Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
History
Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
Great Britain -- Colonies -- History -- 19th century; United States -- Description and travel; Voyages around the world
Here, at the Alumni Celebration, a procession was marshaled in the
library in which the order was by classes; the oldest class of which
there were living members being called the first. “Class of 1797!” and
two old white-haired gentlemen tottered from the crowd, and started on
their march down the central aisle, and out bareheaded into the blaze of
one of the hottest days that America had ever known. “Class of 1800!”
missing two years, in which all the graduates were dead; and out came
one, the sole survivor. Then came “1803,” and so on, to the stalwart
company of the present year. When the classes of 1859 and 1860, and of
the war-years were called, those who marched out showed many an empty
sleeve.
The present triennial celebration is noteworthy not only for the efforts
of the university reformers, but also for the foundation of the Memorial
Hall, dedicated as a monument to those sons of Harvard who fell while
serving their country in the suppression of the late rebellion. The
purity of their patriotism hardly needed illustration by the fire of
young Everett, or the graceful speech of Dr. Holmes. Even the splendid
oratory of Governor Bullock could do little more than force us to read
for ourselves the Roll of Honor, and see how many of Harvard‘s most
distinguished younger men died for their country as privates of
Massachusetts Volunteers.
There was a time, as England knows, when the thinking men of Boston, and
the Cambridge professors, Emerson, Russell Lowell, Asa Gray, and a dozen
more of almost equal fame, morally seceded from their country‘s
councils, and were followed in their secession by the younger men. “The
best men in America stand aloof from politics,” it was said.
The country from which these men seceded was not the America of to-day:
it was the Union which South Carolina ruled. From it the Cambridge
professors “came out,” not because they feared to vex their nerves with
the shock of public argument and action, but because the course of the
slaveholders was not their course. Hating the wrongs they saw but could
not remedy, they separated themselves from the wrong-doers; another
matter, this, from the “hating hatred” of our culture class in England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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