PRINCETON.

We went to Princeton, where I presented my letters of introduction,

passed a by no means severe examination for the Freshman's class, was

very courteously received by the professors to whom I was commended, and,

to my inexpressible delight, found myself a college student. Rooms were

secured for me at a Mrs. Burroughs', opposite Nassau Hall; the adjoining

apartment was occupied by Mr. Craig Biddle, now a judge. George H. Boker

was then at the end of his Sophomore year, the term having but a few days

to run. He had rooms in college and lived in unexampled style, having

actually a carpet on his floor and superior furniture, also a good

collection of books, chiefly standard English poets. He at once took me

in hand and gave me a character.

Princeton College was entirely in the hands of the strictest of "Old

School" Presbyterian theologians. Piety and mathematics rated

extravagantly high in the course. The latter study was literally

reckoned in the grades as being of more account than all the rest

collectively. Thus, as eventually happened to me, a student might excel

in Latin, English, and Natural Philosophy--in fact, in almost everything,

good conduct included--and yet be the last in the class if he neglected

mathematics. There was no teaching of French, because, as was naively

said, students might read the irreligious works extant in that language,

and of course no other modern language; as for German, one would as soon

have proposed to raise the devil there as a class in it. If there had

been an optional course, as at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by which German

was accepted in lieu of mathematics, I should probably have taken the

first honour, instead of the last. And yet, with a little more Latin, I

was really qualified, on the day when I matriculated at Princeton, to

have passed for a Doctor of Philosophy in Heidelberg, as I subsequently

accurately ascertained.

There were three or four men of great ability in the Faculty of the

University. One of these was Professor Joseph Henry, in those days the

first natural philosopher and lecturer on science in America. I had the

fortune in time to become quite a special _protege_ of his. Another was

Professor James Alexander, who taught Latin, rhetoric, and mental

philosophy. He was so clear-headed and liberally learned, that I always

felt sure that he must at heart have been far beyond the bounds of Old

School theology, but he had an iron Roman-like sternness of glance which

quite suited a Covenanter. The most remarkable of all was Albert Dodd,

Professor of Mathematics and Lecturer on Architecture. This man was a

genius of such a high order, that had it not been for the false position

in which he was placed, he would have given to the world great works. The

false position was this: he was the chief pulpit orator of the old

school, and had made war on the Transcendentalist movement in an able

article in the _Princeton Review_ (which, by the way, was useful in

guiding me to certain prohibited works, before unknown to me). But as he

was a man of poetic genial feeling, he found himself irresistibly

fascinated by what he had hunted down, and so read Plato, and when he

died actually left behind him a manuscript translation of Spinoza's

works!

The reader may imagine what a marvellous _find_ I was to him. George

Boker, who was ages beyond me in knowledge of the world--man and

woman--said one day that he could imagine how Dodd sat and chuckled to

hear me talk, which remark I did not at all understand and thought rather

stupid. I remember that during my first call on him we discussed _Sartor

Resartus_, and I expressed it as my firm conviction that the idea of the

Clothes Philosophy had been taken from the Treatise on Fire and Salt by

the Rosicrucian Lord Blaise. Then, in all _naivete_ and innocence of

effect, I discussed some point in Kant's "Critic," and a few other

trifles not usually familiar to sub-Freshmen, and took my departure, very

much pleased at having entered on a life where my favourite reading did

not really seem to be quite silly or disreputable. I remember, however,

being very much surprised indeed at finding that the other students, in

whom I expected to encounter miracles of learning, or youth far superior

to myself in erudition and critical knowledge, did not quite come up to

my anticipations. However, as they were all far beyond me in

mathematics, I supposed their genius had all gone in that direction, for

well I knew that the toughest page in Fichte was a mere trifle compared

to the awful terrors of the Rule of Three, and so treated them as young

men who were my superiors in other and greater things.

There were wearisome morning prayers in the chapel, and roll-call every

morning, and then an hour of recitation before breakfast, study till ten

or eleven, study and recitation in the afternoon, and evening prayers

again and study in the evening. The Sabbath was anything but a day of

rest, for we had the same prayers; morning attendance at church;

afternoon, the learning and reciting of _four chapters_ in the Bible;

while we were expected in the evening to master one or two chapters in

the Greek Testament. I am not sorry that I used to read books during

sermon-time. It kept me from, or from me, a great deal of wickedness.

_Videlicet_:

The sermons consisted principally of assertion that man himself consisted

chiefly of original sin. As evil communications corrupt good manners, I

myself, being young and impressionable, began to believe that I too was

an awful sinner. Not knowing where else to look for it, I concluded that

it consisted in my inability to learn mathematics. I do not distinctly

remember whether I prayed to Heaven that I might be able to cross the

Pons Asinorum, but "anyway" my prayer was granted when I graduated.

Another stock-piece in the _repertoire_ consisted of attacks on Voltaire,

Tom Paine, and other antiquated Deists or infidels. I had read with

great contempt a copy of "The Rights of Man" belonging to my genial uncle

Amos. I say with great contempt, for I always despised that kind of free

thought which consisted chiefly of enmity to Christianity. Now I can see

that Voltaire and his followers were quite in the right in warring on

terrible and immediate abuses which oppressed mankind; but I had learned

from Spinoza to believe that every form of faith was good in its way or

according to its mission or time, and that it was silly to ridicule

Christianity because the tale of Balaam's ass was incredible. Paine was

to me just what a Positivist now is to a Darwinian or Agnostic, and such

preaching against "infidels" seemed to me like pouring water on a drowned

mouse. There had always been in Mr. Furness's teaching a very decided

degree of Rationalism, and I had advanced far more boldly on the track. I

remember reading translations from Schleiermacher and buying Strauss's

"Life of Jesus" before I went to Princeton--I saw Strauss himself in

after years at Weinsberg, in Germany--but at Princeton the slightest

approach to explaining the most absurd story in the Old Testament was

regarded as out-and-out atheism. It had all happened, we were told, just

as it is described.

I may as well note here the fact that for many years in my early life

such a thing as only reading a book through once rarely happened, when I

could obtain it long enough. Even the translations of the

Neo-Platonists, with Campanella, Vanini, or the Italian naturalists, were

read and reread, while the principal English poets, and such books as I

owned, were perused daily.

And here in this great infant arithmetic school I was in due time set

down to study Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and Locke on the

Understanding--like Carlyle's young lion invited to a feast of chickweed.

Apropos of the first, I have a droll reminiscence. There had been in

Philadelphia two years before a sale of a fine library, and I had been

heart-broken because my means had not permitted me to buy the works of

Sir Kenelm Digby. However, I found them in the Princeton College

Library. The first thing I came to in Paley was his famous simile of the

watch--taken bodily and without acknowledgment from Digby. The theft

disgusted me. "These be your Christian champions!" I thought--

"Would any of the stock of infidels

Had been my evidence ere such a Christian!"

And, moreover, Paley forgets to inform us what conclusion the finder

might draw if he had picked up a badly made watch which did not keep good

time--like this our turnip of a world at times!

As we were obliged to attend divine service strictly on Sunday, I was

allowed to go to the Episcopal church in the village, which agreed very

well with my parents' views. I quite fell into the sentiment of the

sect, and so went to Professor Dodd to ask for permission from the

Faculty to change my religion. When he asked me how it was that I had

renegaded into Trinitarianism, I replied that it was due to reflection on

the perfectly obvious and usual road of the Platonic hypostases eked out

with Gnosticism. I had found in the College Library, and read with great

pleasure almost as soon as I got there, Cudworth's "Intellectual System"

(I raided a copy as _loot_ from a house in Tennessee in after years,

during the war), and learned from it that "it was a religious instinct of

man to begin with a Trinity, in which I was much aided by Schelling, and

that there was no trace of a Trinity in the Bible, or rather the

contrary, yet that it _ought_ consistently to have been there"--a

sentiment which provoked from Professor Dodd a long whistle like that of

Uncle Toby with Lilliburlero. "For," as I ingeniously represented, "man

or God consists of the Monad from which developed spirit or intellect and

soul; for _toto enim in mundo lucet Trias cujus Monas est princeps_, as

the creed of the Rosicrucians begins (which is taken from the Zoroastrian

oracles)"--here there was another long subdued whistle--"and it is set

forth on the face of every Egyptian temple as the ball, the wings of the

spirit which rusheth into all worlds, and the serpent, which is the

_Logos_." Here the whistle became more sympathetic, for Egypt was the

professor's great point in his lectures on architecture. And having thus

explained the true grounds of the Trinity to the most learned theologian

of the Presbyterian sect, I took my leave, quite unconscious that I had

said anything out of the common, for all I meant was to give my reasons

for going back to the Episcopal Church. As for Professor Dodd, he had

given me up from the very first interview to follow my idols as I

pleased, only just throwing in argument enough to keep me well going. He

would have been the last man on earth to throw down such a marvellous

fairy castle, goblin-built and elfin-tenanted, from whose windows rang

AEolian harps, and which was lit by night with undying Rosicrucian lamps,

to erect on its ruin a plain brick, Old School Presbyterian slated

chapel. I was far more amusing as I was, and so I was let alone.

I had passed my examination about the end of June, and I was to remain in

Princeton until the autumn, reading under a tutor, in the hope of being

able to join the Sophomore class when the college course should begin.

There I was utterly alone, and rambled by myself in the woods. I

believed myself to be a very good Christian in those days; but I was

really as unaffected and sincere a Poly-Pantheist or Old Nature heathen

as ever lived in Etrusco-Roman or early German days. A book very dear to

my heart at that time was the _Curiositez Inouyes_ of Gaffarel (Trollope

was under the impression that he was the only man in Europe who ever read

it), in which there is an exquisite theory that the stars of heaven in

their courses and the lines of winding rivers and bending corn, the

curves of shells and minerals, rocks and trees, yes, of all the shapes of

all created things, form the trace and letters of a stupendous _writing_

or characters spread all over the universe, which writing becomes little

by little legible to the one who by communion with Nature and earnest

faith seeks to penetrate the secret. I had found in the lonely woods a

small pond by a high rock, where I often sat in order to attain this

blessed illumination, and if I did not get quite so far as I hoped, I did

in reality attain to a deep unconscious familiarity with birds and leafy

shades, still waters, and high rising trees; in short, with all the sweet

solemnity of sylvan nature, which has ever since influenced all my life.

I mean this not in the second-hand way in which it is so generally

understood, but as a _real_ existence in itself, so earnestly felt that I

was but little short of talking with elfin beings or seeing fairies

flitting over flowers. Those who explain everything by "imagination" do

not in the least understand how _actual_ the life in Nature may become to

us. Reflect for a minute, thou whose whole soul is in gossip and petty

chronicles of fashion, and "sassiety," that in that life thou _wert_ a

million years ago, and in it thou wilt be a million years hence, ever

going on in all forms, often enough in rivers, rock, and trees, and yet

canst not realise with a sense of awe that there are in these forms,

passing to others--ever, ever on--myriads of men and women, or at least

their _life_--_how_ we know not, as _what_ we know not--only this, that

the Will or creative force of the Creator or Creating is in it all. This

was the serious yet unconscious inspiration of my young life in those

days, in even more elaborate or artistic form, which all went very well

hand in hand with the Euclid and Homer or Demosthenes and Livy with which

my tutor Mr. Schenk (pronounce _Skank_) was coaching me.

My reading may seem to the reader to have been more limited than it was,

because I have not mentioned the historians, essayists, or belletrists

whose works are read more or less by "almost everybody." It is hardly

worth while to say, what must be of course surmised, that Sterne,

Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson, Swift, and Macaulay--in fine, the leading

English classics--were really well read by me, my ambition being not to

be ignorant of anything which a literary man should know. Macaulay was

then new, and I devoured not only his works, but a vast amount by him

suggested. I realised at an early age that there was a certain cycle of

knowledge common to all really cultivated minds, and this I was

determined to master. I had, however, little indeed of the vanity of

erudition, having been deeply convinced and constantly depressed or

shamed by the reflection that it was all worse than useless, and

injurious to making my way in life. When I heard that Professor Dodd had

said that at seventeen there were not ten men in America who had read so

much, while Professor Joseph Henry often used words to this effect, and

stern James Alexander in his lectures would make deeply learned allusions

intended for me alone--as, for instance, to Kant's "AEsthetik"--I was

anything but elated or vain in consequence. I had read in _Sartor

Resartus_, "If a man reads, shall he not be learned?" and I knew too well

that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps pitiable, incurable

mania-amusement, which might ruin me for life, and which, as it was, was

a daily source of apprehension between me and my good true friends, who

feared wisely for my future.

I absolutely made James Alexander smile for once in his life--'twas

sunshine on the grim Tarpeian rock. I had bought me a nice English large

type Juvenal, and written on the outside in quaint Elizabethan character

form--I forget now the name of the author--the following:--

"Ay, Juvenall, thy jerking hande is good,

Not gently laying on, but bringing bloude.

Oh, suffer me amonge so manye men

To treade aright the traces of thy penne,

And light my lamp at thy eternal flame!"

We students in the Latin class had left our books on a table, when I saw

grim and dour James Alexander pick up my copy, read the inscription, when

looking up at me he smiled; it was a kind of poetry which pleased him.

I remember, too, how one day, when in Professor Dodd's class of

mathematics, I, instead of attending to the lecture, read surreptitiously

Cardanus _de Subtilitate_ in an old vellum binding, and carelessly laid

it on the table afterwards, where Professor Dodd found it, and directed

at me one of his half-laughing Mephistophelian glances. Reading of

novels in lectures was not unknown; but for Dodd to find anything so

caviare-like as Cardanus among our books was unusual. George Boker

remarked once, that while Professor Dodd was a Greek, Professor James

Alexander was an old Roman, which was indeed a good summary of the two.

I have and always had a bad memory, but I continued to retain what I read

by repetition or reviewing and by _collocation_, which is a marvellous

aid in retaining images. For, in the first place, I read entirely by

GROUPS; and if I, for instance, attacked Blair's "Rhetoric," Longinus and

Burke Promptly followed; and if I perused "Rambles in the Footsteps of

Don Quixote," I at once, on principle, followed it up with "Spain in

1830," and a careful study of Ford's Guide-Book for Spain, and perhaps a

score of similar books, till I had got Spain well into me. And as I have

found by years of observation and much research, having written a book on

Education partly based on this principle, ten books on any subject read

together, profit more than a hundred at intervals. And I may here add,

that if this record of what I read be dull, it is still that of my real

youthful life, giving the clue to my mind as it was formed. Books in

those days were the only events of my life.

Long before I went to college I had an attack of Irish antiquities, which

I relieved by reading O'Brien, Vallancey, the more sensible Petrie, and

O'Somebody's Irish grammar, aided by old Annie Mooney, who always

remained by us. In after years I discovered an Ogham inscription and the

famed Ogham tongue, or _Shelta_, "the lost language of the bards,"

according to Kuno Meyer and John Sampson.

During my first half-year a college magazine was published, and I, a

Freshman, was requested to contribute to the first number. I sent in an

article on the history of English poetry. Before I wrote it, the great

man among the senior students asked leave to be allowed to write it with

me. I did not quite like the idea, but reflecting that the association

would give me a certain prestige, I accepted his aid. So it appeared;

but it was regarded as mine. Professor Dodd said something to me about

the inexpediency of so young a person appearing in print. I could have

told him that I had already published several poems, &c., in

Philadelphian newspapers, but reflecting that it was not kind to have the

better of him, I said nothing. From that time I published something in

every number. My second article was an essay on Spinoza, and I still

think it was rather good for a boy of sixteen.

There was the College and also a Society library, out of which I picked a

great deal of good reading. One day I asked Professor John MacLean, the

college librarian, for the works of Condorcet. His reply was, "Vile

book! vile book! can't have it." However, I found in the Society library

Urquhart's translation of "Rabelais," which I read, I daresay, as often

as any mortal ever did. And here I have a word to say to the wretched

idiots who regard "the book called Rabelais" as "immoral" and unfit for

youth. Many times did I try to induce my young friends to read

"Rabelais," and some actually mastered the story of the goose as a

_torche-cul_, and perhaps two or three chapters more; but as for reading

through or enjoying it, "that was not in their minds." All complained,

or at least showed, that they "did not understand it." It was to them an

aggravating farrago of filth and oddity, under which they suspected some

formal allegory or meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable. Learn

this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a

dolt or ignoramus. Even the Old Testament, with all its stores of the

"shocking," really does very little harm. It requires _mind for mind_ in

reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they

cannot understand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the _Moyen de

Parvenir_, and the _Cymbalum Mundi_, and Boccaccio (I owned these books),

and laughed over them, yet was withal as pure-minded a youth as could

well be imagined without being a simpleton. For, with all such reading,

I best loved such a book as Bromley's "Sabbath of Rest," or sweet,

strange works of ancient Mysticism, which bore the soul away to the stars

or into Nature. Such a combination is perfectly possible when there is

no stain of dishonesty or vulgarity in the character, and I had escaped

such influences easily enough.

A droll event took place in the spring. It had been usual once a year--I

forgot on what occasion--to give to all the classes a holiday. This year

it was abolished, and the Sophomore, junior, and senior classes quietly

acquiesced. But we, the Freshmen, albeit we had never been there before,

rebelled at such infringement of "our rights," and absented ourselves

from recitation. I confess that I was a leader in the movement, because

I sincerely believed it to be a sin to "remove old landmarks," and that

the students required more rest and holidays than were allowed them; in

which I was absolutely in the right, for our whole life, except Saturday

afternoons, was "one demnition grind."

The feeling which was excited by this "Freshman's rebellion" was one of

utter amazement, or awful astonishment tempered with laughter, not

unmingled with respect. It was the terrier flying at the lion, when the

great mastiff, and bloodhound, and Danish dog had quietly slunk aside.

There were in the class beside myself several youths of marked character,

and collectively we had already made an impression, to which my intimacy

with George Boker, and Professor Dodd, and the very _elite_ of the

seniors, added not a little force. We were _mysterious_. Hitherto a

Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created for

ridicule, a sort of "leathery fox" or mere tyro (_ty_--not a

ty-pographical error--_pace_ my kind and courteous reviewer in the

_Saturday_)--and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in dignity above

all others.

Which reminds me of a merry tale. It was usual for Freshmen to learn to

smoke for the first time after coming to college, and for more advanced

students to go to their rooms, or find them in others, and smoke them

sick or into retreating. I, however, found a source of joy in this, that

I could now sit almost from morning till night, and very often on to

three in the morning, smoking all the time, being deeply learned in

Varinas, Kanaster, and the like; for I smoked nothing but real Holland

tobacco, while I could buy it. A party of Sophomores informed George

Boker that they intended to smoke me out. "Smoke _him_ out!" quoth

George; "why, he'd smoke the whole of you dumb and blind." However, it

came to pass that one evening several of them tried it on; and verily

they might as well have tried it on to Niklas Henkerwyssel, who, as the

legend goes, sold his soul to the devil for the ability to smoke all the

time, to whom my father had once compared me. So the cigars and tobacco

were burned, and I liked it extremely. Denser grew the smoke, and the

windows were closed, to which I cheerfully assented, for I liked to have

it thick; and still more smoke and more, and the young gentlemen who had

come to smother me grew pale, even as the Porcupines grew pale when they

tried to burn out the great Indian sorcerer, who burned _them_! But I,

who was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly in such congenial society,

only filled Boker's great meerschaum with Latakia, and puffed away. One

by one the visitors also "puffed away," _i.e._, vanished through the door

into the night.

"Shall I open the window?" asked George.

"Not on my account," I replied. "I rather enjoy it as it is."

"I begin to believe," replied my friend, "that you would like it in

Dante's hell of clouds. Do you know what those men came here for? It

was _to smoke you out_. And you smoked them out, and never knew it."

Which was perfectly true. As for smoking, my only trouble was to be able

to buy cigars and tobacco. These were incredibly cheap in those days,

and I always dressed very respectably, but my smoking always cost me more

than my clothing.

When we Freshmen had rebelled, we were punished by being rusticated or

sent into the country to board. I went to Professor Dodd to receive my

sentence, and in a grave voice, in which was a faint ring as of irony,

and with the lurking devil which always played in his great marvellous

mysterious black eyes, he said, "If you were any other student, I would

not send you to the city, and so reward your rebellion with a holiday.

But as I know perfectly well that you will go into the Philadelphia

Library, and never stop reading till it is time to return, I will send

you there."

My parents were then absent with my younger sisters in New England, but I

had unlimited credit at Congress Hall Hotel, which was kept by a Mr. John

Sturdevant, and where I was greatly respected as the son of the owner of

the property. So I went there, and fared well, and, as Professor Dodd

prophesied, read all the time. One night I went into an auction of

delightful old books. My money had run low; there only remained to me

one dollar and a half.

Now, of all books on earth, what I most yearned for in those days were

the works of Jacob Behmen. And the auctioneer put up a copy containing

"The Aurora or Morning Rednesse," English version (_circa_ 1636), and I

bid. One dollar--one dollar ten cents--twenty--twenty-five; my heart

palpitated, and I half fainted for fear lest I should be outbid, when at

the very last I got it with my last penny.

The black eyes of Professor Dodd twinkled more elfishly than ever when I

exhibited to him my glorious treasure. He evidently thought that my

exile had been to me anything but a punishment, and he was right. For a

copy of _Anthroposophos Theomagicus_ or the works of Robert Fludd I would

have got up another rebellion.

It was quite against the college regulations for students to live in the

town, but as I never touched a card, was totally abstemious and "moral,"

and moreover in rather delicate health, I was passed over as an odd

exception. Once or twice it was proposed to bring me in, but Professor

Dodd interfered and saved me. While in Princeton for more than four

years, I never once touched a drop of anything stronger than coffee,

which was a great pity! Exercise was not in those days encouraged in any

way whatever--in fact, playing billiards and ten-pins was liable to be

punished by expulsion; there was no gymnasium, no boating, and all

physical games and manly exercises were sternly discouraged as leading to

sin. Now, if I had drunk a pint of bitter ale every day, and played

cricket or "gymnased," or rowed for two hours, it would have saved me

much suffering, and to a great degree have relieved me from reading,

romancing, reflecting, and smoking, all of which I carried to great

excess, having an inborn impulse to be always doing something. That I

did not grapple with life as a real thing, or with prosaic college

studies or society, was, I can now see, a _disease_, for which, as my

peculiar tastes had come upon me from nervous and Unitarian and Alcottian

evil influences, I was not altogether responsible. I was a precocious

boy, and I had fully developed extraordinary influences, which, like the

seed of Scripture, had in my case fallen on more than fertile ground; it

was like the soil of the Margariten Island, by Budapest, which is so

permeated by hot springs in a rich soil that everything comes to maturity

there in one-third of the time which it does elsewhere. I was the last

child on earth who should ever have fallen into Alcott's hands, or

listened to Dr. Channing or Furness, or have been interested in anything

"ideal"; but fate willed that I should drink the elfin goblet to the

dregs.

George H. Boker had a great influence on me. We were in a way connected,

for my uncle Amos had married his aunt, and my cousin, Benjamin Godfrey,

his cousin. He was exactly six feet high, with the form of an Apollo,

and a head which was the very counterpart of the bust of Byron. A few

years later N. P. Willis described him in the _Home Journal_ as the

handsomest man in America. He had been from boyhood as precociously a

man of the world as I was the opposite. He was _par eminence_ the poet

of our college, and in a quiet, gentlemanly way its "swell." I passed a

great deal of my time in his rooms reading Wordsworth, Shelley, and

Byron, the last named being his ideal. He ridiculed the Lakers, whom I

loved; and when Southey's last poem, "On Gooseberry Pie," appeared, he

declared that the poor old man was in his dotage, to which I assented

with sorrow in my heart. Though only one year older than I, yet, as a

_Junior_, and from his superior knowledge of life, I regarded him as

being about thirty. He was quite familiar, in a refined and gentlemanly

way, with all the dissipation of Philadelphia and New York; nor was the

small circle of his friends, with whom I habitually associated, much

behind him in this respect. Even during this Junior year he was offered

the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna. From him and the

others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of life, which was sufficient

to keep me from being regarded as a duffer or utterly "green," though in

all such "life" I was practically as innocent as a young nun. Now,

whatever I heard, as well as read, I always turned over and over in my

mind, thoroughly digesting it to a most exceptional degree. So that I

was somewhat like the young lady of whom I heard in Vienna in after

years. She was brought up in the utmost moral and strict seclusion, but

she found in her room an aperture through which she could witness all

that took place in the neighbouring room of a _maison de passe_; but

being a great philosopher, she in time regarded it all as the "butterfly

passing show" of a theatre, the mere idle play of foolish mortal

passions.

Even before I began my Freshman year there came into my life a slight but

new and valuable influence. Professor Dodd, when I arrived, had just

begun his course of lectures on architecture. To my great astonishment,

but not at all to that of George Boker, I was invited to attend the

course, Boker remarking dryly that he had no doubt that Dodd thanked God

for having at last got an auditor who would appreciate him. Which I

certainly did. I in after years listened to the great Thiersch, who

trained Heine to art, and of whom I was a special _protege_, and many

great teachers, but I never listened to any one like Albert Dodd. It was

not with him the mere description of styles and dates; it was a deep and

truly aesthetic feeling that every phase of architecture mirrors and

reciprocally forms its age, and breathes its life and poetry and

religion, which characterised all that he said. It was in nothing like

the subjective rhapsodies of Ruskin, which bloomed out eight years later,

but rather in the spirit of Vischer and Taine, which J. A. Symonds has so

beautifully and clearly set forth in his Essays {98}--that is, the spirit

of historical development. Here my German philosophy enabled me to grasp

a subtle and delicate spirit of beauty, which passed, I fear, over the

heads of the rest of the youthful audience. His ideas of the

correspondence of Egyptian architecture to the stupendous massiveness of

Pantheism and the appalling grandeur of its ideas, were clear enough to

me, who had copied Hermes Trismegistus and read with deepest feeling the

Orphic and Chaldean oracles. The ideas had not only been long familiar

to me, but formed my very life and the subject of the most passionate

study. To hear them clearly expressed with rare beauty, in the deep,

strange voice of the professor, was joy beyond belief. And as it would

not be in human nature for a lecturer not to note an admiring auditor, it

happened often enough that something was often introduced for my special

appreciation.

For I may here note--and it was a very natural thing--that just as Gypsy

musicians always select in the audience some one who seems to be most

appreciative, at whom they play (they call it _de o kan_), so Professors

Dodd and James Alexander afterwards, in their aesthetic, or more erudite

disquisitions, rarely failed to fiddle at me--Dodd looking right in my

eyes, and Alexander at the ceiling, ending, however, with a very brief

glance, as if for conscience' sake. I feel proud of this, and it affects

me more now than it did then, when it produced no effect of vanity, and

seemed to me to be perfectly natural.

I heard certain mutterings and hoots among the students as I went out of

the lecture-room, but did not know what it meant. George Boker informed

me afterwards that there had been great indignation expressed that "a

green ignorant Freshman" had dared to intrude, as I had done, among his

intellectual superiors and betters, but that he had at once explained

that I was a great friend of Professor Dodd, and a kind of marvellous

_rara avis_, not to be classed with common little Freshmen; so that in

future I was allowed to go my way in peace.

A man of culture who had known Coleridge well, declared that as a

conversationalist on varied topics Professor Albert Dodd was his

superior. When in the pulpit, or in the lengthened "addresses" of

lecturing, there was a marvellous fascination in his voice--an Italian

witch, or red Indian, or a gypsy would have at once recognised in him a

sorcerer. Yet his manner was subdued, his voice monotonous, never loud,

a running stream without babbling stones or rapids; but when it came to a

climax cataract he cleared it with grandeur, leaving a stupendous

impression. In the ordinary monotony of that deep voice there was soon

felt an indescribable charm. In saying this I only repeat what I have

heard in more or less different phrase from others. There was always in

his eyes (and in this as in other points he resembled Emerson) a strange

indefinable suspicion of a smile, though he, like the Sage of Concord,

rarely laughed. Owing to these black eyes, and his sallow complexion,

his sobriquet among the students was "the royal Bengal tiger." He was

not unlike Emerson as a lecturer. I heard the latter deliver his great

course of lectures in London in 1848--including the famous one on

Napoleon--but he had not to the same perfection the music of the voice,

nor the indefinable mysterious charm which characterised the style of

Professor Dodd, who played with emotion as if while feeling he was ever

superior to it. He was a great actor, who had gone far beyond acting or

art.

Owing, I suppose, to business losses, my father and family lived for two

years either at Congress Hall Hotel or _en pension_. I spent my first

vacation at the former place. There lived in the house a Colonel John Du

Solle, the editor of a newspaper. He was a good-natured, rather

dissipated man, who kept horses and had a fancy for me, and took me out

"on drives," and once introduced me in the street to a great actress,

Susan Cushman, {101} and very often to theatres and coffee-houses and

reporters, and printed several of my lucubrations. Du Solle was in after

years secretary to P. T. Barnum, whom I also knew well. He was kind to

me, and I owe him this friendly mention. Some people thought him a

rather dangerous companion for youth, but I was never taken by him into

bad company or places, nor did I ever hear from him a word of which my

parents would have disapproved. But I really believe that I could at

that time, or any other, have kept company with the devil and not been

much harmed: it was not in me. Edgar A. Poe was often in Du Solle's

office and at Congress Hall.

In the summer we all went to Stonington, Connecticut, where we lived at a

hotel called the Wadawanuc House. There I went out sailing--once on a

clam-bake excursion in a yacht owned by Captain Nat. Palmer, who had

discovered Palmer's Land--and sailed far and wide. That summer I also

saw on his own deck the original old Vanderbilt himself, who was then the

captain of a Sound steamboat; and I bathed every day in salt-water, and

fished from the wharf, and smoked a great deal, and read French books;

and after a while we went into Massachusetts and visited the dear old

villages and Boston, and so on, till I had to return to Princeton. Soon

after my father took another house in Walnut Street, the next door above

the one where we had lived. This one was rather better, for though it

had less garden, it had larger back-buildings.

_Bon an_, _mal an_, the time passed away at Princeton for four years. I

was often very ill. In the last year the physician who tested my lungs

declared they were unsound in two places; and about this time I was

believed to have contracted an incurable stoop in the shoulders. One day

I resolved that from _that minute_ I would always hold myself straight

upright; and I did so, and in the course of time became as straight as an

arrow, and have continued so, I believe, ever since.

I discovered vast treasures of strange reading in the library of the

Princeton Theological College. There was in one corner in a waste-room

at least two cart-loads of old books in a cobwebbed dusty pile. Out of

that pile I raked the _thirteenth_ known copy of Blind Harry's famed

poem, a black-letter Euphues Lely, an _Erra Pater_ (a very weak-minded

friend _actually shamed_ me out of making a copy of this great curiosity,

telling me it was silly and childish of me to be so pleased with old

trash), and many more marvels, which were so little esteemed in

Princeton, that one of the professors, seeing me daft with delight over

my finds, told me I was quite welcome to keep them all; but I, who better

knew their _great_ value, would not avail myself of the offer, reflecting

that a time would come when these treasures would be properly valued. God

knows it was a _terrible_ temptation to me, and such as I hope I may

never have again--_ne inducas nos in temptationem_!

The time for my graduation was at hand. I had profited very much in the

last year by the teaching and friendly counsel of Professor Joseph Henry,

whose lectures on philosophy I diligently attended; also those on

geology, chemistry and botany by Professor Torrey, and by the company of

Professor Topping. I stood very high in Latin, and perhaps first in

English branches. Yet, because I had fallen utterly short in

mathematics, I was rated the lowest but one in the class--or, honestly

speaking, the very last, for the one below me was an utterly reckless

youth, who could hardly be said to have studied or graduated at all.

There were two honours usually awarded for proficiency in study. One was

the First Honour, and he who received it delivered the Valedictory

Oration; the second was the Poem; and by an excess of kindness and

justice for which I can never feel too grateful, and which was really an

extraordinary stretch of their power under the circumstances, the Poem

was awarded to me!

I was overwhelmed at the honour, but bitterly mortified and cut to my

heart to think how little I had deserved it; for I had never done a thing

save read and study that which pleased me and was _easy_. I wrote the

poem (and I still think it was a good one, for I put all my soul into

it), and sent it in to the Faculty, with a letter stating that I was

deeply grateful for their extreme kindness, but that, feeling I had not

deserved it, I must decline the honour. But I sent them my MS. as a

proof that I did not do so because I felt myself incapable, and because I

wished to give them some evidence that they had not erred in regarding me

as a poet.

Very foolish and boyish, the reader may say, and yet I never regretted

it. The Faculty were not to blame for the system pursued, and they did

their utmost in every way for four years to make it easy and happy for

one of the laziest and most objectionable students whom they had ever

had. I have never been really able to decide whether I was right or

wrong. At liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts, neither I nor the professors

would ever have discovered a flaw in my industry. At the closely

cramped, orthodox, hide-bound, mathematical Princeton, every weakness in

me seemed to be developed. Thirty years later I read in the _Nassau

Monthly_, which I had once edited, that if Boker and I and a few others

had become known in literature, we had done so _in spite of_ our

education there. I do not know who wrote it; whoever he was, I am much

obliged to him for a very comforting word. For, discipline apart, it was

literally "in spite of our education" that we learned anything worth

knowing at Princeton--as it then was.

* * * * *

From this point a new phase of life begins. Prominent in it and as its

moving power was the great kindness of my father. That I had graduated

at all under any conditions was gratifying, and so was the fact that it

was not in reality without the so-called Second Honour, despite my low

grade. And the pitiable condition of my health was considered. During

the last year I had taken lessons in dancing and fencing, which helped me

a little, and I looked as if I might become strong with a change of life.

So my father took my mother and me on a grand excursion. We went to

Stonington, New York, and Saratoga, where I attended a ball--my first--and

then on to Niagara. On the way we stopped at Auburn, where there was a

great State-prison, which I visited alone. There was among its

attractions a noted murderer under sentence of death. There were two or

three ladies and gentlemen who were shown by the warder with me over the

building. He expressed some apprehension as to showing us the murderer,

for he was a very desperate character. We entered a large room, and I

saw a really gentlemanly-looking man heavily ironed, who was reading a

newspaper. While the others conversed with him, I endeavoured to make

unobserved a sketch of his face. The warder noticing this, called me to

the front to make it boldly, and the prisoner, smiling, told me to go on

with it; which I did, and that not so badly--at least, the sitter

approved of it.

So we went up the beautiful Hudson, which far surpasses the Rhine, and

yields the palm only to the Danube, stopping at Poughkeepsie and Albany,

and so on to Niagara Falls. On the way we passed through a burning

forest. My awe at this wonderful sight amused some one present to whom

it was a familiar thing. Which reminds me that about the time when I

first went to college, but while staying at Congress Hall, I there met a

youth from Alabama or Mississippi, who was on his way to Princeton to

join our ranks. To him I of course showed every attention, and by way of

promoting his happiness took him to the top of the belfry of the State

House, whence there is a fine view. While there I casually remarked what

a number of ships there were in the river, whereupon he eagerly cried,

"Oh, show me one! I never saw a ship in all my life!" I gazed at him in

utter astonishment, as if I would say, "What manner of man art thou?" and

then recalling myself, said, "Well, we are just equal, for you never saw

a ship, and I never saw a _cotton-field_." The young man smiled

incredulously, and replied, "Now I know that you are trying to humbug me,

for how _could_ you grow up without ever seeing cotton-fields?"

We arrived at Niagara about noon, and I at once went to see the Falls.

There was a very respectable-looking old gentleman, evidently from the

far South, with two young ladies, one a great beauty, advancing just

before. I heard him say, "Now, keep your eyes closed, or look down till

you can have a full view." I did the same, and when he cried "Look up!"

did so. It was one of the great instants of my life.

I know not how it was, but that first glance suggested to me something

_chivalric_. It may have been from Byron's simile of the tail of the

white horse and the cataract, and the snow-white steed of that

incarnation of nobility, Crescentius, and there rang in my memory a

mystical verse--

"My eye bears a glance like the gleam of a lance

When I hear the waters dash and dance;

And I smile with glee, for I love to see

The sight of anything that's free!"

But it was a mingled sense of nobility, and above all of _freedom_, which

impressed me in that roaring mist of waters, in the wild river leaping as

in reckless sport over the vast broad precipice. It is usual, especially

for those who have no gift of description, to say that Niagara is

"utterly indescribable," and the Visitors' Book has this opinion repeated

by the American Philistine on every page. But that is because those who

say so have no proper comprehension of facts stated, no poetic faculty,

and no imagination. Of course no mere description, however perfect,

would give the same conception of even a pen or a button as would the

_sight_ thereof; but it is absurd and illogical to speak as if this were

_peculiar_ to a great thing alone. For my part, I believe that the mere

description to a _poet_, or to one who has dwelt by wood and wold and

steeped his soul in Nature, of a tremendous cataract a mile in breadth

and two hundred feet high, cleft by a wooded island, and rushing onward

below in awful rocky rapids with a mighty roar, would, could, or should

convey a very good idea of the great sight. For I found in after years,

when I came to see Venice and the temples on the Nile, that they were

picturesquely or practically precisely what I had expected to see, not

one shade or _nuance_ of an expression more or less. As regards Rome and

all Gothic cathedrals, I had been assured so often, or so generally, by

all "intelligent tourists," that they were all wretched rubbish, that I

was amazed to find them so beautiful. And so much as to anticipations of

Niagara, which I have thrice visited, and the constant assertion by cads

unutterable that it is "indescribable."

While at Niagara for three days, I walked about a great deal with a young

lady whose acquaintance we had made at the hotel. As she was, I verily

believe, the very first, not a relative, with whom I had ever taken a

walk, or, I may almost say, formed an acquaintance, it constituted an

event in my life equal to Niagara itself in importance. I was at this

time just twenty-one, and certain I am that among twenty-one thousand

college graduates of my age in America, of the same condition of life,

there was not another so inexperienced in worldly ways, or so far behind

his age, or so "docile unto discipline." I was, in fact, morally where

most boys in the United States are at twelve or thirteen; which is a very

great mistake where there is a fixed determination that the youth shall

make his own way in life. We cannot have boys good little angels at home

and devils in business abroad.--_Horum utrum magis velim_, _mihi incertum

est_.