Presidents Quincy, Everett, Sparks, and Walker were all engaged in promoting the evolution of the university. After the close of that series come Thomas Hill and Charles William Eliot, the present incumbent, to whose energy, foresight, and courage so much of what may be called this revolution is due. I have already made some notes here of Mr. Quincy and Dr. Walker. It was in Walker’s administration that Lowell returned to the college as Smith professor.
Cornelius Conway Felton, who succeeded Dr. Walker, had been the Greek professor, and had distinguished himself in his place as an editor of Homer and in papers on subjects of Greek literature. Perhaps he soon wore out his hopes for classes of schoolboys. Certainly in my time and Lowell’s, when we were undergraduates, he made little or no effort as a teacher to open out the work of the Greek poets whom we read. Alkestis or the Iliad were literally mere text-books. All the same, the boys believed in Felton. I remember one scene of great excitement when he was a professor, when we thought we were very badly used by the government, as perhaps we were. There was a great crowd of us in front of Holworthy, and Felton appeared on the steps of Stoughton or at a window. Somebody shouted, “Hear Felton! hear Felton! he tells us the truth,” and the noisy mob was still to listen. A man might be glad to have these words carved on his tombstone.
When with other men of letters, Dr. Felton was charming. And his kindness to his old pupils till they died was something marvelous. The published Sumner letters, the Longfellow letters, and other correspondence of the men of that time, with many of his careful reviews, and an occasional pamphlet, perhaps on some subject of controversy now forgotten, show how highly he was prized in his day and how well he deserved such esteem. For many years he was one of the most acceptable writers for the “North American Review.” He died, suddenly, after less than two years of service as President.
President Felton’s successor, Thomas Hill, was a graduate of Harvard, as all her presidents have been since Chauncy died in 1672. Dr. Hill was of a noble family,—if we count nobility on the true standards,—who were driven out of England by the Birmingham riots of 1791, and settled near Philadelphia. Dr. Hill was appointed president of Antioch College, Ohio, in 1859, and, after a very successful administration there, he was inaugurated at Cambridge in 1862. At Antioch he had succeeded Horace Mann in the presidency.
Dr. Hill’s health failed, and he resigned in 1868, leaving behind him charming memories of his devotion to duty and of the simplicity of his character. I called upon him once, with Dr. Newman Hall, when he was in this country. It was delightful to see the enthusiasm with which Dr. Hill spoke of the pleasure he expected in the evenings of the approaching winter, from studying, with his charming wife, the new text of the Syriac version of the New Testament, which had then just been edited by Cureton. He was one of the most distinguished mathematicians of his time. Here is an amusing note to him from Lowell about the arboriculture of the college yard.
My dear Dr. Hill,—I have been meaning to speak to you for some time about something which I believe you are interested in as well as myself, and, not having spoken, I make occasion to write this note. Something ought to be done about the trees in the college yard. That is my thesis, and my corollary is that you are the man to do it. They remind me always of a young author’s first volume of poems. There are too many of ’em, and too many of one kind. If they were not planted in such formal rows, they would typify very well John Bull’s notion of “our democracy,” where every tree is its neighbor’s enemy, and all turn out scrubs in the end, because none can develop fairly. Then there is scarce anything but American elms. I have nothing to say against the tree in itself. I have some myself whose trunks I look on as the most precious baggage I am responsible for in the journey of life; but planted as they are in the yard, there ’s no chance for one in ten. If our buildings so nobly dispute architectural preëminence with cotton mills, perhaps it is all right that the trees should become spindles; but I think Hesiod (who knew something of country matters) was clearly right in his half being better than the whole, and nowhere more so than in the matter of trees. There are two English beeches in the yard which would become noble trees if the elms would let ’em alone. As it is, they are in danger of starving. Now, as you are our Kubernetes, I want you to take the ’elm in hand. We want more variety, more grouping. We want to learn that one fine tree is worth more than any mob of second-rate ones. We want to take a leaf out of Chaucer’s book, and understand that in a stately grove every tree must “stand well from his fellow apart.” A doom hangs over us in the matter of architecture, but if we will only let a tree alone, it will build itself with a nobleness of proportion and grace of detail that Giotto himself might have envied. Nor should the pruning as now be trusted to men who get all they cut off, and whose whole notion of pruning, accordingly, is “ax and it shall be given unto you.” Do, pray, take this matter into your own hands—for you know how to love a tree—and give us a modern instance of a wise saw. Be remembered among your other good things as the president that planted the groups of evergreens for the wind to dream of the sea in all summer, and for the snowflakes to roost on all winter, and believe me (at the end of my sheet, though not of my sermon) always cordially yours,
J.R. Lowell.
Elmwood, December 8, 1863.
After President Hill’s resignation, Dr. Andrew Preston Peabody acted as president until the appointment in 1869 of Mr. Eliot.