A gentleman must make the happy dinner-speech, for only he can perceive the proprieties of the situation. He will neither improve the occasion to give the corporation advice as to the management of the college, nor try to point out to a company of Unitarians the superior advantages of the orthodox faith, nor exhibit to invited guests the rags of his alma mater's poverty. He may, perhaps, avoid the commonplace by so doing, but he will certainly transgress the rules of propriety. The commonplace at a dinner, repeated every year under so nearly similar conditions, cannot be avoided, but can be transformed by the art of the master.
What could be more difficult than the duty of presiding at the dinner of the New England Society and rehearsing the threadbare story of the landing of the Pilgrims and dilating upon it in such a way as to entertain New Englanders, who ever since their childhood have heard the declamations of Webster, Everett, Winthrop, and the rest, about that heroic band? Yet by a mixture of shrewd wit and eloquence Mr. Choate, a Harvard graduate, went over again, last year, at the sixty-fourth anniversary of the society, the main facts of the history, and dwelt upon the relations of New Englanders to New York, making a speech that, printed, fills ten octavo pages but which the audience found charming from beginning to end.
This, like every other fine art, has something cosmopolitan in it. It eschews the local and narrow, refuses to belong to any sect or party, and appeals by the widest culture to men of culture. The dinner speeches of our own Bryant are thus liberal and catholic. So were those of Mr. Everett in the main, though one discovered the superb actor now and then arranging his robe or making use of his splendid presence and reputation to draw attention to himself. Of course, when such a man comes as a guest into a company somewhat foreign in thought and life to his own belongings, he can neglect the rules that good breeding imposes on those who compose the homogeneous circles and become narrow. But he must be narrow by praising not his own methods but the unexpected excellence of life found among his hosts—thus, while apparently dwarfing himself, he throws the dignity of his own reputation and history over that which he eulogizes and really exhibits the truest catholicity of spirit. To do this and perfectly conceal the satisfaction that one has, because he can do it, was perhaps difficult for Everett. Most men who heard him pardoned the failure. It was easier for Dickens. His life was in some sense less splendid but more real.
The amusement and good feeling which it is always the aim of the dinner speaker to create, were largely the aim of Dickens' life. The humor, the knowledge of human nature, that he always had at command, were employed in his writings and daily thoughts to enliven and cheer men. No wonder then that his speeches are models of breadth and sweetness and appositeness, and that good judges regarded him when living as in this department of expression unrivalled.
He who is so guided by the love of letters engrafted on the love of man as to give constant and ample expression to these motives, will be neither a reformer without grace nor a scholar without manliness. Give to such a man a flow of animal spirits and a dash of wit, and he should be not unapt to entertain even when poised on the dangerous wing of an after-dinner speech.
Review, 1870.
THE STUDENT COMMUNITY
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE '67
A very interesting and significant feature of university life in the early days was the great part played by students in the scholastic community. They were not only included in the group described by the word "faculty," but they were charged with administrative and executive functions. The movement toward self-government, which has already borne fruit in many of our colleges, is in no sense a modern influence; it is a return to a condition widely prevalent in the early history of university organization. Not only did the students share, through various deliberative bodies, in the determination of the gravest questions of academic policy, but, in many cases, the executive head of the university was not only chosen by them but was often one of their number. The rector of the Italian universities was in most instances a student, often under twenty-five years of age. The rector of the University of Paris, who was charged with the gravest administrative functions, took precedence of the archbishop, and sat at times in the royal councils with princes and nobles, was originally elected by the student communities, and was often a very young man; and yet Paris was essentially a university of professors. Bologna, which was a university of students, was governed directly by the general assembly of undergraduates. Whether governed by students or by masters,—alumni as we should say,—these historic institutions were essentially democratic, and the student seems on the whole to have been the most important figure; not only because at the beginning he formed the constituency for the popular teacher, but because later when these throngs of students formally organized he had the largest share of privileges and for a long time the controlling voice in the management of affairs.
"Universities," said Professor Croisat at the centenary of the University of Montpellier in 1889, "do not come into the world with a clatter. What we know least about in all our history is the precise moment when it (Montpellier) began." It is impossible, in many instances, to fix the date of organization of many of the foremost of the older institutions; they were not made, they grew. There was a deep necessity for their existence in the intellectual and spiritual condition of the times, and they sprang into being here and there, in Italy, France, Spain, and England, in response to that need. They were notable, at the beginning, not for academic calm, but for turbulence and vitality; for they were not universities of science, they were universities of persons. The differences of scholastic rank were not very sharply defined. In early days, whenever the university body was formally addressed by Pope or Emperor, the students were named in the same sentence as the masters.