I had one curious experience of Muscovite ideas of trade. Moscow

is one of the main centers for the manufacture of the church

bells in which the Russian peasant takes such delight; and, being

much interested in campanology, I visited several of the

principal foundries, and was delighted with the size and

workmanship of many specimens. Walking one morning to the

Kremlin, I saw at the agency of one of these establishments a

bell weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds, most

exquisitely wrought, and such a beautiful example of the best

that Russians can do in this respect that I went in and asked the

price of it. The price being named, I said that I would take it.

Thereupon consternation was evident in the establishment, and

presently the head of the concern said to me that they were not

sure that they wished to sell it. But I said, "You HAVE sold it;

I asked you what your price was, you told me, and I have bought

it." To this he demurred, and finally refused altogether to sell

it. On going out, my guide informed me that I had made a mistake;

that I was myself the cause of the whole trouble; that if I had

offered half the price named for the bell I should have secured

it for two thirds; but that, as I had offered the entire price,

the people in the shop had jumped to the conclusion that it must

be worth more than they had supposed, that I had detected values

in it which they had not realized, and that it was their duty to

make me pay more for it than the price they had asked. The result

was that, a few weeks afterward, a compromise having been made, I

bought it and sent it to the library of Cornell University, where

it is now both useful and ornamental.

The most interesting feature of this stay in Moscow was my

intercourse with Tolstoi, and to this I have devoted a separate

chapter.[14]

[14] See Chapter XXXVII.

One more experience may be noted. In coming and going on the

Moscow railway I found, as in other parts of Europe, that

governmental control of railways does not at all mean better

accommodations or lower fares than when such works are under

individual control. The prices for travel, as well as for

sleeping-berths, were much higher on these lines, owned by the

government, than on any of our main trunk-lines in America, which

are controlled by private corporations, and the accommodations

were never of a high order, and sometimes intolerable.

During this stay in Russia my sympathies were enlisted for

Finland; but on this subject I have spoken fully elsewhere.[15]

[15] See Chapter XXXIV.

Having resigned my position at St. Petersburg in October of 1894,

the first use I made of my liberty was to go with my family to

Italy for the winter; and several months were passed at Florence,

where I revised and finished the book which had been preparing

during twenty years. Then came a rapid run to Rome and through

southern Italy, my old haunts at Castellammare, Sorrento, and

Amalfi being revisited, and sundry new excursions made. Among

these last was one to Palermo, where I visited the Church of St.

Josaphat. This edifice greatly interested me as a Christian

church erected in honor of a Christian saint who was none other

than Buddha. The manner in which the founder of that great

world-religion which preceded our own was converted into a

Christian saint and solemnly proclaimed as such by a long series

of popes, from Sixtus V to Pius IX, inclusive, by virtue of their

infallibility in all matters relating to faith and morals, is one

of the most curious and instructive things in all history.[16]

[16] A full account of this conversion of Buddha (Bodisat) into

St. Josaphat is given, with authorities, etc. in my "History of

the Warfare of Science with Theology," Vol. II, pp. 381 et seq.

At first I had some difficulty in finding this church; but,

finally, having made the acquaintance of an eminent scholar, the

Commendatore Marzo, canon of the Cappella Palatina and director

of the National Library at Palermo he kindly took me to the

place. Over the entrance were the words, "Divo Josaphat"; within,

occupying one of the places of highest honor, was an altar to the

saint, and above it a statue representing him as a young prince

wearing a crown and holding a crucifix. By permission of the

authorities I was allowed to send a photographer, who took a

negative for me. A remark of the Commendatore Marzo upon the

subject pleased me much. When, one day, after showing me the

treasures of his great library, he was dining with me, and I

pressed him for particulars regarding St. Josaphat, he answered,

"He cannot be the Jehoshaphat of the Old Testament, for he is

represented as a very young man, and contemplating a crucifix: e

molto misterioso." It was, after all, not so very mysterious; for

in these later days, now that the "Life of Barlaam and Josaphat,"

which dates from monks of the sixth or seventh century, has been

compared with the "Life of Buddha," certainly written before the

Christian era, the constant coincidence in details, and even in

phrases, puts it beyond the slightest doubt that St. Josaphat and

Buddha are one and the same person.

Very suggestive to thought was a visit to the wonderful cathedral

of Monreale, above Palermo; for here, at this southern extreme of

Europe, I found a conception of the Almighty as an enlarged human

being, subject to human weakness, identical with that shown in

the sculptures upon the cathedral of Upsala, at the extreme north

of Europe. The whole interior of Monreale Cathedral is covered

with a vast sheet of mosaics dating from about the twelfth

century, and in one series of these, representing the creation,

the Almighty is shown as working, day after day, like an artisan,

and finally, on the seventh day, as "resting,"--seated in almost

the exact attitude of the "weary Mercury" of classic sculpture,

with a marked expression of fatigue upon his countenance and in

the whole disposition of his body.[17]

[17] I have given a more full discussion of this subject in my

"History of the Warfare of Science with Theology," Vol. I, p. 3.

During this journey, having revisited Orvieto, Perugia, and

Assisi, I returned to Florence, and again enjoyed the society of

my old friends, Professor Willard Fiske, Professor Villari, with

his accomplished wife, and Judge Stallo, former minister of the

United States in Rome.

The great event of this stay was an earthquake. Seated on a

pleasant April evening in my rooms at the house built by Adolphus

Trollope, near the Piazza dell' Independenza, I heard what seemed

at first the rising of a storm; then the rushing of a mighty

wind; then, as it grew stronger, apparently the gallop of a corps

of cavalry in the neighboring avenue; but, almost instantly, it

seemed to change into the onrush of a corps of artillery, and, a

moment later, to strike the house, lifting its foundations as if

by some mighty hand, and swaying it to and fro, everything

creaking, groaning, rattling, and seeming likely to fall in upon

us. This movement to and fro, with crashing and screaming inside

and outside the house, continued, as it seemed to me, about

twenty minutes--as a matter of fact, it lasted hardly seven

seconds; but certainly it was the longest seven seconds I have

ever known. At the first uplift of the seismic wave my wife and I

rose from our seats, I saying, "Stand perfectly still."

Thenceforward, not a word was uttered by either of us until all

was over; but many thoughts came,--the dominant feeling being a

sense of our helplessness in the presence of the great powers of

nature. Neither of us had any hope of escaping alive; but we

calmly accepted the inevitable, thinking each moment would be,

the last. As I look back, our resignation and perfect quiet still

surprise me. That room, at the corner of the Villino Trollope,

which an ill-founded legend makes the place where George Eliot

wrote "Romola," is to me sacred, as the place where we two passed

"from death unto life."

Nearly all that night we remained near the doors of the house,

ready to escape any new shocks; but only one or two came, and

those very light. Crowds of the population remained out of doors,

many dwellers in hotels taking refuge in carriages and cabs, and

staying in them through the night.

Next morning I walked forth to find what had happened,--first to

the cathedral, to see if anything was left of Giotto's tower and

Brunelleschi's dome, and, to my great joy, found them standing;

but, as I entered the vast building, I saw one of the enormous

iron bars which take the thrust of the wide arches of the nave

pulled apart and broken as if it had been pack-thread; there were

also a few cracks in one of the piers supporting the dome, but

all else was as before.

At the Palazzo Strozzi a crowd of people were examining sundry

crevices which had been made in its mighty walls: and at various

villas in the neighborhood, especially those on the road to San

Miniato, I found that the damage had been much worse. A part of

the tower of one villa, occupied by an English lady of literary

distinction, had been thrown down, crashing directly through one

of the upper rooms, but causing no loss of life; the villa of

Judge Stallo, at the Porta Romana, was so wrecked that he was

obliged to leave it; and in the house of another friend a heavy

German stove on the upper floor, having been thrown over, had

come down through the ceiling of the main parlor, crashing

through the grand piano, and thence into the cellar, without

injury to any person. One of the professors whom I afterward met

told me that he was giving a dinner-party when, suddenly, the

house was lifted and shaken to and fro, the chandeliers swinging,

broken glass crashing, and the ladies screaming, and, in a

moment, a portion of the outer wall gave way, but fortunately

fell outward, so that the guests scrambled forth over the ruins,

and passed the night in the garden. Perhaps the worst damage was

wrought at the Convent of the Certosa, where some of the

beautiful old work was irreparably injured.

It was very difficult next morning to get any real information

from the newspapers. They claimed that but three persons lost

their lives in the city: it was clearly thought best to minimize

the damage done, lest the stream of travel might be scared away.

I remarked at the time that we should never know fully what had

occurred until we received the American papers; and, curiously

enough, several weeks afterward a Californian showed me a very

full and minute account of the whole calamity, with careful

details, given in the telegraphic reports of a San Francisco

newspaper on the very morning after the earthquake.

On the way to America I passed a short time, during the month of

June, in London, meeting various interesting people, a most

pleasant occasion to me being a dinner given by Mr. Bayard, the

American minister, at which I met my classmate Wayne MacVeagh,

formerly attorney-general of the United States, minister to

Constantinople and ambassador to Rome, full, as usual, of

interesting reminiscence and witty suggestion. Very interesting

also to me was a talk with Mr. Holman Hunt, the eminent

pre-Raphaelite artist. He told me much of Tennyson dwelling upon

his morbid fear that people would stare at him. He also gave an

account of his meeting with Ruskin at Venice, when Ruskin took

Hunt to task for not having come to see him more frequently in

London; to which Hunt replied that, for one reason, he was very

busy, and that, for another, he did not wish to be classed with

the toadies who swarmed about Ruskin. Whereupon Ruskin said that

Hunt was right regarding the character of most of the people

about him. Hunt also spoke of the ill treatment of his beautiful

picture, "The Light of the World." From him, or from another

source about that time, I learned that formerly the Keble College

people had made much of it; but that, some one having interpreted

the rays passing through the different openings of the lantern in

Christ's hand as typifying truth shining through different

religious conceptions, the owners of the picture distrusted it,

and had recently refused to allow its exhibition in London.

It surprised me to find Holman Hunt so absorbed in his own art

that he apparently knew next to nothing about that of other

European masters,--nothing of Puvis de Chavannes at Paris;

nothing of Menzel, Knaus, and Werner at Berlin.

Having returned to America, I was soon settled in my old

homestead at Cornell,--as I supposed for the rest of my life.

Very delightful to me during this as well as other sojourns at

Cornell after my presidency were sundry visits to American

universities at which I was asked to read papers or make

addresses. Of these I may mention Harvard, Yale, and the State

universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, at each of

which I addressed bodies of students on subjects which seemed to

me important, among these "The Diplomatic Service of the United

States," "Democracy and Education," "Evolution vs. Revolution in

Politics," and "The Problem of High Crime in the United States."

To me, as an American citizen earnestly desiring a noble future

for my country, it was one of the greatest of pleasures to look

into the faces of those large audiences of vigorous young men and

women, and, above all, at the State universities of the West,

which are to act so powerfully through so many channels of

influence in this new century. The last of the subjects

above-named interested me painfully, and I was asked to present

it to large general audiences, and not infrequently to the

congregations of churches. I had become convinced that looseness

in the administration of our criminal law is one of the more

serious dangers to American society, and my earlier studies in

this field were strengthened by my observations in the

communities I had visited during the long journey through our

Southern and Pacific States, to which I have just referred. Of

this I shall speak later.

Returning to Washington in February of 1897, I joined the

Venezuela Commission in presenting its report to the President

and Secretary of State, and so ended my duties under the

administration of Mr. Cleveland. Of my connection with the

political campaign of 1896 I have spoken elsewhere. In May of

1897, having been appointed by President McKinley ambassador to

Berlin, I sailed for Europe, and my journeys since that time have

consisted mainly of excursions to interesting historical

localities in Germany, with several short vacations in the

principal towns of northern Italy, upon the Riviera, and in

America.

PART VII

MISCELLANEOUS RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTER LVI

THE CARDIFF GIANT: A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF HUMAN

FOLLY--1869-1870

The traveler from New York to Niagara by the northern route is

generally disappointed in the second half of his journey. During

the earlier hours of the day, moving rapidly up the valleys,

first of the Hudson and next of the Mohawk, he passes through a

succession of landscapes striking or pleasing, and of places

interesting from their relations to the French and Revolutionary

wars. But, arriving at the middle point of his journey,--the head

waters of the Mohawk,--a disenchantment begins. Thenceforward he

passes through a country tame, monotonous, and with cities and

villages as uninteresting in their appearance as in their names;

the latter being taken, apparently without rhyme or reason, from

the classical dictionary or the school geography.

And yet, during all that second half of his excursion, he is

passing almost within musket-shot of one of the most beautiful

regions of the Northern States,--the lake country of central and

western New York.

It is made up of a succession of valleys running from south to

north, and lying generally side by side, each with a beauty of

its own. Some, like the Oneida and the Genesee, are broad

expanses under thorough cultivation; others, like the Cayuga and

Seneca, show sheets of water long and wide, their shores

sometimes indented with glens and gorges, and sometimes rising

with pleasant slopes to the wooded hills; in others still, as the

Cazenovia, Skaneateles, Owasco, Keuka, and Canandaigua, smaller

lakes are set, like gems, among vineyards and groves; and in

others shimmering streams go winding through corn-fields and

orchards fringed by the forest.

Of this last sort is the Onondaga valley. It lies just at the

center of the State, and, although it has at its northern

entrance the most thriving city between New York and Buffalo, it

preserves a remarkable character of peaceful beauty.

It is also interesting historically. Here was the seat--the "long

house"--of the Onondagas, the central tribe of the Iroquois;

here, from time immemorial, were held the councils which decided

on a warlike or peaceful policy for their great confederation;

hither, in the seventeenth century, came the Jesuits, and among

them some who stand high on the roll of martyrs; hither, toward

the end of the eighteenth century, came Chateaubriand, who has

given in his memoirs his melancholy musings on the shores of

Onondaga Lake, and his conversation with the chief sachem of the

Onondaga tribe; hither, in the early years of this century, came

the companion of Alexis de Tocqueville, Gustave de Beaumont, who

has given in his letters the thoughts aroused within him in this

region, made sacred to him by the sorrows of refugees from the

French Revolution.

It is a land of peace. The remnant of the Indians live quietly

upon their reservation, Christians and pagans uniting

harmoniously, on broad-church principles, in the celebration of

Christmas and in the sacrifice of the white dog to the Great

Spirit.

The surrounding farmers devote themselves in peace to their

vocation. A noted academy, which has sent out many of their

children to take high places in their own and other States,

stands in the heart of the valley, and little red school-houses

are suitably scattered. Clinging to the hills on either side are

hamlets like Onondaga, Pompey, and Otisco, which in summer remind

one of the villages upon the lesser slopes of the Apennines. It

would be hard to find a more typical American population of the

best sort--the sort which made Thomas Jefferson believe in

democracy. It is largely of New England ancestry, with a free

admixture of the better sort of more recent immigrants. It was my

good fortune, during several years, to know many of these

dwellers in the valley, and perhaps I am prejudiced in their

favor by the fact that in my early days they listened very

leniently to my political and literary addresses, and twice sent

me to the Senate of the State with a large majority.

But truth, even more than friendship, compels this tribute to

their merits. Good influences have long been at work among them:

in the little cemetery near the valley church is the grave of one

of their early pastors,--a quiet scholar,--the Rev. Caleb

Alexander, who edited the first edition of the Greek Testament

ever published in the United States.

I have known one of these farmers, week after week during the

storms of a hard winter, drive four miles to borrow a volume of

Scott's novels, and, what is better, drive four miles each week

to return it. They are a people who read and think, and who can

be relied on, in the long run, to take the sensible view of any

question.

They have done more than read and think. They took a leading part

in raising regiments and batteries for the Civil War, and their

stalwart sons went valiantly forth as volunteers. The Onondaga

regiments distinguished themselves on many a hard-fought field;

they learned what war was like at Bull Run, and used their

knowledge to good purpose at Lookout Mountain, Five Forks, and

Gettysburg. Typical is the fact that one of these regiments was

led by a valley schoolmaster,--a man who, having been shot

through the body, reported dead, and honored with a public

commemoration at which eulogies were delivered by various

persons, including myself, lived to command a brigade, to take

part in the "Battle of the Clouds," where he received a second

wound, and to receive a third wound during the march with Sherman

to the sea.

Best of all, after the war the surviving soldiers returned, went

on with their accustomed vocations, and all was quiet as before.

But in the autumn[18] of 1869 this peaceful region was in

commotion from one end to the other. Strange reports echoed from

farm to farm. It was noised abroad that a great stone statue or

petrified giant had been dug up near the little hamlet of

Cardiff, almost at the southern extremity of the valley; and

soon, despite the fact that the crops were not yet gathered in,

and the elections not yet over, men and women and children were

hurrying from Syracuse and from the farm-houses along the valley

to the scene of the great discovery.

[18] October 16.

I had been absent in a distant State for some weeks, and, on my

return to Syracuse, meeting one of the most substantial citizens,

a highly respected deacon in the Presbyterian Church, formerly a

county judge, I asked him, in a jocose way, about the new object

of interest, fully expecting that he would join me in a laugh

over the whole matter; but, to my surprise, he became at once

very solemn. He said, "I assure you that this is no laughing

matter; it is a very serious thing, indeed; there is no question

that an amazing discovery has been made, and I advise you to go

down and see what you think of it."

Next morning, my brother and myself were speeding, after a fast

trotter in a light buggy, through the valley to the scene of the

discovery; and as we went we saw more and more, on every side,

evidences of enormous popular interest. The roads were crowded

with buggies, carriages, and even omnibuses from the city, and

with lumber-wagons from the farms--all laden with passengers. In

about two hours we arrived at the Newell farm, and found a

gathering which at first sight seemed like a county fair. In the

midst was a tent, and a crowd was pressing for admission.

Entering, we saw a large pit or grave, and, at the bottom of it,

perhaps five feet below the surface, an enormous figure,

apparently of Onondaga gray limestone. It was a stone giant, with

massive features, the whole body nude, the limbs contracted as if

in agony. It had a color as if it had lain long in the earth, and

over its surface were minute punctures, like pores. An especial

appearance of great age was given it by deep grooves and channels

in its under side, apparently worn by the water which flowed in

streams through the earth and along the rock on which the figure

rested. Lying in its grave, with the subdued light from the roof

of the tent falling upon it, and with the limbs contorted as if

in a death struggle, it produced a most weird effect. An air of

great solemnity pervaded the place. Visitors hardly spoke above a

whisper.

Coming out, I asked some questions, and was told that the farmer

who lived there had discovered the figure when digging a well.

Being asked my opinion, my answer was that the whole matter was

undoubtedly a hoax; that there was no reason why the farmer

should dig a well in the spot where the figure was found; that it

was convenient neither to the house nor to the barn; that there

was already a good spring and a stream of water running

conveniently to both; that, as to the figure itself, it certainly

could not have been carved by any prehistoric race, since no part

of it showed the characteristics of any such early work; that,

rude as it was, it betrayed the qualities of a modern performance

of a low order.

Nor could it be a fossilized human being; in this all scientific

observers of any note agreed. There was ample evidence, to one

who had seen much sculpture, that it was carved, and that the man

who carved it, though by no means possessed of genius or talent,

had seen casts, engravings, or photographs of noted sculptures.

The figure, in size, in massiveness, in the drawing up of the

limbs, and in its roughened surface, vaguely reminded one of

Michelangelo's "Night and Morning." Of course, the difference

between this crude figure and those great Medicean statues was

infinite; and yet it seemed to me that the man who had carved

this figure must have received a hint from those.

It was also clear that the figure was neither intended to be

considered as an idol nor as a monumental statue. There was no

pedestal of any sort on which it could stand, and the disposition

of the limbs and their contortions were not such as any sculptor

would dream of in a figure to be set up for adoration. That it

was intended to be taken as a fossilized giant was indicated by

the fact that it was made as nearly like a human being as the

limited powers of the stone-carver permitted, and that it was

covered with minute imitations of pores.

Therefore it was that, in spite of all scientific reasons to the

contrary, the work was very generally accepted as a petrified

human being of colossal size, and became known as "the Cardiff

Giant."

One thing seemed to argue strongly in favor of its antiquity, and

I felt bound to confess, to those who asked my opinion, that it

puzzled me. This was the fact that the surface water flowing

beneath it in its grave seemed to have deeply grooved and

channeled it on the under side. Now the Onondaga gray limestone

is hard and substantial, and on that very account used in the

locks upon the canals: for the running of surface water to wear

such channels in it would require centuries.

Against the opinion that the figure was a hoax various arguments

were used. It was insisted, first, that the farmer had not the

ability to devise such a fraud; secondly, that he had not the

means to execute it; third, that his family had lived there

steadily for many years, and were ready to declare under oath

that they had never seen it, and had known nothing of it until it

was accidentally discovered; fourth, that the neighbors had never

seen or heard of it; fifth, that it was preposterous to suppose

that such a mass of stone could have been brought and buried in

the place without some one finding it out; sixth, that the

grooves and channels worn in it by the surface water proved its

vast antiquity.

To these considerations others were soon added. Especially

interesting was it to observe the evolution of myth and legend.

Within a week after the discovery, full-blown statements appeared

to the effect that the neighboring Indians had abundant

traditions of giants who formerly roamed over the hills of

Onondaga; and, finally, the circumstantial story was evolved that

an Onondaga squaw had declared, "in an impressive manner," that

the statue "is undoubtedly the petrified body of a gigantic

Indian prophet who flourished many centuries ago and foretold the

coming of the palefaces, and who, just before his own death, said

to those about him that their descendants would see him

again."[19] To this were added the reflections of many good

people who found it an edifying confirmation of the biblical

text, "There were giants in those days." There was, indeed, an

undercurrent of skepticism among the harder heads in the valley,

but the prevailing opinion in the region at large was more and

more in favor of the idea that the object was a fossilized human

being--a giant of "those days." Such was the rush to see the

figure that the admission receipts were very large; it was even

stated that they amounted to five per cent. upon three millions

of dollars, and soon came active men from the neighboring region

who proposed to purchase the figure and exhibit it through the

country. A leading spirit in this "syndicate" deserves mention.

He was a horse-dealer in a large way and banker in a small way

from a village in the next county,--a man keen and shrewd, but

merciful and kindly, who had fought his way up from abject

poverty, and whose fundamental principle, as he asserted it, was

"Do unto others as they would like to do unto you, and--DO IT

FUST."[20] A joint-stock concern was formed with a considerable

capital, and an eminent show man, "Colonel" Wood, employed to

exploit the wonder.

[19] See "The Cardiff Giant Humbug," Fort Dodge, Iowa, 1870, p.

13.

[20] For a picture, both amusing and pathetic, of the doings of

this man, and also of life in the central New York villages, see

"David Harum," a novel by E. N. Westcott, New York, 1898.

A week after my first visit I again went to the place, by

invitation. In the crowd on that day were many men of light and

leading from neighboring towns,--among them some who made

pretensions to scientific knowledge. The figure, lying in its

grave, deeply impressed all; and as a party of us came away, a

very excellent doctor of divinity, pastor of one of the largest

churches in Syracuse, said very impressively, "Is it not strange

that any human being, after seeing this wonderfully preserved

figure, can deny the evidence of his senses, and refuse to

believe, what is so evidently the fact, that we have here a

fossilized human being, perhaps one of the giants mentioned in

Scripture?"

Another visitor, a bright-looking lady, was heard to declare,

"Nothing in the world can ever make me believe that he was not

once a living being. Why, you can see the veins in his legs."[21]

[21] See Letter of Hon. Galusha Parsons in the Fort Dodge

Pamphlet.

Another prominent clergyman declared with ex cathedra emphasis:

"This is not a thing contrived of man, but is the face of one who

lived on the earth, the very image and child of God."[22] And a

writer in one of the most important daily papers of the region

dwelt on the "majestic simplicity and grandeur of the figure,"

and added, "It is not unsafe to affirm that ninety-nine out of

every hundred persons who have seen this wonder have become

immediately and instantly impressed with the idea that they were

in the presence of an object not made by mortal hands.... No

piece of sculpture ever produced the awe inspired by this

blackened form.... I venture to affirm that no living sculptor

can be produced who will say that the figure was conceived and

executed by any human being."[23]

[22] See Mr. Stockbridge's article in the "Popular Science

Monthly," June, 1878.

[23] See "The American Goliath," Syracuse, 1869, p. 16.

The current of belief ran more and more strongly, and soon

embraced a large number of really thoughtful people. A week or

two after my first visit came a deputation of regents of the

State University from Albany, including especially Dr. Woolworth,

the secretary, a man of large educational experience, and no less

a personage in the scientific world than Dr. James Hall, the

State geologist, perhaps the most eminent American paleontologist

of that period.

On their arrival at Syracuse in the evening, I met them at their

hotel and discussed with them the subject which so interested us

all, urging them especially to be cautious, and stating that a

mistake might prove very injurious to the reputation of the

regents, and to the proper standing of scientific men and methods

in the State; that if the matter should turn out to be a fraud,

and such eminent authorities should be found to have committed

themselves to it, there would be a guffaw from one end of the

country to the other at the expense of the men intrusted by the

State with its scientific and educational interests. To this the

gentlemen assented, and next day they went to Cardiff. They came;

they saw; and they narrowly escaped being conquered. Luckily they

did not give their sanction to the idea that the statue was a

petrifaction, but Professor Hall was induced to say: "To all

appearance, the statue lay upon the gravel when the deposition of

the fine silt or soil began, upon the surface of which the

forests have grown for succeeding generations. Altogether it is

the most remarkable object brought to light in this country, and,

although not dating back to the stone age, is, nevertheless,

deserving of the attention of archaeologists."[24]

[24] See his letter of October 23, 1869, in the Syracuse papers.

At no period of my life have I ever been more discouraged as

regards the possibility of making right reason prevail among men.

As a refrain to every argument there seemed to go jeering and

sneering through my brain Schiller's famous line:

"Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain."[25]

[25] "Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens." Jungfrau

von Orleans, Act III, scene 6.

There seemed no possibility even of SUSPENDING the judgment of

the great majority who saw the statue. As a rule, they insisted

on believing it a "petrified giant," and those who did not dwelt

on its perfections as an ancient statue. They saw in it a whole

catalogue of fine qualities; and one writer went into such

extreme ecstatics that he suddenly realized the fact, and ended

by saying, "but this is rather too high-flown, so I had better

conclude." As a matter of fact, the work was wretchedly defective

in proportion and features; in every characteristic of sculpture

it showed itself the work simply of an inferior stone-carver.

Dr. Boynton, a local lecturer on scientific subjects, gave it the

highest praise as a work of art, and attributed it to early

Jesuit missionaries who had come into that region about two

hundred years before. Another gentleman, who united the character

of a deservedly beloved pastor and an inspiring popular lecturer

on various scientific topics, developed this Boynton theory. He

attributed the statue to "a trained sculptor . . . who had noble

original powers; for none but such could have formed and wrought

out the conception of that stately head, with its calm smile so

full of mingled sweetness and strength." This writer then

ventured the query, "Was it not, as Dr. Boynton suggests, some

one from that French colony, . . . some one with a righteous soul

sighing over the lost civilization of Europe, weary of swamp and

forest and fort, who, finding this block by the side of the

stream, solaced the weary days of exile with pouring out his

thought upon the stone?"[26] Although the most eminent sculptor

in the State had utterly refused to pronounce the figure anything

beyond a poor piece of carving, these strains of admiration and

adoration continued.

[26] See the Syracuse daily papers as above.

There was evidently a "joy in believing" in the marvel, and this

was increased by the peculiarly American superstition that the

correctness of a belief is decided by the number of people who

can be induced to adopt it--that truth is a matter of majorities.

The current of credulity seemed irresistible.

Shortly afterward the statue was raised from its grave taken to

Syracuse and to various other cities, especially to the city of

New York, and in each place exhibited as a show.

As already stated, there was but one thing in the figure, as I

had seen it, which puzzled me, and that was the grooving of the

under side, apparently by currents of water, which, as the statue

appeared to be of our Onondaga gray limestone, would require very

many years. But one day one of the cool-headed skeptics of the

valley, an old schoolmate of mine, came to me, and with an air of

great solemnity took from his pocket an object which he carefully

unrolled from its wrappings, and said, "There is a piece of the

giant. Careful guard has been kept from the first in order to

prevent people touching it; but I have managed to get a piece of

it, and here it is." I took it in my hand, and the matter was

made clear in an instant. The stone was not our hard Onondaga

gray limestone, but soft, easily marked with the finger-nail,

and, on testing it with an acid, I found it, not hard carbonate

of lime, but a soft, friable sulphate of lime--a form of gypsum,

which must have been brought from some other part of the country.

A healthful skepticism now began to assert its rights. Professor

Marsh of Yale appeared upon the scene. Fortunately, he was not

only one of the most eminent of living paleontologists, but,

unlike most who had given an opinion, he really knew something of

sculpture, for he had been familiar with the best galleries of

the Old World. He examined the statue and said, "It is of very

recent origin, and a most decided humbug.... Very short exposure

of the statue would suffice to obliterate all trace of

tool-marks, and also to roughen the polished surfaces, but these

are still quite perfect, and hence the giant must have been very

recently buried.... I am surprised that any scientific observers

should not have at once detected the unmistakable evidence

against its antiquity."[27]

[27] See Professor Marsh's letter in the "Syracuse Daily

Journal," November 30, 1869.

Various suspicious circumstances presently became known. It was

found that Farmer Newell had just remitted to a man named Hull,

at some place in the West, several thousand dollars, the result

of admission fees to the booth containing the figure, and that

nothing had come in return. Thinking men in the neighborhood

reasoned that as Newell had never been in condition to owe any

human being such an amount of money, and had received nothing in

return for it, his correspondent had, not unlikely, something to

do with the statue.

These suspicions were soon confirmed. The neighboring farmers,

who, in their quiet way, kept their eyes open, noted a tall, lank

individual who frequently visited the place and seemed to

exercise complete control over Farmer Newell. Soon it was learned

that this stranger was the man Hull,--Newell's

brother-in-law,--the same to whom the latter had made the large

remittance of admission money. One day, two or three farmers from

a distance, visiting the place for the first time and seeing

Hull, said, "Why, that is the man who brought the big box down

the valley." On being asked what they meant, they said that,

being one evening in a tavern on the valley turnpike some miles

south of Cardiff, they had noticed under the tavern shed a wagon

bearing an enormous box; and when they met Hull in the bar-room

and asked about it, he said that it was some tobacco-cutting

machinery which he was bringing to Syracuse. Other farmers, who

had seen the box and talked with Hull at different places on the

road between Binghamton and Cardiff, made similar statements. It

was then ascertained that no such box had passed the toll-gates

between Cardiff and Syracuse, and proofs of the swindle began to

mature.

But skepticism was not well received. Vested interests had

accrued, a considerable number of people, most of them very good

people, had taken stock in the new enterprise, and anything which

discredited it was unwelcome to them.

It was not at all that these excellent people wished to

countenance an imposture, but it had become so entwined with

their beliefs and their interests that at last they came to abhor

any doubts regarding it. A pamphlet, "The American Goliath," was

now issued in behalf of the wonder. On its title-page it claimed

to give the "History of the Discovery, and the Opinions of

Scientific Men thereon." The tone of the book was moderate, but

its tendency was evident. Only letters and newspaper articles

exciting curiosity or favoring the genuineness of the statue were

admitted; adverse testimony, like that of Professor Marsh, was

carefully excluded.

Before long the matter entered into a comical phase. Barnum, King

of Showmen, attempted to purchase the "giant," but in vain. He

then had a copy made so nearly resembling the original that no

one, save, possibly, an expert, could distinguish between them.

This new statue was also exhibited as "the Cardiff Giant," and

thenceforward the credit of the discovery waned.

The catastrophe now approached rapidly, and soon affidavits from

men of high character in Iowa and Illinois established the fact

that the figure was made at Fort Dodge, in Iowa, of a great block

of gypsum there found; that this block was transported by land to

the nearest railway station, Boone, which was about forty-five

miles distant; that on the way the wagon conveying it broke down,

and that as no other could be found strong enough to bear the

whole weight, a portion of the block was cut off; that, thus

diminished, it was taken to Chicago, where a German stone-carver

gave it final shape; that, as it had been shortened, he was

obliged to draw up the lower limbs, thus giving it a strikingly

contracted and agonized appearance; that the under side of the

figure was grooved and channeled in order that it should appear

to be wasted by age; that it was then dotted or pitted over with

minute pores by means of a leaden mallet faced with steel

needles; that it was stained with some preparation which gave it

an appearance of great age; that it was then shipped to a place

near Binghamton, New York, and finally brought to Cardiff and

there buried. It was further stated that Hull, in order to secure

his brother-in-law, Farmer Newell, as his confederate in burying

the statue, had sworn him to secrecy; and, in order that the

family might testify that they had never heard or seen anything

of the statue until it had been unearthed, he had sent them away

on a little excursion covering the time when it was brought and

buried. All these facts were established by affidavits from men

of high character in Iowa and Illinois, by the sworn testimony of

various Onondaga farmers and men of business, and, finally, by

the admissions and even boasts of Hull himself.

Against this tide of truth the good people who had pinned their

faith to the statue--those who had vested interests in it, and

those who had rashly given solemn opinions in favor of

it--struggled for a time desperately. A writer in the "Syracuse

Journal" expressed a sort of regretful wonder and shame that "the

public are asked to overthrow the sworn testimony of sustained

witnesses corroborated by the highest scientific authority"--the

only sworn witness being Farmer Newell, whose testimony was not

at all conclusive, and the highest scientific authority being an

eminent local dentist who, early in his life, had given popular

chemical lectures, and who had now invested money in the

enterprise.

The same writer referred also with awe to "the men of sense,

property, and character who own the giant and receive whatever

revenue arises from its exhibition"; and the argument culminated

in the oracular declaration that "the operations of water as

testified and interpreted by science cannot create

falsehood."[28]

[28] See letter of "X" in the "Syracuse Journal," republished in

the Fort Dodge Pamphlet, pp. 15 and 16.

But all this pathetic eloquence was in vain. Hull, the inventor

of the statue, having realized more money from it than he

expected, and being sharp enough to see that its day was done,

was evidently bursting with the desire to avert scorn from

himself by bringing the laugh upon others, and especially upon

certain clergymen, whom, as we shall see hereafter, he greatly

disliked. He now acknowledged that the whole thing was a swindle,

and gave details of the way in which he came to embark in it. He

avowed that the idea was suggested to him by a discussion with a

Methodist revivalist in Iowa; that, being himself a skeptic in

religious matters, he had flung at his antagonist "those

remarkable stories in the Bible about giants"; that, observing

how readily the revivalist and those with him took up the cudgels

for the giants, it then and there occurred to him that, since so

many people found pleasure in believing such things, he would

have a statue carved out of stone which he had found in Iowa and

pass it off on them as a petrified giant. In a later conversation

he said that one thing which decided him was that the stone had

in it dark-colored bluish streaks which resembled in appearance

the veins of the human body. The evolution of the whole affair

thus became clear, simple, and natural.

Up to this time, Hull's remarkable cunning had never availed him

much. He had made various petty inventions, but had realized very

little from them; he had then made some combinations as regarded

the internal-revenue laws referring to the manufacture and sale

of tobacco, and these had only brought him into trouble with the

courts; but now, when the boundless resources of human credulity

were suddenly revealed to him by the revivalist, he determined to

exploit them. This evolution of his ideas strikingly resembles

that through which the mind of a worthless, shiftless, tricky

creature in western New York--Joseph Smith--must have passed

forty years before, when he dug up "the golden plates" of the

"Book of Mormon," and found plenty of excellent people who

rejoiced in believing that the Rev. Mr. Spalding's biblical novel

was a new revelation from the Almighty.

The whole matter was thus fully laid open, and it might have been

reasonably expected that thenceforward no human being would

insist that the stone figure was anything but a swindling hoax.

Not so. In the Divinity School of Yale College, about the middle

of the century, was a solemn, quiet, semi-jocose,

semi-melancholic resident graduate--Alexander McWhorter. I knew

him well. He had embarked in various matters which had not turned

out satisfactorily. Hot water, ecclesiastical and social, seemed

his favorite element.[29] He was generally believed to secure

most of his sleep during the day, and to do most of his work

during the night; a favorite object of his study being Hebrew.

Various strange things had appeared from his pen, and, most

curious of all, a little book entitled, "Yahveh Christ," in which

he had endeavored to demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity

was to be found entangled in the consonants out of which former

scholars made the word "Jehovah," and more recent scholars

"Yahveh"; that this word, in fact, proved the doctrine of the

Trinity.[30]

[29] The main evidence of this is to be found in "Truth Stranger

Than Fiction: A Narrative of Recent Transactions involving

Inquiries in Regard to the Principles of Honor, Truth, and

Justice, which Obtains in a Distinguished American University,"

by Catherine E. Beecher, New York, 1850.

[30] See "Yahveh Christ, or the Memorial Name," by A. McWhorter,

Boston, 1857.

He now brought his intellect to bear upon "the Cardiff Giant,"

and soon produced an amazing theory, developing it at length in a

careful article.[31]

[31] See McWhorter, "Tammuz and the Mound-builders," in the

"Galaxy," July, 1872.

This theory was simply that the figure discovered at Cardiff was

a Phenician idol; and Mr. McWhorter published, as the climax to

all his proofs, the facsimile and translation of an inscription

which he had discovered upon the figure--a "Phenician

inscription," which he thought could leave no doubt in the mind

of any person open to conviction.

That the whole thing had been confessed a swindle by all who took

part in it, with full details as to its origin and development,

seemed to him not worthy of the slightest mention. Regardless of

all the facts in the case, he showed a pathetic devotion to his

theory, and allowed his imagination the fullest play. He found,

first of all, an inscription of thirteen letters, "introduced by

a large cross or star--the Assyrian index of the Deity." Before

the last word of the inscription he found carved "a flower which

he regarded as consecrated to the particular deity Tammuz, and at

both ends of the inscription a serpent monogram and symbol of

Baal."

This inscription he assumed as an evident fact, though no other

human being had ever been able to see it. Even Professor White,

M.D., of the Yale Medical School, with the best intentions in the

world, was unable to find it. Dr. White was certainly not

inclined to superficiality or skepticism. With "achromatic

glasses which magnified forty-five diameters" he examined the

"pinholes" which covered the figure, and declared that "the

beautiful finish of every pore or pinhole appeared to me strongly

opposed to the idea that the statue was of modern workmanship."

He also thought he saw the markings which Mr. McWhorter

conjectured might be an inscription, and said in a letter,

"though I saw no recent tool-marks, I saw evidences of design in

the form and arrangement of the markings, which suggested the

idea of an inscription." And, finally, having made these

concessions, he ends his long letter with the very guarded

statement that, "though not fully DECIDED, I INCLINE TO THE

OPINION that the Onondaga statue is of ancient origin."[32]

[32] The italics are as in the original.

But this mild statement did not daunt Mr. McWhorter. Having

calmly pronounced Dr. White "in error," he proceeded with sublime

disregard of every other human being. He found that the statue

"belongs to the winged or 'cherubim' type"; that "down the left

side of the figure are seen the outlines of folded wings--even

the separate feathers being clearly distinguishable"; that "the

left side of the head is inexpressibly noble and majestic," and

"conforms remarkably to the type of the head of the

mound-builders"; that "the left arm terminates in what appears to

be a huge extended lion's paw"; that "the dual idea expressed in

the head is carried out in the figure"; that "in the wonderfully

artistic mouth of the divine side we find a suggestion of that of

the Greek Apollo." Mr. McWhorter also found other things that no

other human being was ever able to discern, and among them "a

crescent-shaped wound upon the left side," "traces of ancient

coloring" in all parts of the statue, and evidences that the

minute pores were made by "borers." He lays great stress on an

"ancient medal" found in Onondaga, which he thinks belongs "to

the era of the mound-builders," and on which he finds a "circle

inclosing an equilateral cross, both cross and circle, like the

wheel of Ezekiel, being full of small circles or eyes." As a

matter of fact, this "ancient medal" was an English penny, which

a street gamin of Syracuse said that he had found near the

statue, and the "equilateral cross" was simply the usual cross of

St. George. Mr. McWhorter thinks the circle inclosing the cross

denotes the "world soul," and in a dissertation of about twenty

pages he discourses upon "Baal," "Tammuz," "King Hiram of Tyre,"

the "ships of Tarshish," the "Eluli," and "Atlas," with plentiful

arguments drawn from a multitude of authorities, and among them

Sanchoniathon, Ezekiel, Plato, Dr. Dollinger, Isaiah,

Melanchthon, Lenormant, Humboldt, Sir John Lubbock, and Don

Domingo Juarros,--finally satisfying himself that the statue was

"brought over by a colony of Phenicians," possibly several

hundred years before Christ.[33]

[33] See the "Galaxy" article, as above, passim.

With the modesty of a true scholar he says, "Whether the final

battle at Onondaga . . . occurred before or after this event we

cannot tell"; but, resuming confidence, he says, "we only know

that at some distant period the great statue, brought in a 'ship

of Tarshish' across the sea of Atl, was lightly covered with

twigs and flowers and these with gravel." The deliberations of

the Pickwick Club over "Bill Stubbs, His Mark" pale before this;

and Dickens in his most expansive moods never conceived anything

more funny than the long, solemn discussion between the erratic

Hebrew scholar and the eminent medical professor at New Haven

over the "pores" of the statue, which one of them thought "the

work of minute animals," which the other thought "elaborate

Phenician workmanship," which both thought exquisite, and which

the maker of the statue had already confessed that he had made by

rudely striking the statue with a mallet faced with needles.

Mr. McWhorter's new theory made no great stir in the United

States, though some, doubtless, took comfort in it; but it found

one very eminent convert across the ocean, and in a place where

we might least have expected him. Some ten years after the events

above sketched while residing at Berlin as minister of the United

States, I one day received from an American student at the

University of Halle a letter stating that he had been requested

by no less a personage than the eminent Dr Schlottmann,

instructor in Hebrew in the theological school of that

university,--the successor of Gesenius in that branch of

instruction,--to write me for information regarding the Phenician

statue described by the Rev Alexander McWhorter.

In reply, I detailed to him the main points in the history of the

case, as it has been given in this chapter, adding, as against

the Phenician theory, that nothing in the nature of Phenician

remains had ever been found within the borders of the United

States, and that if they had been found, this remote valley,

three hundred miles from the sea, barred from the coast by

mountain-ranges, forests, and savage tribes, could never have

been the place chosen by Phenician navigators for such a deposit;

that the figure itself was clearly not a work of early art, but a

crude development by an uncultured stone-cutter out of his

remembrance of things in modern sculpture; and that the

inscription was purely the creation of Mr. McWhorter's

imagination.

In his acknowledgment, my correspondent said that I had left no

doubt in his mind as to the fact that the giant was a swindle;

but that he had communicated my letter to the eminent Dr.

Schlottmann, that the latter avowed that I had not convinced him,

and that he still believed the Cardiff figure to be a Phenician

statue bearing a most important inscription.

One man emerged from this chapter in the history of human folly

supremely happy: this was Hull, the inventor of the "giant." He

had at last made some money, had gained a reputation for

"smartness," and, what probably pleased him best of all, had

revenged himself upon the Rev. Mr. Turk of Ackley, Iowa, who by

lung-power had worsted him in the argument as to the giants

mentioned in Scripture.

So elate was he that he shortly set about devising another

"petrified man" which would defy the world. It was of clay baked

in a furnace, contained human bones, and was provided with "a

tail and legs of the ape type"; and this he caused to be buried

and discovered in Colorado. This time he claimed to have the aid

of one of his former foes--the great Barnum; and all went well

until his old enemy, Professor Marsh of Yale, appeared and

blasted the whole enterprise by a few minutes of scientific

observation and common-sense discourse.

Others tried to imitate Hull, and in 1876 one--William Buddock of

Thornton, St. Clair County, Michigan--manufactured a small effigy

in cement, and in due time brought about the discovery of it.

But, though several country clergymen used it to strengthen their

arguments as to the literal, prosaic correctness of Genesis, it

proved a failure. Finally, in 1889, twenty years after "the

Cardiff Giant" was devised, a "petrified man" was found near

Bathurst in Australia, brought to Sydney, and exhibited. The

result was, in some measure, the same as in the case of the

American fraud. Excellent people found comfort in believing, and

sundry pseudo-scientific men of a cheap sort thought it best to

pander to this sentiment; but a well-trained geologist pointed

out the absurdity of the popular theory, and finally the police

finished the matter by securing evidences of fraud.[34]

[34] For the Ruddock discovery see Dr. G.A. Stockwell in the

"Popular Science Monthly" for June, 1878. For the Australian

fraud see the London "Times" of August 2, 1889.

To close these annals, I may add that recently the inventor of

"the Cardiff Giant," Hull, being at the age of seventy-six years,

apparently in his last illness, and anxious for the glory in

history which comes from successful achievement, again gave to

the press a full account of his part in the affair, confirming

what he had previously stated, showing how he planned it,

executed it and realized a goodly sum for it; how Barnum wished

to purchase it from him; and how, above all, he had his joke at

the expense of those who, though they had managed to overcome him

in argument, had finally been rendered ridiculous in the sight of

the whole country.[35]

[35] For Hull's "Final Statement" see the "Ithaca Daily Journal,"

January 4, 1898.

CHAPTER LVII

PLANS AND PROJECTS, EXECUTED AND UNEXECUTED--1838-1905

Among those who especially attracted my youthful admiration were

authors, whether of books or of articles in the magazines. When

one of these personages was pointed out to me, he seemed of far

greater stature than the men about him. This feeling was

especially developed in the atmosphere of our household, where

scholars and writers were held in especial reverence, and was

afterward increased by my studies. This led me at Yale to take,

at first, much interest in general literature, and, as a result,

I had some youthful successes as a writer of essays and as one of

the editors of the "Yale Literary Magazine"; but although it was

an era of great writers,--the culmination of the Victorian

epoch,--my love for literature as literature gradually

diminished, and in place of it came in my young manhood a love of

historical and other studies to which literature was, to my mind,

merely subsidiary. With this, no doubt, the prevailing atmosphere

of Yale had much to do. There was between Yale and Harvard, at

that time, a great difference as regarded literary culture.

Living immediately about Harvard were most of the leading

American authors, and this fact greatly influenced that

university; at Yale less was made of literature as such, and more

was made of it as a means to an end--as ancillary in the

discussion of various militant political questions. Yale had

writers strong, vigorous, and acute: of such were Woolsey,

Porter, Bacon, and Bushnell, some of whom,--and, above all, the

last,--had they devoted themselves to pure literature, would have

gained lasting fame; but their interest in the questions of the

day was controlling, and literature, in its ordinary sense, was

secondary.

Harvard undoubtedly had the greater influence on leading American

thinkers throughout the nation, but much less direct influence on

the people at large outside of Massachusetts. The direct

influence of Yale on affairs throughout the United States was far

greater; it was felt in all parts of the country and in every

sort of enterprise. Many years after my graduation I attended a

meeting of the Yale alumni at Washington, where a Western

senator, on taking the chair, gave an offhand statement of the

difference between the two universities. "Gentlemen," said the

senator, "we all know what Harvard does. She fits men admirably

for life in Boston and its immediate neighborhood; they see

little outside of eastern Massachusetts and nothing outside of

New England; in Boston clubs they are delightful; elsewhere they

are intolerable. And we also know what Yale does: she sends her

graduates out into all parts of the land, for every sort of good

work, in town and country, even to the remotest borders of the

nation. Wherever you find a Yale man you find a man who is in

touch with his fellow-citizens; who appreciates them and is

appreciated by them; who is doing a man's work and is honored for

doing it."

This humorous overstatement indicates to some extent the real

difference between the spirit of the two universities: the

influence of Harvard being greater through the men it trained to

lead American thought from Boston as a center; the influence of

Yale being greater through its graduates who were joining in the

world's work in all its varied forms. Yet, curiously enough, it

was the utterance of a Harvard man which perhaps did most in my

young manhood to make me unduly depreciate literary work. I was

in deep sympathy with Theodore Parker, both in politics and

religion, and when he poured contempt over a certain class of

ineffective people as "weak and literary," something of his

feeling took possession of me. Then, too, I was much under the

influence of Thomas Carlyle: his preachments, hortatory and

objurgatory, witty and querulous, that men should defer work in

literature until they really have some worthy message to deliver,

had a strong effect upon me. While I greatly admired men like

Lowell and Whittier, who brought exquisite literary gifts to bear

powerfully on the struggle against slavery, persons devoted

wholly to literary work seemed to me akin to sugar-bakers and

confectionery-makers. I now know that this view was very

inadequate; but it was then in full force. It seemed to me more

and more absurd that a man with an alleged immortal soul, at such

a time as the middle of the nineteenth century, should devote

himself, as I then thought, to amusing weakish young men and

women by the balancing of phrases or the jingling of verses.

Therefore it was that, after leaving Yale, whatever I wrote had

some distinct purpose, with little, if any, care as to form. I

was greatly stirred against the encroachments of slavery in the

Territories, had also become deeply interested in university

education, and most of my thinking and writing was devoted to

these subjects; though, at times, I took up the cudgels in behalf

of various militant ideas that seemed to need support. The

lecture on "Cathedral Builders and Mediaeval Sculptors," given in

the Yale chapel after my return from Europe, often repeated

afterward in various parts of the country, and widely circulated

by extracts in newspapers, though apparently an exception to the

rule, was not really so. It aimed to show the educational value

of an ethical element in art. So, too, my article in the "New

Englander" on "Glimpses of Universal History" had as its object

the better development of historical studies in our universities.

My articles in the "Atlantic Monthly"--on "Jefferson and

Slavery," on "The Statesmanship of Richelieu," and on "The

Development and Overthrow of Serfdom in Russia"--all had a

bearing on the dominant question of slavery, and the same was

true of my Phi Beta Kappa address at Yale on "The Greatest Foe of

Modern States." Whatever I wrote during the Civil War, and

especially my pamphlet published in London as a reply to the

"American Diary" of the London "Times" correspondent, Dr.

Russell, had a similar character. The feeling grew upon me that

life in the United States during the middle of the nineteenth

century was altogether too earnest for devotion to pure

literature. The same feeling pervaded my lectures at the

University of Michigan, my effort being by means of the lessons

of history to set young men at thinking upon the great political

problems of our time. The first course of these lectures was upon

the French Revolution. Work with reference to it had been a labor

of love. During my student life in Paris, and at various other

times, I had devoted much time to the study of this subject, had

visited nearly all the places most closely connected with it not

only in Paris but throughout France, had meditated upon the noble

beginnings of the Revolution in the Palace and Tennis-court and

Church of St. Louis at Versailles; at Lyons, upon the fusillades;

at Nantes, upon the noyades; at the Abbaye, the Carmelite

monastery, the Barriere du Trone, and the cemetery of the Rue

Picpus in Paris, upon the Red Terror; at Nimes and Avignon and in

La Vendee, upon the White Terror; had collected, in all parts of

France, masses of books, manuscripts, public documents and

illustrated material on the whole struggle: full sets of the

leading newspapers of the Revolutionary period, more than seven

thousand pamphlets, reports, speeches, and other fugitive

publications, with masses of paper money, caricatures,

broadsides, and the like, thus forming my library on the

Revolution, which has since been added to that of Cornell

University. Based upon these documents and books were my lectures

on the general history of France and on the Revolution and

Empire. Out of this came finally a shorter series of lectures

upon which I took especial pains--namely, the "History of the

Causes of the French Revolution." This part of the whole course

interested me most as revealing the strength and weakness of

democracies and throwing light upon many problems which our own

republic must endeavor to solve; and I gave it not only at

Cornell, but at Johns Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania,

Stanford, Tulane, and Washington. It still remains in manuscript:

whether it will ever be published is uncertain. Should my life be

somewhat extended, I hope to throw it into the form of a small

volume; but, at my present age and with the work now upon me, the

realization of this plan is doubtful. Still, in any case, there

is to me one great consolation: my collection of books aided the

former professor of modern history at Cornell, Mr. Morse Stevens,

in preparing what is unquestionably the best history of the

French Revolution in the English language. Nor has the collection

been without other uses. Upon it was based my pamphlet on "Paper

Money Inflation in France: How It Came, What It Brought, and How

It Ended," and this, being circulated widely as a campaign

document during two different periods of financial delusion, did,

I hope, something to set some controlling men into fruitful

trains of thought on one of the most important issues ever

presented to the American people.

Another course of lectures also paved the way possibly for a

book. I have already told how, during my college life and even

previously, I became fascinated with the history of the

Protestant Reformation. This led to further studies, and among

the first courses in history prepared during my professorship at

the University of Michigan was one upon the "Revival of Learning"

and the "Reformation in Germany." This course was developed later

until it was brought down to our own times; its continuance being

especially favored by my stay in Germany, first as a student and

later as minister of the United States. Most of my spare time at

these periods was given to this subject, and in the preparation

of these lectures I conceived the plan of a book bearing some

such name as "The Building of the German Empire," or "The

Evolution of Modern Germany." As to method, I proposed to make it

almost entirely biographical, and the reason for this is very

simple. Of all histories that I have known, those relating to

Germany have been the most difficult to read. Events in German

history are complicated and interwoven, to a greater degree than

those of any other nation, by struggles between races, between

three great branches of the Christian Church, between scores of

territorial divisions between greater and lesser monarchs,

between states and cities, between families, between individuals.

Then, to increase the complication, the center of interest is

constantly changing,--being during one period at Vienna, during

another at Frankfort-on-the-Main, during another at Berlin, and

during others at other places. Therefore it is that narrative

histories of Germany become to most foreign readers wretchedly

confusing: indeed, they might well be classed in Father

Bouhours's famous catalogue of "Books Impossible to be Read."

This obstacle to historical treatment, especially as regards the

needs of American readers, led me to group events about the lives

of various German leaders in thought and action--the real builders

of Germany; and this plan was perhaps confirmed by Carlyle's

famous dictum that the history of any nation is the history of

the great men who have made it. Impressed by such considerations,

I threw my lectures almost entirely into biographical form, with

here and there a few historical lectures to bind the whole

together. Beginning with Erasmus, Luther, Ulrich von Hutten, and

Charles V, I continued with Comenius, Canisius, Grotius,

Thomasius, and others who, whether born on German soil or not,

exercised their main influence in Germany. Then came the work of

the Great Elector, the administration of Frederick the Great, the

moral philosophy of Kant, the influence of the French Revolution

and Napoleon in Germany, the reforms of Stein, the hopeless

efforts of Joseph II and Metternich to win the hegemony for

Austria, and the successful efforts of Bismarck and the Emperor

William to give it to Prussia. My own direct knowledge of Germany

at different dates during more than forty-five years, and perhaps

also my official and personal relations to the two personages

last mentioned, enabled me to see some things which a man drawing

his material from books alone would not have seen. I have given

much of my spare time to this subject during several years, and

still hope, almost against hope, to bring it into book form.

Though thus interested in the work of a professor of modern

history, I could not refrain from taking part in the discussion

of practical questions pressing on thinking men from all sides

and earnestly demanding attention.

During my State senatorship I had been obliged more than once to

confess a lack, both in myself and in my colleagues, of much

fundamental knowledge especially important to men intrusted with

the legislation of a great commonwealth. Besides this, even as

far back as my Russian attacheship, I had observed a similar want

of proper equipment in our diplomatic and consular service. It

was clear to me that such subjects as international law,

political economy, modern history bearing on legislation, the

fundamental principles of law and administration, and especially

studies bearing on the prevention and cure of pauperism,

inebriety, and crime, and on the imposition of taxation, had been

always inadequately provided for by our universities, and in most

cases utterly neglected. In France and Germany I had observed a

better system, and, especially at the College de France, had been

interested in the courses of Laboulaye on "Comparative

Legislation." The latter subject, above all, seemed likely to

prove fruitful in the United States, where not only the national

Congress but over forty State legislatures are trying in various

ways, year after year, to solve the manifold problems presented

to them. Therefore it was that, while discharging my duties as a

commissioner at the Paris Exposition of 1878, I took pains to

secure information regarding instruction, in various European

countries, having as its object the preparation of young men for

the civil and diplomatic service. Especially was I struck by the

thorough equipment for the diplomatic and consular services given

at the newly established ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques at

Paris; consequently my report as commissioner was devoted to this

general subject. On my return this was published under the title

of "The Provision for Higher Instruction in Subjects bearing

directly on Public Affairs," and a portion of my material was

thrown, at a later day, into an appeal for the establishment of

proper courses in history and political science, which took the

final form of a commencement address at Johns Hopkins University.

It is a great satisfaction to me that this publication, acting

with other forces in the same direction, has been evidently

useful Nothing in the great development of our universities

during the last quarter of a century has been more gratifying and

full of promise for the country than the increased provision for

instruction bearing on public questions, and the increased

interest in such instruction shown by students, and, indeed, by

the community at large I may add that of all the kindnesses shown

me by the trustees of Cornell University at my resignation of its

presidency, there was none which pleased me more than the

attachment of my name to their newly established College of

History and Political Science.

During this same period another immediately practical subject

which interested me was the reform of the civil service; and,

having spoken upon this at various public meetings as well as

written private letters to various public men in order to keep

them thinking upon it, I published in 1882, in the "North

American Review," an article giving historical facts regarding

the origin, evolution, and results of the spoils system,

entitled, "Do the Spoils Belong to the Victor?" This brought upon

me a bitter personal attack from my old friend Mr. Thurlow Weed,

who, far-sighted and shrewd as he was, could never see how

republican institutions could be made to work without the

anticipation of spoils; but for this I was more than compensated

by the friendship of younger men who are likely to have far more

to do with our future political development than will the old

race of politicians, and, chief among these young men, Mr.

Theodore Roosevelt. I was also drawn off to other subjects,

making addresses at various universities on points which seemed

to me of importance, the most successful of all being one given

at Yale, upon the thirtieth anniversary of my class, entitled,

"The Message of the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth." It was

an endeavor to strengthen the hands of those who were laboring to

maintain the proper balance between the humanities and technical

studies. To the latter I had indeed devoted many years of my

life, but the time had arrived when the other side seemed to

demand attention. This address, though the result of much

preliminary meditation, was dictated in all the hurry and worry

of a Cornell commencement week and given in the Yale chapel the

week following. Probably nothing which I have ever done, save

perhaps the tractate on "Paper Money Inflation in France,"

received such immediate and wide-spread recognition: it was

circulated very extensively in the New York "Independent," then

in the form of a pamphlet, for which there was large demand, and

finally, still more widely, in a cheap form.

Elsewhere in these reminiscences I have given an account of the

evolution of my "History of the Warfare of Science with

Theology." It was growing in my mind for about twenty years, and

my main reading, even for my different courses of lectures, had

more or less connection with it. First given as a lecture, it was

then extended into a little book which grew, in the shape of new

chapters, into much larger final form. It was written mainly at

Cornell University, but several of its chapters in other parts of

the world, one being almost wholly prepared on the Nile, at

Athens, and at Munich; another at St. Petersburg and during a

journey in the Scandinavian countries; and other chapters in

England and France. At last, in the spare hours of my official

life at St. Petersburg I made an end of the work; and in Italy,

during the winter and spring of 1894-1895, gave it final

revision.

For valuable aid in collecting materials and making notes in

public libraries, I was indebted to various friends whose names

are mentioned in its preface; and above all, to my dear friend

and former student, Professor George Lincoln Burr, who not only

aided me greatly during the latter part of my task by wise

suggestions and cautions, but who read the proofs and made the

index.

Perhaps I may be allowed to repeat here that my purpose in

preparing this book was to strengthen not only science but

religion. I have never had any tendency to scoffing, nor have I

liked scoffers. Many of my closest associations and dearest

friendships have been, and still are, with clergymen. Clergymen

are generally, in our cities and villages, among the best and

most intelligent men that one finds, and, as a rule, with

thoughtful and tolerant old lawyers and doctors, the people best

worth knowing. My aim in writing was not only to aid in freeing

science from trammels which for centuries had been vexatious and

cruel, but also to strengthen religious teachers by enabling them

to see some of the evils in the past which, for the sake of

religion itself, they ought to guard against in the future.

During vacation journeys in Europe I was led, at various

historical centers, to take up special subjects akin to those

developed in my lectures. Thus, during my third visit to

Florence, having read Manzoni's "Promessi Sposi," which still

seems to me the most beautiful historical romance ever written, I

was greatly impressed by that part of it which depicts the

superstitions and legal cruelties engendered by the plague at

Milan. This story, with Manzoni's "Colonna Infame" and Cantu's

"Vita di Beccaria," led me to take up the history of criminal

law, and especially the development of torture in procedure and

punishment. Much time during two or three years was given to this

subject, and a winter at Stuttgart in 1877-1878 was entirely

devoted to it. In the course of these studies I realized as never

before how much dogmatic theology and ecclesiasticism have done

to develop and maintain the most frightful features in penal law.

I found that in Greece and Rome, before the coming in of

Christianity, torture had been reduced to a minimum and, indeed,

had been mainly abolished; but that the doctrine in the mediaeval

church as to "Excepted Cases"--namely, cases of heresy and

witchcraft, regarding which the theological dogma was developed

that Satan would exercise his powers to help his votaries--had

led to the reestablishment of a system of torture, in order to

baffle and overcome Satan, far more cruel than any which

prevailed under paganism.

I also found that, while under the later Roman emperors and, in

fact, down to the complete supremacy of Christianity, criminal

procedure grew steadily more and more merciful, as soon as the

church was established in full power yet another theological

doctrine came in with such force that it extended the use of

torture from the "Excepted Cases" named above to all criminal

procedure, and maintained it, in its most frightful form, for

more than a thousand years. This new doctrine was that since the

Almighty punishes his erring children by tortures infinite in

cruelty and eternal in duration, earthly authorities may justly

imitate this divine example so far as their finite powers enable

them to do so. I found this doctrine not only especially

effective in the mediaeval church, but taking on even more

hideous characteristics in the Protestant Church, especially in

Germany. On this subject I collected much material, some of it

very interesting and little known even to historical scholars. Of

this were original editions of the old criminal codes of Europe

and later criminal codes in France and Germany down to the French

Revolution, nearly all of which were enriched with engravings

illustrating instruments and processes of torture. So, too, a

ghastly light was thrown into the whole subject by the

executioners' tariffs in the various German states, especially

those under ecclesiastical rule. One of several in my possession,

which was published by the Elector Archbishop of Cologne in 1757

and stamped with the archbishop's seal, specifies and sanctions

every form of ingenious cruelty which one human being can

exercise upon another, and, opposite each of these cruelties, the

price which the executioner was authorized to receive for

administering it. Thus, for cutting off the right hand so much;

for tearing out the tongue, so much; for tearing the flesh with

hot pincers, so much; for burning a criminal alive, so much; and

so on through two folio pages. Moreover, I had collected details

of witchcraft condemnations, which, during more than a century,

went on at the rate of more than a thousand a year in Germany

alone, and not only printed books but the original manuscript

depositions taken from the victims in the torture-chamber. Of

these were the trial papers of Dietrich Flade, who had been,

toward the end of the sixteenth century, one of the most eminent

men in eastern Germany, chief justice of the province and rector

of the University of Treves. Having ventured to think witchcraft

a delusion, he was put on trial by the archbishop, tortured until

in his agony he acknowledged every impossible thing suggested to

him, and finally strangled and burned. In his case, as in various

others, I have the ipsissima verba of the accusers and accused:

the original report in the handwriting of the scribe who was

present at the torture and wrote down the questions of the judges

and the answers of the prisoner.

On this material I based a short course of lectures on "The

Evolution of Humanity in Criminal Law," and have often thought of

throwing these into the form of a small book to be called "The

Warfare of Humanity with Unreason"; but this will probably remain

a mere project. I mention it here, hoping that some other person,

with more leisure, will some day properly present these facts as

bearing on the claims of theologians and ecclesiastics to direct

education and control thought.

Of this period, too, were sundry projects for special monographs.

Thus, during various visits to Florence, I planned a history of

that city. It had interested me in my student days during my

reading of Sismondi's "History of the Italian Republics," and on

resuming my studies in that field it seemed to me that a history

of Florence might be made, most varied, interesting, and

instructive. It would embrace, of course, a most remarkable

period of political development--the growth of a mediaeval

republic out of early anarchy and tyranny; some of the most

curious experiments in government ever made; the most wonderful,

perhaps, of all growths in art, literature, and science; and the

final supremacy of a monarchy, bringing many interesting results,

yet giving some terrible warnings. But the more I read the more I

saw that to write such a history a man must relinquish everything

else, and so it was given up. So, too, during various sojourns at

Venice my old interest in Father Paul Sarpi, which had been

aroused during my early professorial life while reading his pithy

and brilliant history of the Council of Trent, was greatly

increased, and I collected a considerable library with the idea

of writing a short biography of him for American readers. This,

of all projects not executed, has been perhaps the most difficult

for me to relinquish. My last three visits to Venice have

especially revived my interest in him and increased my collection

of books regarding him. The desire to spread his fame has come

over me very strongly as I have stood in the council-rooms of the

Venetian Republic, which he served so long and so well; as I have

looked upon his statue on the spot where he was left for dead by

the emissaries of Pope Paul V; and as I have mused over his

grave, so long desecrated and hidden by monks, but in these

latter days honored with an inscription. But other work has

claimed me, and others must write upon this subject. It is well

worthy of attention, not only for the interest of its details,

but for the light it throws upon great forces still at work in

the world. Strong men have discussed it for European readers, but

it deserves to be especially presented to Americans.

I think an eminent European publicist entirely right in saying

that Father Paul is one of the three men, since the middle ages,

who have exercised the most profound influence on Italy; the

other two being Galileo and Machiavelli. The reason assigned by

this historian for this judgment is not merely the fact that

Father Paul was one of the most eminent men in science whom Italy

has produced, nor the equally incontestable fact that he taught

the Venetian Republic--and finally the world--how to withstand

papal usurpation of civil power, but that by his history of the

Council of Trent he showed "how the Holy Spirit conducts the

councils of the church" ("comme quoi le Saint Esprit dirige les

conciles").[36]

[36] Since writing the above, I have published in the "Atlantic

Monthly" two historical essays upon Sarpi.

Yet another subject which I would have been glad to present was

the life of St. Francis Xavier--partly on account of my

veneration for the great Apostle to the Indies, and partly

because a collation of his successive biographies so strikingly

reveals the origin and growth of myth and legend in the warm

atmosphere of devotion. The project of writing such a book was

formed in my Cornell lecture-room at the close of a short course

of lectures on the "Jesuit Reaction which followed the

Reformation." In the last of these I had pointed out the beauty

of Xavier's work, and had shown how natural had been the immense

growth of myth and legend in connection with it. Among my hearers

was Goldwin Smith, and as we came out he said: "I have often

thought that if any one were to take a series of the published

lives of one of the great Jesuit saints, beginning at the

beginning and comparing the successive biographies as they have

appeared, century after century, down to our own time much light

would be thrown upon the evolution of the miraculous in

religion." I was struck by this idea, and it occurred to me that,

of all such examples, that of Francis Xavier would be the most

fruitful and interesting. For we have, to begin with, his own

letters written from the scene of his great missionary labors in

the East, in which no miracles appear. We have the letters of his

associates at that period, in which there is also no knowledge

shown of any miracles performed by him. We also have the great

speeches of Laynez, one of Xavier's associates, who, at the

Council of Trent, did his best to promote Jesuit interests, and

who yet showed no knowledge of any miracles performed by Xavier.

We have the very important work by Joseph Acosta, the eminent

provincial of the Jesuits, written at a later period, largely on

the conversion of the Indies, and especially on Xavier's part in

it, which, while accepting, in a perfunctory way, the attribution

of miracles to Xavier, gives us reasoning which seems entirely to

discredit them. Then we have biographies of Xavier, published

soon after his death, in which very slight traces of miracles

begin to be found; then other biographies later and later,

century after century, in which more and more miracles appear,

and earlier miracles of very simple character grow more and more

complex and astounding, until finally we see him credited with a

vast number of the most striking miracles ever conceived of. In

order to develop the subject I have collected books and documents

of every sort bearing upon it from his time to ours, and have

given a brief summary of the results in my "History of the

Warfare of Science." But the full development of this subject,

which throws intense light upon the growth of miracles in the

biographies of so many benefactors of our race, must probably be

left to others.

It should be treated with judicial fairness. There should not be

a trace of prejudice against the church Xavier served. The

infallibility of the Pope who canonized him was indeed committed

to the reality of miracles which Xavier certainly never

performed; but the church at large cannot justly be blamed for

this: it was indeed made the more illustrious by Xavier's great

example. The evil, if evil there was, lay in human nature, and a

proper history of this evolution of myth and legend, by throwing

light into one of the strongest propensities of devout minds,

would give a most valuable warning against basing religious

systems on miraculous claims which are constantly becoming more

and more discredited and therefore more and more dangerous to any

system which persists in using them.

Still another project interested me; effort connected with it was

a kind of recreation; this project was formed during my attache

days at St. Petersburg with Governor Seymour. It was a brief

biography of Thomas Jefferson. I made some headway in it, but was

at last painfully convinced that I should never have time to

finish it worthily. Besides this, after the Civil War, Jefferson,

though still interesting to me, was by no means so great a man in

my eyes as he had been. Perhaps no doctrine ever cost any other

country so dear as Jefferson's pet theory of State rights cost

the United States: nearly a million of lives lost on

battle-fields, in prisons, and in hospitals; nearly ten thousand

millions of dollars poured into gulfs of hatred.

With another project I was more fortunate. In 1875 I was asked to

prepare a bibliographical introduction to Mr. O'Connor Morris's

short history of the French Revolution. This I did with much

care, for it seemed to me that this period in history, giving

most interesting material for study and thought, had been much

obscured by ideas drawn from trashy books instead of from the

really good authorities.

Having finished this short bibliography, it occurred to me that a

much more extensive work, giving a selection of the best

authorities on all the main periods of modern history, might be

useful. This I began, and was deeply interested in it; but here,

as in various other projects, the fates were against me. Being

appointed a commissioner to the French Exposition, and seeing in

this an opportunity to do other work which I had at heart, I

asked my successor in the professorship of history at the

University of Michigan, who at a later period became my successor

as president of Cornell, Dr. Charles Kendall Adams, to take the

work off my hands. This he did, and produced a book far better

than any which I could have written. The kind remarks in his

preface regarding my suggestions I greatly prize, and feel that

this project, at least, though I could not accomplish it, had a

most happy issue.

Another project which I have long cherished is of a very

different sort; and though it may not be possible for me to carry

it out, my hope is that some other person will do so. For many

years I have noted with pride the munificent gifts made for

educational and charitable purposes in the United States. It is a

noble history,--one which does honor not only to our own country,

but to human nature. No other country has seen any munificence

which approaches that so familiar to Americans. The records show

that during the year 1903 nearly, if not quite, eighty millions

of dollars were given by private parties for these public

purposes. It has long seemed to me that a little book based on

the history of such gifts, pointing out the lines in which they

have been most successful, might be of much use, and more than

once I have talked over with my dear friend Gilman, at present

president of the Carnegie Institution at Washington, the idea of

our working together in the production of a pamphlet or volume

with some such title as, "What Rich Americans have Done and can

Do with their Money." But my friend has been busy in his great

work of founding and developing the university at Baltimore, I

have been of late years occupied in other parts of the world, and

so this project remains unfulfilled. There are many reasons for

the publication of such a book. Most of the gifts above referred

to have been wisely made; but some have not, and a considerable

number have caused confusion in American education rather than

aided its healthful development. Many good things have resulted

from these gifts, but some vastly important matters have been

utterly neglected. We have seen excellent small colleges

transformed by gifts into pretentious and inadequate shams called

"universities"; we have seen great telescopes given without any

accompanying instruments, and with no provision for an

observatory; magnificent collections in geology given to

institutions which had no professor in that science; beautiful

herbariums added to institutions where there is no instruction in

botany; professorships of no use established where others of the

utmost importance should have been founded; institutions founded

where they were not needed, and nothing done where they were

needed. He who will write a thoughtful book on this subject,

based upon a careful study of late educational history, may

render a great service. As I revise this chapter I may say that

in an address at Yale in 1903, entitled, "A Patriotic

Investment," I sought to point out one of the many ways in which

rich men may meet a pressing need of our universities with great

good to the country at large.[37]

[37] See "A Patriotic Investment," New Haven, 1903.

Yet another project has occupied much time and thought, and may,

I hope, be yet fully carried out. For many years I have thought

much on our wretched legislation against crime and on the

imperfect administration of such criminal law as we have. Years

ago, after comparing the criminal statistics of our own country

with those of other nations, I came to the conclusion that, with

the possible exception of the lower parts of the Italian kingdom,

there is more unpunished murder in our own country than in any

other in the civilized world. This condition of things I found to

be not unknown to others; but there seemed to prevail a sort of

listless hopelessness regarding any remedy for it. Dining in

Philadelphia with my classmate and dear friend Wayne MacVeagh, I

found beside me one of the most eminent judges in Pennsylvania,

and this question of high crime having been broached and the

causes of it discussed, the judge quietly remarked, "The taking

of life, after a full and fair trial, as a penalty for murder,

seems to be the only form of taking life to which the average

American has any objection." Many of our dealings with murder and

other high crimes would seem to show that the judge was, on the

whole, right. My main study on the subject was made in 1892,

during a journey of more than twelve thousand miles with Mr.

Andrew Carnegie and his party through the Middle, Southern,

Southwestern, Pacific, and Northwestern States. We stopped at all

the important places on our route, and at vast numbers of

unimportant places; at every one of these I bought all the

newspapers obtainable, examined them with reference to this

subject, and found that the long daily record of murders in our

metropolitan journals is far from giving us the full reality. I

constantly found in the local papers, at these out-of-the-way

places, numerous accounts of murders which never reached the

metropolitan journals. Most striking testimony was also given me

by individuals,--in one case by a United States senator, who gave

me the history of a country merchant, in one of the Southwestern

States, who had at different times killed eight persons, and who

at his last venture, endeavoring to kill a man who had vexed him

in a mere verbal quarrel, had fired into a lumber-wagon

containing a party coming from church, and killed three persons,

one of them a little girl. And my informant added that this

murderer had never been punished. In California I saw walking

jauntily along the streets, and afterward discoursing in a

drawing-room, a man who, on being cautioned by a policeman while

disturbing the public peace a year or two before, had simply shot

the policeman dead, and had been tried twice, but each time with

a disagreement of the jury. Multitudes of other cases I found

equally bad. I collected a mass of material illustrating the

subject, and on this based an address given for the first time in

San Francisco, and afterward at Boston, New York, New Haven,

Cornell University, and the State universities of Wisconsin and

Minnesota. My aim was to arouse thinking men to the importance of

the subject, and I now hope to prepare a discussion of "The

Problem of High Crime," to be divided into three parts, the first

on the present condition of the problem, the second on its

origin, and the third on possible and probable remedies.

Of all my projects for historical treatises, there are two which

I have dreamed of for many years, hoping against hope for their

realization. I have tried to induce some of our younger

historical professors to undertake them or to train up students

to undertake them; and, as the time has gone by when I can devote

myself to them, I now mention them in the hope that some one will

arise to do honor to himself and to our country by developing

them.

The first of these is a history of the middle ages in the general

style of Robertson's "Introduction to the Life of Charles V."

Years ago, when beginning my work as a professor of modern

history at the University of Michigan, I felt greatly the need

for my students of some work which should show briefly but

clearly the transition from ancient history to modern. Life is

not long enough for the study of the minute details of the

mediaeval period in addition to ancient and modern history. What

is needed for the mass of thinking young men is something which

shall show what the work was which was accomplished between the

fall of Rome and the new beginnings of civilization at the

Renascence and the Reformation. For this purpose Robertson's work

was once a masterpiece. It has rendered great services not only

in English-speaking lands, but in others, by enabling thinking

men to see how this modern world has been developed out of the

past and to gain some ideas as to the way in which a yet nobler

civilization may be developed out of the present Robertson's work

still remains a classic, but modern historical research has

superseded large parts of it, and what is now needed is a short

history--of, say, three hundred pages--carried out on the main

lines of Robertson, taking in succession the most important

subjects in the evolution of mediaeval history, discarding all

excepting the leading points in chronology, and bringing out

clearly the sequence of great historical causes and results from

the downfall of Rome to the formation of the great modern states.

And there might well be brought into connection with this what

Robertson did not give--namely, sketches showing the character

and work of some of the men who wrought most powerfully in this

transition.

During my stay at the University of Michigan, I made a beginning

of such a history by giving a course of lectures on the growth of

civilization in the middle ages, taking up such subjects as the

downfall of Rome, the barbarian invasion, the rise of the papacy,

feudalism, Mohammedanism, the anti-feudal effects of the

crusades, the rise of free cities, the growth of law, the growth

of literature, and ending with the centralization of monarchical

power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But the lectures

then prepared were based merely upon copious notes and given, as

regarded phrasing, extemporaneously. It is too late for me now to

write them out or to present the subject in the light of modern

historical research; but I know of no subject which is better

calculated to broaden the mind and extend the horizon of

historical studies in our universities. Provost Stille of the

University of Pennsylvania did indeed carry out, in part,

something of this kind, but time failed him for making more than

a beginning. The man who, of all in our time, seems to me best

fitted to undertake this much needed work is Frederic Harrison.

If the general method of Robertson were combined with the spirit

shown in the early chapters of Harrison's book on "The Meaning of

History," the resultant work would be not only of great service,

but attractive to all thinking men.

And, last of all, a project which has long been one of my

dreams--a "History of Civilization in Spain." Were I twenty years

younger, I would gladly cut myself loose from all entanglements

and throw myself into this wholly. It seems to me the most

suggestive history now to be written. The material at hand is

ample and easily accessible. A multitude of historians have made

remarkable contributions to it, and among these, in our own

country, Irving, Prescott, Motley, Ticknor, and Lea; in England,

Froude, Ford, Buckle, and others have given many pregnant

suggestions and some increase of knowledge; Germany and France

have contributed much in the form of printed books; Spain, much

in the publication of archives and sundry interesting histories

apologizing for the worst things in Spanish history; the

Netherlands have also contributed documents of great value. There

is little need of delving among manuscripts; that has already

been done, and the results are easily within reach of any

scholar. The "History of Civilization in Spain" is a history of

perhaps the finest amalgamation of races which was made at the

downfall of the Roman Empire; of splendid beginnings of liberty

and its noble exercise in the middle ages; of high endeavor; of a

wonderful growth in art and literature. But it is also a history

of the undermining and destruction of all this great growth, so

noble, so beautiful, by tyranny in church and state--tyranny over

body and mind, heart and soul. A simple, thoughtful account of

this evolution of the former glory of Spain, and then of the

causes of her decline to her present condition, would be full of

suggestions for fruitful thought regarding politics, religion,

science, literature, and art. To write such a history was the

best of my dreams. Perhaps, had I been sent in 1879 as minister

to Madrid instead of to Berlin, I might at least have made an

effort to begin it, and, whether successful or not, might have

led other men to continue it. It is now too late for me, but I

still hope that our country will supply some man to undertake it.

Whoever shall write such a book in an honest, broad, and

impartial spirit will gain not only honor for his country and

himself, but will render a great service to mankind.

In closing this chapter on "Plans and Projects, Executed and

Unexecuted," I know well that my confessions will do me no good

in the eyes of many who shall read them. It will be said that I

attempted too many things. In mitigation of such a judgment I may

say that the conditions of American life in the second half of

the century just closed have been very different from those in

most other countries. It has been a building period, a period of

reforms necessitated by the rapid growth of our nation out of

earlier conditions and limitations. Every thinking man who has

felt any responsibility has necessarily been obliged to take part

in many enterprises of various sorts: necessary work has abounded

and has been absolutely forced upon him. It has been a period in

which a man could not well devote himself entirely to the dative

case. Besides this, so far as concerns myself, I had much

practical administrative work to do, was plunged into the midst

of it at two universities and at various posts in the diplomatic

service, to say nothing of many other duties, so that my plans

were constantly interfered with. Like many others during the

latter half of the nineteenth century, I have been obliged to

obey the injunction, "Do the work which lieth nearest thee." It

has happened more than once that when all has been ready for some

work which I greatly desired to do, and which I hoped might be of

use, I have been suddenly drawn off to official duties by

virtually an absolute command. Take two examples out of many: I

had brought my lectures on German history together, had collected

a mass of material for putting them into final shape as a

"History of the Building of the New Germany," and had written two

chapters, when suddenly came the summons from President Cleveland

to take part in the Venezuela Commission,--a summons which it was

impossible to decline. For a year this new work forbade a

continuance of the old; and just as I was again free came the

Bryan effort to capture the Presidency, which, in my opinion,

would have resulted in wide-spread misery at home and in dishonor

to the American name through out the world. Most reluctantly then

I threw down my chosen work and devoted my time to what seemed to

me to be a political duty. Then followed my appointment to the

Berlin Embassy, which could not be declined; and just at the

period when I hoped to secure leisure at Berlin for continuing

the preparation of my book on Germany, there came duties at The

Hague Conference which took my time for nearly a year. It is,

perhaps, unwise for me thus to make a clean breast of it,--"qui

s'excuse, s'accuse"; but I have something other than excuses to

make: I may honestly plead before my old friends and students who

shall read this book that my life has been mainly devoted to

worthy work; that I can look back upon the leading things in it

with satisfaction; that, whether as regards religion, politics,

education, or the public service in general, it will be found not

a matter of unrelated shreds and patches, but to have been

developed in obedience to a well-defined line of purpose. I

review the main things along this line with thankfulness: First,

my work at the University of Michigan, which enabled me to do

something toward preparing the way for a better system of higher

education in the United States; next, my work in the New York

State Senate, which enabled me to aid effectively in developing

the school system in the State, in establishing a health

department in its metropolis, in promoting good legislation in

various fields; and in securing the charter of Cornell

University; next, my part in founding Cornell University and in

maintaining it for more than twenty years; next, the preparation

of a book which, whatever its shortcomings and however deprecated

by many good men, has, as I believe, done service to science, to

education, and to religion; next, many speeches, articles,

pamphlets, which have aided in the development of right reason on

political, financial, and social questions; and, finally, the

opportunity given me at a critical period to aid in restoring and

maintaining good relations between the United States and Germany,

and in establishing the international arbitration tribunal of The

Hague. I say these things not boastingly, but reverently. I have

sought to fight the good fight; I have sought to keep the

faith,--faith in a Power in the universe good enough to make

truth-seeking wise, and strong enough to make truth-telling

effective,--faith in the rise of man rather than in the fall of

man,--faith in the gradual evolution and ultimate prevalence of

right reason among men. So much I hope to be pardoned for giving

as an apologia pro vita mea.

PART VIII

RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER LVIII

EARLY IMPRESSIONS--1832-1851

When the colonists from New England came into central and western

New York, at the end of the eighteenth century, they wrote their

main ideas large upon the towns they founded. Especially was this

evident at my birthplace on the head waters of the Susquehanna.

In the heart of the little village they laid out, largely and

liberally, "the Green"; across the middle of this there gradually

rose a line of wooden structures as stately as they knew how to

make them,--the orthodox Congregational church standing at the

center; close beside this church stood the "academy"; and then,

on either side, the churches of the Baptists, Methodists, and

Episcopalians. Thus were represented religion, education, and

church equality.

The Episcopal church, as belonging to the least numerous

congregation, was at the extreme left, and the smallest building

of all. It was easily recognized. All the others were in a sort

of quasi-Italian style of the seventeenth century, like those

commonly found in New England; but this was in a kind of

"carpenter's Gothic" which had grown out of vague recollections

of the mother-country. To this building I was taken for baptism,

and with it are connected my first recollections of public

worship. My parents were very devoted members of the Protestant

Episcopal Church. With a small number of others of like mind,

they had taken refuge in it from the storms of fanaticism which

swept through western New York during the early years of the

nineteenth century. For that was the time of great "revivals."

The tremendous assertions of Jonathan Edwards regarding the

tyranny of God, having been taken up by a multitude of men who

were infinitely Edwards's inferiors in everything save

lung-power, were spread with much din through many churches:

pictures of an angry Moloch holding over the infernal fires the

creatures whom he had predestined to rebel, and the statement

that "hell is filled with infants not a span long," were among

the choice oratorical outgrowths of this period. With these loud

and lurid utterances went strivings after sacerdotal rule. The

presbyter--"old priest writ large"--took high ground in all these

villages: the simplest and most harmless amusements were

denounced, and church members guilty of taking part in them were

obliged to stand in the broad aisle and be publicly reprimanded

from the pulpit.

My mother was thoughtful, gentle, and kindly; in the midst of all

this froth and fury some one lent her a prayer-book; this led her

to join in the devotions of a little knot of people who had been

brought up to use it; and among these she found peace. My father,

who was a man of great energy and vigor, was attracted to this

little company; and not long afterward rose the little church on

the Green, served at first by such clergymen as chanced to be in

that part of the State.

Among these was a recent graduate of the Episcopal College at

Geneva on Seneca Lake--Henry Gregory. His seemed to be a soul

which by some mistake had escaped out of the thirteenth century

into the nineteenth. He was slight in build, delicate in health,

and ascetic in habits, his one interest in the world being the

upbuilding of the kingdom of God--as he understood it. It was the

time when Pusey, Newman, Keble, and their compeers were reviving

mediaeval Christianity; their ideas took strong hold upon many

earnest men in the western world, and among these no one absorbed

them more fully than this young missionary. He was honest,

fearless, self-sacrificing, and these qualities soon gave him a

strong hold upon his flock,--the hold of a mediaeval saint upon

pilgrims seeking refuge from a world cruel and perverse.

Seeing this, sundry clergymen and influential laymen of what were

known as the "evangelical denominations" attempted to refute his

arguments and discredit his practices. That was the very thing

which he and his congregation most needed: under this opposition

his fervor deepened, his mediaeval characteristics developed, his

little band of the faithful increased, and more and more they

adored him; but this adoration did not in the least injure him:

he remained the same gentle, fearless, narrow, uncompromising man

throughout his long life.

My first recollections of religious worship in the little old

church take me back to my fourth year; and I can remember well,

at the age of five, standing between my father and mother,

reading the Psalter with them as best I could, joining in the

chants and looking with great awe on the service as it went on

before my admiring eyes. So much did it impress me that from my

sixth to my twelfth year I always looked forward to Sunday

morning with longing. The prayers, the chants, the hymns, all had

a great attraction for me,--and this although I was somewhat

severely held to the proper observance of worship. I remember

well that at the age of six years, if I faltered in the public

reading of the Psalter, a gentle rap on the side of my head from

my father's knuckles reminded me of my duty.

At various times since I have been present at the most gorgeous

services of the Anglican, Latin, Russian, and Oriental churches;

have heard the Pope, surrounded by his cardinals, sing mass at

the high altar of St. Peter's; have seen the Metropolitan

Archbishop of Moscow, surrounded by prelates of the Russian

Empire, conduct the burial of a czar; have seen the highest

Lutheran dignitaries solemnize the marriage of a German kaiser;

have sat under the ministrations of sundry archbishops of

Canterbury; have been present at high mass performed by the

Archbishop of Athens under the shadow of Mars Hill and the

Parthenon; and, though I am singularly susceptible to the

influence of such pageants, especially if they are accompanied by

noble music, no one of these has ever made so great an impression

upon me as that simple Anglo-American service performed by a

surpliced clergyman with a country choir and devout assemblage in

this little village church. Curiously enough, one custom, which

high-churchmen long ago discarded as beneath the proper dignity

of the service, was perhaps the thing which impressed me most,

and I have since learned that it generally thus impressed

new-comers to the Episcopal Church: this was the retirement of

the clergyman, at the close of the regular morning prayer, to the

vestry, where he left his surplice, and whence he emerged in a

black Geneva gown, in which he then preached the sermon. This

simple feature in the ceremonial greatly impressed me, and led me

to ask the reason for it: at which answer was made that the

clergyman wore his white surplice as long as he was using God's

words, but that he wore his black gown whenever he used his own.

Though comparatively little was said by Episcopalians regarding

religious experiences or pious states of mind, there was an

atmosphere of orderly decency during the whole service which

could hardly fail to make an impression on all thinking children

brought into it. I remember that when, on one or two occasions, I

was taken to the Congregational church by my grandmother, I was

much shocked at what seemed to me the unfit dress and conduct of

the clergyman,--in a cutaway coat, lounging upon a sofa,--and at

the irreverent ways of the sturdy farmers, who made ready to

leave the church during the final prayer, and even while they

should have been receiving the benediction.

I thus became a devotee. Of the sermons I retained little, except

a few striking assertions or large words; one of my amusements,

on returning home, was conducting a sort of service, on my own

account, with those of the household who were willing to take

part in it; and, from some traditions preserved in the family

regarding my utterances on such occasions, a droll sort of

service it must have been.

In my seventh year the family removed to Syracuse, the "Central

City" of the State, already beginning a wonderful career,

although at that time of less than six thousand inhabitants. My

experience in the new city was prefaced by an excursion, with my

father and mother and younger brother, to Buffalo and Niagara;

and as the railways through central New York were then

unfinished,--and, indeed, but few of them begun,--we made the

journey almost entirely on a canal-packet. Perhaps my most vivid

remembrance of this voyage is that of the fervid prayers I then

put up against shipwreck.

At Syracuse was a much larger and more influential Protestant

Episcopal church than that which we had left,--next, indeed, in

importance to the Presbyterian body. That church--St. Paul's--has

since become the mother of a large number of others, and has been

made the cathedral of a new diocese. In this my father, by virtue

of his vigor in everything he undertook, was soon made a

vestryman, and finally senior warden; and, the rectorate

happening to fall vacant, he recommended for the place our former

clergyman, Henry Gregory. He came, and his work in the new place

was soon even more effective than in the old.

His first influence made me a most determined little bigot, and I

remember well my battles in behalf of high-church ideas with

various Presbyterian boys, and especially with the son of the

Presbyterian pastor. In those days went on a famous controversy

provoked by a speech at a New England dinner in the city of New

York which had set by the ears two eminent divines--the Rev. Dr.

Wainwright, Episcopalian, and the Rev. Dr. Potts; Presbyterian.

Dr. Potts had insisted that the Puritans had founded a "church

without a bishop and a state without a king"; Dr. Wainwright

insisted that there could be no church without a bishop; and on

this the two champions joined issue. Armed with the weapons

furnished me in the church catechism, in sundry sermons, and in

pious reading, I took up the cudgels, and the battles then waged

were many and severe.

One little outgrowth of my religious intolerance was quickly

nipped in the bud. As I was returning home one evening with a

group of scampish boys, one of them pointed out the "Jew

store,"--in those days a new thing,--and reminded us that the

proprietor worshiped on Saturday and, doubtless, committed other

abominations. At this, with one accord, we did what we could to

mete out the Old Testament punishment for blasphemy--we threw

stones at his door. My father, hearing of this, dealt with me

sharply and shortly, and taught me most effectually to leave

dealing with the Jewish religion to the Almighty. I have never

since been tempted to join in any anti-Semitic movement whatever.

Meanwhile Mr. Gregory--or, as he afterward became, Dr.

Gregory--was fighting the battles of the church in many ways, and

some of his sermons made a great impression upon me. Of these one

was entitled "The Church not a Sect," the text being, "For as to

this sect, we know that it is everywhere spoken against." Another

sermon showed, especially, his uncompromising spirit and took yet

stronger hold upon me; it was given on an occasion when

Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists were drawn in large

numbers to his church; but, disdaining all efforts to propitiate

them, he took as his subject "The Sin of Korah," who set himself

up against the regularly ordained priesthood, and was, with all

his adherents, fearfully punished. The conclusion was easily

drawn by all the "dissenters" present. On another occasion of the

same sort, when his church was filled with people from other

congregations, he took as his subject the story of Naaman the

Syrian, his text being, "Are not Abana and Pharphar, rivers of

Damascus, better than all the rivers of Israel? May I not wash in

them and be clean?" The good rector's answer was, in effect, "No,

you may not. The Almighty designated the river Jordan as the

means for securing health and safety; and so in these times he

has designated for a similar purpose the church--which is the

Protestant Episcopal Church: outside of that--as the one

appointed by him--you have no hope."

But gradually there came in my mind a reaction, and curiously, it

started from my love for my grandmother--my mother's mother.

Among all the women whom I remember in my early life, she was the

kindest and most lovely. She had been brought as a young girl, by

her parents, from Old Guilford in Connecticut; and in her later

life she often told me cheerily of the days of privation and

toil, of wolves howling about the cottages of the little New York

settlement in winter, of journeys twenty miles to church, of

riding on horseback from early morning until late in the evening,

through the forests, to bring flour from the mill. She was

quietly religious, reading every day from her New Testament, but

remaining in the old Congregational Church which my mother had

left. I remember once asking her why she did not go with the rest

of us to the Episcopal Church. Her answer was, "Well, dear child,

the Episcopal Church is just the church for your father and

mother and for you children; you are all young and active, but I

am getting old and rather stout, and there is a little too much

getting up and sitting down in your church for me." To the harsh

Calvinism of her creed she seemed to pay no attention, and, if

hard pressed by me, used to say, "Well, sonny, there is, of

course, some merciful way out of it all." Her religion took every

kindly form. She loved every person worth loving,--and some not

worth loving,--and her benefactions were extended to people of

every creed; especially was she a sort of Providence to the poor

Catholic Irish of the lower part of the town. To us children she

was especially devoted--reconciling us in our quarrels, soothing

us in our sorrows, comforting us in our disappointments, and

carrying us through our sicknesses. She used great common sense

in her care of us; kindly and gentle to the last degree, there

was one thing she would never allow, and this was that the

children, even when they became quite large, should be out of the

house, in the streets or public places, after dark, without an

elderly and trusty companion. Though my brother and I used to

regard this as her one fault, it was really a great service to

us; for, as soon as dusk came on, if we were tempted to linger in

the streets or in public places, we returned home, since we knew

that if we did not we should soon see her coming to remind us,

and this was, of course, a serious blow to our pride.

When, then, I sat in church and heard our mediaeval saint preach

with ardor and unction, Sunday after Sunday, that the promises

were made to the church alone; that those outside it had

virtually no part in God's goodness; that they were probably

lost,--I thought of this dear, sweet old lady, and my heart rose

in rebellion. She was certainly the best Christian I knew, and

the idea that she should be punished for saying her prayers in

the Presbyterian Church was abhorrent to me. I made up my mind

that, if she was to be lost, I would be lost with her; and soon,

under the influence of thoughts like these, I became a religious

rebel.