The fact is that, under the new system, ``horse sense'' is especially called for to prevent a too extreme reaction from the evils which afflicted university instruction during my student days.
While it rejoices my heart to see the splendid courses in modern literature now offered at our larger universities, some of them arouse misgivings. Reflecting upon the shortness of human life and the vast mass of really GREAT literature, I see with regret courses offered dealing with the bubbles floating on the surface of sundry literatures--bubbles soon to break, some of them with ill odor.
I would as soon think of endowing restaurants to enable young men to appreciate caviar, or old Gorgonzola, or game of a peculiarly ``high'' character, as of establishing courses dealing with Villon, Baudelaire, Swinburne, and the like; and when I hear of second-rate critics summoned across the ocean to present to universities which have heard Emerson, Longfellow, Henry Reed, Lowell, Whipple, and Curtis the coagulated nastiness of Verlaine, Mallarm, and their compeers, I expect next to hear of courses introducing young men to the beauties of absinthe, Turkish cigarettes, and stimulants unspeakable.
Doubtless these things are all due to the ``oscillatory law of human progress,'' which professors of ``horse sense'' like my friend Joe Sheldon will gradually do away with.
As time went on, buildings of various sorts rose around the university grounds, and, almost without exception, as gifts from men attracted by the plan of the institution. At the annual commencement in 1869 was laid the cornerstone of an edifice devoted especially to lecture-rooms and museums of natural science. It was a noble gift by Mr.
John McGraw; and amid the cares and discouragements of that period it gave us new heart, and strengthened the institution especially on the scientific side. In order to do honor to this occasion, it was decided to invite leading men from all parts of the State, and, above all, to request the governor, Mr. Fenton, to lay the corner-stone.
But it was soon evident that his excellency's old fear of offending the sectarian schools still controlled him. He made excuse, and we then called on the Freemasons to take charge of the ceremony. They came in full regalia, bringing their own orators; and, on the appointed day, a great body of spectators was grouped about the foundations of the new building on the beautiful knoll in front of the upper quadrangle. It was an ideal afternoon in June, and the panorama before and around us was superb. Immediately below us, in front, lay the beautiful valley in which nestles the little city of Ithaca;beyond, on the left, was the vast amphitheater, nearly surrounded by hills and distant mountains; and on the right, Cayuga Lake, stretching northward for forty miles.
Few points in our country afford a nobler view of lake, mountain, hill, and valley. The speakers naturally expatiated in all the moods and tenses on the munificence of Mr. Cornell and Mr. McGraw; and when all was ended the great new bell, which had just been added to the university chime in the name of one most dear to me,--the largest bell then swinging in western New York, inscribed with the verse written for it by Lowell,--boomed grandly forth. As we came away I walked with Goldwin Smith, and noticed that he was convulsed with suppressed laughter.
On my asking him the cause, he answered: ``There is nothing more to be said; no one need ever praise the work of Mr. Cornell again.'' On my asking the professor what he meant, he asked me if I had not heard the last speech. I answered in the negative--that my mind was occupied with other things. He then quoted it substantially as follows: ``Fellow-citizens, when Mr. Cornell found himself rich beyond the dreams of avarice, did he give himself up to a life of inglorious ease? No, fellow-citizens; he founded the beautiful public library in yonder valley. But did he then retire to a life of luxury?
No, fellow-citizens; he came up to this height (and here came a great wave of the hand over the vast amphitheater below and around us) and he established this UNIVERSE!''
In reference to this occasion I may put on record Lowell's quatrain above referred to, which is cast upon the great clock-bell of the university. It runs as follows:
I call as fly the irrevocable hours Futile as air, or strong as fate to make Your lives of sand or granite. Awful powers, Even as men choose, they either give or take.
There was also cast upon it the following, from the Psalter version of Psalm xcii:
To tell of thy loving-kindness early in the morning: and of thy truth in the night season.
