CORRESPONDENCE.
IMPRESSIONS OF AN AMERICAN STUDENT AT CAMBRIDGE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTATOR:)
SIE,—" Gods of a cloudy Olympus" ; " antiquarians " of the kind pilloried by Milton as among the hinderers of reforma- tion; these and similar expressions suggest themselves to an American at the thought of Oxford or Cambridge. But familiarity enlightens as often as it breeds contempt; and the New Yorker at Cambridge is relieved to find these terms, used sometimes in ridicule and even in pity, fade into the inspiring word "tradition." Ile is struck with three things in particular on coming into residence at Cambridge. Firstly, the small number of things at which to be astonished; secondly, the great comparative importance of the physical and moral side as compared with the intellectual; thirdly, the emblems of conservatism clinging to the student in the forms of cap and gown and surplice as the old skin clings about a snake striving for emancipation. Impelled by the strangeness of things he appreciates, perhaps he overestimates the grandeur of the edifices rearing themselves on all sides, silent but eloquent protests against mediocrity. "The old order changeth, yielding place to new," yet the old does not all die, and breathes into the new a continually sweet perfume. For the architecture the American can have only veneration. But in his further criticisms the cap and gown and other various actualities, reminding him of all that hitherto he had considered obsolete, stir up in his mind the lost knowledge of natural history which told him that within the blubber of the whale are to be found miniature feet now useless tokens of a former utility. And not these things alone draw his attention. Even as be writes the curfew tolls, and he realises that he is, indeed, in the land of Stoke Pogis and the Avon. We have heard the story of the American Volunteer Captain who, having marched his company up to a fence, and being ignorant of military words of command, ordered his men to break away and when they re-formed to do so on the other side of the fence. The element of inexperience and the brand of newness condemn many things American in the eyes of an Englishman. As westward the course of Empire sweeps the occasional sneer of the British Tory is passed on by the Blue-stocking of Bostva to the barbarous inhabitants of the wild and woolly West who are so benighted as to object to crucifixion on a cross of gold. The American can see no wise reason in the College chapel. And as regards work : "What will you demand in your worship of intellect?" breaks in the Trinity man; "would you have us stamp upon a man's soul the page of a book and send Lim to destruction ? " and he quotes Tammany and Alger, and the American quotes Old Sarum and the Crimean War, and they continue arm-in-arm along the K.P. Coming into close contact with young Englishmen, their American cousin has revealed to him the reason of England's greatness. He learns why the Empire of to-day surpasses its Roman predecessor; and he questions himself as to the possibility of lost illusions. It was an American who said that men of character are the conscience of the world, and the American of this generation perceives that character must be founded upon stability. "John Bull, he is a barbarian," says the Frenchman, and the American, from his exterior view- point, knows the reason of that opinion. But at the same time he learns that where there is apparent bluntness there may be real courtesy ; that where there is little cuteness there may be wit; that when each stands still the whole may yet advance. And he sighs as he observes that the hand of Providence has cast, as it were, a spell upon the revered University slumbering under the wheels of fate. If he Las already studied at Geneva and in Paris, he thinks of the absence in the one of all that distinguishes Cambridge, and the melancholy fever of the other. He adheres to his old principles while aiming conscientiously at impartiality, till he finds himself floundering in a quicksand of compromise ; and where he has not learned to approve he has at least learned not too quickly to condemn, and mellowed by continual discoveries, he quotes: "I am one with my kind. I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd," yet with these mental reservations, founded on no absence of love and respect for Continentals, that his kind are particularly Anglo-Saxons and that his fate is an unlimited one. He is censured for his deportment at home toward an inferior race, yet he finds at Cambridge the counterpart of this in a case less justified. But he finds a democracy not less perfect than that which claims his allegiance. Ile is surprised that a Freshman is permitted to appreciate the Runaway Girl from whatever seat he chooses to pay for. Not of so reflective a nature as his English fellow-student, he is less sensitive of his own dignity. Claiming no class distinction, yet seekiiig con- genial companions, he devotes himself unfettered to amuse- ment and pursues learning in the absence of wisdom. He has seen John Bull on the Continent, and the chances are that he has not been edified; but now, probably, he has penetrated to the Holy of Holies and has found no golden calf, but the living germ of an Empire character. Yet as he turns at last westward to Brook Farm or to Dutcher's Cooly he regrets that he was still unable to brush that dust from the Professor's crown He has heard so much of the riches of his own
gown.
countrymen that he looks for poverty in England, but a self- supporting scholar is unknown, and when he studies the
luxurious habits of many of his companions he meditates on the next motion for debate, a declaration that the English nation shows signs of degeneration. And in his summing up he con- cludes that leisure is essential, and that the destiny of his own energetic and tireless nation has not yet begun to manifest itself. The American claims no omniscience for his own people, but he perceives a blindness in foreign ignorance. Himself imaginative, he finds, or seems to find, no great difficulty in penetrating the three thousand miles of darkness which obscure Europe beyond the Atlantic. We are new, but our substance is old; we, too, have tradition as glorious to us as these old walls ; we have our Charter oak no less cherished than the most historic. Our battlefields have echoed to the tramp of millions. Our fathers fell at Antietam and at King's Mountain. All things are comparative. For us the voices of national heroes "echo down the corridors of time," and beyond our personal history opens a vista which yields to view a common tradition and an origin none the less ours because obstructed by a mighty severance.—I am, Sir, &c., T. S. j.
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