November 1, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



673 



cated, if not the most highly educated, 

 people in the world. Something like this 

 we may say of the Yale alumni — if they 

 number few men of genius, they number 

 many men of talents, usefulness and power ; 

 if there are none who are equal to Tennyson 

 and Schiller and Victor Hugo, there are 

 many who have been the advocates of 

 truth and the promoters of social reform, 

 in terse and vigorous English. They have 

 excelled in the pulpit and at the bar, and 

 in the halls of legislation, so that without 

 mentioning the names of men whom we 

 have personally known, I will remind you 

 of that long line of jurists and statesmen 

 who were living near the beginning of our 

 second century, William Samuel Johnson, 

 Pelatiah Webster, John C. Calhoun, James 

 Kent, Jeremiah Mason, and that constella- 

 tion of New England theologians, an in- 

 numerable host, from Edwards to Taylor. 

 Professor Kingsley was called the Ad- 

 dison of America, and he had such wit, 

 knowledge and grace as might have given 

 him distinction in literary composition if 

 he had so directed his energy ; but he was 

 one of those ' generally useful men ' that 

 this college produces, who held at one time 

 what we should call four chairs. We 

 should all be proud to claim as the prod- 

 uct of our alma mater James Fenimore 

 Cooper, but we cannot, for like Shelley from 

 Oxford, he was driven out because of a 

 boyish misdemeanor. Professor Kingsley 

 once told me this story : The novelist 

 Cooper, Judge Kane, of Philadelphia, and 

 Hon. John C. Spencer, of New York met at 

 a dinner. ' Where were you educated ? ' 

 said one. ' I had the honor of being turned 

 out of Yale College,' was the reply. ' And 

 so did I,' said the second ; and ' I had the 

 same honor,' said the third. Hcec fabula 

 docet that boyish liveliness is not always 

 fatal to mature success. If we cannot 

 claim Cooper, Theodore Winthrop is ours — 

 the essayist and novelist, whose posthumous 



fame shows what was lost to letters when 

 he died a patriot's death upon the field of 

 battle. 



Lounsbury says that Cooper left Yale 

 with little learning in his head and then 

 he wittily adds, " No one will doubt this 

 who has learned to view with profoundest 

 respect the iufinite capability of the human 

 mind to resist the introduction of knowl- 

 edge." 



In the second quarter of the nineteenth 

 century the influence of Coleridge is ap- 

 parent. William Adams, Horace Bushnell, 

 Lyman At water, William Watson Andrews 

 and Noah Porter are conspicuous examples 

 of this infusion of idealism. Their writ- 

 ings are in evidence. The powerful imagi- 

 nation which produced ' The Ancient 

 Mariner ' and ' Christabel ' had been direc- 

 ted to the transcendent study of the Infinite, 

 and many who turned away from the most 

 rigid tenets of Calvin, and from the literal 

 interpretation of the Old Testament, were 

 strengthened and guided by the philosopher 

 of Highgate. Bushnell confessed greater 

 indebtedness to the ' Aids to Eeflection ' 

 than to any other book — save the Bible. 

 Of the theological emancipator, I am not 

 called upon to speak — of the gifted writer 

 more than passing mention must be made. 

 His sermons, addresses and essays always 

 arrested the attention and excited the im- 

 agination of those who heard and those 

 who read them. For example, his estimate 

 of Connecticut, his 'Age of Homespun,' 

 indeed all the contents of his ' Work and 

 Play,' and many parts of 'Nature and the 

 Supernatural,' glow with life and fancy, and 

 will be as good reading for our grandchildren 

 as they were for our fathers. The incisive 

 notes of his voice as I first heard it when 

 an undergraduate, still ring in my ears — 

 and his racy sentences, his inspiring and 

 suggestive phrases, and the eloquence of his 

 thoughts were even more impressive than 

 his voice. The name of Horace Bushnell 



