If we would know what a university is, considered in its most
elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the first and most
beautiful home of European civilization, to the bright and beautiful
Athens,--Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, and then sent back
to the business of life, the youth of the Western world for a long
thousand years. Seated on the verge of the continent, the city seemed
hardly suited for the duties of a central metropolis of knowledge; yet
what it lost in convenience of approach, it gained in its neighborhood
to the traditions of the mysterious East, and in the loveliness of the
region in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land,
where all the archetypes of the great and the fair were found in
substantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and all
diversities of intellectual power exhibited; where taste and
philosophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal court; where
there was no sovereignty but that of mind, and no nobility but that of
genius; where professors were rulers and princes did homage,--hither
flocked continually from the very corners of the _orbis terrarum_, the
many-tongued generation, just rising or just risen into manhood, in
order to gain wisdom.
[Footnote 7: From Volume III of the "Historical Sketches."]
Pisistratus[8] had at an early age discovered and nursed the infant
genius of his people, and Cimon,[9] after the Persian war, had given
it a home; that war had established the naval supremacy of Athens; she
had become an imperial state; and the Ionians, bound to her by the
double chain of kindred and of subjection, were importing into her
both their merchandise and their civilization. The arts and philosophy
of the Asiatic Court were easily carried across the sea, and there
was Cimon, as I have said, with his ample fortune, ready to receive
them with due honor. Not content with patronizing their profession, he
built the first of those noble porticoes, of which we hear so much in
Athens, and he formed the groves, which in process of time formed the
celebrated academy. Planting is one of the most graceful, as in Athens
it was one of the most beneficent, of employments. Cimon took in hand
the wild wood, pruned and drest it, and laid it out with handsome
walks and welcome fountains. Nor, while hospitable to the authors of
the city's civilization, was he ungrateful to the instruments of her
prosperity. His trees extended their cool, umbrageous branches over
the merchants who assembled in the Agora, for many generations.
[Footnote 8: Pisistratus flourished from 605 B.C. until 527. He was a
friend of Solon, but usurped supreme power in 560; was twice expelled
and then restored to power. He is usually credited with a notable
systematic attempt to preserve the Works of Homer.]
[Footnote 9: Cimon died in 449 B.C. He was a son of Miltiades and
defeated the Persians on both sea and land in 466.]
Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of bounty; for all the
while their ships had been carrying forth the intellectual fame of
Athens to the Western world. Then commenced what may be called her
university existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon, both in the
government and in the patronage of art, is said by Plutarch to have
entertained the idea of making Athens the capital of federated Greece;
in this he failed; but his encouragement of such men as Phidias and
Anaxagoras led the way to her acquiring a far more lasting sovereignty
over a far wider empire. Little understanding the sources of her own
greatness, Athens would go to war; peace is the interest of a seat of
commerce and the arts; but to war she went: yet to her whether peace
or war mattered not. The political power of Athens waned and
disappeared; kingdoms rose and fell, centuries rolled away;--they did
but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and the sage. There
at length the swarthy Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the
blue-eyed Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject to Mithridates,
gazed without alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. Revolution after
revolution passed over the face of Europe, as well as of Greece, but
still she was there,--Athens, the city of the mind, as radiant, as
splendid, as delicate, as young, as ever she had been.
Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue Ægean, many a
spot is there more beautiful or sublime to see, many a territory more
ample; but there was one charm in Attica, which in the same perfection
was nowhere else. The deep pastures of Arcadia, the plain of Argos,
the Thessalian Vale, these had not the gift; Boeotia, which lay to its
immediate north, was notorious for the very want of it. The heavy
atmosphere of that Boeotia might be good for vegetation, but it was
associated in popular belief with the dulness of the Boeotian
intellect; on the contrary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness,
and salubrity of the air of Attica, fit concomitant and emblem of its
genius, did that for it which earth did not;--it brought out every
bright line and tender shade of the landscape over which it was
spread, and would have illuminated the face even of a more barren and
rugged country.
A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and
thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers meeting at an
angle; three prominent mountains commanding the plain,--Parnes,
Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not
always full;--such is about the report which the agent of a London
company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate
was mild, the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble;
more pasture than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient
certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines
once, but long since worked out; figs, fair; oil, first-rate; olives
in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down was, that
that olive-tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it
excited a religious veneration, and that it took so kindly to the
light soil as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb
up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his
employer, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet
blended and subdued, the colors on the marble, till they had a
softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture looks
exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell how
that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale
olive, until the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like
the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian Hills. He would say nothing of the
thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would
hear nothing of the hum of its bees, nor take much account of the rare
flavor of its honey, since Sozo and Minorca were sufficient for the
English demand.
He would look over the Ægean from the height he had ascended; he would
follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the
Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when
they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto
across the sea; but that fancy would not occur to him, nor any
admiration of the dark violet billows with their white edges down
below; nor of those graceful, fanlike jets of silver upon the rocks,
which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver
and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear, in a soft
mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the
whole liquid plain; nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a
line of soldiery, as they resounded upon the hollow shore--he would
not deign to notice that restless living element at all, except to
bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor
the refined coloring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden line
of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows east from Otus or Laurium
by the declining sun--our agent of a mercantile firm would not value
these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the
sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barbarous
land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might
take his fill gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible,
unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province,
from Britain or from Mauritania, who in a scene so different from that
of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery, choking sands, learned
at once what a real university must be, by coming to understand the
sort of country which was its suitable home.
Nor was this all that a university required and found in Athens. No
one, not even there, could live on poetry. If the students at that
famous place had nothing better than bright hues and soothing sounds,
they would not have been able or disposed to turn their residence
there to much account. Of course they must have the means of living,
nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment, if Athens was to be an _alma
mater_ at the time, or to remain afterward a pleasant thought in their
memory. And so they had: be it recollected Athens was a port and a
mart of trade, perhaps the first in Greece; and strangers were ever
flocking to it, whose combat was to be with intellectual, not physical
difficulties, and who claimed to have their bodily wants supplied that
they might be at leisure to set about furnishing their minds.
Now barren as was the soil of Attica, and bare the face of the
country, yet it had only too many resources for an elegant, nay,
luxurious abode there. So abundant were the imports of the place, that
it was a common saying that the productions which were found singly
elsewhere were brought together in Athens. Corn and wine, the staple
of existence in such a climate, came from the Islands of the Ægean;
fine wool and carpeting from Asia Minor; slaves, as now, from the
Euxine; and timber too, and iron and brass, from the coasts of the
Mediterranean. The Athenian did not condescend to manufactures
himself, but encouraged them in others, and a population of
foreigners caught at the lucrative occupation, both for home
consumption and for exportation. Their cloth and other textures for
dress and furniture, and their hardware--for instance, armor--were in
great request. Labor was cheap; stone and marble in plenty; and the
taste and skill, which at first were devoted to public buildings, as
temples and porticoes, were in course of time applied to the mansions
of public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that
art did much more.