More encouraging was a rapid visit, on my way home, to the Chicago Exposition buildings, which, though not yet fully completed, were very beautiful; and still more pleasure came from a visit to the new University of Chicago, which was evidently beginning a most important work for American civilization. Its whole plan is remarkably well conceived, and with the means that it is rapidly accumulating, due to the public spirit of its main benefactor and a multitude of others hardly second to him in the importance of their gifts, it cannot fail to exercise a great influence, especially throughout the Northwestern States. First of all, it will do much to lift the city in which it stands out of its crude materialism into something higher and better. It is a pleasure to note that its buildings are worthy of it: they seem likely to form a fourth in the series of fit homes for great centers of advanced education in the United States,—Virginia, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania being the others.
Having returned to Cornell, I went on quietly with my work until autumn, when, to my surprise, I received notice that the President had appointed me minister to St. Petersburg; and on the 4th of November I arrived at my post in that capital. Of my experience as minister I have spoken elsewhere, but have given no account of two journeys which interested me at that period. The first of these was in the Scandinavian countries. The voyage of a day and night across the Baltic through the Aland Islands was like a dream, the northern twilight making night more beautiful than day, and the approach to the Swedish capital being, next to the approaches to Constantinople and to New York, the most beautiful I know.
Very instructive to me was a visit to Upsala—especially to the university and cathedral. As to the former, the "Codex of Ulfilas," in the library, which I had long desired to see, especially interested me; and visits to the houses of the various "nations" showed me that out of the social needs of Swedish students in the middle ages had been developed something closely akin to the fraternity houses which similar needs have developed in our time at American universities. The cathedral, containing the remains of Gustavus Vasa and Linnaeus, was fruitful in suggestions. By a curious coincidence I was at that time finishing my chapter entitled "From Creation to Evolution," and had been paying special attention to the ancient and mediaeval conceptions of the creation of the world as a work done by an individual in human form, laboring with his hands during six days, and taking needed rest on the seventh; and here I found, at the side entrance of the cathedral, a delightfully naive mediaeval representation of the whole process,—a series of medallions representing the Almighty toiling like an artisan on each of the six days and reposing, evidently very weary, on the seventh.
The journey across Sweden, through the canals and lakes, was very restful. At Christiania Mr. Gade, the American consul, who had served our country so long and so honorably in that city, took me under his guidance during various interesting excursions about the fiords. At Gothenburg I took pains to obtain information regarding their system of dealing with the sale of intoxicating liquors, and became satisfied that it is, on the whole, the best solution of the problem ever obtained. The whole old system of saloons, gin-shops, and the like, with their allurements to the drinking of adulterated alcohol, had been swept away, and in its place the government had given to a corporation the privilege of selling pure liquors in a restricted number of decent shops, under carefully devised limitations. First, the liquors must be fully tested for purity; secondly, none could be sold to persons already under the influence of drink; thirdly, no intoxicant could be sold without something to eat with it, the effects of alcohol upon the system being thus mitigated. These and other restrictions had reduced the drink evil, as I was assured, to a minimum. But the most far-reaching provision in the whole system was that the company which enjoyed the monopoly of this trade was not allowed to declare a dividend greater than, I believe, six per cent.; everything realized above this going into the public treasury, mainly for charitable purposes. The result of this restriction of profits was that no person employed in selling ardent spirits was under the slightest temptation to attract customers. Each of these sellers was a salaried official and knew that his place depended on his adhering to the law which forbade him to sell to any person already under the influence of liquor, or to do anything to increase his sales; and the whole motive for making men drunkards was thus taken away.
I was assured by both the American and British consuls, as well as by most reputable citizens, that this system had greatly diminished intemperance. Unfortunately, since that time, fanatics have obtained control, and have passed an entirely "prohibitory" law, with the result, as I understand, that the community is now discovering that prohibition does not prohibit, and that the worst kinds of liquors are again sold by men whose main motive is to sell as much as possible.
The most attractive feature in my visit to Norway was Throndheim. With my passion for Gothic architecture, the beautiful little cathedral, which the authorities were restoring Judiciously, was a delight, and it was all the more interesting as containing one of those curiosities of human civilization which have now become rare. In one corner of the edifice is a "holy well," the pilgrimages to which in the middle ages were, no doubt, a main source of the wealth of the establishment. The attendant shows, in the stonework close to the well, the end of a tube coming from the upper part of the cathedral; and through this tube pious monks in the middle ages no doubt spoke oracular words calculated to enhance the authority of the saint presiding over the place. It was the same sort of thing which one sees in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, and the zeal which created it was no doubt the same that to-day originates the sacred fire which always comes down from heaven on Easter day into the Greek church at Jerusalem, the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius in the cathedral at Naples, and sundry camp-meeting utterances and actions in the United States.
Sweden and Norway struck me as possessing, in some respects, the most satisfactory civilization of modern times. With a monarchical figurehead, they are really a republic. Here is no overbearing plutocracy, no squalid poverty, an excellent system of education, liberal and practical, from the local school to the university, a population, to all appearance, healthy, thrifty, and comfortable.
And yet here, as in other parts of the world, the resources of human folly are illimitable. A large party in Norway urges secession from Sweden, and both remain divided from Denmark, though the three are, to all intents and purposes, of the same race, religion, language, and early historical traditions. And close beside them looms up, more and more portentous, the Russian colossus, which, having trampled Swedish Finland under its feet, is looking across the Scandinavian peninsula toward the good harbors of Norway, just opposite Great Britain. Russia has declared the right of her one hundred and twenty millions of people to an ice-free port on the Pacific; why shall she not assert, with equal cogency, the right of these millions to an ice-free port on the Atlantic? Why should not these millions own a railway across Scandinavia, and a suitable territory along the line; and then, logically, all the territory north, and as much as she needs of the territory south of the line? The northern and, to some extent, the middle regions of Norway and Sweden would thus come under the sway of a czar in St. Petersburg, represented by some governor-general like those who have been trying to show to the Scandinavians of Finland that newspapers are useless, petitions inadmissible, constitutions a fetish, banishment a blessing, and the use of their native language a superfluity. The only sad thing in this fair prospect is that it is not the objurgatory Bjornson, the philosophic Ibsen, and the impulsive Nansen, with their compatriots, now groaning under what they are pleased to call "Swedish tyranny," who would enjoy this Russian liberty, but their children, and their children's children.
At Copenhagen I was especially attracted by the Ethnographic Museum, which, by its display of the gradual uplifting of Scandinavian humanity from prehistoric times, has so strongly aided in enforcing on the world the scientific doctrine of the "rise of man," and in bringing to naught the theological doctrine of the "fall of man."
A short stay at Moscow added to my Russian points of view, it being my second visit after an interval of nearly forty years. Although the city had spread largely, there was very little evidence of real progress: everywhere were filth, fetishism, beggary, and reaction. The monument to Alexander II, the great emancipator, stood in the Kremlin, half finished; it has since, I am glad to learn, been completed; but this has only been after long and slothful delays, and the statue in St. Petersburg has not even been begun. It is well understood that one cause of this delay has been the reluctance of the reactionary leaders in the empire to glorify so radical a movement as the emancipation of the serfs.