, Talmuds, and Rabbins of Dr. John Lightfoot, the Orient- 
 alist ; of whom Gibbon wrote that " by constant reading of the 
 Rabbies he was almost become a Rabbin himself." 1 It was more 
 than doubled by the bequest of the books of Dr. Theophilus 
 Gale. On April 4, 1689, Samuel Sewall, when on a visit to 
 Oxford, recorded in his Diary: "Was shew'd the Library and 
 Chapel of Corpus Christi Colledge and the Cellar by Mr. Holland 
 a Fellow. Library may be ab* the bigness of Harvard. . . . 
 Said Holland treated me very civilly though told him was a 
 N[ew] E[ngland] man." 2 The books, whether acquired by 
 gift or by purchase, were of a solid and serious kind. They 
 had mostly been written by theologians who, like Armado, were 
 " for whole volumes in folio." Among the donors were such 
 men as the Rev. Mr. Rogers, the founder of Rowley, Massa- 
 chusetts, who in his last will professed himself " to have lived 
 
 1 The Harvard University Library, by C. K. Bolton, p. 435; Gibbon's 
 Misc. Works, ed. 1796, II. 56. 
 
 2 Sewall's Diary, I. 304, 307. 
 
 285 
 
286 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 and to die an unfeigned hater of all the base opinions of the 
 Anabaptists and Antinomians, and of all other frantic dotages 
 of the times that spring from them." In the same solemn 
 document he " protested against the general disguisement of 
 long, ruffian-like hair." x The age of the Restoration and of 
 Queen Anne came and went by without affecting the Library. 
 In 1723 "it contained no volume from Addison, or his fellows, 
 nothing of Locke, Dryden, South, or Tillotson ; Shakespeare 
 and Milton had been recently acquired." 2 In the same year 
 Cotton Mather recorded that " the scholars' studies are filled 
 with books which may truly be called Satan's library." 3 Per- 
 haps among them were some of Dryden's Plays and Tillotson's 
 Sermons, — equally detestable in the eyes of a rigid Puritan. 
 Seventy years later, when Channing entered College, " the 
 young men," we are told, "were passionately given up to the 
 study of Shakespeare." 4 What, an outcry must Mather have 
 raised if he saw the letter which one of the greatest of Har- 
 vard's early benefactors, Thomas Hollis, sent with a parcel of 
 books from England. " If," he wrote, " there happen to be 
 some books not quite orthodox, in search after truth with an 
 honest design don't be afraid of them.' A public library ought 
 to be furnished, if it can, with con as well as pro, that students 
 may read, try, judge. ' Thus saith Aristotle,' ' Thus saith Cal- 
 vin,' will not now pass for proof in our London disputations." 5 
 Bishop Berkeley sent books — Berkeley, to whom belonged 
 " every virtue under Heaven " ; Bishop Sherlock, " whose 
 style," said Johnson, " is very elegant, though he has not made 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 426. 
 
 2 The Harvard University Library, by C. K. Bolton, p. 436. 
 
 3 Quincy's Harvard, I. 341. 
 
 4 Life of IV. E. Channing, I. 66. 
 
 5 Quincy's Harvard, I. 433. 
 
xvii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 287 
 
 it his principal study," and the physician, Dr. Mead, "who 
 lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man." 
 In January, 1764, the Library was destroyed by fire. Dur- 
 ing the vacation the small-pox had broken out in Boston, and 
 the General Court of the Colony had fled to Cambridge, just 
 as in earlier years in England the Parliament had fled to St. 
 Albans and Oxford. The Governor and Council met in the 
 Library, while the House of Representatives sat in the room 
 beneath. The weather was very cold, and too large a fire, it 
 seems likely, was kept up. " In the middle of a very tem- 
 pestuous night," writes an eye-witness, " a severe cold storm of 
 snow, attended with high wind, we were awaked by the alarm 
 of fire. Harvard Hall, the only one of our ancient buildings 
 which still remained, was seen in flames. In a very short time 
 this venerable monument of the piety of our ancestors was 
 turned into a heap of ruins." 1 Of five thousand volumes only 
 a hundred were* saved, and of John Harvard's books but a 
 single one. It bears the title of The Christian Warfare 
 against the Deuill, World, and Flesh. It was printed in Lon- 
 don in 1634. 2 There was grief in the Colony but no despair. 
 Two days after the fire the House of Representatives " resolved 
 unanimously that Harvard Hall be built at the expense of the 
 Province, and granted two thousand pounds to begin the new 
 edifice." Subscriptions were made both in America and Eng- 
 land. "The Archbishops of Canterbury and York subscribed 
 and used their influence in favour of the College." From the 
 King and Court there came nothing. Benjamin Franklin gave 
 " valuable instruments for the apparatus ) also a bust of Lord 
 Chatham " ; Langhorne's Plutarch was sent by Boswell's 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 112, 480. 
 
 2 The Harvard University Library, pp. 433, 437. 
 
288 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 " worthy booksellers and friends," the Messrs. Dilly, at whose 
 house Johnson " owned that he always found a good dinner." 
 From Barlow Trecothick, the London Alderman, about whom, 
 despising him as a Whig, he asked, " where did he learn Eng- 
 lish?" came books and thirty pounds in money. Whitefield 
 did not forget the day when he had preached beneath the elm 
 on the Common, for by his own gifts and those of his friends 
 he was a large benefactor. Dr. Heberden sent three guineas 1 
 — Cowper's " virtuous and faithful Heberden," " ultimus 
 Romanorum, the last of the learned physicians." 
 
 The Library grew rapidly, and by 1790 could boast of twelve 
 thousand volumes. During the Revolutionary War, by a gift of 
 the Legislature, it had received four hundred volumes confis- 
 cated from Tory refugees. 2 Most of these unfortunate men, it 
 is to be hoped, had had time to carry off their books with 
 them ; otherwise the King's friends would seem to have been 
 but an illiterate set. Eighty years after the great fire, in 
 August, 1834, an alarm was raised of a second conflagration. 
 A Protestant mob had burnt down a Roman Catholic Chapel 
 in a suburb of Boston ; in checking their lawlessness the Gov- 
 ernment had shown almost as much laxness as if it had been 
 an Anti-Slavery Hall that was attacked. Rumours of retaliation 
 spread, for Papists have never been so meek under wrong as 
 Abolitionists. On a certain night a bonfire, it was said, was to 
 be made of the Library of the College. A body of students 
 and graduates was secretly brought together to defend it. " At 
 dusk sentinels were stationed at the windows, muskets in hand, 
 ready to renew the sounds of war which had not been heard 
 within its peaceful walls since the days of 1775. They sent 
 
 1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 113, 491. 
 
 2 Lb. II. 399; Higher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 63. 
 
xvn. HARVARD COLLEGE. 289 
 
 out a waiter to reconnoitre towards Charlestown. He returned, 
 saying that he could hear nothing but frogs. At another time 
 a horseman came at full speed to announce that one thousand 
 Irishmen were on their way to Cambridge." l The thousand 
 Irishmen were as insubstantial as the four hundred Jesuits 
 who, at the time of the Popish Plot, crossed the Straits of 
 Dover on dromedaries and exercised every night on Hamp- 
 stead Heath. 
 
 The bequest of one hundred thousand dollars (,£20,450) 
 made to his old College by an eminent Boston lawyer, Christo- 
 pher Gore, came at a time when the collection of books had out- 
 grown the building in which it was lodged. In 1838 the foun- 
 dation was laid of Gore Hall, the present home of the Library. 
 Frequent gifts in money, books, and autographs have greatly 
 enriched it of late years, while the Corporation of the Univer- 
 sity has given it the most liberal support. On it and on its 
 branches in the different Schools little less than fifty thousand 
 dollars (^10,225) is spent every year, 2 two thousand pounds 
 more than was spent on the Bodleian in 1893. 3 American 
 scholars have not been unmindful of the debt they owe to their 
 Alma Mater. Prescott bequeathed to the Library his books 
 and manuscripts relating to the reign of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella. Sumner sent it more than fifteen thousand pam- 
 phlets. " He used to say that he preferred having them at the 
 Library rather than at his residence, because at the Library he 
 could find at once any particular pamphlet he wished to see." 
 
 1 The Harvard University Library, by C. K. Bolton, p. 441. 
 
 2 Higher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 106. 
 
 3 Under the Copyright Act the Bodleian can claim a copy of every new 
 book free of charge. Nearly forty thousand volumes were thus received 
 last year. 
 
 V 
 
290 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHA1> 
 
 On his death he left it many rare books ; among them an 
 Album in which Milton had inscribed at Geneva : — 
 
 " — if Vertue feeble were, 
 Heaven it selfe would stoope to her. 
 
 Ccelum non animu muto du trans mare 
 Curro 
 
 Joannes Miltonius 
 
 Anglus 
 Junv io° 1639." * 
 
 Lowell, when he was American Minister to Spain, wrote from 
 Madrid : " I buy books mainly with a view to the College 
 Library, whither they will go when I am in Mount Auburn, 
 with so much undone that I might have done." - 
 
 Nay, even from our side of the Atlantic there came a 
 scholarly bequest. Carlyle left it a part of his "poor and 
 indeed almost pathetic collection of books," to quote the 
 words of his will. He adds : — 
 
 " Having with good reason, ever since my first appearance in Literature, 
 a variety of kind feelings, obligations, and regards towards New England, 
 and indeed long before that a hearty good will, real and steady, which 
 still continues, to America at large, and recognizing with gratitude how 
 much of friendliness, of actually credible human love, I have had from 
 that country, and what immensities of worth and capability I believe and 
 partly know to be lodged, especially in the silent classes there, I have now, 
 after due consultation as to the feasibilities, the excusabilities of it, decided 
 to fulfil a fond notion that has been hovering in my mind these many 
 years; and I do therefore hereby bequeath the books (whatever of them 
 I could not borrow, but had to buy and gather, that is, in general whatever 
 of them are still here) which I used in writing on Cromwell and Friedrich 
 and which shall be accurately searched for, and parted from my other books, 
 to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, City of Cambridge, State 
 of Massachusetts, as a poor testimony of my respect for XhzXAlma Mater of 
 so many of my transatlantic friends, and a token of the feelings above indi- 
 cated towards the Great Country of which Harvard is the Chief School." 
 
 1 The Harvard University Library, by C. K. Bolton, pp. 441-43, 
 
 2 Letters of J. R, Lowell, II. 242, 
 
xvii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 291 
 
 As a marginal note " to Walker's Anarchia anglicana (Vol. 
 II. p. 139), where mention is made of the Eikon basilike of 
 Charles I., Carlyle has written in pencil : ' Shewing him (had 
 it been he, which palpably it was not) to have been the most 
 perfect Pharisee, inane Canter, and shovel-hatted Quack that 
 ever went about in clear-starched surplice and formula! — Do 
 but read it.' " x 
 
 One remarkable gift has lately been made by Longfellow's 
 heirs — five hundred and eighty- six volumes of American 
 Poetry, mainly presentation copies. 2 Who is so hard-hearted 
 as not to be touched with pity when he reflects on the five 
 hundred and odd letters which the unhappy recipient had to 
 write in acknowledgment of these cruel presents from his 
 brother bards? Compared with such toil as this the Village 
 Blacksmith's was a mere trifle. 
 
 Mr. J. L. Sibley, who was Librarian from 1856 to 1877, by 
 his constant importunities, added greatly to the collection 
 which he loved so well. " He begged from his friends the old 
 books and pamphlets which lay unused in their garrets. At 
 last, he says, ' I acquired the name of being a sturdy beggar, 
 and received a gentle hint from the College Treasurer to desist 
 from begging, which I as gently disregarded.' " 3 Some twenty 
 years ago he published a book entitled Harvard Graduates. 
 His researches ended with the men who took their degrees in 
 1689. "There are," wrote Lowell, "ninety-seven of them by 
 tale, and as he fishes them out of those dismal oubliettes they 
 come up dripping with the ooze of Lethe, like Curll from his 
 dive in the Thames, like him also gallant competitors for the 
 
 1 Bibliographical Contributions, ed. Justin Winsor, No. 26, p. 6, 
 
 2 Reports, 1892-93, p. 174. 
 
 3 The Harvard University Library, p. 443. 
 
292 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 crown of Dulness. 1 It is the very balm of authorship. No 
 matter how far you may be gone under, if you are a graduate 
 of Harvard College you are sure of being dredged up again 
 and handsomely buried, with a catalogue of your works to keep 
 you down. I do not know when the provincialism of New 
 England has been thrust upon me with so ineradicable a barb. 
 Not one of their works which stands in any appreciable rela- 
 tion with the controlling currents of human thought or history, 
 not one of them that has now the smallest interest for any liv- 
 ing soul ! And yet, somehow, I make myself a picture of the 
 past out of this arid waste, just as the mirage rises out of the 
 dry desert. Dear old Sibley ! I would read even a sermon of 
 his writing, so really noble and beautiful is the soul under that 
 commonplace hull!" 2 In his last Report the old Librarian 
 wrote : " The Library has been during more than half of a 
 long life the chief object of my interest, and I have given to it 
 the best of my ability and attainments, and now my eyes have 
 become so dimmed that I am unable to read this Report." 3 
 
 Under this good old scholar's successor, Dr. Justin Winsor, 
 the Library has grown with extraordinary rapidity. In the last 
 fourteen years the number of books has increased by one 
 hundred and fifty-nine thousand, and of pamphlets by one 
 hundred and eleven thousand. 4 He is a born Librarian. To 
 extensive learning, a love of books, and the scholar's kindly 
 gentle nature, he adds common sense and enthusiasm — a rare 
 combination — and great powers of organization. " I try 
 never to forget," he wrote, " that the prime purpose of a book 
 
 1 Lowell quoted from memory. It was into Fleet Ditch that the dives 
 were made, and Curll was not one of the divers. 
 
 2 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 147. 
 
 3 The Harvard University Library, p. 443. 
 
 4 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 12. 
 
xvii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 293 
 
 is to be much read ; though it is equally true that we are under 
 obligations to posterity to preserve books whose loss might be 
 irrecoverable." * In this view of the Librarian's duties he has 
 the President on his side, who says in his last report : " How- 
 ever troublesome and costly it may be to teach thousands of 
 students the abundant use of books, it is the most important 
 lesson that can be given them during their student life." 2 In 
 the Harvard Statutes it is written : " The Library is for the 
 use of the whole University." 3 It is open for readers even on 
 Sunday afternoons during term-time. On only six week-days 
 in the whole year is it closed — Christmas Day and the five 
 great holidays of the Commonwealth, the Twenty-second of 
 February (Washington's Birthday), Fast -Day (no longer kept 
 as a fast), Memorial Day (the Commemoration of the soldiers 
 who fell in the war between the North and the South), the 
 Fourth of July (Declaration of Independence), and Thanks- 
 giving Day (the general thanksgiving for the blessings of the 
 year at the end of November) . " Twenty years ago only 
 fifty-seven per cent of the students in College used it, now 
 over ninety per cent of the upper classmen are borrowers. 
 The elective system deserves a part of the credit for this 
 increased use of original authorities. The mere note-taking 
 or text-book studying student is now the exception where he 
 used to be the rule." 4 Undergraduates not only are allowed 
 to read in the Library, but those " who have given bonds may 
 take out books, three volumes at a time, and may keep them 
 one month." 5 To outsiders these privileges are extended. 
 
 1 The Harvard University Library, p. 446. 
 
 2 Reports, 1892-93, p. 36. 
 
 3 Catalogue, p. 33. 
 
 4 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 87. 
 
 5 Catalogue, p. 483. 
 
294 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Last year nearly two thousand five hundred persons in all were 
 registered as borrowers, of whom three hundred and sixty-two 
 did not belong to the University. 1 " Books have been sent to 
 scholars as far south as New Orleans, and as far west as 
 Wisconsin and New Mexico. A very general use is made of 
 the Library by scholars in all parts of New England." 2 It is 
 surprising, with such an extensive circulation as this, how small 
 is the loss. In his last Report the Librarian says : " Of 
 books reported missing since 1883 there are still four hundred 
 and fifty-nine unaccounted for" — not fifty volumes a year. 
 Almost all of these have disappeared from the shelves contain- 
 ing works of reference and certain other collections to which 
 all readers have free access. 
 
 While the Library is thus turned into a great school where 
 the young student is taught the use of books, learning and 
 scholarship are well cared for. From Professor Child I learnt 
 of the readiness of the University to provide even at a great 
 cost all the works which a scholar needs. For one rare book, 
 which he himself required for his English and Scottish Popular 
 Ballads, no less than a thousand dollars (^204) was given. 
 The Professor of the newly-founded Chair of Economic His- 
 tory, visiting England before he entered on his post, was 
 directed to order for the Library many rare and costly works 
 and documents which he needed. Every quarter the Harvard 
 University Bulletin is issued by the Librarian, in which is given 
 a classified list of the principal accessions. Under his direc- 
 tion, moreover, is published from time to time a scholarly series 
 entitled Bibliographical Contj'ibutions. Fifty numbers have 
 been already issued, among them Principal Books relating to the 
 
 1 Reports, 1892-93, p. 173. 
 
 2 The Harvard University Library, p. 447. 
 
xvii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 295 
 
 Life and Works of Michaelangelo, with Notes, by C. E. Norton ; 
 The Bibliography of Ptolemy's Geography, by Justin Winsor ; 
 The Dante Collections in the Harvard College and Boston 
 Public Libraries, by W. C. Lane ; A Bibliography of Persius, 
 by M. H. Morgan. How good a thing it would be if at 
 Oxford some of the money, too often wasted so far as learning 
 is concerned on scholarships and prize fellowships, were spent 
 in training young scholars in an exact knowledge of literature ! 
 What excellent work might be done by them in the Bodleian in 
 preparing, under the guidance of learned men, a series of 
 bibliographies such as these ; or in gathering and arranging 
 material for the use of the editor of our great English Dic- 
 tionary ! 
 
 In the course of fifty years the collection of books has again 
 outgrown the building in which it is lodged, in spite of the 
 addition of a wing and of the creation of several Departmental 
 Libraries. The number of readers, moreover, has so largely 
 increased, that sitting room can scarcely be found for the 
 undergraduates, while for men of learning a quiet place of 
 study is greatly needed. He who has been used to work in 
 one of the alcoves in Bodley, where he was never crowded and 
 where his tired eyes could get rested as they looked down on 
 the pleasant lawn of Exeter College far below, would study 
 with reluctance in Gore Hall. However, with the abundant 
 liberty which is given to a scholar of borrowing books, almost all 
 the learned work is done outside the building in private houses. 
 The Librarian, in a Report written in November, 1892, spoke 
 strongly of the need of enlargement. "I have in earlier 
 Reports," he said, " exhausted the language of warning and 
 anxiety in representing the totally inadequate accommodations 
 for books and readers which Gore Hall affords. Each twelve 
 
296 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xvii. 
 
 months brings us nearer to a chaotic condition." l These 
 warnings, I conjecture, were addressed not to the Corporation, 
 but to the rich citizens of the Commonwealth in general. It 
 was for them to add to the permanent foundations of Harvard. 
 The warnings this time did not fall on deaf ears, and for a brief 
 space the brightest prospect was opened. In Frederick Loth- 
 rop Ames, one of the Fellows of the College, the generous 
 benefactor presented himself. Taking into his counsels the 
 Librarian and an architect, he planned a noble addition to the 
 building. When I was at Harvard Dr. Winsor was full of 
 happiness at the glorious prospect which opened before him 
 and his beloved Library. " In a moment it was night." The 
 warm heart was chilled and the generous hand closed by the 
 sudden stroke of death. Out of the ample fortune which he 
 left may his heirs soon raise to him that monument which, had 
 his life been lengthened by a few brief months, he would have 
 raised to himself. 
 
 1 Reports, 1891-92, p. 1 61. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The Government of Harvard. — The Charter. — The Overseers. — The 
 Corporation, Church, and State. — The Faculty. — The President. — The 
 Professors. — Oxford and Harvard. 
 
 " r I ^HE management of Harvard College is in the hands of 
 A. three separate bodies ; the first of these being the 
 Faculty, or immediate government, having the entire discipline 
 of the students in its hands ; the second being the Corporation, 
 having the management of the funds and revenues of the College, 
 and the appointment of instructors, with other duties exercised 
 under the supervision of the third body, the Overseers, repre- 
 senting the interests of the graduates and of the public at large." 1 
 Of these three bodies the oldest is the Board of Overseers and 
 the youngest the Faculty. The President of the College is ex 
 officio an Overseer, and President of the Corporation and of 
 the Faculty. It was in 1642, six years after the resolution was 
 passed to found the College, that the General Court of the 
 Colony of Massachusetts Bay placed its government under a 
 Board composed of " the Governor and Deputy-Governor, and 
 all the magistrates of this jurisdiction, together with the teach- 
 ing elders of the six next adjoining towns." These towns were 
 Boston and four places which are now reckoned as its suburbs, 
 together with Cambridge. The "teaching elders" were the 
 ministers of the Church. To them was given the entire control 
 of the College property and full powers " to establish all such 
 
 1 Life of George Ticknor, I. 355. 
 297 
 
298 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 orders, statutes, and constitutions " as should promote " piety, 
 morality, and learning." 
 
 This Body must have been found too large and too much 
 scattered " to have the immediate direction of the College," for 
 in 1650 the General Court by a Charter " enacted that the 
 College shall be a Corporation consisting of a President, five 
 Fellows, and a Treasurer or Bursar, who shall have perpetual 
 succession, and shall be called by the name of President and 
 Fellows of Harvard College." In this they followed the model 
 of an English College, where, whenever a Fellowship becomes 
 vacant, it is filled up by the votes of the surviving members of 
 the Corporate Body, and where, with very few exceptions, the 
 President, under whatever title he is known, is elected by the 
 Fellows. The Harvard President and Fellows have never had 
 that freehold right in their posts which was enjoyed by their 
 brethren in England ; neither had they the absolute power of 
 appointment, for they had in each case " to procure the presence 
 of the Overseers and by their counsel and consent to elect." 
 They were entitled to appoint and dismiss the officers and 
 servants of the College, and to make orders and by-laws, pro- 
 vided the said orders and by-laws were allowed by the Overseers. 
 By an Appendix to the Charter in 1657 their powers were in- 
 creased. The orders and by-laws which they should henceforth 
 make were at once to come into effect, though they " were 
 alterable by the Overseers." 
 
 " The Charter of Harvard College," said President Eliot at 
 the Commemoration of 1886, " granted in 1650 is in force to- 
 day in every line, having survived in perfect integrity the pro- 
 digious political, social, and commercial changes of more than 
 two centuries." 1 It is preserved in the Library of the College 
 
 1 Harvard University, 250th Anniversary, p. 262. 
 
xviii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 299 
 
 — surely one of the most venerable of documents on the face 
 of the earth ; for it is the Charter of the first University founded 
 by the money of the people voted in their popular Assembly. 
 
 The first President was Henry Dunster, a graduate of Mag- 
 dalen College, Cambridge, and a clergyman of the Church of 
 England, " one of the greatest masters of the Oriental languages 
 that hath been known in these ends of the earth." Of the five 
 Fellows two were Masters of Arts and three Bachelors. Their 
 Christian names — there were three Samuels, one Jonathan, and 
 one Comfort — seem to indicate that they were Puritans, not 
 only by conviction but by birth. 
 
 No important change was made in the government of the 
 University till the Rebellion of the Colonies. In 1780, four 
 years after the Declaration of Independence, by the Constitu- 
 tion which was framed by the new Commonwealth of Massa- 
 chusetts, the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Council and 
 Senate of the Commonwealth were made successors to the 
 Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Magistrates on the Board of 
 Overseers, the President and the ministers of the six churches 
 still retaining their seats. By an Act passed in 1810 and modi- 
 fied in 18 1 4 there were added to the Board fifteen laymen; 
 while, instead of six ministers there were to be fifteen, no longer 
 confined to particular parishes, but chosen from among the 
 Congregational churches of the district generally. Both laymen 
 and ministers were elected by the Overseers. In 1843 the 
 clerical seats were thrown open to ministers of all denomina- 
 tions. By the Act of 185 1 the Senators ceased to be ex officio 
 members of the Board, and seats were no longer reserved for 
 the clergy. Thirty members were to be elected by the Senators 
 and Representatives assembled in one room. They were divided 
 into three classes, one of which was to go out of office every 
 
100 HARVARD COLLEC chap. 
 
 Party politics soon cast a taint over the election and 
 through it over the University. In 1S65 a great measure of 
 reform was carried. Henceforth the President and Treasurer 
 were to be the sole ex officio members, while the thirty Over- 
 seers were no longer to be elected by the Legislature but by the 
 ilors of Arts of five years standing, the Masters of Arts, and 
 the holders of honorary degrees. By a provision in the Act, 
 the wisdom of which seems more than doubtful, " no officer of 
 government or instruction in the College is entitled to vote." 
 The men, that is to say, who have the interests of the Univer- 
 sity most at heart, and who know best how to promote them, 
 have no voice in the election of this important Board. The 
 poll is taken at Cambridge on Commencement Day. Every 
 r must attend in person ; there is no voting by proxy papers, 
 as in the election of Members of Parliament in our Universities. 1 
 The thirty Overseers are divided into six equal classes, one of 
 which goes out of office every year. By a final reform carried 
 in 1S80, "persons not inhabitants of the Commonwealth of 
 ichusetts were made eligible." In the present year six 
 are citizens of outside States. Thus in the course of 
 two centuries and a half the fetters of Church and State have 
 been first gradually loosened and at last wholly cast away. Not 
 a single member of the Corporation or of the Board of Over- 
 seers holds a theological degree. " A few years ago five of the 
 ra were clergymen ; of these, three were Unitarians, one 
 Episcopalian, and one Orthodox Congregationalism" 2 At the 
 
 1 The Universities of England, Scotland, and Ireland return nine repre- 
 sentatives to Parliament, who, as might be expected from the nature of 
 Universities, all vote with the Tory party. 
 
 2 History of Higher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 92. Bishop 
 Lawrence, as I am informed while I am correcting the proofs, was elected 
 to the Board of Overseers last Commencement (1894). 
 
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302 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 mittees the duties are " to visit " the different Departments of 
 the University ; others report on the Courses of Instruction. 
 I cannot learn that these "visitations " ever take place. There 
 is a tradition, I am told, that an Overseer would now and then 
 drop in at a lecture, but at the present day the professional 
 mind is never thus rudely agitated. The Board has five "stated 
 meetings" every year, besides one "annual meeting." The 
 Corporation meets on the second and on the last Monday of 
 every month. 
 
 The Fellows, even in the early days of Harvard, were not 
 necessarily tutors, neither were the tutors necessarily Fellows ; 
 in this respect also the founders had modelled their institution 
 on the English Colleges. It rarely happened indeed in the 
 American Cambridge that the majority of the Fellows were 
 engaged in tuition. Whether they were at first required to be 
 resident is not clear. At all events, before the end of the 
 seventeenth century the obligation had ceased. Thus there 
 shortly grew up side by side two rival authorities, the Corpora- 
 tion and the tutors. The President presided over both bodies, 
 siding, it would seem probable, sometimes with one and some- 
 times with the other. " Not until after 1725 did the President 
 and tutors assume the authority of an independent Board on all 
 subjects of discipline." Even so late as 1785 "the Professors 
 were required to exhibit to the Corporation the text-books used 
 in the College and give an account of their method of instruc- 
 tion." At the beginning of the present century on the Cor- 
 poration for the first time there was not a single resident 
 Fellow. In 1824 eleven of the tutors, in a memorial, main- 
 tained that by the Charter, " the Fellows are necessarily resi- 
 dent instructors." Their claim was not allowed by either the 
 Corporation or the Overseers; but to meet the difficulties 
 
xviii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 303 
 
 which had arisen, " the immediate government " was authorized 
 to assume the name of the Faculty of the University. 1 The 
 powers which they had gradually acquired they not only 
 retained but extended. By the increase in their number and 
 in their dignity through the rapid foundation of Professorships 
 in the early part of this century, they had become too strong a 
 body to be slighted. At the present time there are six Facul- 
 ties over the eight Schools which constitute the University; 
 the College proper, the Scientific School, and the Graduate 
 School being all placed under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 
 "Each Faculty is composed of all the Professors, Assistant- 
 Professors, and Tutors, and of all the Instructors appointed for 
 a term longer than one year, who teach in the department or 
 departments under the charge of that Faculty." It has full 
 power of discipline, and by a vote of two-thirds of its mem- 
 bers can punish a student not only with rustication but with 
 expulsion. The President is a member of each Faculty, but 
 its chief executive officer is its Dean, " who is appointed by 
 the Corporation, with the consent of the Overseers. He is 
 responsible for the proper preparation and conduct of its 
 business, and makes an annual Report to the President." 
 These Reports are published every year, together with one 
 by the President, in which he deals with the information and 
 recommendations contained in them and with the general con- 
 dition of the University. " Each Faculty may delegate any of 
 its powers relating to ordinary matters of administration and 
 discipline to Administrative Boards, nominated from among 
 its members by the President, and appointed by the Corpo- 
 ration with the consent of the Overseers." Three such Boards 
 have been established, all under the Faculty of Arts and 
 1 Higher Education, etc., pp. 42, 73, 89. 
 
304 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Sciences, one for the College, the second for the Scientific 
 School, and the third for the Graduate School. This Faculty is 
 also divided into twelve Divisions ; and of these Divisions some 
 are sub-divided into Departments. For each Division and for 
 each Department there is a separate Committee. Thus the 
 Division of Ancient Languages, of which the Professor of Greek 
 Literature is Chairman, is composed of the Departments of 
 Indo- Iranian Languages, presided over by the Professor of 
 Sanskrit ; and of the Department of The Classics (Greek and 
 Latin) , presided over by the Professor of Latin. " Each of 
 these Committees practically decides all questions of instruc- 
 tion and honours in its province." 1 There are, moreover, in 
 the same Faculty fourteen Standing Committees, which deal 
 with such subjects as Admission Examinations, Admission from 
 other Colleges, and Fellowships and other Aids for Graduates. 
 The discipline of the College outside the Lecture Rooms is 
 maintained by the Parietal Board, composed of " the Proctors 
 and the Officers of Instruction who reside in University build- 
 ings, or in buildings to which the superintendence of the Uni- 
 versity extends." On it there are forty-six members. They 
 are under the direction of a Regent, " a University officer who 
 exercises a general supervision over the conduct and welfare of 
 the students." "It is a tradition of the College that no teacher 
 is commanded to do anything ; his work is only suggested to 
 him by his superior officers. The controlling Boards, the 
 Faculties, the Corporation, and the Board of Overseers never 
 assume a mandatory relation to each other, or to the individu- 
 als who compose them." 2 
 
 The Governing Bodies of all the Schools are united in a 
 
 1 Catalogue, pp. 31, 60; Educational Review, April, 1894, p. 315. 
 
 2 Catalogue, pp. 32, 62; Higher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 92. 
 
xviii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 305 
 
 University Council, whose function is " to consider questions 
 which concern more than one Faculty and questions of Univer- 
 sity policy." 
 
 "In all Departments of the University, Professorships are 
 held without express limitation of time. All officers of instruc- 
 tion and government are subject to removal for inadequate 
 performance of duty, or for misconduct." It seems neverthe- 
 less to have been "generally assumed" till the beginning of the 
 present year, that " the tenure of office of Professors was a 
 life-tenure." 1 Happily, the course recently taken by the Cor- 
 poration in requesting the resignation of two Professors has 
 scattered this assumption to the winds. Our great Universities 
 have surely suffered enough from these life-tenure men to be 
 a warning to the younger countries. At Harvard, so long as 
 there is zealous discharge of duty, the Professor's tenure is as 
 sure as any tenure can be in this world. Should there be a 
 failure through old age, an ample pension will before long, it is 
 hoped, be provided. " An alumnus," said the President at the 
 Commencement Day Dinner in June, 1889, "has recently 
 offered a gift of peculiar acceptability of two hundred thousand 
 dollars (^40,899) towards the retiring allowance fund, than 
 which no other purpose could be happier." 2 " Assistant- Pro- 
 fessorships are held for five years, and tutorships for not more 
 than three years. At the end of the term of an Assistant- 
 Professor or Tutor his connection with the University ceases, 
 unless he be reappointed. Lecturers are appointed for not 
 
 1 Catalogue, p. 30; Harvard Graduates' Magazine, March, 1894, 
 
 P- 443- 
 
 2 Higher Education, etc., p. 104. Dr. George M. Lane, Pope Professor 
 of Latin, who resigned his office last spring, has received " a retiring allow- 
 ance of three thousand dollars (^613) a year." Harvard Graduates' 
 Magazine, March, 1894, p. 530. 
 
 x 
 
306 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 more than one year. Instructors are appointed for such terms 
 as convenience may require." There is great merit in this 
 system. In any case where incompetency is shown, far less 
 moral courage is required in the Governing Body to let an 
 appointment lapse by course of time than to bring it to an 
 end by dismissal. 
 
 " A visitor from Europe," writes Mr. Bryce, " is struck by 
 the prominence of the President in an American University 
 or College, and the almost monarchical position which he 
 sometimes occupies towards the Professors as well as towards 
 the students. Far more authority seems to be vested in him, 
 far more to turn upon his individual talents and character, 
 than in the Universities of Europe. Neither the German Pro- 
 Rector, nor the Vice-Chancellor in Oxford and Cambridge, 
 nor the Principal in a Scottish University, nor the Provost of 
 Trinity College in Dublin, nor the head in one of the Colleges 
 in Oxford or Cambridge is anything like so important a per- 
 sonage in respect of his office, whatever influence his individ- 
 ual gifts may give him, as an American College President. In 
 this, as in not a few other respects, America is less republican 
 than England. . . . No University dignitaries in Great Britain 
 are so well known to the public, or have their opinions quoted 
 with so much respect, as the heads of the seven or eight lead- 
 ing Universities of the United States." l Among the seven or 
 eight heads President Eliot undoubtedly holds the first place. 
 He holds it, not only as the President of the first University 
 on the American continent, but also by reason of his own 
 great qualities. He is a born ruler of men. A distinguished 
 American historian, speaking to me of the powers which he 
 has shown during his five and twenty years of office, both in 
 
 1 The American Commonwealth, 2d ed., II. 548-49. 
 
xviii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 307 
 
 governing and in organizing, said : " He would have made an 
 admirable President of a great Railway Company or of the 
 United States." Six months after he was appointed Lowell 
 wrote of him : " Our new President of the College is winning 
 praise of everybody, 1 take the inmost satisfaction in him, and 
 think him just the best man that could have been chosen. 
 We have a real Captain at last." 1 His father for eleven years 
 had been Treasurer of the College. His grandfather had 
 founded the Chair of Greek Literature. His uncle, on his 
 mother's side, the father of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, 
 that graceful and accomplished scholar, the editor of Lowell's 
 Letters, had held the Chair of Sacred Literature. He him- 
 self graduated at Harvard, and was for some time Assist- 
 ant-Professor of Mathematics and Chemistry. Later on he 
 was placed at the head of the Department of Chemistry in 
 the Scientific School. Resigning this post, ten years after 
 graduation he went to Europe, where " he spent two years in 
 the study of Chemistry, and in acquainting himself with the 
 organization of public institutions in France, Germany, and 
 England." 2 He returned to America to fill the Chair of 
 Chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not 
 having yet had his fill of learning, he once more returned as a 
 student to Europe. In September, 1868, the President of Har- 
 vard retired, and Mr. Eliot, who was in his thirty-fifth year, 
 was appointed his successor by the Corporation. Among the 
 Fellows there was, I was told, one man of great insight and 
 great influence, who had discovered the young Professor's 
 extraordinary powers, and who convinced his colleagues of his 
 pre-eminent fitness for the post. The Overseers apparently 
 wished to follow in the old course, and to have the choice fall 
 
 1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 58. 2 Higher Education, etc., p. 220. 
 
308 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 on some elderly man, distinguished rather by his learning 
 than by his strength of character and all the high and rare 
 qualities of a ruler. At all events they refused their " consent." 
 The Corporation elected him a second time, and a second time 
 the Overseers vetoed the election. After an interregnum last- 
 ing more than seven months they at last yielded. On May 19, 
 1869, Mr. Eliot became President of Harvard College, and 
 the College was at once launched on its great and rapid course 
 of the most glorious prosperity. 
 
 How different is his position from that held seventy years 
 ago by his predecessor, Dr. Kirkland, whose office, according 
 to Lowell, " combined, with its purely scholastic functions, 
 those of accountant and chief of police ! For keeping books 
 he was incompetent (unless it were those he borrowed), and 
 the only discipline he exercised was by the unobtrusive pres- 
 sure of a gentlemanliness which rendered insubordination to 
 him impossible." 1 The President of our days is a great 
 power ; he surveys the whole machine of the rapidly growing 
 University, and adjusts it to the needs and changes of the 
 times and to the advances of scholarship and science. " He 
 has to preside at the meetings of the Corporation and to act 
 as the ordinary medium of communication between the Cor- 
 poration and the Overseers, and between the Corporation and 
 the Faculties. He has to make an annual report to the Over- 
 seers on the general condition of the University. He has to 
 preside on public academic days ; to preside over the several 
 Faculties ; to direct the official correspondence of the Uni- 
 versity ; to acquaint himself with the state, interests, and wants 
 of the whole institution ; and to exercise a general superin- 
 tendence over all its concerns." 2 How admirably President 
 
 1 Literary Essays, 1890, I. 84. 2 Catalogue, p. 29. 
 
xviii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 309 
 
 Eliot has done his work is shown by the extraordinary growth 
 of Harvard in the last twenty-five years. Part of this growth 
 is due to that great reform which, three years before he entered 
 on office, established a government of the University, by the 
 University, for the University. Part is due to the sound 
 scholars and ardent workers among the senior Professors, who, 
 even longer than he, have been steadily advancing the highest 
 interests of Harvard. Much is due to the younger men whom 
 he helped to choose, and who have so well supported him in 
 all his great measures. But when all is deducted there still 
 remains a noble balance. Much will be forgotten ; but in far 
 distant years Harvard men will still talk of the Age of the 
 Great President. In the quarter of a century in which he has 
 held office, the number of students under the Faculty of Arts 
 and Science has increased from six hundred and thirty-four 
 to two thousand one hundred and eighty-eight, and of students 
 in the whole University from eleven hundred and twelve to 
 three thousand one hundred and fifty-six. 1 
 
 The revenue, which at the beginning of the period was two 
 hundred and seventy thousand dollars (,£55,213) is now one 
 million and forty-seven thousand (£214,108) ; while the aid 
 given every year in money to poor students has grown from 
 twenty-five thousand dollars (£5111) to eighty-nine thousand 
 (£18,199). Twenty-four new buildings have been erected 
 at a cost of two million two hundred and fourteen thousand 
 dollars (£452,757), and as I am writing fresh piles are rapidly 
 rising. 2 Romam lateriiiam invenit, tnarmoream reliquit. 
 
 1 I do not include the three hundred and forty-six students who attend 
 the Summer School — a school which has been called into existence in this 
 period. 
 
 2 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, pp. 12, 98-101; Catalogue, 
 
 P- 536. 
 
310 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 Such a constitution as this where, according to the strict 
 letter, the Overseers in so many matters have an absolute veto 
 over the votes of the Corporation, where the Corporation has 
 an unlimited control over the Faculty, and where the power of 
 the President is so small would seem unworkable in a great 
 University. Like the English constitution, it moves easily by 
 the combined forces of wise custom and common sense. The 
 Overseers, who are the stronghold of academic conservatism, 
 never push their rights to the point of obstinacy, and the Cor- 
 poration has long worked in harmony with the Faculty. It is 
 only in matters of general policy that the Overseers make their 
 power felt j and even in these they never long oppose the Cor- 
 poration and a united Faculty. When the Faculty is divided, 
 then they have been known to side with the minority. A few 
 years ago, for instance, a proposal to institute a " Three Years' 
 Course," which was supported by a considerable majority of 
 the Faculty, was vetoed by the Overseers, mainly, I believe, 
 under the influence of a few of the ablest Professors. They 
 have been described at Harvard as " our House of Lords, 
 whose main business it is to act as a drag on progress." They 
 are perhaps chiefly useful as a means of getting money. They 
 are generally chosen from among the most influential and 
 wealthy New England families. Their official position increases 
 the interest in the University which they would naturally feel as 
 graduates, and they not only themselves often make splendid 
 donations, but they stir up the liberality of their friends. They 
 everywhere preach the gospel of endowment. Though the 
 appointment of the Professors and other teachers nominally 
 belongs to the Corporation, under the approval of the Over- 
 seers, it is by the Faculty in each branch and the President 
 acting together that every vacancy is filled up. The name that 
 
xviii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 311 
 
 he in concurrence with them submits to the Corporation, and 
 through them to the Overseers, is always accepted. No better 
 mode of appointment could be devised. With the men most 
 competent to judge of a teacher's merits and who have most at 
 heart the welfare of their own School, acting with the Presi- 
 dent, the choice lies. Jobbing and favouritism seem unknown. 
 Not a breath of suspicion ever reached me. 
 
 By the side, therefore, of the two powers recognized by the 
 Charter, two others have gradually grown into great importance 
 — the President and the Faculty. The President, it is true, 
 from the first belonged to both the original Governing Bodies, 
 being a member of the Overseers and presiding over the Cor- 
 poration ; but he has, as it were, two persons, one in which he 
 is a member of these bodies, and one in which he is an inde- 
 pendent power. In this second position he has no absolute 
 authority, but he rules like a wise constitutional monarch of the 
 earlier type, who, keeping within the lines of the constitution, 
 nevertheless was a real and strong governor. In every measure 
 theoretically the President can be overruled first by the Corpo- 
 ration and next by the Overseers, but practically in almost every 
 measure connected with discipline and instruction he has his 
 own way, so long as he is supported by the Faculty. If he 
 may justly be compared to a King or a President of a Republic, 
 it is to a King like William III., or to a President like Lincoln, 
 each of whom was his own Prime Minister. The Faculty 
 exists by the vote of the Corporation and the Overseers, and 
 by their vote could theoretically be abolished. Nevertheless, 
 as I have shown, it has gained a position of great authority 
 and stability. With the management of the property of the 
 University, the Faculty has nothing directly to do, that falling 
 within the province of the Corporation. They leave it mainly 
 
312 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 to the Treasurer, who by virtue of his office is a member of 
 the Board. 
 
 In nothing does Harvard differ more thoroughly from Oxford 
 than in the perfect organization which exists in her army of 
 teachers. In Oxford the teachers are divided into two main 
 bodies, entirely independent of each other and under no central 
 government — the University Professors and the College Tutors. 
 Over the Professors scarcely any control exists ; they rival the 
 Cyclopes in their independence. The tutors are governed each 
 by the Corporation of his own College. Of this Corporation he 
 is commonly a member. The Colleges are twenty in number. 1 
 To the Professors and Tutors must be added the University 
 Readers, 2 who are under a special Board ; the Assistants and the 
 Demonstrators in the Museum who are under the control of 
 their Professors ; and the teachers of the Unattached Students 
 
 — the students, that is to say, who are undergraduates of the 
 University, but are not members of any College. In all the 
 confusion of such a system as this, if system it can be called, 
 there is a great waste of labour and of money, and an unfair 
 inequality of payment. There are, or there have been till lately, 
 Professors of great learning who have lectured to empty benches 
 
 — I might say to empty chairs j for, unable to face the forlorn 
 look of the lecture- rooms, they have given their instruction in 
 their own studies. Even there there has been an appearance 
 of vacancy. On the other hand, there are Tutors who, never 
 failing to draw together a large number of students, are never- 
 
 1 I exclude Keble, for it is not a College in the sense in which the word 
 has always been used at Oxford. It is governed by a Board of outsiders. 
 Neither do I reckon the two Halls. 
 
 2 They, roughly speaking, answer to the Assistant-Professors, but they 
 are independent of the Professors. In some departments indeed there is 
 only a Reader and no Professor. 
 
xvm. HARVARD COLLEGE. 313 
 
 theless miserably paid for their work, and see no sure opening 
 before them of advancement. In our army of learning there 
 is no Field- Marshal's baton in every soldier's knapsack. 
 There is no clear and well-marked path of promotion, on which 
 a young man can with confidence set his foot, sure that high 
 merit will in time bring him to a high position. However able 
 he may be, he has chance fighting heavily against him. The 
 learned author who is at present throwing a stream of light on 
 the reign of the first two Stuarts and of the Commonwealth, 
 skilled though he is as a teacher, has never been made a Tutor 
 in the College, or a Professor in the University, which he so 
 greatly adorns. From the College at the beginning of his career 
 he was shut out by religious intolerance, just as from the same 
 College another distinguished student and teacher, many years 
 later, was thrust forth. From a University Chair he has been 
 excluded mainly through the absence of organization in the staff 
 of teachers. He is by no means a solitary example. Mr. Free- 
 man was not made Professor of History until he was too old to 
 learn the teacher's art ; Mr. Froude, when he succeeded him, 
 had passed the Psalmist's limit of three-score years and ten. 
 The two distinguished scholars who have recently been raised 
 to the Chairs of Greek and Latin, in a wealthy and properly 
 organized University would have been made Professors twenty 
 years earlier. So often does it happen in Oxford that men are 
 not promoted till they are past their prime, that not uncommonly 
 a Professor's salary is looked upon, not as wages, but a reward. 
 Little surprise is caused by the nomination of a man from whom 
 fresh work can hardly be expected. That he has done good 
 work is, with many, a full justification of his appointment. It 
 is his claims, and not the claims of the students, that are 
 examined. His well-earned pension as a hard and successful 
 
314 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 worker in the field of learning is to be provided at their expense. 
 Through the whole of the University far too much is spent in 
 rewards and far too little in wages. Were the wealth of the 
 foundations more wisely used, teachers would be more fairly 
 remunerated, and learned men and students of nature, who 
 may have no gift for teaching, would be able to count on a 
 decent maintenance whilst they laboriously advanced the boun- 
 daries of knowledge. In Harvard, provision for such men as 
 these is as yet but very imperfectly made. The millionaire 
 who shall endow research has not as yet appeared on the stage 
 of the New England Cambridge. Perhaps he is within the 
 prompter's call. 
 
 It is in the organization of the great body of teachers that 
 Harvard excels. An undergraduate who greatly distinguishes 
 himself, after taking his degree, with the help of a scholarship, 
 if he is a poor man, will continue his studies in the Graduate 
 School or in some foreign university. In due time he joins the 
 staff of teachers as a Lecturer, Demonstrator, or Assistant. His 
 appointment is but for one year. In all likelihood it will be 
 continued if he shows his fitness for the post. If he does not, 
 he is weeded out while he is still young enough to seek his living 
 elsewhere. The University is not saddled with an incompetent 
 teacher, who, as sometimes happens in our Oxford Colleges, is 
 kept on through pity, to the great injury of the students. He, 
 however, who successfully passes through this period of proba- 
 tion may hope before long to become an Instructor or a Tutor 
 with a longer engagement ; and, later on, an Assistant-Professor 
 with much higher pay and an engagement for five years. At 
 last he arrives at the full Professorship. He can rise no higher, 
 unless he is made President ; but with length of service and with 
 merit his salary increases up to a certain limit. The average 
 
xviii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 315 
 
 age at which a man becomes full Professor is thirty-five years. 
 If in any of these grades of advancement there is no vacancy 
 in Harvard, an able teacher may count on receiving a " call " 
 from some other University. Should he there greatly distinguish 
 himself, he is scarcely less sure, when a vacancy does occur, to 
 be recalled to his old College. The chance of promotion has 
 greatly increased of late years, not only by the foundation of 
 other seats of learning, for each of which a whole staff of Pro- 
 fessors is needed, but moreover by the rapid growth in all 
 the chief departments of the University. This has indeed gone 
 on by leaps and by bounds. In the last twenty-five years the 
 number of students, as I have said, has increased by more than 
 two thousand. Instead of forty-eight Professors and Assistant- 
 Professors there are now one hundred and eighteen, and instead 
 of thirty-three Tutors, Instructors, Demonstrators, and Assistants 
 there are now two hundred and four. Twenty-five years ago 
 there were in all eighty-one teachers ; they now number three 
 hundred and twenty-two. This augmentation is still going on. 
 This year there are eighteen more Professors and Assistant- 
 Professors than there were two years ago, while the lower ranks 
 of teachers have in the same short time been increased by fifty- 
 one. 1 
 
 In the method which is followed when a vacant Chair has to 
 be filled up or a new Chair is created, Harvard, in common, I 
 believe, with American universities in general, sets us an excel- 
 lent example. No application is made for the post by a crowd 
 of eager candidates ; no testimonials are sent in — testimonials 
 in which one side of the shield only is shown, in which truth so 
 often is divided from falsehood by the thinnest of partitions. 
 
 1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 12; Catalogue, 1891-92, p. 454; 
 lb. 1893-94, p. 536. 
 
316 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xvm. 
 
 The members of each Faculty have made themselves acquainted 
 with the merits of the most eminent teachers in other seats of 
 learning ; should Harvard herself not furnish the right man, 
 they know where he is to be found. He is offered the post ; 
 he is not exposed to the loss of dignity which invests a suitor. 
 One man is honoured by the selection which is made of him ; 
 none are wounded in their feelings by being passed over. The 
 selection is not confined to citizens of the United States. Two 
 years ago two new Chairs were founded at Harvard, one of 
 Economic History, the other of Experimental Psychology. To 
 fill them an invitation was sent across the Canadian border to 
 an Oxford Master of Arts, a Professor in the University of 
 Toronto, and across the Atlantic to a German Doctor of Phi- 
 losophy, a teacher in the University of Freiburg. 
 
 How happy would a University be where, with a perfect sys- 
 tem of subordination by which merit is sure of recognition, 
 should be combined the social life and the friendly intercourse 
 and all the opportunities for the interchange of thought and 
 knowledge which are found in every one of our Oxford Col- 
 leges. Each one of them is the gathering-place, the home, of 
 a small knot of learned men. Each of the Common-Rooms 
 is a centre of kindly feeling and hospitality. Of these we have 
 twenty ; Harvard has not one. It will be easier for Oxford to 
 take to herself all the good that there is in the Harvard system, 
 than for Harvard to add to her vigorous and admirable organi- 
 zation all that charm and pleasantness of life which make an 
 Oxford man's College scarcely less dear to him than Oxford 
 herself. By an Act of Parliament the one reform can be 
 in great part effected ; the other could only come . about by 
 the slow changes of long years. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Graduate Schools in Oxford and Cambridge. — Respublica Literatorum. — 
 American Students in English Universities, — The Old Home. 
 
 THE Senate of our English Cambridge, I read, has issued 
 a report in favour of graduate study. It is proposed 
 " to establish two new degrees, those of Bachelor of Letters 
 and Bachelor of Science, open to graduates either of Cam- 
 bridge or of other ' recognized ' universities, who shall have 
 given evidence that they have pursued at Cambridge, for at 
 least one year, a course of advanced study or research, and 
 shall also have presented an original dissertation for approval 
 by the board of studies." I hope that this scheme will be not 
 only adopted but greatly enlarged, and that in an amended 
 form it will be transferred to Oxford. The Schools of Arts, 
 Natural Science, History, Law, Medicine, and Theology, in 
 fact, of all that is taught, should be equally opened to these 
 graduates, and the higher degrees in each Faculty should be 
 conferred on those who deserve them. The day perhaps is 
 far distant when at Oxford and Cambridge the Master's degree 
 shall no longer be given as a matter of course, after a certain 
 lapse of time, and on the payment of a certain sum of money. 
 In Oxford a beginning has been made with the degrees in Law. 
 I have the satisfaction of knowing that no one possessed of 
 an ignorance equal in amount to that which I had when I 
 took the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor would have the least 
 chance of gaining these distinctions now. With these graduate 
 
 3i7 
 
318 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 students the first step in reforming the Master's degree might 
 very properly be made. Their fitness for it should be tested 
 either by examination, or — which is far better — by some 
 piece of original work. The residence which is proposed of 
 one year — of five and twenty weeks, that is to say — seems 
 much too short. Among the " recognized universities " all 
 should be recognized which are worthy of recognition, whether 
 they belong to one of our colonies, or to a foreign land. That 
 Respublica Lite rata rum, that great Commonwealth of Scholars 
 to which Bodley dedicated his noble Library, should not be 
 bounded and divided by seas, rivers, and mountains, and all 
 the limits which part nation from nation. For its citizens no 
 passports should be needed, and no letters of naturalization 
 should be required. In every university the scholar should 
 find his home ; in every seat of learning he should have his 
 right of domicile. Like the Roman State, this commonwealth 
 should extend over the whole civilized world, and its citizen- 
 ship should be obtained, not by birth, but with a great sum — 
 the toil of years. Wherever the standard of learning is on a 
 level with ours, the graduates of that university, when they 
 come to study with us, should hold the same rank as they had 
 held at home. The Bachelor of Arts from Harvard or Yale 
 should at Oxford or Cambridge wear the Bachelor's gown. If 
 he disgraced it by idleness or misconduct, he should at once 
 have it stripped from his shoulders. He should wear it on 
 sufferance, but on a noble and generous sufferance. The gra- 
 duates who came from the inferior seats of learning, whether 
 English or foreign, might very properly be placed in an inferior 
 position till they had gone through a certain amount of study. 
 This is done at Harvard. I was told of a young Bachelor of 
 Arts from one of the Canadian universities who would have 
 
xix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 319 
 
 had to enter as a Senior had he not appealed to the high 
 honours which he had taken in his final examination. Even the 
 undergraduates, who, at the rate of about fifty a year, flock in 
 there from other universities, do not, by any means, altogether 
 lose whatever standing they had already acquired. They go 
 before the Committee on Admission, who, measuring the work 
 which they had hitherto done and the position which they had 
 held " by Harvard standards," determine in which of the four 
 Classes they shall each be placed. 1 Almost all of them, I was 
 told, would be admitted " a year short." A Senior, that is to 
 say, would be reckoned as a Junior, a Junior as a Sophomore, 
 and a Sophomore as a Freshman. Those, however, who come 
 from Yale, and perhaps from one or two other Universities, are 
 not thus degraded. 
 
 I hope that the day is not far distant when the never-failing 
 stream of American students which, like the Gulf Stream, sets 
 eastwards, shall be diverted from Germany and flow towards 
 England ; when the graduate of Harvard and Yale and of many 
 another University shall wear the gown in the Colleges of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, and tread the cloisters which were trodden by 
 their forefathers. Towards England, the mother-country, the 
 Old Home, the land of the Pilgrim Fathers, whose towns, 
 streets, rivers, fields, hedge-rows, lanes have by poetry, history, 
 biography and fiction been made scarcely less dear and scarcely 
 less familiar to the gentle reader than his own New England, 
 this stream would surely naturally set. How these scholars 
 have loved " this little world, this precious stone set in the sil- 
 ver sea, "this dear, dear land," in spite of our coldness, in spite 
 of our unkindness, in spite of our arrogance, in spite of all the 
 sufferings of the War of Independence, in spite of the insolence 
 
 1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 53. 
 
320 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 which brought on the War of 18 12, in spite of the loud applause 
 given by the classes, though not by the people, to the Southern 
 slaveholders in their cruel struggle against liberty and the 
 Union, in spite of the insults offered to the Northern patriots, 
 to a man like Lowell with his warm and generous heart, as if 
 the army in which fell his three nephews ("the hope of our 
 race") and his three cousins were " an army officered by tai- 
 lors' apprentices and butcher boys." l The wrong, I know, has 
 not been all on one side ; arrogance has of old been met with 
 arrogance, insolence with insolence, and wrong-doing with 
 wrong-doing. The blundering selfishness of the American 
 nation has brought, and is still bringing, misery to many a poor 
 English home, by destroying that twice-blessed freedom of 
 trade which blesseth him that gives and him that takes ; that 
 freedom which everywhere alike gives the poor man his bread, 
 not only in greater abundance but all "the sweeter because it is 
 no longer leavened with a sense of injustice." The ungenerous 
 treatment of our authors, men who have spread knowledge 
 and happiness broadcast through their land and have been 
 robbed of their reward, though not so bad as it had so long 
 been, still goes on. Nevertheless the balance of wrong-doing 
 — if the balance of the last hundred and twenty years should 
 now be struck — lies heavily against us. Yet in spite of all 
 this, how dear England is to many and many an American ! 
 Though they never seem to forget that they are with foreigners 
 when in our company, while we so easily forget that we are 
 with foreigners when in theirs, nevertheless in New England, 
 among people of any education, there is a far more friendly 
 feeling towards England and the English than there exists 
 among us towards America and the Americans. How can they 
 
 1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. II, 159. 
 
xix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 321 
 
 help loving the land not only of their forefathers, but of their 
 own day-dreams and their imagination ; the land peopled for 
 them by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Clarendon, Pepys, Addison, 
 Goldsmith, Boswell, Jane Austen, Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, 
 and by many another famous writer with that strange host, 
 some the children of fancy, others once real men and women, 
 but now, having passed through a great author's hands, little 
 more than the children of fancy ; some so odd, some so full of 
 humour, some so tender and pitiful, some so rough and master- 
 ful, some so wise and lovable, some so foolish and no less lova- 
 ble ? This is the land of the Temple Garden, where Somerset 
 and Richard Plantagenet plucked the red rose and the white, 
 and of Brick Court hard by where, bewailed by the poor and 
 the outcast, Oliver Goldsmith died ; of Clement's Inn, where 
 FalstafT and Shallow heard the chimes at midnight ; of West- 
 minster Abbey, where the Spectator looking upon the tombs of 
 the great felt every motion of envy die in him ; of Westminster 
 Bridge, where Wordsworth saw " a sight so touching in its 
 majesty " ; of the little Chapel in the Tower ; of Fleet Street, 
 " the most delightful scene in the world," more delightful, John- 
 son and Boswell thought, than Tempe, and of Charing Cross 
 "with its full tide of human existence." It is the land of the 
 cathedrals and castles; of the old-fashioned inns which still 
 help to form " the felicity of England " ; of Addison's Walk 
 and the Bodleian ; of the silver Thames and the sedgy Severn ; 
 of the beautiful country life, the parks, the lawns, the ivy- 
 mantled towers each with its peal of bells, the green fields, the 
 winding lanes. "The country," wrote Ticknor, "is much more 
 beautiful than I thought any country could be." 1 A New 
 England minister has recorded how eighty years ago he was 
 
 1 Life of George Ticknor, I. 56. 
 
 y 
 
322 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 gazing at a print-shop, when two men who were passing along 
 stopped to look at a picture in the window. " ' Do you not 
 recognize it?' said one of them to his companion. ' Oh yes,' 
 was the reply ; * it is Guildhall.' I had some feeling akin to 
 sublimity in the thought that I was standing so near two gentle- 
 men at once who had travelled to London and seen Guild- 
 hall." 1 "What shall I say of London," wrote Longfellow; 
 " of my pilgrimage to Temple Bar, Eastcheap, and Little 
 Britain? Indeed, I know not what to say." 2 " My heart 
 bounded when I caught the first sight of England," an ancient 
 dame said to me. " I love every inch of it," said another lady. 
 I asked a distinguished scholar, a man sprung of the best New 
 England stock, whether an American was touched by Shake- 
 speare's glorious praise of England. "Your forefathers," I said, 
 "would have felt it as Englishmen." With his gentle and 
 thoughtful smile, he replied that there were roots in him which 
 went down deeper in England than even in his own country. An 
 old country lawyer who had never crossed the Atlantic despised 
 all mankind but the English stock. We were talking one day 
 of the Southern States. "It was not unlikely," I said, "that 
 in some of them the negroes by enduring the climate better 
 might in the end supplant the descendants of the English." 
 He scornfully replied : " I don't know anything but God 
 Almighty that can kill an Anglo-Saxon." The great-grand- 
 fathers of these New Englanders before the fatal shot was 
 fired at Concord Bridge would have felt the proud boast, — 
 
 " That Chatham's language was their mother tongue, 
 And Wolfe's great name compatriot with their own." 
 
 1 Life of Benjamin Silliman, II. 150. 
 
 2 Life of H. W. Longfellow, I. 170. 
 
xix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 323 
 
 Their children now say with Wordsworth : — 
 
 " We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
 That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold 
 Which Milton held. — In everything we are sprung 
 Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold." 
 
 "They are islanders," wrote Prescott of us, with all the gene- 
 rous enthusiasm of a scholar and, I would fain believe, with 
 all the pride of kinship, " they are islanders cut off from the 
 great world. But their island is indeed a world of its own. 
 With all their faults, never has the sun shone — if one may use 
 the expression in reference to England — on a more noble 
 race ; or one that has done more for the great interests of 
 humanity." 1 "They have the proudest history in the world," 
 wrote Emerson. " Would to God," said Judge Story, " that I 
 could see Westminster Hall, and the Abbey, and the Houses 
 of Parliament. A cluster of recollections belongs to them, 
 almost unexampled in the history of the world." 2 Lowell, in 
 all "the bitterness (half resentment and half regret) " which 
 he felt towards England at the close of the Slaveholders' War, 
 could still say : " I know what the land we sprung from, and 
 which we have not disgraced, is worth to freedom and civiliza- 
 tion." 3 He added: "We have not a thought nor a hope 
 that is not American." But here in his anger he deceived him- 
 self. He was never one of those who held that " the felicity 
 of the American colonists consisted in their escape from the 
 past." 4 The past was too much for him; except, indeed, in 
 the very heat of the great war it was always with him. Even 
 
 1 Life of W. H. Prescott, p. 320. 
 
 2 Life of Joseph Slory, II. 445. 
 
 3 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 402. 
 
 4 Works of Daniel Webster, I. 101. 
 
324 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 American spelling he would not tolerate. " Why do you give 
 in to these absurdities?" he wrote to a brother-author who had 
 spelt mouldered moldered. " Why abscond into this petty creek 
 from the great English main of orthography?" 1 Except in 
 his own pleasant home in Cambridge, nowhere in his old age 
 was he so happy as in England. He returned to it again and 
 again. " This is my ninth year at Whitby," he wrote, " and 
 the place loses none of its charm for me." 2 " There is not a 
 corner of England that has not its special charm," he had 
 written three years earlier. 3 But in earlier days, long before 
 his fame, his great position, and his beautiful character and 
 scholarly mind had won for him a place among us so high that 
 it would have softened even the surliest Yankee and made him 
 fond of England, he loved the island for itself. To a friend 
 he wrote nearly forty years ago : " I will envy you a little 
 your delightful two months in England — and a picture rises 
 before me of long slopes washed with a cool lustre of watery 
 sunshine — a swan-silenced reach of sallow-fringed river — 
 great humps of foliage contrasting taper spires — cathedral 
 domes, gray Gothic fronts elbowed by red-brick deaneries — 
 broad downs clouded with cumulous sheep." 4 "Hereditary 
 instincts," he told Mr. Leslie Stephen, " enabled him to appre- 
 ciate our English scenery." 5 He was meditating one more 
 visit to us when the illness came upon him, from which he 
 never recovered. Had he died among us, surely his last 
 resting-place would have been in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 What a hold should we get on men of the noblest minds in 
 the United States, and through them on their countrymen, did 
 we open wide our universities ! What's Germany to them or 
 
 1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 294. 
 
 2 lb. II. 421. 3 lb. II. 356. 4 Lb. I. 300. 5 Lb. II. 501, 
 
xix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 325 
 
 they to Germany ? To England the young students could not 
 help coming if a welcome were given them, and if in every 
 one of the Arts and Sciences, teaching and opportunities for 
 original work were provided worthy of a great university. 
 When Oxford and Cambridge have each their great Graduate 
 School, a School of men indifferent to honours and unworried 
 by examinations, then that blessed time will not be far distant. 
 If once we get hold of these young Americans, we will defy 
 them to pass through Balliol or Magdalen or New College, and 
 not love Oxford and England. Prescott, the evening before 
 his death, said of us to a friend : " What a hearty and noble 
 people they are, and how an American's heart warms towards 
 them after he has been in England once, and found them out 
 in their hospitable homes ! " ] "Each traveller makes his own 
 England," writes Dr. Holmes. 2 Not altogether so, most gentle 
 of Autocrats. We Englishmen can do something towards 
 making it for him. We can make him feel that it is not among 
 a strange people that he has come ; that it is by no waters 
 of Babylon that he sitteth himself down. Few men can any- 
 where feel more strongly the sense of loneliness than the 
 American scholar who knowing nobody wanders through 
 England. Those who 
 
 " At the purple dawn of day 
 Tadmor's marble waste survey " 
 
 are scarcely more solitary than the young New Englander 
 without a friend in the land of his forefathers, and in the land 
 of his books. The very words Old Home, which had so plea- 
 sant a sound far off, add to his desolation. He is like a man 
 
 1 Life of W. H. Prescott, p. 442. 
 
 2 R. W. Emerson, p. 218. 
 
326 HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 who after the lapse of years comes back to his old College and 
 finds nobody who knows him. He sees the new names above 
 the doors. Many a New Englander visits the English village 
 in which his forefathers lived two centuries and a half ago. 
 He wanders about it, thinking how once to those of his name 
 there was not a house that would not have been open ; he goes 
 into the old church and sits where his ancestors sat ; in his old 
 home he is utterly a stranger. He passes through England, 
 seeing all its beauties, visiting like a pilgrim many a spot of 
 which he had dreamt since the day when books first took hold 
 of him, but living in inns and knowing nobody but landlords 
 and waiters. Those friends, once so real and still so dear, 
 with whom so often in his New England parlour he had laughed 
 and wept, in their own homes are for the first time found to be 
 shadows. They all "are melted into air, into thin air." Where 
 he could love so much he finds no one even to give him a 
 hand. " England," said an American to me, " is a country 
 where a foreigner meets with the greatest hospitality and the 
 greatest neglect. There is no people so hospitable as the 
 English, if you have an introduction to them. If there is the 
 tiniest little tag on which to hang hospitality, no one can be 
 more hospitable than an Englishman ; but if there is no intro- 
 duction, no one can stand more aloof." Our ancient univer- 
 sities could so easily provide a noble " tag " indeed. What 
 ever- widening circles of friendship would in them be formed — 
 circles which would in time include hundreds and thousands of 
 gentle spirits and cordial hearts on both sides of the wide 
 Atlantic ! In Boston, on the walls of the Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society, hang two swords crossed. They once hung 
 above the books in Prescott's library. One of them had been 
 worn by his father's father on Bunker Hill, the other by his 
 
xix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 327 
 
 mother's father on an English sloop-of-war which, from the 
 river below, cannonaded the patriots. For fifty years and more 
 they have been crossed in peace in the gentle seats of learning 
 — a symbol, I trust, of that unruffled harmony, that perfect 
 good-will, which some day by the help of books, scholars, and 
 universities, shall be established between the great and kindred 
 nations. 
 
 Before many years have passed by, Harvard in every one of 
 her Schools will supply her students with that higher learning 
 in search of which they have so long resorted to Europe. 
 "Our day of dependence," said Emerson nearly sixty years 
 ago, " our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, 
 draws to a close." ! Nevertheless, her young scholars will still 
 cross the Atlantic in the same noble quest. It is not only the 
 Libraries, the Museums, the Art Collections, the ancient sites 
 and monuments of the Old World which will bring them. More 
 than for all these, they will come to live for a while in the midst 
 of those great floating traditions of learning and mental refine- 
 ment, that priceless possession handed down from far distant 
 centuries, and ever growing as it passed from one generation to 
 another. These traditions well-nigh perished in the severity of 
 the Puritans' character and in the prolonged struggle with a 
 barren soil and a stern climate. In later years their growth has 
 been checked by the swift and victorious march westward over 
 a country so rich and fruitful that by the restless ambition which 
 it exerted it destroyed that repose in which learning and refine- 
 ment are best nurtured. 
 
 While their students must spend some time in Europe, I 
 trust that before long many a scholar fresh from Oxford and 
 Cambridge will cross the Atlantic to finish his studies in Har- 
 
 i Works, 1884, 1. 65. 
 
328 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 
 
 vard. More than one hundred years ago that generous bene- 
 factor of the College, the old London merchant, Thomas 
 Hollis, seeing Oxford and Cambridge closed to the Noncon- 
 formists, turned his eyes towards Harvard as the place where 
 English ministers might be educated. "To train them up 
 in arts and sciences," he wrote, "would be a method to 
 correct mean and ignorant explications and applications of 
 Scripture, attended with a little enthusiasm l too often, which 
 narrows that catholic charity among all Christians, recommended 
 by the apostles of our Lord Jesus. I should rejoice to hear 
 your College was well furnished with Professors in every science 
 that young students might be completely instructed in the 
 ministry, and our ministers at London might encourage the 
 sending such like youth to Harvard College, instead of Leyden 
 and Utrecht, our present practice." a Happily one part of 
 Hollis's wish has at last been fulfilled. In every science the 
 University is well furnished with Professors, while there are 
 departments in the Graduate School where our best men might 
 study with profit. But the greatest profit of all would be the 
 residence among a people so like and yet so unlike. Here 
 the student of history, political science, and political economy 
 might study, as it were, in a great Life-School. Nowhere 
 could a man get more quickly or more thoroughly cured of 
 what Lowell calls " the English genius for thinking all the 
 rest of mankind unreasonable." "There is one thing," he 
 adds, " Englishmen always take for granted, namely, that an 
 American must see the superiority of England." 3 At Harvard 
 
 1 Enthusiasm he uses in the sense which it commonly bore through the 
 greater part of last century : " a vain belief of private revelation." 
 
 2 Quincy's Harvai'd, I. 434. 
 
 3 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 405. 
 
xix. HARVARD COLLEGE. 329 
 
 "the freshening western blast " would sweep away that and a 
 few other insular prejudices besides. Here, too, the young 
 student of Oxford or Cambridge would see a great university 
 greatly ruled. He would return home loving his own College 
 and his own University more than ever, but resolved that so far 
 as it in him lay, they shall be still worthier of the love and 
 reverence felt for them by their children. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, 301. 
 
 Adams, President John Quincy, 109, 
 114, 211. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 301. 
 
 Adams, Samuel, 51. 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 73. 
 
 Adler, Felix, 48. 
 
 Admission, Committee on, 319. 
 
 Advisers, Committee of, 232. 
 Agassiz, Professor Louis, 82, 138, 218 
 
 266. 
 Agassiz, Mrs., 275. 
 Agassiz, Professor Alexander, 266. 
 Agriculture, School of, 160. 
 Alcoholic liquors, 83, 89, 121, 174. 
 Alexander, Emperor of Russia, 179. 
 Allen, Rev. W., 9. 
 Ames, Professor James Barr, 261. 
 Ames, Frederick Lothrop, 296. 
 Amherst College, 41. 
 Ancient Customs of Harvard College, 57. 
 Andrew, John Albion, 17. 
 Association of Alumni, 98. 
 Athleticism, 117, 136, 143, 149, 152. 
 Auld Lang Syne, 123. 
 
 Bancroft, George, 301. 
 
 Bancroft, , 151. 
 
 Baseball, 138. 
 Baths, 175. 
 Bemis, George, 19. 
 Bequests. See Endowments. 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 286. 
 Bismarck, Prince, 223. 
 Blaschka, Messrs., 268. 
 Bloody Monday, 63. 
 
 Boarding-houses, 168. 
 Boat-races, 147, 151. 
 Bod ley, Sir Thomas, 318. 
 Holies, Frank, 164. 
 Bonaparte, Jerome, 210. 
 Bonaparte, Charles Joseph, 301. 
 Boston, " the Literary Emporium," 
 Boston Sunday (ilobe, 203. 
 Boys, 136, 187. 
 Brandeis, Louis D., 260. 
 1 Brattle, Major, 81. 
 Brattle, Thomas, 81. 
 Brewster, " Sir," 7. 
 Bright, John, 182, 235. 
 Brilliants, 248. 
 
 Brooks, Bishop Phillips, 48, 53. 
 Brooks, Preston S., 41. 
 Bryce, Right Hon. James, 306. 
 Bulkeley, "Sir," 7. 
 Burgoyne, General, 34. 
 Burlingame, Anson, 179. 
 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 111, 171. 
 Burney, Dr. Charles, 184. 
 Butler, Bishop, 184. 
 Butler, General, 97. 
 
 Cambridge University, endowments, 
 21 ; Emmanuel College, 23, 27 ; 
 founders of Harvard, 23, 159; ex- 
 aminations, 243, 246; Colleges for 
 Women, 274; graduate study, 317. 
 
 Campus, 57. 
 
 Caps and gowns, 59, 154. 
 
 Carlyle, Dr. Alexander, 11. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 105, 113, 290. 
 
 Carter, Mrs., 13. 
 
 33i 
 
332 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Catalogue, Triennial, 29. 
 Centenary of 1836, 23, 37. 
 Channing, Professor Edward Tyrrel, 
 
 75- 
 Channing, Dr. William Ellery, 33 
 
 286. 
 
 ■1, 46, 167. 
 
 « haiies I., 291. 
 
 ( lharles II., 42. 
 
 Charter ol Harvard College, 159, 298. 
 
 Charter ol Massachusetts, 42. 
 
 Chauncy, President, 7, 57. 
 
 Child, Professor Francis James, 115, 
 -94- 
 
 Christmas, 182. 
 Chumming, 16a, 171. 
 
 1 
 
 1 , 100. 
 
 y, 10S. 
 
 lent, 1S0. 
 Clubs Campaign 
 
 Clu 
 
 :t Club, 173, 2"; . ; Re- 
 
 publican Club, i3o; Medical 1 
 Musical Clubs, 1 j. 
 i). Richard, 235. 
 Commemoration of 1886, 27. 
 
 lencement, 31, 82, 120, 153. 
 Common, Cambridge, 30, 05. 
 Commons, 
 Concord, 33, 122. 
 Conington, Professor, 220. 
 Corporal punishment, 55. 
 Corporation, 298. 
 Council, 305. 
 Courses of study, 231. 
 Crammers, 201. 
 Cranmer, Archbishop, 53. 
 Creighton, Bishop, 27. 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 23. 
 Currency, 14, 84. 
 
 Curtis, Benjamin R., 223, 224, 256. 
 Curtis, George William, 115, 281. 
 Cushing, Caleb, 29, 121. 
 
 Dana, Richard, 9. 
 
 Dana, Richard II., 9, jo, 82, 103, 115^ 
 
 138, 255. 
 Pane, Nathan, 254. 
 Dartmouth College, 210. 
 Darwin, Charles Robert, 106, III. 
 Davis, A. M., 283. 
 Daw, Sir Humphry, 214. 
 
 ■mas, 10S. 
 1 lean of the College, 303. 
 
 ,, -250 317. 
 Depot, 
 
 . Earl of, 27, 194, 221. 
 1 )icey, I Uberl \'eiin, 254. 
 
 1 )ickens, ( lharles, 183. 
 
 ., 288. 
 1 >iogenes I aertius, 
 1 )ivinity School, 44, 225. 
 Donations. See Endowments, 
 Dormitories, 161, 171. 
 
 ick, 126. 
 1 )ow ning, Si; I 
 
 I ). 
 
 Drummond, Professor, 48. 
 
 • l8. 
 1 )iui ' it, 7, 299. 
 
 Durant, U. I-'., 282. 
 
 tive studies, 228, 293. 
 entary education, 235. 
 eria, 10. 
 
 Eliot, President Charles William, Di- 
 vinity School, 45; speech at Com- 
 mencement, 105; Phi Beta day, 117; 
 Class Day, 130; hours for lectures, 
 145 ; athleticism, 149, 152; rich young 
 men, 206; elective system, 228, 232, 
 244; secondary school studies, 236, 
 238 ; Harvard and her teachers, 251 ; 
 Law School, 253, 257, 258, 263; Sci- 
 entific School, 266; Charter, 298; 
 retiring allowance fund, 305 ; Presi- 
 dency, 306. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, singing, 3; 
 Fugitive Slave Law, 40; Saturday 
 Club, 82, 138; Phi Beta Poet, 112; 
 Phi Beta President, 115; class en- 
 thusiasm, 137; chumming, 162; lines 
 
INDEX. 
 
 333 
 
 on duty, 169; portrait in Memorial 
 Hall, 170; elected to a club, 179; 
 first sermon, 192 ; President's Fresh- 
 man, 193; Everett's coming from 
 Germany, 216 ; ideal university, 229 ; 
 lines on Samuel Hoar, 301 ; English 
 history, 323 ; America's apprentice- 
 ship, 327. 
 
 Employment Bureau, 200. 
 
 Endicott, Governor, 301. 
 
 Endowments, bequests, and gifts, 8-20, 
 169, 207, 254, 266, 285, 287, 289, 309. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 25, 40, 73, 75, 87, 88, 
 114, 211, 216. 
 
 Everett, William, 78. 
 
 Examinations, 79, 230, 239, 245. 
 
 Exeter Academy, 236. 
 
 Expenses, 162, 172, 191, 207. 
 
 Faculties, 303. 
 
 Fagging, 57. 
 
 Fair Harvard, 26, 129, 276. 
 
 Fellows, 8, 43, 52, 298, 302. 
 
 Felton, Professor Cornelius C, 40, 114. 
 
 Fines, 50, 56. 
 
 Football, 147. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 287. 
 
 Free Masonry, 108. 
 
 Freeman, Edward Augustus, 160, 214, 
 
 3*3- 
 Freshmen, 57, 176, 232. 
 Froude, James Anthony, 214, 313. 
 Furniture, 165. 
 
 Gale, Dr. Theophilus, g, 285. 
 
 Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, 313. 
 
 Garfield, President, 73, 203. 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 37, 41, 101. 
 
 Gateing, 161. 
 
 Geneva, University of, 278. 
 
 George III., 30, 35. 
 
 German books, 210, 219. 
 
 German universities, 161, 210, 225, 227, 
 
 263. 
 Gibbon, Edward, 161. 
 Gilman, Arthur, 275. 
 Gladstone, Right Hon. William Ewart, 
 
 184. 
 
 Glee Club, 3. 
 
 Goethe, 213. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 188, 191, 194. 
 
 Goodale.Professor George Lincoln, 268. 
 
 Goodwin, Professor William Watson, 
 benefactors of Harvard, 15; future 
 of Harvard, 46; Dr. Popkin, 78; 
 Phi Beta Society, 109; College and 
 University, 157; Harvard modelled 
 on an English college, but assimi- 
 lated to a German university, 160, 
 225, 227; examinations and the 
 elective system, 189, 230, 244 ; school 
 education, 235, 238, 239 ; graduate 
 school, 248, 250; German univer- 
 sities, 263; foreign schemes, 266; 
 College for Women, 273. 
 
 Gore, Christopher, 289. 
 
 Gottingen, 210, 223. 
 
 Gould, Jay, 19. 
 
 Government, 297. 
 
 Governor of Massachusetts, 92, 96. 
 
 Grace, Dr., 149. 
 
 Graduate School, 160, 242, 248, 250. 
 
 Grammar Schools, 237. 
 
 Greek, 5, 210, 230, 243. 
 
 Greenleaf, Simon, 256, 258. 
 
 Greenough, Professor James Brad- 
 street, 273. 
 
 Grouping, 71. 
 
 Hale, Dr. Edward Everett, 53, 93. 
 
 Hancock, Governor, 32, 35, 108. 
 
 Hancock, Thomas, 19. 
 
 Harrison, General, 180. 
 
 Harte, Bret, 115. 
 
 Harvard, John, statue, 4; bequest, 8; 
 
 library, 9, 285, 287 ; Master of Arts of 
 
 Emmanuel College, 23, 28 ; house, 
 
 104. 
 Harvard College and University, 157. 
 Harvard Graduates, 291. 
 Harvard indifference, 188. 
 Harvard Law Review, 263. 
 Harvard spirit, 142, 190. 
 Harvard Stories, 153. 
 Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 
 
 103. 
 
334 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ird yell, 03. 141. 
 
 1 74. 
 
 '>8. 
 Hawthorne, I, 128, 138, . 
 
 , 60. 
 
 Hear:. I 
 
 I, 288. 
 78. 
 
 . 
 pi. 
 
 H 
 
 Hollis, j. 286, 328. 
 
 ■ 
 
 lb, 82; lin 
 
 1829, 10- ixa; 
 
 Phi 
 
 335. 
 
 Holyok 
 
 119. 
 
 172. 
 Instructors, 306. 
 
 fames II., 72. 
 
 Jeffire 43- 
 
 Professors, 212. 
 
 Johns Hopkins University, 248. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, note on Sir, 7 ; 
 Thomas Hollis, 13; letter to Chester- 
 field, 29; "ground dignified by wis- 
 dom," 30; Taxation no Tyranny, 35; 
 
 .ps for liberty," 38 ; Dr. Hanvood, | 
 54; inscriptions in English, 86; lem- j 
 onade, 90 ; chapel at Oxford, 167 ; > 
 Pilgrim's Progress, 184; Goldsmith's ' 
 
 linner 
 
 at M . 288. 
 
 I njamin, 220, 240. 
 
 Keane, I 
 
 Kent, I 111. 
 
 ml. President, 78, 88, 216, 308. 
 
 '. 87. 
 Landor, Wa tzx. 
 
 Lane, v. 
 
 Lane, Prol G ■•■ Martin, 305. 
 
 1 Ihristophei 
 luml 
 
 .1, Rev. M: 
 Latin, 5, 237. 
 Laud, Archbishop 
 
 , 160, 266. 
 
 300. 
 
 Library, B, 10, 2 
 
 I 
 
 Ughtfbot, Dr. John, 285. 
 
 Lincoln, >6, 117, 311. 
 
 bert, 105. 
 Little, B 1 '•>., 10. 
 
 :und, 206. 
 Loan-Furniture Association. 
 
 London University, 43. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, house, 
 30; Sumner's speech in 1848, 40; 
 Emerson hooted, 41 ; Professor, 46, 
 215, 226; College dining-room, 73; 
 rebellion in College, 76; Dr. Popkin, 
 78; Brattle Street, 80; Saturday 
 Club, 82; Emerson as a lecturer, 
 113; Class Day, 122, 125; portrait in 
 Memorial Hall, 170; River Charles, 
 175; Christmas, 182; Jared Sparks, 
 227; women students, 273 ; American 
 poets, 291 ; London, 322. 
 
 Lotteries, 15. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 335 
 
 Lovejoy, Elijah, 38. 
 
 Lowell, Charles Russell, 170. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, centenary, 27 ; 
 Emmanuel College tercentenary, 28 ; 
 Triennial Catalogue, 29 ; Washington 
 Elm, 30; Burgoyne's army, 34; Ab- 
 olitionists, 38; Fugitive Slave Law, 
 40; Dr. Popkin, 78; President 
 Kirkland, 79, 216, 308; Professors' 
 Row, 80; changing names, 81; 
 Saturday Club, 82, 138 ; Commence- 
 ment, 84; John Holmes, 102; Emer- 
 son's oration, 112; Phi Beta, 115; 
 Class Day, 121, 125; Professor 
 Child's Popular Ballads, 126; boat- 
 race, 147; Professor, 155; portrait 
 in Memorial Hall, 170; Charles 
 River, 175; rusticated, 189; Law 
 School, 256; Harvard Library, 290; 
 Harvard Graduates, 291 ; England, 
 3 2 3. 3 28 - 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 193. 
 
 Mansell, Dean, 220. 
 
 Mason, Jeremiah, 112. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, 286. 
 
 Matthews Dormitory, 183. 
 
 May, Rev. Samuel, 101. 
 
 Maynard, Sir John, 9. 
 
 Mead, Dr., 287. 
 
 Meals, 10, 34, 166, 172. 
 
 Medical School, 99, 160, 225. 
 
 Memorial Hall, 169, 172. 
 
 Milman, Dean, 160. 
 
 Milton, John, 4, 23, 168, 290. 
 
 Money-aids, 206. 
 
 Moore, Archbishop, 193. 
 
 Morgan, Professor Morris Hicky, 295. 
 
 Morris, William, in. 
 
 Motley, John Lothrop, Fugitive Slave 
 Law, 40; Brattle House, 81; Satur- 
 day Club, 82, 138; Phi Beta, no; 
 portrait in Memorial Hall, 170; 
 on novels, 189 ; Gottingen, 223. 
 
 Mowlson, Lady, 283. 
 
 Names, change of, 80. 
 Negro students, 17, 126. 
 
 Nonconformists, English, 11. 
 North, Lord, 35. 
 
 Norton, Professor Charles Eliot, 28, 29, 
 158. 295, 307. 
 
 Overseers, 298, 310. 
 
 Oxford, " makes an American unhap- 
 py," 1; Earl of Derby, chancellor, 
 27; Anglicanism, 43; attendance 
 at chapel, 49; matriculation, 55; 
 external respect, 58 ; caps and gowns, 
 59. !57» l8 7; riots, 61, 71 ; dress, 64; 
 social life, 66, 72, 316; Commemora- 
 tion, 85, 94, 97, 124, 129 ; representa- 
 tives in Parliament, 105; Professor 
 Huxley's lecture, 106; undergrad- 
 uates, 134 ; cricket-matches, 143 ; 
 " 'Varsity," 143 ; hours of lectures, 
 144; boat-race, 147; government, 
 157, 160, 312; "gateing," 161; 
 chumming, 162; furniture, 164; 
 licensed lodgings, 165 ; baths, 175 ; 
 boat-club subscriptions, 179; servi- 
 tors, 193; scholarships, 206; ex- 
 penses, 207; examinations, 209, 229, 
 239, 242, 246, 250, 314; Professors, 
 214, 220; Natural Science School, 
 221 ; Glasgow students, 223 ; elective 
 studies, 242; men afraid of their 
 reputation, 247; Law School, 263; 
 Extension Lectures, 260; students 
 excluded, 250, 270 ; Radcliffe Library, 
 283; Bodleian, 289, 295, 318; prizes, 
 247, 295 ; students from abroad, 318 ; 
 Colleges — All Souls', 97; Balliol, 
 II, 59, 77; Christ Church, 51, 62, 
 194; Corpus Christi, 285; Exeter, 
 194, 295; Oriel, 50, 68; Pembroke, 
 49, 66, 145, 162, 163, 193, 219; 
 Queen's, 59; University, 34; Halls 
 for Women, 274, 277. 
 
 Palmer, Professor George Herbert, 63, 
 
 234. 
 Parietal Board, 65, 304. 
 Parker, Theodore, 103. 
 Parkman, Francis, 40. 
 Parmele, Elisha, 107. 
 
336 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Parsons, Theophilus, 256. 
 
 Peabody, George, 301. 
 
 Peabody, Professor, hazing, 60 ; tutors 
 and students, 70; college rebellions, 
 75; Dr. Popkin, yj ; President 
 Quincy, 81; the Common, 85; life 
 in College, 163, 166; instruction, 218. 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, 7. 
 
 Percy, Bishop, 184. 
 
 Perkins Hall, 19. 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa Society, 65, 87, 107, 
 177. 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, 29, 39, 103, 116, 190. 
 
 Pierce, Rev. John, 89, 103. 
 
 Plate, 168. 
 
 Policemen, 140. 
 
 Poor student, 164, 191. 
 
 Popkin, Professor, yj. 
 s flip, 79. 
 
 Putt.r. Right Rev. H. C, 48. 
 
 '. 'illiam Hickling, matricula- 
 tion, 79; Phi B>*ta, no; Carlyle's 
 French Revolution, 113; Harvard 
 degree, 124; Saturday Club, 138; 
 Oxford degree, 156; eyesight in- 
 jured, 168; portrait in Memorial 
 '., 170; mathematics, 22S ; he- 
 quest to Library, 289; England, 323, 
 325; ancestors' swords, 320. 
 
 President, The, 298, 302, 306, 311. 
 
 1 Jion, 139. 
 ors, 166. 
 
 Professors, 69, 226, 302, 305, 314. 
 
 Quincy, President, popularity in repub- 
 lies, 36; discipline, 60; odd charac- 
 ter, 81 ; Commencement Day, 85 ; 
 Class Day, 121; College plate, 168 
 attendance at chapel, 225. 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, 47, 88, 121. 
 
 Radcliffe College, 159, 273. 
 
 Ragging, 176. 
 Rebellions, 32, 74. 
 Research, 314, 317. 
 Reveille, 114. 
 
 Revenue, 8, 10, 13, 15, 309. 
 Reviews, 202. 
 
 Rhode Island, 42. 
 
 Ripley, Rev. Samuel, 192. 
 
 Rogers, Rev. Mr., 285. 
 
 Roman Catholics, 48. 
 
 Room rents, 162. 
 
 Ruskin, John, in. 
 
 Russia, 180. 
 
 Russian naval officers, 92, 97. 
 
 Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 9, 301. 
 Saturday Club, 82, 138. 
 Scarborough, Maine, 9. 
 Schools, Secondary, 236. 
 Schultze, Dr., 211. 
 Sedgwick, Professor Adam, 214. 
 Sewail, Samuel, 90, 104, 183, 285. 
 Shakespeare, William, 286. 
 
 Sheridan, General, 170. 
 
 Sherlock, Bishop, 286. 
 
 Shingles, 176. 
 
 Shire, 9. 
 
 Sibley, J. L., 291. 
 
 Sillinian, Professor Benjamin, 51, 89, 
 213. 
 
 v, 37. 85. 
 
 Smith, Adam, II, 223. 
 
 Smith, Samuel Francis, 102. 
 
 Snaps, 233. 
 
 South Carolina, 37. 
 
 Southampton, Earl of, 207. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 1. 
 
 Sparks, Jared, 40, 227. 
 
 Special Students, 270. 
 
 Spelling, 324. 
 
 Spreads, 122, 130. 
 
 State aids, 15. 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, 324. 
 
 Story, Joseph, Centenary of 1836, 23; 
 War of Independence, 25 ; Unitarian, 
 44 ; fagging, 60 ; tutors and students, 
 71; Association of Alumni, 97; 
 Classes, 100 ; Commencement, 103 ; 
 Phi Beta, 109, in; Class Day Poet, 
 125; portrait, 170; foreign countries, 
 211; Ticknor's reforms, 217; Pro- 
 fessor, 254, 258 ; Westminster Hall, 
 
 323- 
 Story, W. W., 121. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 337 
 
 Summer School, 268, 309. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, hooted at Cambridge, 
 39 ; assaulted by Brooks, 41 ; buff 
 waistcoat, 65 ; Saturday Club, 82 ; 
 Phi Beta, in, 113, 115; College 
 bills, 207; mathematics, 229; Story's 
 pupil, 255, 256; pamphlets, 289. 
 
 Suspension, 122. 
 
 Swift, Dean, 175. 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, in. 
 
 Tea, 32. /^ 
 
 Thacher, Professor, 51. ; ' 
 
 Thayer, W. R., 158. 
 
 Thompson, Maurice, 117. 
 
 Ticknor, George, Fugitive Slave Law, 
 40; Phi Beta, in, 114; Oxford de- 
 gree, 155 ; Vacations, 198 ; student 
 of Gottingen, 210; Professor, 213; 
 reforms, 215 ; Prescott and mathe- 
 matics, 228 ; England, 321. 
 
 Tory Refugees, 288. 
 
 Treasurer, 298. 
 
 Trecothick, Barlow, 288. 
 
 Turnpikes, 33. 
 
 Unitarianism, 44, 224. 
 University College, London, 277. 
 
 Vacations, 198. 
 Vane, Sir Henry, 4. 
 Vassall, Colonel, 81. 
 Vincent, Bishop, 48. 
 
 Wadham, Nicholas, 4. 
 Wadsworth, President, 86. 
 Walker, General, 117. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 13. 
 
 Ware, Professor, 80. 
 
 Warren, General, 24. 
 
 Warren, Dr. John, 24. 
 
 Washburn, Emory, 256. 
 
 Washington, 25. 
 
 Washington, George, 30, 34, 86. 
 
 Washington, Martha, 282. 
 
 Washington Elm, 36, 276. 
 
 Watson, Bishop, 207, 214. 
 
 Weather, 127. 
 
 Webb, Henry, 10. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, oratory, 26, 112; 
 Abolitionists, 37 ; Speech of March 
 7, 1850, 40 ; Lafayette, 87 ; Com- 
 mencement dinner, 90; Phi Beta 
 dinner, in; Dartmouth College, 
 210 ; America's debt to Europe, 265. 
 
 Weeds, 268. 
 
 Wellesley College, 142, 282. 
 
 White, D. A., 223. 
 
 Whitefield, Rev. George, 30, 193, 195, 
 288. 
 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 82. 
 
 William III., 9, 311. 
 
 William and Mary College, 107, 
 
 Williams, Roger, 42. 
 
 Winsor, Dr. Justin, 292. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, in. 
 
 Yale College, orthodox, 43; chapel, 
 51; fondness for noise, 57 ; baseball, 
 138; baths, 175; toughs, 190; poor 
 students, 191, 196; Professor Silli- 
 man, 213; students at Harvard, 265. 
 
 Yard, The, 2. 
 
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