New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-04-28
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

Mifhin d Co.
1t is greatly TO be regretted that the late James
Freeman Clarke unable TO carry his auto
biography further than the beginning of his pub
lie career, for the eighty pages OF it 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
most fascinating record AS it is the fragment
presents a 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 was man of great versatility and varied
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 lie tried his hand at 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
gies upon one occupation. The burning of some
chemical works in which he had invested all 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 Hubs all offered refugees and
homes TO their broken kin. To his grandfather
Freeman, the subject of this memoir owed happy
opening 10 his education, for this wise old man
had anticipated the most advanced modern theories
his first care 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
lence of this method may be seen in the fact that
before / was ten years old | had read a good
deal of Ovid, some odes of Horace, little of
Virgil, the gospel of Matthew in Greek and had
gone as far rs cubic equations in algebra.
also had read through the History of the United
States Hume's England RobertsOn's Scotland
Ferguson's and Gibbons Rome | can repeat
to-day, after sixty years many passages of Ovid
and at least three odes of Horace which com
mtted to memory before | was ten. Nor was /
aware that | doing q great deal, for the
study was made almost as entertaining as play"
Afterward he went to the Boston Latin School,
and later TO Harvard, where the methods of in
structiOn were as stupid his grandfathers had
been intelligent. Mr.. Clarke writes almost with
bitterness Of the Harvard rotations of his day |
There absolutely no help for the student in |
the plan pursued. The professors sat silently in |
their classrooms and the men rccited before them
No comment made by the teachers, no solu- |
ton Of any difficulty offered, no explanations |
were given. The professor merely marked the |
credits or dement's against each recitation, and |
there an end. 1t impossible that the students |
should get much good cut of so barren an educa-
tiOnal apparatus, and a matter of fact they
did not profit greatly by their make believe instruc
tiOn. 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 be entered the active world to NAV his
part for better. for worse, New England was in
state of ferment 1t a 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 theOlogi
cal forms and barriers, was moved by a vague
restleSsnesS and Quickening faith in the approach
of some great psychical reform, some religious
revolution which TO eXalt and purify the
community, bring God nearer and make of Chris
tianty a rule of daily life and not a thing of rites
and ceremonies merely or mainly This also was
the time when the body polite 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.
but visionary speculations issued the notable
Brook Farm fasco 1t epoch of grand
talking and enthusiastic correspondence, when the
Channings and Emerson and Margaret Fuller and
George Ripley and their fellows labOrcd together
or apart with various plans but a single end in
view. From the first, however, James Freeman
Clarke manifested an unitncss for the role of en-
thusast Even at college the lad had become re-
marked for a certain judicial habit of mind His
intellect constituted that it a necessity
with him 10 look at both sides of every question.
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
equability of great service to him in after life yet
not invariably. In his relations to the Anti
bo how Ntido,
fiuence had he been less balanced in his views
and in this instance a balanced view was not the
truest or the most phiosophic one.
His first work in the pulpit done at Louis
vile, 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 liberal than Boston on the
slavery question. The Kentuckians frankly ad-
mitted that it was an evil, and that it ought to
be put an end TO. IL is true that this breadth Of
view did not endure long. Clarke, during his
residence in slave State, learned TO hate slavery,
but he could not see that the Shareholders were
implicated in the sin and wrong which they main
tanned and upon which they subssted. Clarke
was never member of the Ant-Savery Society,
and he was not a very scrviceablc friend to the
cause-thouqh Mr.. Hale thinks otherwise-for the
reason that his shrinking from what lie thought
excess or one-sdedness impaired TO his words and
views a tolerance which in the circumstances was
most unreasonable He at first regarded CARR
son. for example, very much as PhlllStlne Boston
did; and though he changed lis opinion later, he
Fever approved of the methods whereby the North
ern conscience was At length awakened. We
think it certain that the Nation would have been
all slave or the Union would have been lgnobly
dissolved if the North h had no cOunsellors but
those who stood for compromise and the placation
of the aggressive South. The politicians expert
mented on that line TO the verge OF national ruin
Their patchwork was flung aside and the situation
was firmly faced at last, only because the Anti