第90章

To further the work of my students in the lecture-room, I published an interleaved syllabus of each course, and was, I think, the first person in our country who ever did this in connection with historical lectures. It is a matter of wonder to me that so few professors in these days resort to this simple means of strengthening their instruction.

It ought to be required by university statutes. It seems to me indispensable to anything like thorough work. Asyllabus, properly interleaved, furnishes to a student by far the best means of taking notes on each lecture, as well as of reviewing the whole course afterward, and to a professor the best means of testing the faithfulness of his students. As regards myself personally, there came to me from my syllabus an especial advantage; for, as I have shown in my political experiences, it gained for me the friendship of Charles Sumner.

I have stated elsewhere that my zeal in teaching history was by no means the result of a mere liking for that field of thought. Great as was my love for historical studies, there was something I prized far more--and that was the opportunity to promote a better training in thought regarding our great national problems then rapidly approaching solution, the greatest of all being the question between the supporters and opponents of slavery.

In order that my work might be fairly well based, I had, during my college days and my first stay abroad, begun collecting the private library which has added certainly to the pleasures, and probably to the usefulness, of my life. Books which are now costly rarities could then be bought in the European capitals for petty sums. There is hardly any old European city which has not been, at some time, one of my happy hunting-grounds in the chase for rare books bearing upon history; even now, when my collection, of which the greater part has been trans-ferred to Cornell University, numbers not far short of forty thousand volumes, the old passion still flames up at times; and during the inditing of this chapter I have secured two series of manuscripts of very great value in illustrating the evolution of modern civilization. My reason for securing such original material was not the desire to possess rarities and curiosities. I found that passages actually read from important originals during my lectures gave a reality and vividness to my instruction which were otherwise unattainable. A citation of the ipsissima verba of Erasmus, or Luther, or Melanchthon, or Peter Canisius, or Louis XIV, or Robespierre, or Marat, interested my students far more than any quotation at second hand could do. No rhetoric could impress on a class the real spirit and strength of the middle ages as could one of my illuminated psalters or missals; no declamation upon the boldness of Luther could impress thinking young men as did citations from his ``Erfurt Sermon,'' which, by weakening his safe-conduct, put him virtually at the mercy of his enemies at the Diet of Worms; no statements as to the fatuity of Robespierre could equal citations from an original copy of his ``Report on the Moral and Religious Considerations which Ought to Govern the Republic''; all specifications of the folly of Marat paled before the ravings in the original copies of his newspaper, ``L'Ami du Peuple''; no statistics regarding the paper-money craze in France could so impress its actuality on students as did the seeing and handling of French revolutionary assignats and mandats, many of them with registration numbers clearly showing the enormous quantities of this currency then issued; no illustration, at second hand, of the methods of the French generals during the Revolutionary period could produce the impression given by a simple exhibition of the broadsides issued by the proconsuls of that period; no description of the collapse of the triumvirate and the Reign of Terror could equal a half-hour's reading from the ``Moniteur'';and all accounts of the Empire were dim compared to grandiose statements read from the original bulletins of Napoleon.

In this way alone can history be made real to students.

Both at my lectures and in the social gatherings at my house, I laid out for my classes the most important originals bearing upon their current work; and it was no small pleasure to point out the relations of these to the events which had formed the subject of our studies together. Isay ``our studies together,'' because no one of my students studied more hours than myself. They stimulated me greatly. Most of them were very near my own age; several were older. As a rule, they were bright, inquiring, zealous, and among them were some of the best minds Ihave ever known. From among them have since come senators, members of Congress, judges, professors, lawyers, heads of great business enterprises, and foreign ministers. One of them became my successor in the professorship in the University of Michigan and the presidency of Cornell, and, in one field, the leading American historian of his time. Another became my predecessor in the embassy to Germany. Though I had what might be fairly called ``a good start'' of these men, it was necessary to work hard to maintain my position; but such labor was then pleasure.