fraud, and social injustice, under whatever specious disguises they
might be veiled. In matters of right and wrong his perceptions were
rather clouded. He never could be duped into admiring a charlatan like
the late Emperor of the French. Upon the Eastern Question he wielded a
Varangian axe, and had his advice been heeded, the Commander of the
Faithful would ere now have been sent back to Brusa, or beyond. But
while in politics and in criticism he could hit hard, his disposition
was as tender and humane as Uncle Toby's. Eminently characteristic is
the discussion on fox-hunting which he carried on with Anthony Trollope
some years ago in the "Fortnightly Review," in which he condemned that
time-honoured sport as intolerably cruel.
Mr. Freeman was very domestic in his habits. When not travelling, he was
to be found in his country home, writing in his own library. When he was
in the United States, it amused him to see people's surprise when told
that he did not live in a city, and did not spend his time deciphering
musty manuscripts in public libraries or archives. He used to say that,
even in point of economy, he thought it better to dwell among pleasant
green fields and to consult one's own books than to take long journeys
or be stifled in dirty cities in order to consult other people's book.
His chief subjects of study favoured such a policy, for most of the
sources of information on the eleventh century, as well as upon ancient
Greece, are contained in printed volumes. Now and then he missed some
little point upon which a manuscript might have helped him. But one
cannot help wishing he might have stayed among the quiet fields of
Somerset instead of taking that last fatal journey to Alicante.
It was chiefly with the political aspects of history that Freeman
concerned himself; not in the old-fashioned way, as a mere narrative of
the deeds of kings and cabinets, but in scientific fashion, as an
application of the comparative method to the various processes of
nation-building. I do not mean that his narrative was subordinated to
scientific exposition, but that it was informed and vitalized by the
spirit and methods of science. In pure description Freeman was often
excellent; his account of the death of William Rufus, for example, is a
masterpiece of impressive narrative. In description and in argument
alike Freeman usually confined his attention to political history,
except when he dealt in his suggestive way with architecture and
archæology. To art in general, to the history of philosophy and of
scientific ideas, to the development of literary expression, of manners
and customs, of trade and the industrial arts, he devoted much less
thought. I believe he did not fully approve of his friend Green's method
of carrying along political, social, and literary topics abreast in his
"History of the English People." Few will doubt, however, that in this
respect Green's artistic grasp upon his subject was stronger than
Freeman's.
It is some slight consolation for our bitter loss to know that many of
the great historian's books were in large part written long before he
felt the time to be ripe for completing and publishing them. Some of the
unfinished portions may be brought toward completeness and edited by
other hands. In this way I hope we may look for one or two more volumes
of the "Sicily," and perhaps for the second volume of the "Federal
Government," dealing with the Swiss and other German federations.
Probably no other Englishman, and few other men anywhere in our time,
knew anything like so much as Freeman about the history of Switzerland.
I once or twice begged him to make haste and finish that volume, but
desisted; for it was evident that "Sicily" was absorbing him, and an
author does not like to be pestered with advice to turn aside from the
work that is uppermost in his mind.
_November, 1892._
X
CAMBRIDGE AS VILLAGE AND CITY[27]
We have met together this evening on one of those occasions, which keep
recurring, for communities as well as for individuals, when it is
desirable to take a retrospect of the past, to call attention to some of
the characteristic incidents in our history, to sum up the work we have
done and estimate the position we occupy in the world. As long as we
retain the decimal numeration that is natural to ten-fingered creatures,
we shall encounter such moments at intervals of half centuries and
centuries, and happy are the communities that can meet them without
shameful memories that shun the light of history; happy are the people
that can look back upon the work of their fathers and in their heart of
hearts pronounce it good! What a blot it was upon the civic fame of
every Greek community that took part in putting out the brightest light
of Hellas in the wicked Peloponnesian War! Can any right-minded Venetian
look without blushing at the bronze horses that surmount the stately
portal of St. Mark's?--a perpetual memento of that black day when
ravening commercial jealousy decoyed an army of Crusaders to the
despoiling of the chief city of Christendom, and thus broke away the
strongest barrier in the path of the advancing Turk! What must the
citizen of Paris think to-day of cowardly massacres of unresisting
prisoners, such as happened in 1418 and in 1792? Is there any dweller in
Birmingham who would not gladly expunge from the past that summer
evening which witnessed the burning of the house and library of Dr.
Priestley? From such melancholy scenes, and from complicity in political
crime, our community, our neighbourhood, has been notably free. The
annals of Massachusetts, during its existence of nearly three centuries,
are written in a light that is sometimes dull or sombre, but very seldom
lurid. In particular the career of Cambridge has been a placid one. We
do not find in it many things to startle us; but there is much that we
can approve, much upon which, without falling into the self-satisfied
mood that is the surest index of narrowness and provincialism, we may
legitimately pride ourselves. In commemorating the fiftieth anniversary
of the incorporation of Cambridge as a city, a retrospect of the half
century is needful; but we shall find it pleasant to go farther back,
and start with a glimpse of the beginnings of our town.
I came near saying "humble beginnings;" it is a stock phrase, and
perhaps savours of tautology, since beginnings are apt to be humble as
compared with long-matured results. But an adjective which better suits
the beginnings of our Cambridge is "dignified." Circumstances of dignity
attended the selection of this spot upon the bank of Charles River as
the site of a town, and there was something peculiarly dignified in the
circumstances of the change of vocation which determined the change in
its name. The story is a very different one from that of the founding of
towns in the Old World, in the semi-barbarous times when the art of
nation-making was in its infancy. In those earlier ages, it was only
through prolonged warfare against enemies nearly equal in prowess and
resources that a free political life could be maintained; and it was
only after numberless crude experiments that nations could be formed in
which political rights could be efficiently preserved for the people.
All the training that such long ages of turbulence could impart had been
gained by our forefathers in the Old World. To the founders of our
Cambridge it had come as a rich inheritance. They were not as the rough
followers of Alaric or Hengist. They had profited by the work of Roman
civilization, with its vast and subtle nexus of legal and political
ideas. In the hands of their fathers had been woven the wonderful fabric
of English law; they were familiar with parliamentary institutions; they
had been brought up in a country where the king's peace was better
preserved than anywhere else in Europe, and where at the same time
self-government was maintained in full vigour. They had profited,
moreover, by the scholastic learning of the Middle Ages and the Greek
scholarship of the Renaissance; nor was the newly awakening spirit of
scientific inquiry, visible in Galileo and Gilbert, lost upon their keen
and inquisitive minds. These Puritans, heirs to what was strongest and
best in the world's culture, came to Massachusetts Bay in order to put
into practice a theory of civil government in which the interests both
of liberty and of godliness seemed to them likely to be best subserved.
They came to plant the most advance civilization in the midst of a
heathen wilderness, and thus the selection of a seat of government for
the new commonwealth was an affair of dignity and importance.
Half a dozen towns, including Boston, had already been begun, when it
was decided that a site upon the bank of Charles River, three or four
miles inland, would be most favourable for the capital of the Puritan
colony. It would be somewhat more defensible against a fleet than the
peninsulas of Boston and Charlestown. The warships to be dreaded at that
moment were not so much those of any foreign power as those of King
Charles himself; for none could tell that the grim clouds of civil war
then lowering upon the horizon of England and Scotland might not also
darken the coast of Massachusetts Bay. When the site was selected, on
the 28th of December, 1630, it was agreed that the governor, deputy
governor, and all the Court of Assistants (except Endicott, already
settled at Salem) should build their houses here. Fortunately no name
was bestowed upon the new town. It was known simply as the New Town, and
here in the years before 1638 the General Court was several times
assembled. During those seven years the number of Puritans in New
England increased from about 1500 to nearly 20,000. It was also clear
that the King's troubles at home were likely to keep him from molesting
Massachusetts. With the increased feeling of security, Boston came to be
preferred as the seat of government, and only two of its members ever
fulfilled the agreement to build their houses in the New Town.
The building of the New Town, however, furnished the occasion for
determining at the outset what kind of government the Puritan
commonwealth should have. It was to be a walled town, for defence
against frontier barbarism of the New World type; not the formidable
destructive power of an Attila or a Bayazet, but the feeble barbarism of
the red men and the Stone Age, so that a wall of masonry was not
required, but a wooden palisade would do. In 1632 the Court of
Assistants imposed a tax of £60 for the purpose of building this
palisade; but the men of Watertown refused to pay their share, on the
ground that they were not represented in the taxing body. The ensuing
discussion resulted in the establishment of a House of Deputies, in
which every town was represented. Henceforth the Court of Assistants
together with the House of Deputies formed the General Court. There was
no authority for such a representative body in the charter, which vested
the government in the Court of Assistants; but, as Hutchinson tells us,
the people assumed that the right to such representation was implied in
that clause of the charter which reserved to them the natural rights of
Englishmen. Thus the building of a wooden palisade from Ash Street to
Jarvis Field furnished the occasion for the first distinct assertion in
the New World of the principles that were to bear fruit in the
independence of the United States.
But the most interesting event in the history of the New Town before it
became Cambridge was the brief sojourn of the Rev. Thomas Hooker and his
company, from Braintree in England. In popular generalizations it is
customary to allude to our Puritan forefathers as if they were all alike
in their ways of thinking, whereas in reality it would be difficult to
point out any group of men and women among whom individualism has more
strongly flourished. Among the numberless differences of opinion and
policy, it was only a few--and mostly such as were related to vital
political questions--that blazed up in acts of persecution. For the
disorganization wrought by Mrs. Hutchinson swift banishment seemed the
only available remedy; but slighter differences could be healed by a
peaceful secession, which some people deprecated as the "removal of a
candlestick." Such a secession was that of Hooker and his friends. The
difference between Hooker's ideal of government and Winthrop's has come
to be recognized as in some measure foreshadowing the different
conceptions of Jefferson and Hamilton in later days. But of controversy
between the two eminent Puritans only slight traces are left. One act of
omission on the part of the friendly seceders is more forcible than
reams of argument: the founders of Connecticut did not see fit to limit
the suffrage by the qualification of church membership.
The removal of so many people to the banks of the Connecticut left in
the New Town only eleven families of those who had settled here before
1635. But depopulation was prevented by the arrival of a new
congregation from England. There stands on our common a monument in
commemoration of John Bridge, who was for many years a selectman of
Cambridge, and dwelt beyond the western limits of the town, on or near
the site since famous as the headquarters of Washington and the home of
Longfellow. This John Bridge, deacon of the First Church, was one of the
earliest settlers of the New Town, and one of the eleven householders
that stayed behind, a connecting link between the old congregation of
Thomas Hooker and the new congregation of Thomas Shepard. The coming of
this eminent divine was undoubtedly an event of cardinal importance in
the history of our community, for in the Hutchinson controversy, which
shook the little colony to its foundations, his zeal and vigilance in
exposing heresy were conspicuously shown; and, if we may believe Cotton
Mather, it was this circumstance that led to the selection of the New
Town as the site for the projected college. It was well for students of
divinity to sit under the preaching of such a man, and of such as he
might train up to succeed him. How vain were all such hopes of keeping
this New English Canaan free from heresy was shown when Henry Dunster,
first president of the college, was censured by the magistrates and
dismissed from office for disapproving of infant baptism!
In the great English universities at that time Royalism and Episcopacy
prevailed at Oxford, while Puritanism more or less allied with
Republicanism was rife at Cambridge. Ever since the fourteenth century a
superior flexibility in opinion had been observable in the eastern
counties, whence came so many of the people that founded New England.
Not only Hooker and Shepard, but most of our clergy, among whom
individualism was so rife, were graduates of Cambridge. When it was
decided that the New Town was to be the home of our college, it was
natural for people to fall into the habit of calling it Cambridge; and
this name, so long enshrined already in their affections, already made
illustrious by Erasmus and Fisher, by Latimer and Cranmer, by Burghley
and Walsingham and the two Bacons, by Edmund Spenser and Ben
Jonson,--this name of such fame and dignity was adopted in 1638 by an
order of the General Court. The map of the United States abounds in town
names taken at random from the Old World, often inappropriate and
sometimes ludicrous from the incongruity of associations. The name of
our city is connected by a legitimate bond of inheritance with that of
the beautiful city on the Cam. It was given in the thought that the work
for scholarship, for godliness, and for freedom, which had so long been
carried on in the older city, was to be continued in the younger. The
name thus given was a pledge to posterity, and it has been worthily
fulfilled.
Into the history of the town of Cambridge during the two centuries after
it received its name I do not propose to enter. But a glimpse of its
general appearance during the greater part of that period is needful, in
order to give precision and the right sort of emphasis to the contrast
which we see before us to-day. The Cambridge of those days was simply
the seat of the college, not yet developed into a university. Within the
memory of persons now living, Old Cambridge was commonly alluded to as
"the village." In the original laying out of the township we seem to
see a reminiscence of the ancient threefold partition into town mark,
arable mark, and common. The "east gate," near the corner of Harvard and
Linden streets, and the "west gate," at the corner of Ash and Brattle,
marked the limits of the town in those directions. The town was at first
comprised between Harvard Street and the marshes which cut off approach
to the river bank. Afterward, the "West End," from Harvard Square to
Sparks Street, was gradually covered with homesteads. The common began,
as now, hard by God's Acre, the venerable burying ground, and afforded
pasturage for the village cattle as far as Linnæan Street. The regions
now occupied by Cambridgeport and East Cambridge contained the arable
district with many farms, small and large, but everywhere salt marshes
bordered the river, and much of the country was a wild woodland. The
tale of wolves killed in Cambridge for the year 1696 was seventy-six,
and a bear was seen roaming as late as 1754. It was a rough country
which the British first encountered when they landed at Lechmere Point
in 1775, on their night march to Lexington. Cambridge then turned its
back toward Boston, to which the only approach was by a causeway and
bridge at what we now call Boylston Street, and by this route the
distance was eight miles, as we still read upon the ancient milestone in
God's Acre. To complete our outline of the village, we must recall the
principal public buildings. The meetinghouse, a little south of the site
of Dane Hall, was used both as church and as townhouse until 1708, when
a building was erected in the middle of Harvard Square to serve for town
meetings and courts. A little eastward, near the "east gate," stood the
parsonage. The schoolhouse was behind the site of Holyoke House. The
jail stood on then west side of Winthrop Square, which was then an open
market. Between this market and Harvard Square, in the sanded parlour of
the Blue Anchor Tavern, then selectmen held their meetings; and on the
corner of the street which still bears the name of Harvard's first
president was something rarely to be seen in so small a village, the
printing press now known as the University Press, established in
1639,--the only one in English America until Boston followed the example
in 1676.
Until the beginning of the present century these outlines of Cambridge
remained with but little change, save for the building of noble houses
on spacious estates toward Mount Auburn in one direction, and upon Dana
Hill in the other. The occupants of many of these estates were members
of the Church of England, and the building of Christ Church in 1759 was
one marked symptom of the change that was creeping over the little
Puritan community. It was a change toward somewhat wider views of life,
and toward the softening of old animosities. In contrast with the age in
which we live the whole eighteenth century in New England seems a slow
and quiet time, when the public pulse beat more languidly, or at any
rate less feverishly, than now. The people of New England led a
comparatively isolated life.
Thought in our college town did not keep pace with European centres of
thought, as it does in our day. There was less hospitality toward
foreign ideas. Few people visited Europe. Life in New England was thrown
upon its own resources, and this was in great measure true of Cambridge
in the days when it was eight miles from Boston, and indefinitely remote
from the mother country. One of the surest results of social isolation
is the acquirement of peculiarities of speech, often shown in the
retaining of archaisms which fashionable language had dropped. That
quaint Yankee dialect, of which Hosea Biglow says that,
"For puttin' in a downright lick
'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther's few can metch it,
An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick
Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet,"--
that dialect so sweet to the ears of every true child of New England may
still be heard, if we go to seek it; but in Lowell's boyhood it must
have been a familiar sound in the neighbourhood of Elmwood.
But the work done in this rustic college community, if done within
somewhat narrow horizons, was eminently a widening and liberalizing
work. The seeds of the nineteenth century were germinating in the
eighteenth. Two or three indications must suffice, out of many that
might be cited. In 1669 there was a schism in the First Parish of
Boston, brought about by an attempt to revise the conditions of church
membership, in order to obviate some of the difficulties arising from
the restriction of the suffrage to church members, and the founding of
the Old South Church by the more liberal party was a result of this
schism. One hundred and sixty years later, in 1829, there was a schism
in the First Parish of Cambridge, which resulted in the founding of the
Shepard Church by the more conservative party. The questions at issue
between the two parties were the questions that divide Unitarian
theology from Trinitarian, and the distance between the kind of
interests at stake in the earlier controversy and in the later may serve
as a fair measure of the progress which the mind of Massachusetts had
been making during that interval of a hundred and sixty years. In all
that time, the chief training school for the ministers by whom the
speculative minds of Massachusetts were stimulated and guided was
Harvard College. But it was here, too, that men eminent in civic life
were trained; and among the various illustrations of the type thus
nurtured may be cited Samuel Adams and Thomas Hutchinson, foemen worthy
of one another, Warren and Hancock, Jonathan Trumbull and John Adams. So
far as New England was concerned, the chief work in bringing on the
Revolution was done by graduates of Harvard. In the convention which
framed our Federal Constitution, three important delegates were the
Harvard men, Gerry, Strong, and King; and in this connection we cannot
fail to recall names so closely associated with our national beginnings
as Timothy Pickering and Fisher Ames, nor can we omit the noble line of
jurists from Parsons to Story, and so on to Curtis, whom so many of us
well remember; or, going back to that Massachusetts convention, of which
the work is commemorated in the name of Federal Street, we may single
out for mention the great minister and statesman, type of what is best
in Puritanism, Samuel West, of New Bedford. Such names speak for the
kind of quiet, unobtrusive work that was going on in Cambridge during
those two centuries of rural existence. Such strengthening and unfolding
of the spirit is the only work that is truly immortal. In a town like
ours the material relics of the past are inspiring, and it is right that
we should do our best to preserve them; but they are perishable. The
gambrel-roofed house from the door of which President Langdon asked
God's blessing upon the men that were starting for Bunker Hill, in later
days the birthplace and homestead of our beloved Autocrat, has vanished
from the scene; the venerable elm under which Washington drew the sword
in defence of American liberty is slowly dying, year by year. But for
the spiritual achievement that has marked the career of our community
there is no death, and they that have turned many to righteousness shall
shine in our firmament as the stars forever and ever.