James Kendall Hosmer

“ The most impressive part of the spectacle was the defunct giantess, whose wide-spreading draperies and head-gear, as Brooks came down with a well-studied crash, took up so much of the floor that the rest of us had no room left to die in dignity. The piece was so much of a success that we performed it again at the house of Theodore Lyman, in Brookline,—and still again, at Chickering Hall in Boston.
Though Brooks could frolic upon occasion, his mood in his student days was prevailingly grave, and as he matured, warmed, and deepened into earnest religious conviction. ”

“ I shall not dispute here whether or not he chose wisely; much less, how far a lame outcome at Antioch was due to his human limitations, and how far to the inevitable conditions. He was a potent and unselfish striver for the betterment of men, and his words and example still remain an inspiration.
My father in these years was a trustee of Antioch College, and this brought our household into touch with the illustrious figure of whom all men spoke. My memory holds more than a film of him, rather a vivid picture, his stately height dominating my boyish inches, as I stood in his presence. ”

“ Between are a score or more of soldiers of lesser note, only soldiers, spurred and sabre-girt,—except at the very back; and there, just where the tail of Frederick's horse droops over, stand—whom think you?—no others than Leasing, critic and poet, most gifted and famous; and Kant, peer of Plato and Bacon, one of the most gifted brains of all time. Just standing room for them among the hoofs and uniforms at the tail of Frederick's horse! Every third man one met in Berlin was a soldier off duty. Batteries of steel guns rolled by at any time, obedient to their bugles. ”

“ In the cathedral of Speyer stand the statues of the mighty German Kaisers, who six hundred years ago wore the purple, and, after their wild battle with the elements of disorder about them, were buried at last in its crypts. They are majestic figures for the most part, idealised by the sculptor, and yet probably not far beyond nature; for the imperial dignity was not hereditary, but given to the man chosen for it, and the choice was often a worthy one. They were leaders in character as well as station, and it is right to give their images the bearing of men strong in war and council. ”

“ Often our young American students in Germany take to the Schläger as gracefully and naturally as game-cocks to spurs. The most noted duellist at one of the universities that winter was a burly young Westerner, who had things at first all his own way. A still burlier Prussian from Tübingen, however, appeared at last, and so carved our valiant borderer's face, that thereafter with its criss-cross scars it looked like a well-frequented skating-ground. Football, too, in America probably kills and maims more in a year than all the German duels. ”

“ Each day at noon, through the roar of the streets, swelled the finest martial music; first a grand sound of trumpets, then a deafening roll from a score of brazen drums. A heavy detachment of infantry wheeled out from some barracks, ranks of strong brown-haired young men stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk, neat in every thread and accoutrement, with the German gift for music all, as the stride told with which they beat out upon the pavement the rhythm of the march, dropping sections at intervals to do the unbroken guard duty at the various posts. ”

“ The historians of America are a goodly company, scarcely less worthy than the champions whose deeds they have chronicled. With most men who, during the last seventy-five years, have written history in America, I have had contact, sometimes a mere glimpse, sometimes intimacy. Washington Irving and Prescott I never saw, though as to the latter I have just been making him responsible to some extent for my own little proclivity, Parkman, I only saw sitting with his handsome Grecian face relieved against a dignified background as he sat on the stage among the Corporation of Harvard University. ”

“ The coffin of Lowell rested for a moment on the grass under its wreaths, President Eliot and Holmes walked side by side; I have a distinct image of the countenance of Holmes as they came slowly out. It was no longer a young face but it had all the old vivacity and even at the moment was cheerful rather than serious; it had not, however, the cheerfulness of a man who looks lightly on life, but that of one whose philosophy enables him to conquer sorrow and look beyond, the face of a man who might write a triumphant hymn even in an atmosphere of death. ”

“ In his thought any limitation of the sympathies within the comparatively narrow bounds of one country was a vice rather than a virtue, and no nation was worthy to endure which did not stand for the good of the world at large; into love for all humanity narrower affections should emerge. He invited me to spend some days at the Grange at Toronto in his beautiful home, but circumstances made it impossible. I am glad to have seen Goldwin Smith at Niagara; that majestic environment befitted the subduing stateliness of his presence, his intellect, power, and elevation of view. ”

“ It was the acme of martial splendour.
"But how do you bear it all?" you say to your Prussian friend, with whom you stand looking on at the base of Billow's statue. "Is not this enormous preparation for bloodshed something dreadful? Then the tax on the country to support it all, the withdrawing of such a multitude from the employments of peace." Your friend, who had been a soldier himself, would answer: "We bear it because we must. It is the price of our existence, and we have got used to it; and, after all, with the hardship come great benefits. ”

“ Study the schools, and there was something to call up the soldier. Study the church, and even there was a burly polemic quality which you can trace back from to-day to the time when the Prussian bishops were fighting knights. Study the people in their quietest moods, in their homes, among their recreations, indeed, among the graves of those they honour as the greatest heroes, and you found the same overhanging shadow of war. ”

“ But that through eight generations there has been in the hearts of the best men, a constant all-absorbing devotion to the institution, is a thing for America unique, and which cannot be taken away. How stimulating is this to a noble loyalty in these later generations! The old college is a thing to be watchfully and tenderly shielded. As Alexander told me the story, I felt in his manner and intonation that the three centuries of devotedness had had great influence with him. As John Harvard had been the first of the liberal givers, so he was the last, and I suppose the greatest. ”

“ The world was beautiful in the old days and human life was vivid. Ought we to deny to all this a warm and graphic setting forth? If we do we shall do it to our cost. Is it the proper attitude of the historian simply to write, without thought of anything so irrelevant as a reader? Bancroft was a pioneer, breaking the way ponderously perhaps, but he delved faithfully. If the orotund rolls too sonorously in his periods it was an excess in which his age upheld him. He was a good path-breaker and ought not to be lightly esteemed by those who now go to and fro with ease through the roads he opened. ”

“ The impression of the greatness of a mountain we get powerfully if the eye can measure it from the waif of seaweed at low tide up to the snow-cap of the summit. At this and similar jokes the boy Simon Newcomb connived, as he moved in our crowd. They were the waifs at low tide from which his towering mind rose to the measuring of the courses of the stars. He came among us as a student of the Lawrence scientific school, muscular and heavy-shouldered from work on shore and at the oar in Nova Scotia. ”

“ No lovelier form was ever sculptured than that of the beautiful Queen Louisa of Prussia, as she lies in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, carved by Rauch, asleep on the tomb in white purity. To the eye, our Hero's tomb was just such a block of spotless marble seen against a background of black, with just such a fair figure recumbent upon it, whose palms and lids and draping the chisel of an artist seemed to have folded and closed and hung,—all idealised again by the magic of the magnesium-light. ”

“ When the Franco-Prussian War broke out the world felt that Germany had the hardest of nuts to crack and in many a mind the forecast was that France would be the victor, but even to my limited judgment the shortcomings of the French troops were plain. They were inferior in physique, lacking in trimness and even in cleanliness, and imperfectly disciplined. I wondered if the rather slovenly ill-trained battalions of small pale men could stand up against the prompt rigid alignment of the broad-shouldered six-footers I had seen manoeuvring on the other side of the Rhine. ”

“ The small units were forever unsympathetic and inharmonious, jealous over a petty "balance of power" and always liable to war. The disease which the face of the map suggested to the boy's imagination was indeed a real one, inveterate, deep-seated, and prostrating to all that is best in human nature. For a few years, before the adoption of the Constitution, America seemed likely to fall a prey to it, each of the thirteen States standing aloof on its own little dignity in a bond scarcely more than nominal, of the weakest and coolest. ”

“ Nothing so paralyses a soldier as want of confidence in the leadership and these poor fellows had lost that. The regiments passed on in turn, the sunlight glittering on their arms. Through the vista of the boulevard the eagles of the Second Empire rose above, the grave colonels were conspicuous at the head, and the drum-beats, choked by the towering buildings, sounded a melancholy muffled march that was befitting. It was the scene pictured by Détaille in Le Régiment quì Passe. ”

“ As the cortège paused for a moment, I stood at the side of the gun-carriage which bore the coffin wrapped in the flag, and paid my tribute to this good man and great citizen who had played his part well.
A controversy, which has now died away, used to be waged during and soon after the Civil War as to whether West Point had really vindicated a place for itself. Many an American, full of that over-confidence which besets us, maintained that a man could become a good soldier by a turn of the hand as it were. ”

“ I had followed the course of his fame, and felt happy that I had once known him. Returning to my lodgings, during a sojourn in Washington, I was told I had had a visitor, a man well on in years, plain in attire, and rugged-faced. The card he left bore the name "Simon Newcomb." I sought him out at once, and have rarely felt more honoured than that my old friend, learning casually of my whereabouts, had felt the impulse to find me and renew our former intercourse. After a half-century the boy was still discernible in the aging man. ”

“ The injustice, hoary from antiquity, not recognised as injustice until within a generation or two, might wait a generation or two longer before we dealt with it. Let the evil be endured a while that the greater evil might not come. I neither defend nor denounce him. I am now only remembering; and what a stately and solemn image it is to remember!
* * * * *
William H. Seward, unlike Webster, had the handicap of an unimpressive exterior, nor had his voice the profound and conquering note which is so potent an ally of the mind in subduing men. ”

“ Every able-bodied young Prussian must serve as a soldier, be he noble or low-born, rich or poor. If he cannot read or write, he must learn. He must be punctual, neat, temperate, and so gets valuable habits. His body is trained to be strong and supple. Shoemaker and banker's son, count, tailor, and farmer march together, and community of feeling comes about. The great traditions of Prussian history are the atmosphere they breathe, and they become patriotic. The soldier must put off marrying, perhaps half forget his trade, and come into life poor ”

“ The genius of Racine glows finely in Esther. In the choruses, the inspirations of the Hebrew prophets, framed as it were in a Greek mould, give impressive relief to the dialogue, as in Sophocles and Aeschylus. It was played several times, and no favour was more envied at the Court than an invitation to the representations. The literature of the time has many allusions to them. The splendid world, in all its lace and powder, crowded to the quiet convent. The great soldiers, the wits, the beautiful women were all there. The king and Madame de Maintenon sat in stiff dignity in the foreground. ”