The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862

So horrible a thing is war, and so dreadful are its inevitable miseries, that there is at first thought something shocking to many persons, in the idea of making military instruction a part of the system of public education—in cultivating the military spirit, and training the children and youth of a nation to science and skill in the arts of carnage. The kind and gentle-hearted find little consolation in being reminded that war is one of God's agencies. They acknowledge that the earthquake, the pestilence, the tornado, are His agencies. They find no difficulty in saying, with Wordsworth, in regard to these:

'We bow our hearts before Thee, and we laudAnd magnify Thy Name, Almighty God!'

Yet when he adds:

'But Thy most dreaded instrumentIn working out a pure intent,Is man arrayed for mutual slaughter—Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter.'

they shrink from the thought and the image. It is too dreadful for ready acquiescence.

But there is another side to the subject, and a deeper view. See how the hero preacher, the saintly-hearted Robertson—as pure and tender a spirit as ever breathed—puts the matter:

'Take away honor and imagination and poetry from war, and it becomes carnage. Doubtless. And take away public spirit and invisible principles from resistance to a tax, and Hampden becomes a noisy demagogue. * * * * Carnage is terrible. Death, and human features obliterated beneath the hoof of the war horse, and reeking hospitals, and ruined commerce, and violated homes, and broken hearts—they are all awful. But there is something worse than death. Cowardice is worse. And the decay of enthusiasm and manliness is worse. And it is worse than death—aye, worse than a hundred thousand deaths—when a people has gravitated down into the creed that the wealth of nations consists not in generous hearts, in national virtues, and primitive simplicity, and heroic endurance, and preference of duty to life—not in MEN, but in silk and cotton, and something they call 'capital.' Peace is blessed—peace arising out of charity. But peace springing out of the calculations of selfishness is not blessed. If the price to be paid for peace is this, that wealth accumulate and men decay, better far, that every street in every town of our country should run blood.'

Now it may be that it is God's purpose to save us by the war we are now engaged in from such a 'gravitation'—to save us by war from calamities far worse than any that war can bring upon us. But be this as it may, one thing we must all admit, that horrible as war is, and dreadful as are its miseries, no nation is fit to be a nation that will not defend itself by arms, if war is forced upon it. And no nation is safe, or worthy of a place among nations, if it is not prepared to maintain its existence against invasion from without or rebellion from within. Beside, to be prepared for war is one of the best securities against war.

But the best, the only sufficient foundation for this preparation, must be laid in the education of the young—an education not exclusively military for any, but while professionally military for a sufficient number, yet as to the rest, military in just and due proportion—an education which, as John Milton says, 'fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private, of peace and of war.' 'The nation,' says Wordsworth, in the preface to one of his grand odes, 'the nation would err grievously, if she suffered the abuse which other states have made of the military power, to prevent her from perceiving that no people ever was or can be independent, free, or secure, much less great in any sane application of the word, without martial propensities and an assiduous cultivation of the military virtues.'

THE NOBLE DEAD

'Those great spirits, that went down like sunsAnd left upon the mountain-tops of deathA light that made them lovely.'

CAMBRIDGE AND ITS COLLEGES

I love Cambridge, and must write very kindly about it. For in the first place, I met there with some of the best men I have ever known. And secondly, it has educated some very noted geniuses and fine poets. I do not envy the American who can linger in its cloisters, ramble in the college walks and survey the colleges themselves with an unmoved spirit. Out of its courts marched Bacon, Newton, Milton, and Jeremy Taylor; Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron issued from it but the other day, for what are a few years in the biography of genius? And was it not but yesterday that Tennyson wrote his prize poem there? It was hallowed ground to me, worthy of not unmixed reverence, but of much reverence was it worthy.

I went straightway to the residence of Dr. Whewell, master of Trinity College, and he received me very cordially. His works are well known in America, and I knew them, and directly made complimentary allusions to them, which, did not displease him. 'Sir, you are welcome,' he said, pressing my hand. 'You are very welcome, sir.' He proceeded to talk of America, and spoke of Edward Everett, and his visit to Cambridge in 1842, and of the speech he made. Everett made a decidedly favorable impression. 'We had a visit from another of your countrymen, last year,' said Dr. W. 'Parker of Boston—Theodore Parker. A man of genius, but I believe a rationalist in religion. He saw but few of our men, and, indeed, we were not disposed to receive him. It would have created a scandal. But he is a very clever man.' After tea, I repaired with the Doctor to his study, and had a pleasant chat with him about American literature. We discussed the merits of Longfellow, Bryant, Irving, Cooper, Channing, Bancroft and Emerson. Of the last-mentioned writer, he said, 'He is not like Carlyle, though the newspaper critics are constantly associating them together. I have no sympathy with his opinions, but I am refreshed by reading him. He is a strong man, sir, and your country will be proud of him. Amongst our young men here his opinions are making great strides. 'Tis the vice of the age. Germany has had the disease, and is near recovery. England and America have caught the epidemic. But pantheism, sir, will not live, though here and at Oxford the students are reading Hegel, Strauss, Bruno-Bauer, and Feuerbach. At Oxford,' he added, 'these pernicious doctrines are demoralizing the university. Blanco White and John Sterling were but the pioneers of a large party of university men, who are preparing to avow their disbelief in Christianity.' The Doctor was right. Francis Newman, brother of the Puseyite Newman, who seceded to the Romish Church, and belongs now to the Oratory of St. Philip Neri,—Froude, brother of the deceased Puseyite Froude,—Foxton, an ordained priest of the Church of England, and Travers, another priest and vicar, have quitted Oxford and the Church, and published heretical works, or are preaching heretical doctrines; while, according to the testimony of Archdeacon Wilberforce, and Dr. Vaughan of Harrow, the doctrines of the German theologists have been embraced by half the undergraduates there.

The town of Cambridge is uninteresting. The streets are narrow and dismal, nor have they any ancient buildings or architectural oddities, except the Round Church, to arrest the stranger's attention, as Shrewsbury and Chester have. The surrounding country is level as a prairie, broken only toward the southeast, by the ridiculous dustheaps called the Gog-Magog Hills. These hills belong to the curiosities of Cambridge, and are as famous in university annals as the colleges themselves. Robert Hale scarcely joked when he said to a friend who visited him during his residence at Cambridge, and who asked him for these hills, 'When that man yonder moves out of the way, you will see them.' They are four miles from the town, and on the estate of the Godolphin family, of which the Rev. Sydney Godolphin Osborne, the S. G. O. of the London Times newspaper, is the present representative.

I was greatly disappointed with the Cam. It is a narrow, muddy stream, varying in depth from five to twenty feet. There is a deep pool near the village of Grantchester, two miles from the town, in which Byron used to bathe, and which bears his name. I would have the stranger that visits Cambridge go to see Grantchester churchyard. It is reached by a pleasant walk across fields, and is really a beautiful spot. Many students who have died at college are buried here. Another walk of three miles along the old coach road, leading to Oxford, will bring him to the Madingley, with its park and mansion, the seat of the Cotton family. Before he leaves this part of the country he should also visit Ely, distant twelve miles, and see the venerable cathedral.

There are seventeen colleges and halls at Cambridge. The halls enjoy equal privileges with the colleges, which is not the case at Oxford. The colleges are: Trinity, St. John's, King's, Queen's, Jesus, Corpus Christi, Caius (pronounced Keys), Sydney-Sussex, Magdalene (pronounced Maudlen), Christ's, Pembroke, Emmanuel, St. Peter's and Downing. The halls are: Trinity, Catherine, and Clare. Bacon, Newton, Byron, Tennyson, and Macaulay were of Trinity College; Milton was of Christ's, Gray of Pembroke, Wordsworth of St. John's, and Coleridge of Jesus. There is an amusing anecdote of Byron current in the university, which I do not remember to have seen in print. The roof of the library of Trinity College is surmounted by three figures in stone, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. These figures are accessible only from the window of a particular room in Neville's Court, which was occupied by Byron during his residence at college. The adventurer after getting out of this window has to climb a perpendicular wall, sustaining himself by a frail leaden spout. He has then to traverse the sloping roof of a long range of buildings, by moving carefully on his hands and knees, at the imminent risk of being precipitated fifty feet into the court beneath. When the library is gained, a stone parapet has to be crossed, a bare glance at which sends a thrill through the spectator who surveys it from below. This feat Byron performed one Sunday morning, while the heads of the dons and dignitaries were yet buried in their pillows, 'full of the foolishest dreams.' He had abstracted three surplices from the college chapel, which he bore with him along the dangerous route I have described. When the bell, at eight o'clock, rung out its deep-toned summons to the usual morning devotions, and the fellows and undergraduates hurried on their way to the chapel, they were startled to behold Faith, Hope, and Charity clad in surplices which reached in snowy folds to their feet, while their heads were surmounted, helmet-wise, with bedchamber waterewers. An inquiry was instituted by the indignant college authorities. A few select friends knew, and the rest of the college guessed, that Byron was the author of the outrage, but it was never brought home to him. No undergraduate beholds these statues now without a hearty laugh.

When I was at Cambridge, the poet's statue by Thorwaldsen had just been rescued from the cellar of the London custom house, where it had lain for years amongst rubbish of all kinds, because the bigots of Westminster Abbey would not permit it to be erected in the Poet's Corner of that edifice. Dr. Whewell, much to his honor, though he is no admirer of Byron's poetry, procured it for the library of the college, where the poet was educated.

Many college anecdotes are related of Coleridge in Gilman's unfinished life of him. (When will it be finished?) These, though they are not much known in this country, I shall not repeat; but there is one current at Cambridge which has never yet been published, from deference to the feelings of the descendants of a vain, but otherwise worthy man. Dr.–, the master of – College, it was known, aspired to a bishopric, but for a long time he had been disappointed, though he had assiduously paid court to the Tory ministry, and intimated, in various ways, that he would have no objection to pronounce the nolo episcopari. Was not Dr. Mansell, the master of Trinity, bishop of Bristol? Watson, bishop of Llandaff, the apologist for the Bible, never strove harder for the archbishopric of York than did Dr. – to get appointed bishop of any see that might fall vacant. It happened that the see of Durham, the richest in all England, worth at that time, $400,000 a year, did fall vacant, and Coleridge, with borrowed money, posted up to London. In two days the master received a letter, offering him the bishopric—it was a private, friendly letter from the first Lord of the Treasury—on condition that he would support the ministry in more liberal measures than they had yet resorted to. He assembled his friends, and communicated the happy tidings. The next mail conveyed to the Prime Minister his grateful acceptance of the dignity. He was liberal at heart, and had always been so. His vote would be always at the service of the minister and his party whether in or out of office. The pleasing illusion was soon dissipated, and Dr. – never held up his head again. Coleridge wrote the Prime Minister's private and friendly letter.

I gathered anecdotes of Bulwer, Macaulay, and Tennyson, that are perhaps not worth the telling. Bulwer was of Trinity Hall. He went one day to bathe in the Cam at Grantchester, and was robbed of his clothes. Before he could emerge from the water, the future dandy author of Pelham had to borrow a suit of corduroys from a rustic. He crept down by-lanes till he reached his rooms, but a friend met him, who teased him into an explanation, and afterward spread the story. He was noted at Cambridge for his foppishness, and for wearing scented kid gloves. Tennyson was manly there, and gentlemanly, as he always is. I shall have something to say about him hereafter.

Connop Thirlwall, the present bishop of St. David's, one of the translators of Niebuhr's 'History of Rome,' and author of the best history of Greece that had appeared before the publication of Mr. Grote's magnificent work, used to say of the fellows of Trinity, when he was tutor of that college, that they were the wittiest companions when drunk, that he had ever met with. It is certain that, thirty years ago, they used to drink to excess, and the Combination Room was the scene of numerous debauches that would have discredited a common tavern. Everybody has heard of Professor Person's reputation in this way. He was a famous compounder of whiskey toddy, and under its influence scattered puns and witticisms in the purest attic Greek. Since his day, the drinking custom is abated, and even Dr. Thirlwall would find in the present fellows of Trinity College a race of men altogether unlike those who frequented the Combination Room, and called for their third bottle, in his time.

I was at much pains to acquire correct information respecting the system of education pursued in the university. The son of poor parents, I found, has but a small chance of receiving classical instruction in England. At Cambridge the sizars, and at Oxford the servitors, form the lowest grade of students. Formerly menial tasks were imposed upon them, and amongst other duties, they had to wait upon the fellows of their colleges at the dinner table—to bear the dishes and fill the goblets. This custom has long since been discontinued; nor are the sizars of Trinity and St. John's any longer distinguished from the great body of the students by any external mark of inferiority. At the small colleges, however, they wear different gowns, and are recognized without difficulty in the street. Of course, in aristocratic England they are shunned by the richer students. Their expenses for the first year of their college residence ought not to be over $300, and are frequently kept below $200 by the prudence of the individual. If, at the first annual examination of the college they obtain a place in either the first, second, or third classes, they are entitled to receive assistance from the college funds. So privileged, they pay no rent for their rooms, and their commons, or food, is furnished to them free of expense. They are, however, made to feel the humiliation of their position. They dine off the remnant dishes of the fellows' table, after the latter have risen. There is certainly no lack of provisions, which are of a luxurious quality, and are cooked in the best style. The head cook of Trinity College receives a salary of $3,500 a year, and has about thirty assistants.

The educational system pursued at Cambridge is open, I think, to one very grave objection. Unless the student is tolerably wealthy, he is deprived of the advantages which his richer companions enjoy. The brief lectures—of one hour's duration only—delivered daily by the college tutors to a crowd of undergraduates, are ill calculated to benefit the striving individual student. As far as the college is concerned, the youth is left to himself. If he cannot afford the expense of a private tutor, his attainments are due to solitary application, and he is self taught within the very walls of a college. The private tutors reap a rich harvest from this careless system. They are usually members of the university who have recently taken their first degree, and prefer the large recompense of tuition to the miserable stipend of a curacy. To each of their pupils—and a popular private tutor has usually eight or ten—they devote one hour daily, and their charge is $70 for the term. As a term sometimes expires at the end of seven weeks, they receive about $2 an hour. This sum is beyond the poor scholar's means, and he has to run an unequal race at the examinations with his more fortunate competitor.

If appearances are to be trusted, the Trinity undergraduates are not untiring students. They seem to pass their days and nights in the pursuit of pleasure. The great evil of the English universities is the credit system, and though Dr. Whewell endeavored to show me that it was thoroughly discountenanced by the college authorities, he did not succeed in convincing me that they were dealing properly with the difficulty. A student, in defiance of all the restrictions imposed upon his intercourse with the tradesmen of the town, may contract debts to almost any amount. It is notorious that parents are brought to the verge of ruin every year by their sons' misconduct at college, unless they choose to contest the demands of the tradesmen in a court of law, by pleading the infancy of the debtor when he has not attained his majority. The college regulations demand that every tradesman licensed by the university—and with none other is the student authorized to deal—shall send to the tutor, at the expiration of each term, the bills of the respective undergraduates who have been his customers. From the position occupied in society by the friends of the student, the tutor is enabled to judge whether he is exceeding his income. The expenditure which would be excessive for the son of a clergyman, with a small living, would be moderate for the heir to a peerage. It is further required that the expenses of each term shall be paid before the undergraduate recommences his studies, and any tradesman who is known to withhold from the tutor's knowledge any debt, or portion of a debt, owing him by any student, is immediately deprived of his license. Nevertheless, all but a few of the more wealthy tradesmen conduct their transactions with the students on the understanding that these regulations are to be violated at pleasure. Thus, from term to term, debt is added to debt, until the student is preparing to leave the university. Then the tradesman becomes eager for a settlement. The student endeavors to put him off with promises. The tradesman hurries to a lawyer. A writ is issued, judgment is delivered, and the student has to fly from the university without taking his degree, in order to escape a prison. Or, if he is in his minority, proceedings are commenced against his father, who, if he is a proud man, will rather pay the bill than contest it, though the entire amount will seriously impair the fortunes of his other children. Or he may deny his liability, plead that his son is a minor, and that the articles furnished were not necessaries. In this way, it has been argued by barristers on the plaintiff's side that wine, cigars, jewels, and hired horses were necessaries of life, and the presiding judge has sometimes ruled on one side that they were, and sometimes on the other, that they were not. Hundreds of young men have had their prospects in life blasted by this system, and yet, no cure has been found. I heard of one instance, and it was only one of many nearly similar, where an undergraduate had contracted debts amounting to upward of $10,000 beyond his ability to pay. Of this sum, I recollect some of the items: $1,000 was for cigars, $3,000 for wine, $2,500 for the hire of horses, $1,900 for rings, pins, and other trinkets, and only $200 for books. He had attained his majority, and was sent to prison, his father resolutely refusing to pay his debts. He languished in prison for two years, and died there.

Nor does it always follow that the undergraduate may be saved from this disgrace and ruin by firmness and honorable principles. He is, for the first time in his life, his own master. The superintendence of the college tutor amounts to just nothing at all. Immediately he arrives at the university, he is besieged by tradesmen. It is particularly impressed upon him, that money is not necessary to conclude a bargain. He can pay when he likes. Three years hence will do. The youth is sorely tempted. He finds his new college acquaintance sailing under press of canvas, over the sea of extravagance. They give splendid wine parties, and invite him to the jovial board. He is bound to return the hospitality of these prime fellows. One extravagance leads to another. The port and sherry, that he could afford, shine no more upon his table. He drinks hock now, and claret, and princely champagne, at two dollars and fifty cents a bottle. He smokes cigars at $10 a pound. He is living like a gentleman. Let the poor sizar toil over musty books; he will have a race horse. 'Tis a fine life. How much better than a schoolboy's. He speaks of his father as the governor, and talks in a flash manner of the girls he is acquainted with. He thinks he will marry one of them, but his choice is not determined. The college dons, professors, tutors, fellows, know the temptations, know the risk, know the ruinous goal, but no one arrests his career. Which is most to blame; the raw, undisciplined boy, or the evil university system?

I passed a rare time at Cambridge. What delight it was in those cold mornings to take a bracing walk into the country, and looking back over miles of level land, to behold the chapel of King's College, and the tower of St. Mary's church, which had been the land beacons of aspiring students for so many generations! I verily believe that the chapel of King's College is the finest piece of modern architecture in the world. It is a poem in stone! Teaching so much—not of this earth, only; least of this earth, perhaps. I never wearied of walking in it, and around it, repeating Wordsworth's sonnet, and feeling that 'for a few white-robed scholars only,' it was not built; but as an utterance of man's spirit, more fervent than he could express in the articulate speech of man. The soul of the individual, nurtured by any semblance of culture, who can stand unmoved beneath that fretted roof, must be cold as the frozen zone. It remains with me, like Niagara.

As a college, Trinity is the most interesting. The chapel is very inferior to that of King's, but it is hallowed by the memory of Newton. Roubiliac's statue of the philosopher is the chief object of interest, and the Trinity men do not envy the scholars of King's their chapel, when they behold that statue. The dean of Trinity, the Rev. W. Carns, author of the 'Life of Simeon,' is the present possessor of the rooms once occupied by Newton. The little watch tower where he pierced the heavens with his telescope is still standing. One ascends it, and surveys the firmament, not without a reverential feeling. Cambridge abounds with the associations of genius. Chaucer studied here, and at Oxford also, it is said; and in treading the great court of Trinity, one cannot help thinking of Bacon. Milton's mulberry tree is yet standing, and puts forth a few fresh leaves every spring in the garden of Christ's College. His manuscript of 'Comus,' partly in his own writing, partly in that of his amanuensis—of one of his daughters, it is probable—is in the library of Trinity College, and may be seen by the curious. The spirits of these venerable men still haunt the scenes of their studious youth, and with their mighty shadows brooding over us, what is the value of dollars and dimes?