within a year, a most estimable bishop, who for forty years has been doing an apostle's work just south of the Ohio, who asked, in all simplicity, how geologists know that the world is more than six thousand years old, and asked again, when General Wadsworth's then recent death was mentioned, "Was that the poet Wordsworth, sir?" Of course it is the praise of these men that, despite their limitations, they have made themselves ministers of life to that people. The labors of such as these have christianized those semi-barbarous communities, and prepared the way for the coming civilization. But their field was the camp-meeting, not the college; and, as they begin their regenerating work there by bringing the sinner "under conviction of sin," they need now the presence of true culture and scholarship to beget, in these many colleges, the conviction of ignorance. The professors at Harvard College teach not only there, but in every college and High School in New England as well, stimulating all by the high standard of Cambridge. But, in the West, there is a fatal disparity between the grade of the colleges and that of the public schools. The schools being free, while the colleges are sectarian, they take rank much more nearly with kindred institutions here, and find themselves kept down by the colleges, rather than lifted up. It is impossible that the High Schools in all these rapidly multiplying cities should import their teachers from New England, and equally impossible for them to be supplied from Western colleges without being degraded. Hence, as Mr. Mann had furnished, in his Massachusetts work, ideas and examples for all the common schools in our country, he needed to do a similar service for the Western colleges, that the schools might do their work unhindered. He had thus a multiform purpose and a manifold influence there. And he exiled himself to the West with the hope of planting there in the heart of the country, hard by the fountains of future political power, an institution which should not only accord to woman her right to an equal share in the world's educational beneficence, but should welcome those of every faith and color; should work as the instrument, not of a - sect, but of a civilization; should send out from its preparatory department teachers trained as the Normal Schools of Massachusetts train them; should maintain, in the college proper, a standard of scholarship then unknown at the West; and, more than all, should watch with all its eyes, and mould with all its influences, the moral life of its pupils, making virtue no subordinate thing, but the one central object of the teacher's endeavor; thus showing an example seen nowhere else on earth. This was the great characteristic of Antioch College. Horace Mann would not increase the intellectual power of an immoral youth. It seemed to him like arming a madman. He required a quick conscience, a consecrated will, from every pupil of his charge. He tolerated neither vice nor moral indifference. And he felt it far more his duty to labor and watch for a pupil's moral development than to educe mental power, or bestow scholarly accomplishment. The college took indeed a foremost place in scholarship in the West. Taking thither New-England teachers, methods, and standards, testing every step by severe written examinations, it maintained, under both its presidents, a grade surprisingly high. The want of previous training kept most of its students in the preparatory department; but the ripe age and mental maturity of those who entered college, enabled them to make attainments in many branches beyond those reached by the younger pupils of Eastern institutions. This maturity of judgment and character is evinced by that extract from one of the Commencement parts, given at page 454 of the Life; as well as by a paper from the same pen, and by another written by one of the lady pupils, published at New Haven, in the "University Quarterly" for January and April, 1860. But all that was subordinate, in Mr. Mann's thought, to the vital phenomena, the moral purpose and aspiration of his pupils. Not the increase of power, but the consecration of it, was dearest to his heart. No prioress ever watched her novices with more prayerful vigils. His greatest joy was in their well-doing; his most mortifying pain, in their unworthiness. Who that ever witnessed it can forget the impressiveness of the scene, or his attitude and expression, so beni n and fatherly, when, at the close of morning prayers, before dismissing them to their daily toil, he paused, while the hush of expectation made the chapel breathless, and gave some little anecdote or incident sure to sink deep into those hearts, stamping ineffaceably there its lesson of the blessedness of obedience, the beauty of holiness? As he spoke, the cloak he wore seemed like a Roman toga round him; and he looked the incarnation of manliness, like a senator of Rome's best days. And who could make folly so ridiculous, or vice so hateful, as he? Small chance was there to make a college hero of the offender once subjected to his excoriation. Though the power of his sarcasm was so tremendous, and though the smoking of a cigar was a grave offence in his eyes, it was rare that any popular re-action in the school interposed itself to lighten his stroke. For his pupils always perceived the kindly purpose, the fatherly affection and care, which prompted him. They felt that he suffered more than the offender. They got no impression of undue severity or vindictiveness. If he seemed to them to magnify small offences, they knew that he was resisting the beginnings of evil, as the watchman on the levee does not wait till a district is devastated, but assails the first percolation of the flood through its sandy wall. It is to be noted, in this connection, that what little college vice he had to deal with (that which he would call "unsanctified fun," " where it isn't fun for both sides,") was the infection, direct or indirect, of other schools. Boys from other Western colleges, where rowdyism is part of" college life," or from NewEngland academies, into which our college vice strikes down, felt themselves defrauded of their rights, and robbed of some proper scholastic enjoyment, if forbidden to inundate the beds of sleeping freshmen, or to play Samson with the college gates. But Mr. Mann's ridicule made it expensive fun: his wit was irresistible, and his severe rebuke was like one's vision of the day of judgment. But the general impression of his ministry there was one of cheerfulness and joy. His delight was to show the folly of vice, that the offender is more fool than knave; and some witty anecdote or pithy saying, easily kept in memory, was his favorite weapon. He felt safe, when vice was made ridiculous. Nor was any thing more gratifying to him, than to make the offender convict or punish himself. On one occasion, a student, dissatisfied with the diet in college commons, unceremoniously tossed a certain dish out of the window. When summoned to Mr. Mann's house, he was taken to the table, and led to praise the corresponding article there; but what was his confusion on being told, that this was the very dish he before condemned, the aggrieved steward having sent it over for the president's inspection! Mr. Mann's mirthfulness, and love of fun, - traits quite lost sight of by those who picture him with the frown of contest on his face,-made sunshine about him at home, in the facultymeeting, in his recitation-room. His laugh was like that of a child. His fund of witty or humorous stories seemed inexhaustible. His enjoyment of nature's sights and sounds was of primitive freshness. His resilient temperament retained all its spring to the last, manifesting "vitality enough to make a college thrive in Sahara," as Starr King well says, recognizing a nature as sunshiny as his own, albeit with an added grandeur of storm. Never were such severity of moral judgment, and intensity of personal endeavor, brightened by such incessant cheerfulness. The cloud that seemed to many so grim and menacing, lighted only by fitful bolts, had another side, where the illuminating sunshine poured brilliance, warmth, and softness, over all its billowy breadth and height. Mr. Mann drew to himself the most enthusiastic and devoted love of his pupils. His influence at Antioch was like that of Arnold at Rugby. It was not scholastic, nor through judicious regulations. It was personal. He became himself the inspiration of those gathered before him. This may not have been his wish. He felt, with many to-day, that we must lean on persons less, and principles more. He strove to impress the great lessons of law, reward, retribution. But his pupils, following a true instinct, perhaps building better than they knew, felt that love and reverence - the great forces in life-regard not principles but persons, care for law only as it reveals the law-giver, the source of power; and so, while heeding his exhortation, were influenced far more by his personal presence, which moulded their carriage, their tones, their spirits, stamping their innermost being with his image. They clung not to his teaching, but to him: remembered his principles only as he incarnated and illustrated them; and thus gave him that highest ministry of those who engraft others with their own life. But is not this the highest ministry of all? Life is one great web of personal relations. Prin ciples guide, but they cannot impel. Hope and fear cannot do the work of love and reverence. The latter look only toward persons: they contemplate recognition and response; and they are the great forces without which we toil in vain to influence human nature for good. "It takes a great-souled man to move the masses, even to a cleaner sty." And what do we care for law, for the power of God, save, at the prompting of a self-interest more or less refined, to keep ourselves in or out of the path in which his power is moving? We hunger for the great Personality which stands back of law, the Inspirer of life, the object of our mightiest affections. Mr. Mann was of a supremely religious nature. The great organized doubt of "positivism" never seemed to touch him. He was reverent, and full of faith. But he stood at enormous disadvantage at Antioch, in sharing with thousands to-day a religious faith which has not yet taken form or polity; and as having, for the direct constituency of the college, a people strictly evangelical in their religious views, feelings, and methods. True, he never stated his theological opinions to his pupils, in public or private. He gave no weight to such opinions, as compared with habits of daily obedience. Nothing could be more ludicrous to him, than the question asked at one of the Christian conferences, "Whether the religious teachings at the college did not tend to make the students live pure and virtuous lives, and do good to their fellow-men, rather than to love God, through faith in Jesus Christ, as applied by the Holy Spirit?" (Life, p. 538.) But the question had graver significance than he ever admitted: it touched |