and its prospects, I suppose I may be allowed to say a few
words about it in reply, though to be sure I have already
said more than was perhaps proper in one like myself, who am
not even a graduate there, and shall very probably get no
other answer to what I may venture to say hereafter than that
I should do better to mind my books, and let those who are
intrusted with the affairs of ye (_sic_) college take care
of them. I cannot, however, shut my eyes on the fact, that
one _very_ important and principal cause of the difference
between our University and the one here is the different
value we affix to a good library, and the different ideas we
have of what a good library is. In America we look on the
Library at Cambridge as a wonder, and I am sure nobody ever
had a more thorough veneration for it than I had; but it was
not necessary for me to be here six months to find out that
it is nearly or quite half a century behind the libraries of
Europe, and that it is much less remarkable that our stock of
learning is so small than that it is so great, considering the
means from which it is drawn are so inadequate. But what is
worse than the absolute poverty of our collections of books
is the relative inconsequence in which we keep them. We found
new professorships and build new colleges in abundance, but
we buy no books; and yet it is to me the most obvious thing
in the world that it would promote the cause of learning and
the reputation of the University ten times more to give six
thousand dollars a year to the Library than to found three
professorships, and that it would have been wiser to have spent
the whole sum that the new chapel had cost on books than on a
fine suite of halls. The truth is, when we build up a literary
Institution in America we think too much of convenience and
comfort and luxury and show; and too little of real, laborious
study and the means that will promote it. We have not yet
learnt that the Library is not only the first convenience of
a University, but that it is the very first necessity,—that
it is the life and spirit,—and that all other considerations
must yield to the prevalent one of increasing and opening it,
and opening it on the most liberal terms to _all_ who are
disposed to make use of it. I cannot better explain to you the
difference between our University in Cambridge and the one
here than by telling you that here I hardly say too much when
I say that it _consists_ in the Library, and that in Cambridge
the Library is one of the last things thought and talked
about,—that here they have forty professors and more than two
hundred thousand volumes to instruct them, and in Cambridge
twenty professors and less than twenty thousand volumes. This,
then, you see is the thing of which I am disposed to complain,
that we give comparatively so little attention and money to
the Library, which is, after all, the Alpha and Omega of the
whole establishment,—that we are mortified and exasperated
because we have no learned men, and yet make it _physically_
impossible for our scholars to become such, and that to escape
from this reproach we appoint a multitude of professors, but
give them a library from which hardly one and _not_ one of them
can qualify himself to execute the duties of his office. You
will, perhaps, say that these professors do not complain. I
can only answer that you find the blind are often as gay and
happy as those who are blessed with sight; but take a Cambridge
professor, and let him live one year by a library as ample and
as liberally administered as this is; let him know what it is
to be forever sure of having the very book he wants either to
read or to refer to; let him in one word _know_ that he can
never be discouraged from pursuing any inquiry for want of
means, but on the contrary let him feel what it is to have all
the excitements and assistance and encouragements which those
who have gone before him in the same pursuits can give him,
and then at the end of this year set him down again under the
parsimonious administration of the Cambridge library,—and I
will promise you that he shall be as discontented and clamorous
as my argument can desire.
But I will trouble you no more with my argument, though I
am persuaded that the further progress of learning among us
depends on the entire change of the system against which it is
directed.
The next extract is from a letter of Cogswell’s, and gives a glimpse at
the actual work done by these young men:—
GÖTTINGEN, March 8, 1817.
I must tell you something about our colony at Göttingen before
I discuss other subjects, for you probably care little about
the University and its host of professors, except as they
operate upon us. First as to the Professor (Everett) and Dr.
Ticknor, as they are called here; everybody knows them in this
part of Germany, and also knows how to value them. For once
in my life I am proud to acknowledge myself an American on
the European side of the Atlantic: never was a country more
fortunate in its representation abroad than ours has been in
this instance; they will gain more for us in this respect than
even in the treasures of learning they will carry back. Little
as I have of patriotism, I delight to listen to the character
which is here given of my countrymen; I mean as countrymen, and
not as my particular friends: the despondency which it produces
in my own mind of ever obtaining a place by their sides is
more than counterbalanced by the gratification of my national
feelings, to say not a word of my individual attachment. You
must not think me extravagant, but I venture to say that the
notions which the European literati have entertained of
America will be essentially changed by G. and E.’s [Ticknor’s
and Everett’s] residence on the Continent; we were known to be
a brave, a rich, and an enterprising people, but that a scholar
was to be found among us, or any man who had a desire to be a
scholar, had scarcely been conceived. It will also be the means
of producing new correspondences and connections between the
men of the American and European sides of the Atlantic, and
spread much more widely among us a knowledge of the present
literature and science of this Continent.
Deducting the time from the 13th of December to the 27th of
January during which I was confined to my room, I have been
pretty industrious; through the winter I behaved as well as
one could expect. German has been my chief study; to give it a
relief I have attended one hour a day to a lecture in Italian
on the Modern Arts, and, to feel satisfied that I had some
sober inquiry in hand, I have devoted another to Professor
Saalfeld’s course of European Statistics, so that I have
generally been able to count at night twelve hours of private
study and private instruction. This has only sharpened not
satisfied my appetite. I have laid out for myself a course of
more diligent labors the next semester. I shall then be at
least eight hours in the lecture rooms, beginning at six in
the morning. I must contrive, besides, to devote eight other
hours to private study. I am not in the least Germanized, and
yet it appalls me when I think of the difference between an
education here and in America. The great evil with us is, in
our primary schools, the best years for learning are trifled
and whiled away; boys learn nothing because they have no
instructors, because we demand of one the full [work?] of
ten, and because laziness is the first lesson which one gets
in all our great schools. I know very well that we want but
few closet scholars, few learned philologists, and few verbal
commentators; that all our systems of government and customs
and life suppose a preparation for making practical men,—men
who move, and are felt in the world; but all this could be
better done without wasting every year from infancy to manhood.
The system of education here is the very reverse of our own:
in America boys are let loose upon the work when they are
children, and fettered when they are sent to our college; here
they are cloistered, too much so I acknowledge, till they
can guide themselves, and then put at their own disposal at
the universities. Luther’s Reformation threw all the monkish
establishments in the Protestant countries into the hands of
the Princes, and they very wisely appropriated them to the
purposes of education, but unluckily they have retained more of
the monastic seclusion than they ought. The three great schools
in Saxony, Pforte, Meissen, and ⸺ are kept in convents, and the
boys enjoy little more than the liberty of a cloister. They are
all very famous, the first more particularly; out of it have
come half of the great scholars of the country. Still they are
essentially defective in the point above named. Just in the
neighborhood of Gotha is the admirable institution of Salzmann,
in a delightfully pleasant and healthy valley; his number is
limited to thirty-eight, and he has twelve instructors,—admits
no boy who does not bring with him the fairest character: when
once admitted they become his children, and the reciprocal
relation is cherished with corresponding tenderness and
respect. I should like to proceed a little farther in this
subject, but the bottom of my paper forbids.
The following is from Ticknor again, and shows, though without giving
details, that the young men had extended their observations beyond
Göttingen:—
GÖTTINGEN, November 30, 1816.
DEAR SIR,—On returning here about a fortnight since, after a
journey through North Germany which had occupied us about two
months, I found your kind letter of August 4 waiting to welcome
me. I thank you for it with all my heart, and take the first
moment of leisure I can find in the busy commencement of a new
term, to answer it, that I may soon have the same pleasure
again.
You say you wish to hear from me what hours of relaxation
I have, and what acquaintances I make, in this part of the
Continent. The first is very easily told, and the last would
not have been difficult before the journey from which I have
just returned; but now the number is more than I can write or
you willingly hear. However, I will answer both your inquiries
in the spirit in which they are made.
As to relaxation, in the sense of the word in which I used to
employ it at home,—meaning the hours I lounged so happily away
when the weariness of the evening came, on your sofa, and the
time I used to pass with my friends in general, I know not how
or why, but always gayly and thoughtlessly,—of this sort of
relaxation I know nothing here but the end of an evening which
I occasionally permit myself to spend with Cogswell, whose
residence here has in this respect changed the whole color of
my life. During the last semester, I used to visit occasionally
at about twenty houses in Göttingen, chiefly as a means of
learning to speak the language. As the population here is so
changeable, and as every man is left to live exactly as he
chooses, it is customary for all those who wish to continue
their intercourse with the persons resident here to make a call
at the beginning of each semester, which is considered a notice
that they are still here and still mean to go into society.
I, however, feel no longer the necessity of visiting for the
purpose of learning German, and now that Cogswell is here
cannot desire it for any other purpose; have made visits only
to three or four of the professors, and shall, therefore, not
go abroad at all. As to exercise, however, I have enough. Three
times a day I must cross the city entirely to get my lessons.
I go out twice besides, a shorter distance for dinner and a
fourth lesson; and four times a week I take an hour’s exercise
for conscience’ sake and my mother’s in the riding-school. Four
times a week I make Cogswell a visit of half an hour after
dinner, and three times I spend from nine to ten in the evening
with him, so that I feel I am doing quite right and quite as
little as I ought to do in giving up the remaining thirteen
hours of the day to study, especially as I gave fourteen to it
last winter without injury.
The journey we have lately taken was for the express purpose
of seeing all the universities or schools of any considerable
name in the country. This in a couple of months we easily
accomplished, and of course saw professors, directors, and
schoolmasters—men of great learning and men of little learning,
and men of no learning at all—in shoals.
This is from Cogswell again, and is certainly a clarion appeal as to the
need of thoroughness in teaching and learning:—
GÖTTINGEN, July 13, 1817.
I hope that you and every other person interested in the
College are reconciled to Mr. Everett’s plan of remaining
longer in Europe than was at first intended, as I am sure
you would be do you know the use he makes of his time, and
the benefit you are all to derive from his learning. Before
I came to Göttingen I used to wonder why it was that he
wished to remain here so long; I now wonder he can consent
to leave so soon. The truth is, you all mistake the cause of
your impatience: you believe that it comes from a desire of
seeing him at work for and giving celebrity to the College,
but it arises from a wish to have him in your society, at
your dinner-tables, at your suppers, your clubs, and your
ladies, at your tea-parties (you perceive I am aiming at Boston
folks): however, all who have formed such expectations must be
disappointed; he will find that most of these gratifications
must be sacrificed to attain the objects of a scholar’s
ambition. What can men think when they say that two years are
sufficient to make a Greek scholar? Does not everybody know
that it is the labor of half a common life to learn to read
the language with tolerable facility? I remember to have heard
little Drisen say, a few days after I came here, that he had
been spending eighteen years, at least sixteen hours a day,
exclusively upon Greek, and that he could not now read a page
of the tragedians without a dictionary. When I went home I
struck Greek from the list of my studies; I now think no more
of attaining it than I do of becoming an astrologer. In fact,
the most heart-breaking circumstance attending upon human
knowledge is that a man can never go any farther than “to know
how little’s to be known”; it fills, then, the mind of scholars
with despair to look upon the map of science, as it does that
of the traveler to look upon the map of the earth, for both see
what a mere speck can be traveled over, and of that speck how
imperfect is the knowledge which is acquired. Let any one who
believes that he has penetrated the mysteries of all science,
and learnt the powers and properties of whatever is contained
in the kingdoms of air, earth, fire, and water, but just bring
his knowledge to the test; let him, for example, begin with
what seems the simplest of all inquiries, and enumerate the
plants which grow upon the surface of the globe, and call them
by their names, and, when he finds that this is beyond his
limits, let him descend to a single class and bring within
it all that the unfathomed caves of ocean and the unclimbed
mountains bear; and as this is also higher than he can reach,
let him go still lower and include only one family, or a
particular species, or an individual plant, and mark his points
of ignorance upon each, and then, if his pride of knowledge is
not humbled enough, let him take but a leaf or the smallest
part of the most common flower, and give a satisfactory
solution for many of the phenomena they exhibit. But, you will
ask, is Göttingen the only place for the acquisition of such
learning? No, not the only, but I believe far the best for
such learning as it is necessary for Mr. E. to fit him to make
Cambridge in some degree a Göttingen, and render it no longer
requisite to depend upon the latter for the formation of their
scholars: it is true that very few of what the Germans call
scholars are needed in America; if there would only be one
thorough one to begin with, the number would soon be sufficient
for all the uses which could be made of them, and for the
literary character of the country. This one, I say, could
never be formed there, because, in the first place, there is
no one who knows how it is to be done; secondly, there are no
books, and then, by the habits of desultory study practiced
there, are wholly incompatible with it. A man as a scholar
must be completely _upset_, to use a blacksmith’s phrase; he
must have learnt to give up his love of society and of social
pleasures, his interest in the common occurrences of life, in
the political and religious contentions of the country, and
in everything not directly connected with his single aim. Is
there any one willing to make such a sacrifice? This I cannot
answer, but I do assure you that it is the sacrifice made by
almost every man of classical learning in Germany, though to be
sure the sacrifice of the enjoyments of friendly intercourse
with mankind to letters is paying much less dear for fame here
than the same thing would be in America. For my own part I am
sorry I came here, because I was too old to be _upset_; like a
horseshoe worn thin, I shall break as soon as I begin to wear
on the other side: it makes me very restless at this period of
my life to find that I know nothing. I would not have wished to
have made the discovery unless I could at the same time have
been allowed to remain in some place where I could get rid of
my ignorance; and, now that I must go from Göttingen, I have no
hope of doing that.
The following from Edward Everett carries the war yet farther into
Africa, and criticises not merely American colleges, but also secondary
schools:—
GÖTTINGEN, September 17, 1817.
You must not laugh at me for proceeding to business the first
thing, and informing you in some sort as an argument, that, if
I have been unreasonable in prolonging my stay here, I have
at least passed my time not wholly to disadvantage,—that I
received this morning my diploma as Doctor of Philosophy of
this University, the first American, and as far as I know,
Englishman, on whom it has ever been conferred. You will
perhaps have heard that it was my intention to have passed
from this University to that of Oxford, and to have spent this
winter there. I have altered this determination for the sake
of joining forces with Theodore Lyman at Paris this winter;
and as he proposes to pass the ensuing summer in traveling in
the South of France, I shall take that opportunity of going to
England. It is true I should have liked to have gone directly
from Göttingen to Oxford, to have kept the thread as it were
unbroken, and gone on with my studies without any interruption.
But I find, even at Paris, that I have no object there but
study; and Professor Gaisford, at Oxford, writes me that it
is every way better that I should be there in summer, as the
Library is open a greater part of the day. Meanwhile, I try to
feel duly grateful to Providence and my friends at home to whom
I owe the opportunity of resorting to the famous fountains of
European wisdom. The only painful feeling I carry with me is
that I may not have health, or strength, or ability to fulfill
the demands which such an opportunity will create and justify.
More is apt to be expected in such cases than it is possible
to perform; besides that, after the schoolmaster is prepared
for his duty, all depends upon whether the schoolboy is also
prepared for his. You must not allow any report to the contrary
to shake your faith in my good-will in the cause. Some remarks
which I committed to paper at the request of my brother upon
the subject of a National University,—an institution which by
exciting an emulation in our quarter would be the best thing
that could happen to Cambridge,—have, I hear, led some good men
to believe that I was for deserting the service at Cambridge
still more promptly than I had done at Boston,—a suggestion
certainly too absurd to have been made, or to need to have been
contradicted. However, still more important than all which
national or state universities can do themselves immediately,
is the necessity we must impose on the schools of reforming
and improving themselves, or, rather, are the steps we must
take to create good schools. All we have are bad, the common
reading and writing ones not excepted; but of schools which we
have to fit boys for college, I think the Boston Latin School
and the Andover Academy are the only ones that deserve the
name, and much I doubt if they deserve it. There is much truth
in the remark so constantly made that we are not old enough
for European perfection, but we are old enough to do well all
it is worth while to do at all; and if a child here in eight
years can read and speak Latin fluently, there is no reason
why our youth, after spending the same time on it, should
know little or nothing about it. Professional education with
us commences little or no earlier than it does here, and yet
we approach it in all departments with a quarter part of the
previous qualification which is here possessed. But also it is
the weakness of mankind to do more than he is obliged to. The
sort of obligation, to be sure, which is felt, differs with
different spirits, and one is content to be the first man in
his ward, one in his town, one in his county, another in his
state. To all these degrees of dignity the present education
is adequate; and we turn out reputable ministers, doctors,
lawyers, professors, and schoolmasters,—men who get to be as
wise at ye (_sic_) age of threescore as their fathers were at
sixty, and who transmit the concern of life to their children
in as good condition as they took it themselves. Meanwhile, the
physical and commercial progress of ye (_sic_) country goes on,
and more numerous doctors and more ministers are turned out,
not more learned ones, to meet it. I blushed burning red to
the ears the other day as a friend here laid his hand upon a
newspaper containing the address of the students at Baltimore
to Mr. Monroe, with the translation of it. It was less matter
that the translation was not English; my German friend could
not detect that. But that the original was not Latin I could
not, alas! conceal. It was, unfortunately, just like enough
to very bad Latin to make it impossible to pass it off for
Kickapoo or Pottawattamy, which I was at first inclined to
attempt. My German persisted in it that it was meant for Latin,
and I wished in my heart that the Baltimore lads would stick to
the example of their fathers and mob the Federalists, so they
would give over this inhuman violence on the poor old Romans. I
say nothing of ye (_sic_) address, for like all [illegible] it
seems to have been ye (_sic_) object, in the majority of those
productions, for those who made them to compliment, not the
President, but themselves. It is a pity Dr. Kirkland’s could
not have been published first, to serve as a model how they
might speak to the President without coldness on one side and
adulation on the other, and of themselves without intrusion or
forwardness.
The following letter transfers Edward Everett to Oxford, and gives in
a somewhat trenchant way his unfavorable criticisms on the English
universities of that day. He subsequently sent his son to Cambridge,
England, but it was forty years later:—
OXFORD, June 6, 1818.
I have been over two Months in England, and am now visiting
Oxford, having passed a Week in Cambridge. There is more
teaching and more learning in our American Cambridge than
there is in both the English Universities together, tho’
between them they have four times Our number of Students. The
misfortune for us is that our subjects are not so hopeful. We
are obliged to do at Cambridge [U. S.] that which is done at
Eton and Westminster, at Winchester, Rugby, and Harrow, as well
as at Oxford and Cambridge. Boys _may_ go to Eton at 6, and
do go often at 8, 10, and of Necessity before 12. They stay
there under excellent Masters, 6 Years, and then come to the
University. Whereas a smart clever boy with us, will learn out,
even at Mr. Gould’s, in 4 Years, and it was the boast of a very
distinguished Man Named Bird [Samuel Bird, H. C., 1809], who
was two Years before me at Cambridge, that he had fitted in
160 days. And I really think that I could, in six months teach
a mature lad, who was willing to work hard, all the Latin and
Greek requisite for admission.
This letter from Cogswell refers to George Bancroft, who was subsequently
sent out by Harvard College, after his graduation in 1817, that he might
be trained for the service of the institution.
GÖTTINGEN, May 4th, 1819.
It was truly generous and noble in the corporation to send out
young Bancroft in the manner I understand they did; he will
reward them for it. I thought very much of him, when I had
him under my charge at Cambridge, and now he appears to me
to promise a great deal more. I know not at whose suggestion
this was done, but from the wisdom of the measure, I should
conclude it must be the President’s; it is applying the remedy
exactly when it is most wanted, a taste once created for
classical learning at the College, and the means furnished for
cultivating it, and the long desired reform in education in my
opinion is virtually made; knowledge of every other kind may be
as well acquired among us, as the purposes to which it is to
be applied demand. We are not wanting in good lawyers or good
physicians, and if we could but form a body of men of taste and
letters, our literary reputation would not long remain at the
low stand which it now is.
It appears from a letter of my father’s, fourteen years later (November
21, 1833), that, after four years abroad, Mr. Bancroft’s college career
was a disappointment, and he was evidently regarded as a man spoiled by
vanity and self-consciousness, and not commanding a strong influence over
his pupils. My father wrote of these two teachers:—
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., 21 Nov., 1833.