200 HEREDITY. 



life by an academical position. Examine the lists of 

 authors. Bancroft, Prescott, Palfrey, were all in the 

 first quarter of their classes. Motley had an excel- 

 lent rank. The poet Longfellow, at Bowdoin, in 

 1825, was among the first three or four of his class. 

 It is notorious that the career of Edward Everett 

 in college was as brilliant as it was outside in every 

 thing connected with scholarship. Daniel Webster 

 was probably the second scholar in his class at Dart- 

 mouth in 1801. Mr. Evarts was among the very 

 highest at Yale in 1837. Rufus Choate is one of 

 the three who in a hundred years have been gradu- 

 ated at Dartmouth with a perfect mark. 



How do American colleges compare with other 

 universities of the world? How many universities 

 worthy of the name have we, with as many people as 

 Great Britain ? Look into our text-books, and where 

 are the authorities to be found that are named in the 

 foot-notes ? Are they American ?• Seven out of ten 

 of them are German. Scotch and English may add 

 two per cent more. I think not more than one out 

 of ten authorities quoted in our works of learning is 

 American. But we are an hundred years old. It is 

 more than two hundred years since Harvard Univer- 

 sity was founded. "What was the spirit which filled 

 the souls of those who planted learning in the rocky 

 soil of New England? Cotton Mather spoke of 

 Harvard College as " the university which has been 

 to these plantations what Livy said Greece was to all 

 the world, Sal Gentium, the salt of the nations ; the 

 river, without the streams whereof these regions 



