DANGERS AT CORNELL -1868 -1872 365 



in connection with the instruction of the resident profes 

 sors marked an epoch, and did much to remove anything 

 like Philistinism from the student body. Bayard Taylor s 

 lectures in German literature thus supplemented admir 

 ably the excellent work of the resident professors Hewett 

 and Horatio White. To remove still further any danger of 

 Philistinism, I called an eminent graduate of Harvard, 

 Charles Chauncey Shackford, whose general lectures in 

 various fields of literature were attractive and useful. In 

 all this I was mainly influenced by the desire to prevent 

 the atmosphere of the university becoming simply and 

 purely that of a scientific and technical school. Highly as 

 I prized the scientific spirit and technical training, I 

 felt that the frame of mind engendered by them should be 

 modified by an acquaintance with the best literature as 

 literature. There were many evidences that my theory 

 was correct. Some of our best students in the technical 

 departments developed great love for literary studies. 

 One of them attracted much attention by the literary ex 

 cellence of his writings ; and on my speaking to him about 

 it, and saying that it seemed strange to me that a man 

 devoted to engineering should show such a taste for liter 

 ature, he said that there was no greater delight to him 

 than passing from one of the studies to the other that 

 each was a recreation after the other. 



The effort to promote that element in the general culture 

 of the student body which comes from literature, ancient 

 and modern, gained especial strength from a source 

 usually unpromising the mathematical department. 

 Two professors highly gifted in this field exercised a wide 

 and ennobling influence outside it. First of these was 

 Evan William Evans, who had been known to me at Yale 

 as not only one of the best scholars in the class of 1851, 

 but also one of its two foremost writers. Later, he devel 

 oped a passion for modern literature, and his influence 

 was strongly felt in behalf of the humanities. His suc 

 cessor was James Edward Oliver, a graduate of Harvard, 

 a genius in his chosen field, but always exercising a large 



