232 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



There were some to whom the structure of the 

 oriole's nest was more marvellous as well as more 

 poetical than the structure of an ode of Horace. 

 There were others who found in modern history 

 or literature or philosophy an inspiration which 

 they did not draw from that which is old. By the 

 side of this inspiration the grammatical drill of the 

 schools seemed a lifeless thing. And so it has 

 happened that many whom we now regard as 

 great in our literature or our science were held in 

 low esteem in the colleges in which they graduated, 

 — if indeed they ever graduated at all. For the 

 scale of marks connected with the college curric- 

 ulum took little account of the soul of man, but 

 only of the docility and regularity (virtues of them- 

 selves of no mean order) with which the college 

 discipline was taken. And as these qualities are 

 not alone the qualities which win success, either 

 real or spurious, in after life, it came to be believed 

 that college honors meant future failure, — that the 

 college valedictorian was the man who was never 

 to be heard of again ; and in this popular error, 

 easily disproved by statistics, there was just enough 

 of truth to keep it from being forgotten. 



No doubt the ancient classical course was a pow- 

 erful agency for culture to many, — to most stu- 

 dents perhaps who came within its influence. But 

 it was not so to all. Culture is an elusive thing, 

 and the machinery which will secure it for you 

 may have no such effect on me. So that, among 

 the students of the old regime^ some never found 

 culture, and some found it only in a surreptitious 

 study of the world outside. Complaints were not 



