Ohio History Journal

Editorialana.                       473

 

Mrs. Mary E. Bray, Charles R. Bartlett, Mrs. Catharine M. Bartlett,

Louis M. Hanff, Mrs. Frances P. Hanff, Rutland.

After the dinner, Prof. Hulbert, Senator Dana and Edwin D. Mead

spoke briefly, after which the meeting dissolved.  After the meeting,

several signed the membership roll of the Rutland Chapter of the Ohio

Company of Associates.

 

 

 

GOLDWIN SMITH.

A Pupil's Recollection.

Just two score years ago-in the Fall of 1870-the editor of the

QUARTERLY-then a "slip of a lad" just emerging from    his 'teens-

landed at the little city of Ithaca, nestling in the valley at the head

shores of picturesque Lake Cayuga, New   York.  It was one bright

September morn that the young matriculate climbed the "hill of science"

to its brow, surmounted by the campus then only partially leveled knolls,

the site of the new institution of learning, called Cornell University,

which according to its founder was to be an institution "where anybody

could fnd instruction in any study." The university, now one of the

most famous in the land, with a score of magnificent buildings, a

wealth of equipment, hundreds of professors and instructors and

thousands of students, was then but a hope and promise with two or three

permanent grey-stone buildings and half a dozen, temporarily constructed,

frame halls of learning. But brick and stone and chunks of endowment

funds do not alone make a university. It is the professors and the

instruction that mould the character of the student and train and de-

velop his gray matter, if he has any, for the battle of life. It has been

truly said that "Mark Hopkins, seated on one end of a log with a

student at the other makes a college."  At Cornell in those incipient

days, there were crude appointments for the accommodation of the

earnest boys who flocked to this new institution. But it was the first

to break the shell of the old narrow courses of mere dead languages

and a slight smattering of science, and it was the pioneer to broaden

the curriculum into optional studies of a hundred fold. But those early

years was the period of distinguished professors and lecturers, resident

and non-resident. James Russell Lowell, George William Curtis, Bayard

Taylor, in literature; Louis Agassiz in natural science; Herman E. Von

Holst, Goldwin Smith, James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman,

George Washington Green and Andrew D. White, in history. Of that

distinguished galaxy each one has done his good work and passed to

the beyond-all save one, Andrew D. White, the first president and the

one who inspired Ezra Cornell to found the institution and who out-

lined the plans of this distinctly American college-the new and liberal

methods which were at first to draw the bitter antagonism of all other

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1            474       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

colleges- especially the denominational ones, but which in due time

were to be followed, especially in its elective system, by all the leading

instructional institutionsin this country. Noble and potent man, that

Andrew D. White, the scholar, the diplomat, the author, the protagonist

of the depth and breadth of modern American college education-he

still survives to enjoy the appreciation and praise of all right-minded

educators and scholars the world over; may many years yet he his lot.

The editor was moved to revive these informal memories by the

sad realization that Goldwin Smith recently joined "the innumerable

caravan" - Goldwin Smith who from the inception - in 1868- until near

the time of his demise was connected with the growth and progress of

Cornell University as a lecturer in English history, nor was there a

greater in that subject. The editor can never forget the hours he sat

before that tall, gaunt figure, seated in a chair, as was his wont when

     lecturing, after the Oxford manner, and calmly, almost impassively, "talk-

ing" in language of precise elegance of the kings and queens and the

people of England, from the time when Caesar laid his rapacious hand

on the "tight Little Island" to the glorious Victorian Age. In his clear,

precise and scholastic words, it seemed as if the speaker was making

history as he proceeded-it was not a recitation of the annals written

by others, it was the panorama of the scenes and events themselves.

Many are the anecdotes we might recall of those delightful and precious

day. Intensely loyal to America the country of his adoption, as he was, the

national birth right and British sympathies and training of the distin-

guished lecturer would occasionally crop out. He did not agree with

Froude on the Irish question and when the latter was at Ithaca, delivering

his brilliant lectures, at times lit up with flashes of wit and humor, the edi-

tor one morning asked Prof. Smith what he thought of Mr. Froude's hand-

ling of his subject the evening before: "h'ts a very h'easy matter to make

h'an h'audience laugh," was his only reply. Again when Greene, the

eminent American historian, was there, lecturing on the American Revo-

lution, a group of students, at the close of one of his lectures, fell into

a dispute as to who won at the battle of Monmouth, the British or

Americans, student-like a bet was made and the editor as stake holder

was requested to refer the dispute to Goldwin Smith, who had just taken

his seat for his morning discourse. The editor put the question to the

good natured "Goldie," as we called him. He immediately proceeded to

give an elaborate account of the battle of Monmouth in England, in the

famous contest between Scotland and England. As soon as possible the

editor corrected the error into which the professor had fallen by saying,

"not to that battle of Monmouth do we refer, but to the battle of Mon-

mouth in the American Revolution." Instantly the small, deep set eyes

of the professor flashed up as he said, "Oh, I don't know anything about

your petty American squabbles-go ask Greene." But he did know all

about our "petty" American squabbles, and his later writings concerning

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the social and political problems of our government and people showed

an understanding of affairs American as profound and prophetic as any

of our own thinkers and writers.

The latter years of his life he made Toronto his home, where

he became editor of one of the leading Canadian monthlies and he

wrote and spoke much in favor of the ultimate union of the Canadian

province and the United States-it would be best for both, was ever his

plea. He wrote with great force and rare scholarship on many topics

of the day-and no writer, Britsh or American, was read with greater

interest or more thoughtful consideration, for he was fearless, con-

vincing, and devoid of bias, political or religious.

Grand old "Goldie"-thousands of men-pupils of his in the

yea rs early and later throughout our broad land will turn the wheels of

memory and pay mental tribute to the learning and kindly spirit that

was his and gratefully recall the privileged hours when they sat in

his presence and listened to the unfolding of historic events, told in his

easy, fluent rhetoric, unsurpassed in clearness and precision. It was the

golden age of Cornell's historians, and among them the memory of none

is more greatly revered or will be longer remembered than that of

Goldwin Smith.

He proved his undying love and devotion to the university, he

served so long and so well, by leaving the large estate, which had be-

come his in his Canadian home, to that same institution on the Ithacan

hill; upon the campus of which, in its earliest days he caused to be

placed a stone seat upon the back of which was carved the main truth

of his religion:  "Above all nations is Humanity."

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