194 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER 



he said that he was convinced that there was no such stateliness 

 in his country. 



I was at once made so far welcome in Mr. Ticknor's house that 

 it required restraint not to haunt it. I never went through its 

 door, taking the welcome look of the admirable English servant 

 who attended it, without feeling strangely at home. It was my 

 good fortune to be bidden there to dinner often when I was the 

 only one from without the household, and afterward to have a 

 talk with Mr. Ticknor. He was the most charming combination 

 of learning, shrewdness, and simplicity I have ever known. In 

 certain ways his thought ranged far. He had, for instance, a 

 very deep insight into the fit conditions of a university, and 

 from his criticisms of the conditions at Harvard, and his sug- 

 gestions of betterment, my attention was drawn to academic 

 matters. He had studied the system of the University of Vir- 

 ginia, had seen it under the guidance of its founder Jefferson, 

 whom he had known. He was the first to give me an idea of 

 what academic freedom meant. In his advocacy of the elective 

 system, in the better sense of that term, his belief in the 

 fitness of allowing a youth to choose his purpose, he was the 

 pioneer in New England. All of us who have furthered that 

 purpose have been his followers. 



My enthusiastic admiration for my master Agassiz, as well 

 as my criticisms of him, which he very cleverly and to my 

 shame brought out, was one of the bonds of this singular friend- 

 ship between a man already old (he must have been sixty-five, 1 

 when I first met him) and a young student. It was partly 

 based on this good common ground of interest in a greatness 

 which appealed to both of us. He saw in Agassiz the majesty 

 of his personality and was great enough to appreciate it as no 

 common mind could. He would often say that he did not have 

 the least idea what the master was about, but that he was 

 great and that was enough. 



Another bond that drew and held me to Mr. Ticknor was his 



i Ticknor was born in 1791. ED. 



