34 ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION-II 



ough course in boating, under a good stroke oar, does as 

 much as anything to make him impossible. 



At the close of my undergraduate life at Yale I went 

 abroad for nearly three years, and fortunately had, for 

 a time, one of the best of companions, my college mate, 

 Oilman, later president of Johns Hopkins University, and 

 now of the Carnegie Institution, who was then, as he has 

 been ever since, a source of good inspirations to me, 

 especially in the formation of my ideas regarding educa- 

 tion. During the few weeks I then passed in England I 

 saw much which broadened my views in various ways. 

 History was made alive to me by rapid studies of persons 

 and places while traveling, and especially was this the 

 case during a short visit to Oxford, where I received some 

 strong impressions, which will be referred to in another 

 chapter. Dining at Christ Church with Osborne Gordon, 

 an eminent tutor of that period, I was especially interested 

 in his accounts of John Ruskin, who had been his pupil. 

 Then, and afterward, while enjoying the hospitalities of 

 various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, I saw the ex- 

 cellencies of their tutorial system, but also had my eyes 

 opened to some of their deficiencies. 



Going thence to Paris I settled down in the family of 

 a very intelligent French professor, where I remained 

 nearly a year. Not a word of English was spoken in the 

 family; and, with the daily lesson in a French method, 

 and lectures at the Sorbonne and College de France, the 

 new language soon became familiar. The lectures then 

 heard strengthened my conception of what a university 

 should be. Among my professors were such men as St. 

 Marc Girardin, Arnould, and, at a later period, Laboulaye. 

 In connection with the lecture-room work, my studies in 

 modern history were continued, especially by reading Gui- 

 zot, Thierry, Mignet, Thiers, Chateaubriand, and others, 

 besides hearing various masterpieces in French dramatic 

 literature, as given at the Theatre Frangais, where Rachel 

 was then in her glory, and at the Odeon, where Mile. 



