6S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



affairs, would disarrange nice customs, dishevel sound old proprieties, 

 and step absentmindedly over the college halls. These, however, would 

 be apprehensions hardly worthy of men prepared to stand to their own 

 prerogatives and duties. If Mr. Eoosevelt could lend signal aid in 

 education he would hardly dispute that such a task would have its 

 education for himself. And if students delight in his sturdy man- 

 hood, it would be a pity that the race of teachers should shudder at his 

 somewhat carnivorous quality and taste for the jungle. 



There is, to be sure, a delicacy of tone, a fine and deep cultivation 

 of spirit, a sense of esthetic rectitude in things of detail, that one would 

 gladly see set before " our young barbarians, all at play," in the chief 

 person of their community. The fiery furnace of American public life 

 is hardly the place to foster and finish such a product. Indeed this 

 fine fleur — for the truth must be told — does not at present flourish 

 abundantly in American life at all. Our scholarship has largely gone 

 for training to Germany, custodian of the letter rather than of the 

 spirit of culture; and there is something raw in the air at home. But 

 in Mr. Eoosevelt's passion for knowledge and for achievement, in the 

 range of a certain information he has in science, history and letters, 

 in the interest and respect he has always shown for the personalities of 

 the men who advance these studies, there is much to contribute toward 

 the first things needful, the foundation of university life. 



It is obviously a grave consideration on the other hand that he has 

 had no direct experience, except as a student, of educational affairs. 

 This, however, as it happens, is bound up with the essential qualifica- 

 tions we have been considering. Senator Hoar remarks in his " Auto- 

 biography " : 



Making all the allowance for the point of view, and that I was then a 

 youth looking at my elders who had become famous, and that I am now look- 

 ing as an old man at young men, I still think there can be no comparison 

 between the college administrators of fifty years ago and those of to-day. It 

 was then the policy of the college to call into its service great men who had 

 achieved eminent distinction in the world without. It is now its policy to 

 select for its service promising youth, in the hope that they will become great. 

 Perhaps the last method is the best where it succeeds. [And Mr. Hoar notes 

 the distinguished success of President Eliot.] But the effect of failure is most 

 mischievous. Presidents Quincy, Everett, Walker and Sparks administered in 

 succession the office of President during my connection with the Academic 

 Department and the Law School [of Harvard], although Dr. Walker's inaugura- 

 tion was not until later. Each of them in his own way was among the first 

 men of his time. Quincy had been an eminent statesman, a famous orator, and 

 a most successful mayor of Boston. Edward Everett had been in his early 

 youth one of the most famous pulpit orators of the country, afterward a dis- 

 tinguished Member of Congress, Governor of the Commonwealth, Minister to 

 England, and Senator of the United States. He was a consummate orator, on 

 whose lips thousands and thousands of his countrymen had hung entranced. 



