Viscount James Bryce, Ambassador of Great Britain to the United States, and author of The American Commonwealth, the most illuminating work ever written on the American system of government, said, while visiting Chautauqua:
I do not think any country in the world but America could produce such gatherings as Chautauqua's.
Six presidents of the United States have thought it worth while to visit Chautauqua, either before, or during, or after their term of office. These were Grant, Hayes, Garfield, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft. Theodore Roosevelt was at Chautauqua four times. He said on his last visit, in 1905, "Chautauqua is the most American thing in America"; and also:
This Chautauqua has made the name Chautauqua a name of a multitude of gatherings all over the Union, and there is probably no other educational influence in the country quite so fraught with hope for the future of the nation as this and the movement of which it is the archtype.
Let us see what some journalists and writers have said about Chautauqua. Here is the opinion of Dr. Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook, and a leader of thought in our time:
Chautauqua has inspired the habit of reading with a purpose. It is really not much use to read, except as an occasional recreation, unless the reading inspires one to think his own thoughts, or at least make the writer's thoughts his own. Reading without reflection, like eating without digestion, produces dyspepsia. The influence and guidance of Chautauqua will long be needed in America.
The religious influence of Chautauqua has been not less valuable. Chautauqua has met the restless questioning of the age in the only way in which it can be successfully met, by converting it into a serious seeking for rest in truth.
Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, formerly professor in Columbia University, now literary editor of the Independent, wrote in that paper:
If I were a cartoonist, I should symbolize Chautauqua by a tall Greek goddess, a sylvan goddess with leaves in her hair—not vine leaves, but oak, and tearing open the bars of a cage wherein had been confined a bird, say an owl, labeled "Learning." For that is what Chautauqua has done for the world—it has let learning loose.
From the American Review of Reviews, July, 1914: