DANGERS AT CORNELL -1868 -1872 355 



"Agricola" of Tacitus, was an excellent professor; but 

 he yielded to the system then dominant at Yale, and the 

 whole thing was but weary plodding. Hardly ever was 

 there anything in the shape of explanation or comment; 

 but at the end of his work with us he laid down the book, 

 and gave us admirably the reasons why the study of 

 Tacitus was of value, and why we might well recur to it 

 in after years. Then came painfully into my mind the 

 thought, "What a pity that he had not said this at the 

 beginning of his instruction rather than at the end ! ' ' 



Still worse was it with some of the tutors, who took us 

 through various classical works, but never with a particle 

 of appreciation for them as literature or philosophy. I 

 have told elsewhere how my classmate Smalley fought it 

 out with one of these. No instruction from outside lec- 

 tures was provided; but in my senior year there came to 

 New Haven John Lord and George William Curtis, the 

 former giving a course on modern history, the latter 

 one upon recent literature, and both arousing my earnest 

 interest in their subjects. It was in view of these experi- 

 ences that in my "plan of organization" I dwelt espe- 

 cially upon the value of non-resident professors in bring- 

 ing to us fresh life from the outside, and in thus 

 preventing a certain provincialism and woodenness which 

 come when there are only resident professors, and these 

 selected mainly from graduates of the institution itself. 



The result of the work done by our non-resident pro- 

 fessors more than answered my expectations. The twenty 

 lectures of Agassiz drew large numbers of our brightest 

 young men, gave them higher insight into various prob- 

 lems of natural science, and stimulated among many 

 a zeal for special investigation. Thus resulted an enthu- 

 siasm which developed out of our student body several 

 scholars in natural science who have since taken rank 

 among the foremost teachers and investigators in the 

 United States. So, too, the lectures of Lowell on early 

 literature and of Curtis on later literature aroused great 

 interest among students of a more literary turn; while 



