THE INTELLECTUAL 

 INSPIRATION OF PARIS' 



That delightful American humanist, George Ticknor, 

 whose Spanish library is one of the literary treasures of 

 Boston, has given us in his Life and Letters an admirable 

 picture of the University of Gottingen a century ago. 

 The University of Berlin had just been founded, and the 

 characteristics that were to mark this essentially modern 

 German city were as yet unknown. Goethe still reigned 

 at Weimar, and the academic calm of the university 

 towns was a fit environment for the study and investi- 

 gation that made them famous. Still wrapped in an 

 atmosphere of classicism, they were about to feel the 

 quickening spirit of the physical sciences, and to embark 

 upon that rapid advance which has brought wealth 

 and prosperity to modern Germany. Yet Humboldt, the 

 cosmopolite, who epitomized the nascent science of his 

 native land, still lingered among the brilliant leaders of 

 the Paris Academy, although yielding at length, with the 

 deepest reluctance, to the royal command to share the 

 king's table at Potsdam. 



Ever since that day of high ideals, when Goethe and 

 Schiller talked in the quiet gardens of Jena or crossed 

 the Alps to joint the literary colony of Rome, the uni- 

 versities of Germany have drawn to their hospitable 

 halls the students of the United States. To these 



*[By GEORGE ELLERY HALE, Foreign Secretary of the National 

 Academy of Sciences, Correspondent of the Institute of France. ED.] 



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