The influence of _The Nation_, therefore,--so these objectors to Godkin aver,--was especially unfortunate on the intelligent youth of the country. It was in 1870 that John Bigelow, whom I have just quoted, advised Harvard University to include _The Nation_ among its requirements; and it is true that at that time, and for a good while afterwards, _The Nation_ was favorite reading for serious Harvard students. The same practice undoubtedly prevailed at most other colleges. Now I have been told that the effect of reading _The Nation_ was to prevent these young men from understanding their own country; that, as Godkin himself did not comprehend America, he was an unsound teacher and made his youthful readers see her through a false medium. And I am further informed that in mature life it cost an effort, a mental wrench, so to speak, to get rid of this influence and see things as they really were, which was necessary for usefulness in lives cast in America. The United States was our country; she was entitled to our love and service; and yet such a frame of mind was impossible, so this objection runs, if we read and believed the writing of _The Nation_. A man of character and ability, who had filled a number of public offices with credit, told me that the influence of _The Nation_ had been potent in keeping college graduates out of public life; that things in the United States were painted so black both relatively and absolutely that the young men naturally reasoned, "Why shall we concern ourselves about a country which is surely going to destruction?" Far better, they may have said, to pattern after Plato's philosopher who kept out of politics, being "like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along."[191] Such considerations undoubtedly lost _The Nation_ valuable subscribers. I have been struck with three circumstances in juxtaposition. At the time of Judge Hoar's forced resignation from Grant's Cabinet in 1870, _The Nation_ said, "In peace as in war 'that is best blood which hath most iron in't;' and much is to be excused to the man [that is, Judge Hoar] who has for the first time in many years of Washington history given a back-handed blow to many an impudent and arrogant dispenser of patronage. He may well be proud of most of the enmity that he won while in office, and may go back contented to Massachusetts to be her most honored citizen."[192] Two months later Lowell wrote to Godkin, "The bound volumes of _The Nation_ standing on Judge Hoar's library table, as I saw them the other day, were a sign of the estimation in which it is held by solid people and it is they who in the long run decide the fortunes of such a journal."[193] But _The Nation_ lost Judge Hoar's support. When I called upon him in 1893 he was no longer taking or reading it.