42 ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION-II 



On my way northward, excursions among the cities 

 of southern France, especially Nismes, Aries, and Orange, 

 gave me a far better conception of Roman imperial power 

 than could be obtained in Italy alone, and Avignon, 

 Bourges, and Toulouse deepened my conceptions of me 

 diaeval history. 



Having returned to America in the summer of 1856 

 and met my class, assembled to take the master s degree 

 in course at Yale, I was urged by my old Yale friends, 

 especially by Porter and Oilman, to remain in New Haven. 

 They virtually pledged me a position in the school of art 

 about to be established; but my belief was in the value 

 of historical studies, and I accepted an election to a pro 

 fessorship of history at the University of Michigan. The 

 work there was a joy to me from first to last, and my re 

 lations with my students of that period, before I had 

 become distracted from them by the cares of an execu 

 tive position, were among the most delightful of my life. 

 Then, perhaps, began the most real part of my education. 

 The historical works of Buckle, Lecky, and Draper, which 

 were then appearing, gave me a new and fruitful impulse ; 

 but most stimulating of all was the atmosphere coming 

 from the great thought of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, 

 an atmosphere in which history became less and less a 

 matter of annals, and more and more a record of the 

 unfolding of humanity. Then, too, was borne in upon 

 me the meaning of the proverb docendo disces. I found 

 energetic Western men in my classes ready to discuss 

 historical questions, and discovered that in order to keep 

 up my part of the discussions, as well as to fit myself for 

 my class-room duties, I must work as I had never worked 

 before. The education I then received from my classes at 

 the University of Michigan was perhaps the most effective 

 of all. 



