Carlyle's laugh, and other surprises

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

As you have talked a good deal in your letter about the college and its prospects, I suppose I may be allowed to say a few words about it in reply, though to be sure I have already said more than was perhaps proper in one like myself, who am not even a graduate there, and shall very probably get no other answer to what I may venture to say hereafter than that I should do better to mind my books, and let those who are intrusted with the affairs of ye (sic) college take care of them. I cannot, however, shut my eyes on the fact, that one very important and principal cause of the difference between our University and the one here is the different value we affix to a good library, and the different ideas we have of what a good library is. In America we look on the Library at Cambridge as a wonder, and I am sure nobody ever had a more thorough veneration for it than I had; but it was not necessary for me to be here six months to find out that it is nearly or quite half a century behind the libraries of Europe, and that it is much less remarkable that our stock of learning is so small than that it is so great, considering the means from which it is drawn are so inadequate. But what is worse than the absolute poverty of our collections of books is the relative inconsequence in which we keep them. We found new professorships and build new colleges in abundance, but we buy no books; and yet it is to me the most obvious thing in the world that it would promote the cause of learning and the reputation of the University ten times more to give six thousand dollars a year to the Library than to found three professorships, and that it would have been wiser to have spent the whole sum that the new chapel had cost on books than on a fine suite of halls. The truth is, when we build up a literary Institution in America we think too much of convenience and comfort and luxury and show; and too little of real, laborious study and the means that will promote it. We have not yet learnt that the Library is not only the first convenience of a University, but that it is the very first necessity,—that it is the life and spirit,—and that all other considerations must yield to the prevalent one of increasing and opening it, and opening it on the most liberal terms to all who are disposed to make use of it. I cannot better explain to you the difference between our University in Cambridge and the one here than by telling you that here I hardly say too much when I say that it consists in the Library, and that in Cambridge the Library is one of the last things thought and talked about,—that here they have forty professors and more than two hundred thousand volumes to instruct them, and in Cambridge twenty professors and less than twenty thousand volumes. This, then, you see is the thing of which I am disposed to complain, that we give comparatively so little attention and money to the Library, which is, after all, the Alpha and Omega of the whole establishment,—that we are mortified and exasperated because we have no learned men, and yet make it physically impossible for our scholars to become such, and that to escape from this reproach we appoint a multitude of professors, but give them a library from which hardly one and not one of them can qualify himself to execute the duties of his office. You will, perhaps, say that these professors do not complain. I can only answer that you find the blind are often as gay and happy as those who are blessed with sight; but take a Cambridge professor, and let him live one year by a library as ample and as liberally administered as this is; let him know what it is to be forever sure of having the very book he wants either to read or to refer to; let him in one word know that he can never be discouraged from pursuing any inquiry for want of means, but on the contrary let him feel what it is to have all the excitements and assistance and encouragements which those who have gone before him in the same pursuits can give him, and then at the end of this year set him down again under the parsimonious administration of the Cambridge library,—and I will promise you that he shall be as discontented and clamorous as my argument can desire.

But I will trouble you no more with my argument, though I am persuaded that the further progress of learning among us depends on the entire change of the system against which it is directed.

The next extract is from a letter of Cogswell’s, and gives a glimpse at the actual work done by these young men:—

Göttingen, March 8, 1817.

I must tell you something about our colony at Göttingen before I discuss other subjects, for you probably care little about the University and its host of professors, except as they operate upon us. First as to the Professor (Everett) and Dr. Ticknor, as they are called here; everybody knows them in this part of Germany, and also knows how to value them. For once in my life I am proud to acknowledge myself an American on the European side of the Atlantic: never was a country more fortunate in its representation abroad than ours has been in this instance; they will gain more for us in this respect than even in the treasures of learning they will carry back. Little as I have of patriotism, I delight to listen to the character which is here given of my countrymen; I mean as countrymen, and not as my particular friends: the despondency which it produces in my own mind of ever obtaining a place by their sides is more than counterbalanced by the gratification of my national feelings, to say not a word of my individual attachment. You must not think me extravagant, but I venture to say that the notions which the European literati have entertained of America will be essentially changed by G. and E.’s [Ticknor’s and Everett’s] residence on the Continent; we were known to be a brave, a rich, and an enterprising people, but that a scholar was to be found among us, or any man who had a desire to be a scholar, had scarcely been conceived. It will also be the means of producing new correspondences and connections between the men of the American and European sides of the Atlantic, and spread much more widely among us a knowledge of the present literature and science of this Continent.

Deducting the time from the 13th of December to the 27th of January during which I was confined to my room, I have been pretty industrious; through the winter I behaved as well as one could expect. German has been my chief study; to give it a relief I have attended one hour a day to a lecture in Italian on the Modern Arts, and, to feel satisfied that I had some sober inquiry in hand, I have devoted another to Professor Saalfeld’s course of European Statistics, so that I have generally been able to count at night twelve hours of private study and private instruction. This has only sharpened not satisfied my appetite. I have laid out for myself a course of more diligent labors the next semester. I shall then be at least eight hours in the lecture rooms, beginning at six in the morning. I must contrive, besides, to devote eight other hours to private study. I am not in the least Germanized, and yet it appalls me when I think of the difference between an education here and in America. The great evil with us is, in our primary schools, the best years for learning are trifled and whiled away; boys learn nothing because they have no instructors, because we demand of one the full [work?] of ten, and because laziness is the first lesson which one gets in all our great schools. I know very well that we want but few closet scholars, few learned philologists, and few verbal commentators; that all our systems of government and customs and life suppose a preparation for making practical men,—men who move, and are felt in the world; but all this could be better done without wasting every year from infancy to manhood. The system of education here is the very reverse of our own: in America boys are let loose upon the work when they are children, and fettered when they are sent to our college; here they are cloistered, too much so I acknowledge, till they can guide themselves, and then put at their own disposal at the universities. Luther’s Reformation threw all the monkish establishments in the Protestant countries into the hands of the Princes, and they very wisely appropriated them to the purposes of education, but unluckily they have retained more of the monastic seclusion than they ought. The three great schools in Saxony, Pforte, Meissen, and ⸺ are kept in convents, and the boys enjoy little more than the liberty of a cloister. They are all very famous, the first more particularly; out of it have come half of the great scholars of the country. Still they are essentially defective in the point above named. Just in the neighborhood of Gotha is the admirable institution of Salzmann, in a delightfully pleasant and healthy valley; his number is limited to thirty-eight, and he has twelve instructors,—admits no boy who does not bring with him the fairest character: when once admitted they become his children, and the reciprocal relation is cherished with corresponding tenderness and respect. I should like to proceed a little farther in this subject, but the bottom of my paper forbids.

The following is from Ticknor again, and shows, though without giving details, that the young men had extended their observations beyond Göttingen:—

Göttingen, November 30, 1816.

Dear Sir,—On returning here about a fortnight since, after a journey through North Germany which had occupied us about two months, I found your kind letter of August 4 waiting to welcome me. I thank you for it with all my heart, and take the first moment of leisure I can find in the busy commencement of a new term, to answer it, that I may soon have the same pleasure again.

You say you wish to hear from me what hours of relaxation I have, and what acquaintances I make, in this part of the Continent. The first is very easily told, and the last would not have been difficult before the journey from which I have just returned; but now the number is more than I can write or you willingly hear. However, I will answer both your inquiries in the spirit in which they are made.