The morning call., 1894-10-10
LAST OF THE CAMBRIDGE SET.


Thirty-seven years ago, in the CHEEKY
study Of the old manse at Concord, Mass,
four of the brightest men 10 New England.
Longfelow, Lowell, Oliver Wendell
Holmes and Emerson. met to found the
atlantic Monthly. They presently secured
the cooperation of Louis Agassz, Whit
tier. Tboreau, Fields. Charles Eliot Norton.
and others. With this help they created
a periodical which, though it never al
tanned the fame or made the money real
lied by the great New York monthlies, did
more to form American opinion than any
magazine ever pu blished in this country.
All these opinion-makers have been
gathered in except Charles Eliot Norton,
who is a professor at Harvard aud an in
dustrous student of American history.
Agassiz died in 1873. Emerson and Long
fellow 10 1882, Lowell in 1891, Whittier in
1892, and now Holmes has joined his
friends. The coterie consisted of men who
cannot easily be replaced. We read in
books of memoirs of coffee-hoHses in Lon-
don at which wits and statesmen and ar
lists of the last century used to assemble
to ban dv jokes or exchange views on pub
lie affairs. Every now and then some in
discreet clubman furnishes the public with
peep into similar gatherings to-day.
But there are few parallels to the sympo-
SUM in the old manse at Concord unless it
be at the meetings of the young men who
founded the Edinburgh ReUieop in an attic
at Edinburgh and cultivated literature on
little oatmeal, as sydney Smith said, or
at the gatherings of young France in NJ.
Theirs rooms, when Victor Hugo, Geraud
de Nerviile and Theophile Gautier threw
down the gauntlet to the academy on be-
half of The romantic school Of letters.
The Cambridge set soon had work cut
out for them such as only minds of the elite
can perform. The slavery quarrel was
bursting forth. In their secret souls men
differed on the wisdom of the institution
and on the possibility of its extirpation.
but all men of responsibility and social
standing were agreed that abolitionists
were low fellows. To be an abolitionist
was to forfeit ones claims to social recog-
milton. The respect due to an ex-Presi-
dent did not prevent the kd-glove ele-
ment on Beacon street from cutting John
Quincy Adams in his old age. Webster
and Everett, whose instincts were sound,
did not dare to express them for fear Of
social ostracism.
Ii seemed to the young men who gathered
round the apostle of transcenden talism
that it would be a useful and an honor
able task in life to break down this preju-
dice and to educate Boston to realize that
Garrison was not fraud, nor Wendell
Phillips a crank. To that task they de-
voted their wits. and they bestowed them
with such infinite tact that the pupils
they were teaching hardly knew they
were at school. The members Of the CO.
terie were not all alike in mental fiber or
temper. Whittier, Thoreau and Long
fellow were uncom promising foes of the
wrong and liberated their souls in season
and sometimes out Of season, like Garrison
himself Lowell and Holmes were more
diplomatic. They shocked no mans
prejudices. but while they scorned the
subterfuges of the trimmers they made
converts, while some of their allies only
made enemies.
1t was largely due to the apostolic work
of the Cam bridge set that Boston was
made ready for the war when it came, and
that so siff-necked Democrat as Ben
Butler was ready TO take the field, and to
discover under the black skin of darky
an article cOntraband OF war. To have &C
complished such a conversion in a COM
munity in which the dough-face element
preponderated 10 1856 was glory enough
for any set of men.
When Mr. Lowell was sent to England
as United States Minister he became the
pet of the British aristocracy, mainly be-
cause he more than any other writer had
satirized and ridiculed the false position
they took during the war. John Bull is
often stupid, but be is manly fellow, and
he gave hearty handgrasp to the Yankee
who had driven shaft after shalt through
his side and turned the weapon round in
the wound. There is humor in him, 90.
He could laugh his resounding British
laugh when he recalled Lowell's lines:
If turn mad dogs loose, John,
On your front parlor stairs,
Would 1t just meet your vsws. John,
To wait and sue their heirs?
Old Uncle Sam. says he II guess,
only guess" says he,
THAT if Yattel on his toes fell,
'Twould kind o. rifle j. B.,
Az vel lac nd mo