Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1905-09-16

music. The American at Oxford can
very imperfectly recoup himself for
his ignorance of what everybody is
there presumed to know by illusions
to chemistry or analytic geometry,
which are as reconcile to the Briton
as the Briton's subconscious posses
sions are to him; for he is aware that
in these things he himself is but a
smatterer.
One hopes that this Rhodian over
states the case, and indeed it is plain
that there is a personal equation to be
allowed for. Surely he speaks only for
himself when he declares that the or
binary American collegian" is not
clear whether Titan and Murillo were
sculptors, painters, or musicians. But
the inferiority in general culture which
he manfully confesses for himself
might equally be confessed, doubtless,
by most of his colleagues on the Rho
des foundations. He tells, in effect,
the same story in 1905 that Emerson
told in 1S47, and independently arrives
at much the same explanation, the
want of access to books" for the stu
diously minded American boy, COM
pared with the liberty of browsing in
a library" which the English boy of the
class which finds it's way to Oxford
has enjoyed from childhood This is a
want that the present Rhodian, whom
one infers to have been brought up
among the ordinary surroundings of a
| New England village, has doubtless felt
more keenly that the ministers son"
that Emerson was to the sixth and
seventh generation. Assuredly there
| is, on either side of the water, no sat-
isfactory scholastic substitute possible
for the inestimable advantage of hav-
ing been brought up in "a reading fam.
| ily."
| All the same, it is by no means salts
factory to hear Emersons complaint
repeated, and with aggravation, after
almost sixty years. "They read better
than we do, and write better" And
this in spite of the fact that there is,
one may say, no express teaching of
English literature in England, where
knowledge of it is assumed as "by-
product" of home reading plus CLASH
cal culture, and great deal of express
teaching of it in the United States. One
may almost say that our inferiority
comes because of this latter fact. The
classics are taught in Great Britain as
matters of literary culture. In Amer
| lea, under the influence of Germany
they are increasing by coming to be
taught, as our Rhodian intimates, as
matters of Linguistic investigation"
And similarly, though not identically,
with English. When an American
professor, necessarily of German uni
versity training, assures mankind that
there is such thing" such a grew
some thing, las a science of English
literature" the American who has not
sold his birthright for mess of pot
tage, shudders at the announcement
and pities the professors pupils.
When a translation of a German pro-
Ifessor's lectures on the science of his
tory appears from an American press,
written in a jargon which indicates
that the translators have taken pains
to forget all the idiomatic English
they ever knew, one sees that Teuton-
IiZing has been carried very far. We
are worse off than in Emerson's time
insomuch as our lack then was of an
inculcation of the humanities, where
as the condition which now confronts
us is of an express incubation of
what may fairly be called the inhu-
manities. All which goes to show
that Cecil Rhodes may have builded
considerably better than he knew
Scribners.