The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-06-27
The cho1ar INDICATED.
[From George William Curtis's Grafton at Brown
University

Un1VerSltyl
But every educated man is aware of pro-
found popular dlstrust of the courage and sa-
gacity of the educated class. Franklin and Lin
coin are good enough for us, exclaims this jeal.
GUS scepticism; as il Franklin and Lincoln did
not laboriously repair by vigorous study the
want of early opportunity. The scholar ap-
pealing to experience ia proudly told to close
his books, for what has America to do with ex-
perience2 AS il books were not the ever-burn-
ing lamps of accumulated wisdom. When l
hear that America may scorn experience be-
cause she is a law to herself, remember that
few years ago foreign observer came to the
city OF Washington, and said: 81 did not fully
comprehend your greatness until l saw your
Congress. Then I felt that if you could stand
that, you could stand anything, and I under
stood the saying that God takes care of chill
dren, drunken men and the United States"
The scholar is denounced as coward. Slavery
undermines the republic, but the clergy in
America are the educated class, and the church
makes itself the bulwark of slavery. Strong
drink Stays its tens of thousands-but the edu-
Gated class leaves the gospel of temperance to
be preached by the ignorant and the enthusiast,
as the English establishment left the preach
ing of regeneration to Methodist itinerants in
fields and barns Vast questions cast their
shadows upon the future; the just relations of
capital and labor; the distribution of land; the
towering power of corporate wealth; reform in
administrative methods; but the educated class,
says the critic, instead Of advancing to deal
with them promptly, wisely and courageously,
and settling them, as morning dissipates the
night, without a shock, leaves them to be kim
died to fury by demagogues, lifts panic cry
of communism and sinks paralyZed with ter
ror. Erasmus was the great pioneer of mod
ern scholarship But in the fierce contest of
the reform alton Luther dsnouneea- him as
timeserver and coward. With the same feel
ing Theodore Parker, the spiritual child of Luz
Their, asked of Goethe, ''Tell me, what did he
ever do for the cause of MANI" and when moth
ing remained for his country but the dread al
tentative OF slavery or civil war, Parker ex-
claimed sadly of the class to which he be-
longed, eff our educated men had done their
duty we should not now be in the CHASTITY con-
dition we bewail'
Gentlemen, we belong to the accused class
Does the educated class in America especially
deserve this condemn alton of political recrean-
cy and moral cowardice? Faithless scholars,
laggard colleges, bigoted pupils, there may be,
signal instances you may find of feebleness and
pusillanimity. But remember what Coleridge
said to Washington Aston: Never judge
work of art by its defects" Luther, impatient
of the milder spirit of Erasmus and Colet and
Sir Thomas More, might well have called them
our failures, because he was of their class, and
while they counseled moderation, his fiery and
impetuous soul sought to seize triple-crowned
error and drag it from its throne. But Luther
was no less of scholar, and stands equally
with them for the scholarly class, and the her.
oisn of educated men,
So on our side of the sea the educated body
of Puritan Massachusetts, Bay, the clergy and
the magistrates drove Roger Williams from
their border; Roger Williams, also scholar
and clergyman, and, with John Milton the
bright consummate flower of Puritanism. But
shall not he stand for the scholar rather than
Cotton Mather torturing terrified old women to
death as witches? appeal from the scholar
ship that silenced Mrs. Hutchinson, and hung
Mary Dyer, and pressed Giles Corey to death,
to the scholarship that argued with George Fox
and founded political commonwealth upon
soul-liberty. A year ago sat with my breth-
rem of the Phi Beta Kappa at Cambridge, and
seemed to catch echoes of Edmund Burke's re-
sounding impeachment Of Warren Hastings,
in the sparkling denunciatIon of the timidity
of American scholarship. But the scholarly
audience of the scholarly orator of the Phi Be
ia Kappa, with an exquisite sense of relief felt
every count of his singing Indictment recoil
upon himself. He was the glowing refutation
of his own argument. Gentleman, scholar, or
ator, bis is the courage that never quailed; his
the white plume of Navarro that flashed mete-
or-like in the front of battle; his the Amphion
music of an eloquence that levelled the more
than ThebaD walls of American slavery. At
once Judge. accuser and culprit, in the noble
record of his own life, he and his class are tri-
umphantly acquitted Must we count such il
lustrations as exceptions? But how can we do
SO when we see that the Reformation, the men,
tai and moral new birth of Christendom, was
the work of the educated class? The great po-
litical revolution in England was directed by
university men. John Ppm in the commons,
John Hampden in the field, John Milton in
the cabinet were all of them children of Ok
ford and Cambridge. In the next century,
like dawn, lurid but bright the French revo,
luton broke upon the world. But the only
hope of a wise direction of the elemental forces
that upheaved France vanished when the edu-
Gated leadership lost control, and Marat be-
came the genius and the type of that revolu-
ton. Ireland also bears witness. AS its apos-
tie and tutelar saint was scholar, its long de-
spar of Justice has found its voice and its hand
among educated Irishmen. Swift and Molly
neux, and Flood, and Grattan, and O'Connell;
Burke and Lecky, and Duffy; and the young
enthusiasts around Thomas Davis, who sang of
an Erin that never was and dreamed of an Ire
land that cannot be, were men OF the colleges
and schools, whose long persistence of tongue
and pen has foStered the life OF their country,
and gained for her all that she has won. For
modern Italy let Silvio Pellico, and Foresti,
and Maroncelli answer. 1t was italian educa-
ton which Austria sought to smother, and it
was not less Cavour than Garibsldi who gave
constitutional liberty to Italy. When Germany
sank at Jena under the heel of Napoleon, and
Stein-whom Napoleon hated but could not
appall-asked If national life survived, the an
swer rang from the universities, and from them
modern Germany came forth. With prophetic
impulse, Theodore Koerner called his poem
"The Tyre and the Sword" for, like the love
which changed the sea nymph into the harp,
the fervent patriotism of the educated youth
of Germany turned the poets Tyre into the SOL
dier's victorious sword. IN the splendor OF our
American day let us remember and honor our
bret hren first in every council, dead upon ev-
cry field Of freedom, from the Volga to the
Rhine, from John O'Groat's to the A6riatic,
who have steadily drawn Europe from out the
night Of despotism and have indicated for the
educated class the leadership of modern civili-
zation.
Here in America, where as yet there are no
ruins save those of ancient wrongs undoubted- |
ly New England has inspired and moulded our
national life. But if New England has led the
Union, what has led New England? Her sGhol-
arly class. Her educated men. And our Rog-
er Williams gave the key note. HE has |
preached and divulged new and dangerous |
opinions against the authority OF magistrates
said Massachusetts,sas she banished him. |
century later his dangerous opinions had cap |
tured Massachusetts. Young Sam Adams, TAX |
ing his masters degree at Cambridge, argued |
that it was lawful to resist the supreme magis- |
trate if the state could not otherwise be pre- |
served. He was college STRIPPING. But gwen |
years afterward, in 1850, the chief pulpit orator |
in New England, Jonathan Mayhem, preached |
in Boston the famous sermon which Thornton |
called the morning gun of the revolution, ap- |
plying to the political situation the principles
OF Roger Williams. The New England pulpit |
echoed and re-echoed that morning gun, arous- |
ing the country, and twenty five years later its |
warning broke into the rattle of musketry at |
Lexington and Concord, and the glorious |
thunder of Bunker Hill.
1t was son of Harvard, James Otis, who |
proposed the assembly of an American congress |
without asking the kings leave 1t was a son |
Of Yale, John NORM Scott, who declared that |
If taxation without representation were to be |
enforced the colonies ought to separate from
ohm Jay and Scott, and the Livingstons.
wnicn spoke tor the colony in response to the