NATURE 



409 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1896. 



AN AMERICAN PROFESSOR. 

 Memoirs of Frederick A. P. Barnard, D.D., LL.U., &=€., 

 Tent/i President of Columbia College in the City of 

 New York. By John Fulton. Pp. xii + 485- (New 

 York : published for the Columbia University Press by 

 The Macniillan Co. London ; Macniillan and Co., Ltd. 

 1896.1 



THE name of Barnard is honourably associated with 

 the history of education in the United States. To 

 English readers, the best-known bearer of the name is the 

 Hon. Henry Barnard, formerly United States Commis- 

 sioner of Education, and now living in retirement at 

 Hartford, Connecticut. As the author of numerous local 

 and special reports, and the compiler of valuable statistics 

 and monographs on the various aspects of public in- 

 struction ; and particularly, as the editor of four or five 

 massixe volumes containing reprints of standard treatises 

 on the philosophy and history of education in England 

 and Germany, he has done more than any man in the 

 American Union to promote the study of pedagogical 

 literature. 



The present volume recounts the history and doings of 

 one who is less generally known on this side of the 

 Atlantic — the Rev. Frederick A. P. Barnard, a versatile, 

 fluent, and vigorous man who filled with credit many 

 academic offices, and exercised considerable public 

 influence, both within and without the college and uni- 

 versity world of America. He was born in 1809, and 

 graduated at Y'ale 182S, became tutor in 1829, teacher in 

 the asylum for the deaf and dumb at Hartford and in that 

 of New York, his own interest in children thus afflicted 

 being greatly enhanced by the defect of hearing which 

 troubled him through life, and which he manfully strove 

 to fight against. In 1837 he was professor of mathematics 

 and natural philosophy in the Uni\ersity of .Alabama, 

 and afterwards of chemistry, remaining in that University 

 till 1854, when he took orders in the Episcopal Church, 

 and became professor of mathematics and astronomy in 

 the University of Mississippi, becoming its president in 

 1856. He removed to Columbia College in 1864, sub- 

 sequently served as United States Commissioner to the 

 Paris Expositions of 1847 and 1878, and wrote for the 

 former an elaborate report on machinery and the industrial 

 arts. His versatility and many-sided interests are well 

 illustrated by the facts that he occasionally served 

 as professor in literature and history, and that his 

 published works include a treatise on arithmetic ; an 

 analytic grammar with symbolic illustration descriptive 

 mainly of a system designed for the use of the deaf and 

 dumb : letters on Collegiate Government, 1855 ; history 

 of the United States Coast Survey, 1857 ; recent pro- 

 gress of Science, 1869 ; and the Metric System, 1871. 

 Although no scientific observation or discovery of an 

 original kind can be ascribed to him, he was a member in 

 i860 of the astronomical expedition to observe the total 

 eclipse of the sun in Labrador, in 1S62 he was engaged 

 in continuing the reduction of the observations of the 

 stars in the southern hemisphere by Gillis, and in 1863 

 had charge of the publication of Charts and Maps of the 

 United States Coast Survey. He served in i860 as 

 Ni.>. 1401. VOL. 54] 



President of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, and in 1872 of the American Institute. 

 He received honorary degrees from Jefterson College, 

 Missouri, from Yale and from Mississippi, and also that 

 of Doctor of Literature from the University of the State 

 of New York. During part of his life he served as editor 

 of a review, and was a frequent contributor to newspapers 

 and magazines, both in prose and verse. 



The pious care of his widow in collecting his speeches 

 and reports, and the facile pen of his biographer, Mr. 

 Fulton, have produced a large volume of nearly 500 

 pages, which, though containing many facts illustrative of 

 the growth of higher education in America, and much 

 information respecting significant but ephemeral academic 

 controversies, strikes the English reader as somewhat 

 disproportioned to the amount of Barnard's actual 

 achievement and force in the world. A due sense of his- 

 torical perspective, and of the difference between what is 

 temporary and what is permanent in a human life, is one 

 of the highest and, it must be owned, one of the rarest 

 qualifications of a biographer. Had it been possessed by 

 the author of this volume, the narrative might with great 

 advantage have been reduced to half its present length. 



Barnard's views about the purpose of education, though 

 not novel, showed insight and good sense. 



"It has always seemed to me," he said, "to be the 

 great, as it is the almost universal, educational mistake of 

 our time, that children, instead of being introduced to 

 subjects which address the perceptive faculties, and which 

 are adapted to furnish them with a flood of novel and 

 clearly comprehensible ideas, are usually condemned to 

 the dreary study of unintelligible words, which impose a 

 heavy burden on the memory, and are only apprehended 

 after the understanding has become matured with ad- 

 \-ancing years." 



He saw also, with greater clearness than many of his 

 associates, the intellectual dangers of that " elective 

 system " which has obtained so much favour in the 

 States, and the confusion which would arise, especially in 

 small colleges, " if every student were allowed to study 

 what he chose, all that he chose, and nothing that he did 

 not choose." He insisted with much force that the de- 

 mand for such options " did not proceed from a genuine 

 desire for special or partial instruction, but simply and 

 solely from the ambition to obtain the college stamp of 

 scholarship without submitting to that severe and sys- 

 tematic intellectual training which alone can make the 

 scholar." 



Of his resolute opposition to Slavery, and of his 

 sympathy with the party of Union in the Civil War, not- 

 withstanding the prevalent feeling among his neighbours 

 in the South, the volume gives an interesting account. It 

 was not till his removal to Columbia College in New 

 York, that he acquired full freedom to carry into effect his 

 views on academic organisation and reform without being 

 hindered by quasi-political opposition or distrust. At 

 fifty-five years of age he was elected to the presidency of 

 that institution, which, though with an interesting history 

 and considerable resources, had hardly entitled itself to 

 the rank of a university. By the development of a School 

 of Mines and the Schools of Law and of Medicine, and 

 especially by the provision of new means and encourage- 

 ment for post-graduate research, Barnard did much to 



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