George Bancroft was fitted for college at Exeter Academy, where he was especially noted for his fine declamation. He entered Harvard College in 1813, taking his degree in 1817. He was the classmate of four men destined to be actively prominent in the great anti-slavery agitation a few years later,—Samuel J. May, Samuel E. Sewall, David Lee Child, and Robert F. Wallcut,—and of one prospective opponent of it, Caleb Cushing. Other men of note in the class were the Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D. D., the Rev. Alva Woods, D. D., and Samuel A. Eliot, afterwards Treasurer of the College and father of its recent President. Mr. Bancroft was younger than any of these, and very probably the youngest in his class, being less than seventeen at graduation. He was, however, second in rank, and it happened that Edward Everett, then recently appointed Professor of Greek Literature in that institution, had proposed that some young graduate of promise should be sent to Germany for purposes of study, that he might afterwards become one of the corps of Harvard instructors. Accordingly, Bancroft was selected, and went, in the early summer of 1818, to Göttingen. At that time the University had among its professors Eichhorn, Heeren, and Blumenbach. He also studied at Berlin, where he knew Schleiermacher, Savigny, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. At Jena he saw Goethe, and at Heidelberg studied under Schlosser. This last was in the spring of 1821, when he had already received his degree of Ph. D. at Göttingen and was making the tour of Europe. At Paris he met Cousin, Constant, and Alexander von Humboldt; he knew Manzoni at Milan, and Bunsen and Niebuhr at Rome. The very mention of these names seems to throw his early career far back into the past. Such experiences were far rarer then than now, and the return from them into what was the village-like life of Harvard College was a far greater change. Yet he came back at last and discharged his obligations, in a degree, by a year’s service as Greek tutor.