2GO AS UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR I 



further instruction. Its omissions and errors I sought to 

 rectify as AYoolsey, I am sorry to say, had never done to 

 any extent hy oi't'liand talks and by pointing out supple- 

 mentary reading, such as sundry chapters of Gibbon and 

 Hallain, essays by Macaulay, extracts from Lingard, 

 Ranke, Prescott, Motley, and others. Once a fortnight 

 through the winter, the class assembled at my house "so- 

 cially," the more attractive young women of the little city 

 being invited to meet them; but the social part was always 

 preceded by an hour and a half's reading of short passages 

 from eminent historians or travelers, bearing on our class- 

 room work during the previous fortnight. These, pas- 

 sages were read by students whom I selected for the 

 purpose, and they proved useful from the historical, liter- 

 ary, and social point of view. 



For the class next above, the juniors, I took for text- 

 book preparation Guizot's "History of Civilization in 

 Europe" a book tinged with the doctrinairism of its 

 author, but a work of genius; a (jrent work, stimulating 

 new trains of thought, and opening new vistas of know- 

 ledge. This, with sundry supplementary talks, and with 

 short readings from Gibbon, Thierry, Guizot's "History 

 of Civilization in France," and Sir .lames Stephen's 

 "Lectures on French History," served an excellent pur- 

 pose. 



Xor was the use of Guizot's book entirely confined to 

 historical purposes. Calling attention to the Abbe Ban- 

 tam's little book on extemporaneous speaking, as the best 

 treatise on the subject I had ever seen, I reminded my 

 students that these famous lectures of Gui/ot. which had 

 opened a new epoch in modern historical investigation and 

 instruction, were given, as regards phrasing, extempora- 

 neously, but that, as regards matter, they were carefully 

 prepared beforehand, having what Bautain calls a *' self- 

 developing order"; and I stated that 1 would allow any 

 member of my class who might volunteer for the purpose 

 to give, in his own phrasing, the substance of an entire 

 lecture. For a young man thus to stand up and virtually 



