[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.