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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 357. 



for lines in praise of New Haven elms ; and 

 soon, Ray Palmer, whose sacred song has 

 been translated into twenty languages, and 

 sung in Arabic, Tamil, Tahitian, Mahratta 

 and Chinese, as well as in the tongues of 

 Christendom. George H. Colton, one of a 

 family that has cultivated the muses, pub- 

 lished a poem on Tecumseh soon after he 

 graduated in 1840. Twenty years later 

 came Weeks and Sill — Weeks who died 

 before he had stretched his wings for the 

 flights of which he was capable ; and Sill, 

 bright and beloved Sill, whose verses, col- 

 lected since his death, exhibit as do his 

 essays and letters, an intellect strong, un- 

 conventional and suggestive. These are 

 not all the departed whom we may hold in 

 honorable remembrance. 



It is no part of my plan to say much about 

 the living, but there are two writers entitled 

 to special mention — Finch, the author of 

 stanzas which have brightened the fame of 

 Nathan Hale ; and Stedman, anthologist 

 and historian of Victorian poetry, the poet 

 of yesterday and to- morrow, the youth who 

 won his laurels as an undergraduate writer 

 in the Yale Literary Magazine ; the singer 

 who wears them still upon his frosty brow. 



The comparison has been made between 

 the graduates of Havard and of Yale, and 

 the long and brilliant list of historians and 

 poets of Cambridge has been contrasted 

 with the shorter and less famous list of 

 New Haven. Our friends at heart will 

 doubtless attribute something, as is their 

 wont, to the proximity of Boston, a beacon 

 set upon the hill, a port of entry for the 

 culture of other lands, where the Athe- 

 naeum, still foremost among the society 

 libraries of the United States, was an in- 

 spiring resort, close akin to the London 

 Library, giving to men of letters both sus- 

 tenance and stimulant. It, is however, 

 probable that the difference between the 

 two colleges is due to the fact that in East- 

 ern Massachusetts during the last century 



dogmatic theology has been neglected and 

 the ablest intellects have been free to en- 

 gage in literary production. Perhaps this 

 is true. I do not know. We may claim 

 this, however, without making any com- 

 parison, that Yalensians from the beginning 

 were brought up in obedience to ' Duty, 

 stern daughter of the voice of God' ; that 

 the College was founded for the fitting of 

 men to serve the church and state, and 

 that the graduates of Yale, whether famous 

 or unknown, are devoted to the service of 

 their country and show that they have been 

 trained to think, to reason, to write and to 

 speak with freedom and with force. We 

 can every one of us recall classmates and 

 friends, men we have heard and men we 

 have heard of, who have been like village 

 Hampdens, or mute inglorious Miltons ; 

 and we can also recall those who have 

 shown, at the bar and on the bench, in the 

 cabinet and in diplomacy those qualities 

 which under other conditions would have 

 made them orators and authors. The 

 point I make is this, that the Yale train- 

 ing has tended to the development of 

 strength rather than of grace. " I thank 

 God ' ' said a famous preacher who studied 

 in both places, " that I struck no literary 

 roots at Yale and no theological roots at 

 Harvard." " I thank God too," said one of 

 his teachers at New Haven. 



It is certainly true that hundreds of the 

 graduates of Yale have been accurate and 

 forcible writers, who have known what to 

 say and how to say it ; and that they have 

 in this way rendered an incalculable service 

 to the country, far and wide, even though 

 we admit that, under the pressure of stren- 

 uous life, but few of them have shown those 

 literary qualities which are usually evoked 

 where writers and critics come in close re- 

 lation to one another, as they do in cities 

 and in large universities. Long ago, Bish- 

 op Fraser said of the United States, that 

 the people were the most generally edu- 



