America To-day, Observations and Reflections Part 2

Again, it has been my good fortune here in New York to spend an evening in a household which suggested a chapter of d.i.c.kens in his tenderest and most idyllic mood. It was the home of an actor and actress. Two daughters, of about eighteen and twenty, respectively, are on the stage, acting in their father's company; but the master of the house is a bright little boy of seven or eight, known as "the Commodore." As it happened, the mother of the family was away for the day; yet in the hundred affectionate references made to her by the father and daughters, not to me, but to each other, I read her character and influence more clearly, perhaps, than if she had been present in the flesh. A more simple, natural, unaffectedly beautiful "interior" no novelist could conceive. If the family tie is seriously relaxed in America, it seems an odd coincidence that I should in a single month have chanced upon two households where it is seen in notable perfection, to say nothing of many others in which it is at least as binding as in the average English home.

POSTSCRIPT.--The American university system is a very large subject, to which none but a specialist could do justice, and that in a volume, not a postscript. Nevertheless I should like slightly to supplement the above allusion to it. In the first place, let me quote from the _Spectator_ (February 12, 1898) the following pa.s.sage:--

"Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to the ideal of a true University than any of the other types.

Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened out into vast and splendidly endowed inst.i.tutions of universal learning, have a.s.similated some German features, and have combined successfully college routine and discipline with mature and advanced work. Harvard and Princeton were originally English colleges; now, without entirely abandoning the college system, they are great semi-German seats of learning. Johns Hopkins at Baltimore is purely of the German type, with no residence and only a few plain lecture rooms, library, and museums. Columbia, originally an old English college (its name was King's, changed to Columbia at the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in America, magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a school of political and legal science second only to that of Paris.

Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap glorified technical inst.i.tute, has grown into a great seat of culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-rooms, laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany, where nearly all American teachers of the present generation have been educated."

Some authorities, however, deplore the Germanising of American education. A Professor of Greek, himself trained in Germany, and recognised as one of the foremost of American scholars, confessed to me his deep dissatisfaction with the results achieved in his own teaching.

His students did good work on the scientific and philological side, but their relation to Greek literature as literature was not at all what he could desire. This bears out the remark which I heard another authority make, to the effect that American scholarship was entirely absorbed in the counting of accents, and the like mechanical details; while it seems to run counter to the above suggestion that the university system tends to raise the level of culture while lowering the standard of erudition.

At the same time there can be no doubt that the immense width of the field covered by university teaching in America must, in some measure, make for "superficial omniscience" rather than for concentration and research. The truth probably is that the system cuts both ways. The average student seeks and finds general culture in his university course, while the born specialist is enabled to go straight to the study he most affects and concentrate upon it.

To exemplify the lat.i.tude of choice offered to the American student, let me give a list of the "course" in English and Literature at Columbia University, New York, extracted from the Calendar for 1898-99:

RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION

COURSES

1. English Composition. Lectures, daily themes, and fortnightly essays. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours[F] first half-year.

2. English Composition. Essays, lectures, and discussions in regard to style. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours, second half-year.

3. English Composition, Advanced Course. Essays, lectures and consultations. Dr. ODELL. Two hours.

4. Elocution. Lectures and Exercises. Mr. PUTNAM. Two hours.

[5. The Art of English Versification. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.

_Not given in 1898-9_.]

6. Argumentative Composition. Lectures, briefs, essays, and oral discussions. Mr. BRODT. Three hours.

7. Seminar. The topics discussed in 1898-9 will be: Canons of rhetorical propriety (first half-year); the teaching of formal rhetoric in the secondary school (second half-year). Professor G.R. CARPENTER.

ENGLISH AND LITERATURE

COURSES

1 and 2. Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Grammar. Mr.

SEWARD. Two hours.

3. Anglo-Saxon Literature: Poetry and Prose. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.

4. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative Poetry. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.

[5. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Centuries. Professor PRICE. _Not given in 1898-9._]

[6. English Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Century, exclusive of Chaucer, and of the Fifteenth Century; Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9._]

7. English Language and Literature of the Sixteenth Century; Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Jackson. Two hours.

Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the language and literature of Early and Middle English periods: Course 6 was given in 1897-8.

[8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Investigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9. To be given in 1899-1900._]

[10. English Verse-Forms: Study of their historical development.

Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9._]

11. History of English Literature from 1789 to the death of Tennyson: Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three hours.

12. History of English Literature from 1660 to 1789: Lectures. Mr.

Kroeber. Three hours.

[13. History of English Literature from the birth of Shakespeare to 1660, with special attention to the origin of the drama in England and to the poems of Spenser and Milton. Professor Woodberry. _Not given in 1898-9._]

Courses 12 and 13 are given in alternate years.

[14. Pope: Language, Versification, and Poetical Method. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9._]

15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.

16. American Literature. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.

[17. The Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Dramatic, of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. Professor PRICE. _Not given in 1898-9._]

LITERATURE.

COURSES.

1. The History of Modern Fiction. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.

2. The Theory, History, and Practice of Criticism, with special attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination.

Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours.

[3. Epochs of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in 1898-9._]

4. Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.

[5. Moliere and Modern Comedy. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in 1898-9._]

[6. The Evolution of the Essay. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in 1898-9._]

7. Studies in Literature, mainly Critical: Selected Works, in Prose and Verse, ill.u.s.trating the Character and Development of Natural Literature. Lectures. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours.

8. Studies in Literature, mainly Historical: Narrative Poetry of the Middle Ages. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. Two hours.

[9. The Lyrical Poetry of the Middle Ages. Professor G.R.