Letters of Asa Gray; Vol. 2

by Asa Gray

I have for a long while been wishing and endeavoring to write to you, but it is not so easy, so many other letters have to be written, to answer letters from persons that I don’t particularly care for, as to leave little time for those that I do.

I owe you for two very interesting letters; for it was a hurried note of mine that we need not count, which crossed yours of February 4, and then there is your later one of March 1, along with Mrs. Church’s to my wife. I leave it for her to tell you about the novelists. And I have not much to say of myself. I have pottered all winter over the herbarium and upon an article for our “American Academy’s Proceedings,” of a wholly technical nature, which is just in the printer’s hands. I am about to begin another,—a study of another group of North American plants; but the professional work absorbs so much of my time and energy that it will, I know, make no great progress until July brings a long vacation. And then I may have my hands full, somewhat as yours will be, superintending building. I have my church to enlarge. I need a lecture-room here on the spot, and a students’ laboratory in connection with it; and I have a plan for this, to form a wing to the herbarium building, and a fair prospect that I may get it done. We shall see before long; and if the means are forthcoming, I will soon let you know, with all the details....

The last “Spectator” received gives an abstract of Gladstone’s and Forster’s Irish Land and Education bills, and of the general favor they were received with upon their introduction. To have almost satisfied all parties and interests is really a wonderful and a most unexpected achievement. You ought to be proud of Gladstone, and well satisfied at having inevitable and great changes wrought out under so strong a ministry, and so high-minded a leader. Courage, earnestness, and high principle here are seen to command success, in Parliament at least. How anything will work in Ireland remains to be seen. But don’t think as some of my English friends do, that the Irish are incapable of good things. The race over here, as a general thing, develop at once what they seem to lack at home, thrift, and with thrift come order and respect for law.

I happened to be in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day, and was stopped in my carriage while a very long Irish procession passed. They were mainly of the more well-to-do sort, no doubt; but they had made themselves so. Probably nearly every one of middle age was born in Ireland, and would have been a peasant laborer at home, very likely ill-conditioned enough. They were, however, in holiday attire; still they were fair representatives of the race, and I wished we could send them over to you for a day, as specimens of what may be made out of such material, under circumstances, not altogether the best, but much better than those at home. They are not the best element of our population, certainly, but they make by no means a bad lower stratum, out of which many show a truly Yankee-like aptitude for rising. They are almost all Romanists, to be sure; and there is an element of danger. But the influence of the priesthood is much tempered (as witness how they ran into Fenianism, against their exhortations) and in most respects is far from bad. The Germans are counted as a much better population, but they are quite as clannish, and in the towns are rather disposed to be actively anti-Christian.

By the way, I met some time ago Mr. Stanley, who has been in the country before; is now on his way round the world via California, a favorite route. He is, or was, an M. P., a son of Lord Stanley of Alderley, an Oxford man, bright, sharp, and very talkative. He is a specimen of ultra-secularistic liberalism, I should think, of a set that will be apt to give you some trouble hereafter, in the questions that are to come up; if I do not misjudge him, one who thinks the world, or at least England, has not much farther use for distinctive Christianity; just one of the sort you must have had in view, in yours of February 4, as extremely generous “in making free with what other people value, and you don’t care for.” Most uncivilly, I fear, I fell almost into a wrangle with him directly. He even seemed to think us on the whole a bigoted set here in Cambridge,—rather a novel view to us....

Well, I must break off.

Our spring is tardy, after a wintry March. Only snowdrops yet out in the Garden, and those in the sunniest place, a lot which I brought with me from England. For primroses we have to look into a cold frame, in which they, with violets, have been blossoming all the latter part of the winter.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

November 15, 1870.

My dear De Candolle,—Many thanks for your most kind letter of the 24th October. Taken along with one from Mr. Bentham of about the same date, it gives me tidings of several of our French confrères, who are now in such great tribulation. What a change since last year, since last summer even; and for Mrs. Gray and me, how fortunate that we had our visit made and over before the deluge! And what can be the end, and when? It is useless to conjecture. And now there is fear that while Germany is holding the Gallic wolf by the ears,—a situation growing daily more uncomfortable and dangerous for Prussia, and England is left quite alone,—Russia is to take a step forward in the Black Sea, etc., which will greatly vex England and Austria, and perhaps send the torch of war all over Europe; and if all closes up soon Europe will feel this powerful Germany. But it may be the better for Switzerland, whose danger is always from France. It used to make me uneasy and indignant to see the French flag on the shore of your Lake, where it has no business to be!