New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-04-27
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

biography further than the beginning OF ms pup
lie career, for the eighty pages OF 1t which Mr.
Hale is alone able TO publish are so interesting
that it is evident the chronicle, if completed to
within few years Of his death, would have been
q most fascinating record. AS it is the fragment
presents very attractive sketch of his childhood,
youth and early manhood. His first years were
passed under fortunate conditions, notwithstanding
the failure Of his father in business. The elder
Clarke q man of great versatility and Varled
knowledge, but lacked persistence. His forte
was organization and invention, but having struck
out new leads he lost interest in the subject OF
his Investigations and was impatient TO be at some
thing else. He tried his hand ut many things,
and succeeded in the beginning we'll enough to
make it plain that he could easily have amassed
wealth had he been able to concentrate his ener-
gies upon one occupation. The burning of some
chemical works in which he had invested ell he
possessed, at the moment when the insurance had
expired, completed his ruin. But the Massa
chusetts family had many branches, and the Free
MANS Clarkes and Hulls all offered refugees and
homes TO their broken kin. To his grandfather.
Freeman, the subject of this memoir owed happy
opening to his education, for this wise old man
had anticipated the most advanced modern theories
of education, and il teaching his grandchildren
his first care was to interest them in the subjects
of their study
Until he was ten years old; James Freeman
Clarke remained under this intelligent teacher and
TO show what he gained, he says: The excel
Ience of this method may be seen in the fact that
before l was ten years old / had read a good
deal of Ovid odes of Horace little of
Virgil, the gospel of Matthew in Greek, and had
gone as far as cubic equations IN algebra. |
also had read through the History of the United
States Hume's England Robertsons Scotland
Fergusons and Gibbons Rome l repeat
to-day, after sixty years. many passages of Ovid
md at least three odeS of Horace which | COM
mitted to memory before was ten. Nor was |
hware that | was doing a great deal, for the
Study made almost entertaining as play"
Afterward he went to the Boston Latin School,
and later TO Harvard, where the methods of in
struction were stupid rs his grandfather'S had
been intelligent. Mr.. Clarke writes almost with
bitterness of the Harvard rotations Of his day:
There was absolutely no help for the student in
the plan pursued. The professors sat silently in
their classrOOms and the rccited before them.
No comment made by the teachers, solu-
ton of any difficulty offered, explanations
were given The professor merely marked the
credits dement's against each recitation, and
there end 1t was impossible that the students
Should get much good out OF so barren an educa-
tional apparatus, and q matter of fact they
did not profit greatly by their maiebelieve instruc
ton. Young Clarke went through his course in the
Divinity School, however, and if he took no sensi-
BILE gain from the recitatiOns he made valuable
friendships and prepared himself unconsciously
for the business of his life.
When he entered the active world to play his
part for better for worse, New-England was in a
state of fement. 1t was period when all young
New-England, retaining the strong religious bent
it had imbibed with its mothers milk, but rebel
ling against the old, rigid, dogmatic and theooei |
cal forms and barriers moved by a vague
foi in tba
bf some great psychical reform, religious
revolution which was to eXalt and purify the
community, bring God nearer and make of Chris
tianity rule of daily life and thing of rites
and ceremonies merely mainly. This also was
the time when the body polite was TO be raised
and amended when selfish seeking for wealth
was TO die out, and some form of communism,
characterized by plain living and high thinking,
was TO be generally adopted Out Of these gen
erous but visionary speculaiOns issued the notable
Brook Farm fasco. 1t was an epoch of grand
talking and enthusiastic correspondence, when the
Channings and Emerson and Margaret Fuller and
George Ripley and their fellows labOred together
or apart, with various plans but single end in
view. From the first, however, James Freeman
Clarke manifested an untness for the role of en-
thusiast. Even at college the lad had become re-
marked for q certain judicial habit of mind His
Intellect constituted that it was o necessity
Now, whoever does this cannot become an en-
thusiast or strong partisan, for the habit i'm
plies constant recognition of the relatively of
truth James Freeman Clarke found his mental
equabity of great service 10 him in after life yet
not invariably. In his relations TO the Anti
Slavery contest he would have exercised wider in
fuence had he been less balanced in his views
and in this instance balanced view was not the
truest or the most philOsophic one.
His first work in the pulpit was done at Louis
willie. Ky. Here he stayed seven years, moving
thence TO Boston, where he organized the Church
of the Disciples with which he was TO be associ-
ated during the rest of his life. At that time
Louisville was more liberal than Boston on the
slavery question. The Kcntuckians frankly adj
mitted that it evil, and that 1t ought to
be put an end to- 1t is true that this breadth OF
view did not endure long. Clarke, during his
residence in a slave State, learned TO hate slavery
but he could not see that the Shareholders were
implicatod in the sin and wrong which they main
tainea and upon which they subslsted. Clarke
was never q member of the Anti-Slavery Society,
opd no was not a very serviceable friend TO the
eause-though Mr.. Hale thinks Otherwise-for the
reason that his shrinking from what he thought
excess or one-sdedneSS impaired to his words ana
views a tolerance which in the circumstances was
most unreasonable. He at first regarded OarrI-
SON. for example, very much as Fhlllsthe DoS'oH
did: and though he changed lis opinion later ne
never approved of the methods whereby the North-
ern conscience was at length awakened we
,b;pL il certain that the Nation would have been
all slave or the Union would have been l5nooV
dissolved if tho North had had no councillors but
those who stood for compromise and the phcation
NJ the AGGRESSIVE South. The politicians expert
mented ON that lire to the verge of national rum
Their patchwork was flung aside and the situation
,yos firmly faced at last, only because the Anti
Slavery Society had done its work well and thor-
oughly. and had compelled the North to realize
the true nature Of the problem
Personally, James Freeman Clarke was power