The like plea of necessity cannot be urged in regard to the Teutonic or Scandinavian languages. Within the last quarter of a century, the chief scientific works issued in Northern Germany, and many even in Southern, have been printed in the Roman character. Were there no other argument in favor of its universal adoption, it has been found less trying to the eyes. It can be read by all nations; and the other is at best but an additional difficulty for the learner, even in the case of native children, who are plagued with two alphabets and two diametrically opposite systems of penmanship in their earliest years. The result is evident: a good hand is a rare thing In Germany. It is a good sign, that of late years public acts and records, works of learning, all the higher literature, in fact, not purely national, as poetry and romance, are all printed in the Roman character. Nor will any look upon this as a servile imitation. Some of the most national of German writers and scholars, as the brothers Grimm, have pronounced themselves loudly in favor of the change. The tendency of the age is towards universality. It will occur to none to talk of French imitation because chemists make use of the excellent and universally applicable system of the decimal French weights and measures.
What has been said above is not altogether irrelevant as characterizing the tendency of the higher institutions of learning. Every movement in Germany, even the least, since the Reformation, whose chief propagators were professors in the universities,Luther, Reuchlin, Melancthon,every permanent and pervading conquest of the new and good over the old and worn-out, has issued from the lecture-room. Whatever sticklers for old forms and crab-like progress may be found, there is always an overbalancing power. The unity of Germany as one nation has never stood a better chance of being realized than now, when the very men who were students and flocked as volunteers when the iron hand of Napoleon I. weighed heavily on their Fatherland stand as lecturers in the days of Napoleon III., warning of the past, and preaching louder than Schiller or Körner or Arndt for the brotherhood of Prussian and Bavarian, of those that dwell on the Rhine and those that inhabit the regions of the Danube.
Thanks, not to her statesmen, not to her nobility, not to her princes even, that Germany has at last fairly shaken off the self-imposed yoke of servile French imitation, but thanks to her scholars who centre in her twenty-six universities! There was a time, and that not a century ago, when the German language was considered to be of too limited circulation for works of general scientific interest. Lectures were all delivered in Latin, until Thomasius broke open a new path, and now lessons otherwise than in the vernacular tongue are exceptions. French was long the universal medium. Even Humboldt wrote most of his works in that language; and it is not two years since one of the most distinguished Egyptian scholars of Prussia published his History of Egypt in French. The last representatives of this tendency are dying off. The days are over, when every petty German prince must create in his domains a servile imitation of the stiff parks of Versailles,the days of powdered wigs and long cues,when French ballet-dancers gave the tone, and French actors strutted on every stage,when Boileau was the great canon of criticism, and Racine and Molière perpetuated in tragedy and comedy a pseudo-classicism. They are far, those times when Frederick the Great wrote French at which Voltaire laughed, and could find no better occupation for his leisure hours at Sans-Souci than the discussion of the materialistic philosophy of the Encyclopedists, while he affected to despise his own tongue, rejecting every effort towards the popularization of a national literature. Well is it for Germany that other ideas now prevail,well, that Goethe in his old age overcame the Gallomania, which for a while possessed him, of translating all his works, and thenceforth writing only in French. The iron hand of Goetz of Berlichingen would burst the seams of a Paris kid-glove. The bold lyric and dramatic poesy of a language whose figures well up in each word with primitive freshness can ill be contained in an idiom blasé by conventionality and frozen into crystal rigidity by the academy of the illustrious forty,in an idiom in which an unfortunate pun or allusion can destroy the effect of a whole piece. We need but call to mind that Shakspeare's "Othello" was laughed off the stage of the Odéon, owing to the ridiculous ideas the word "napkin" or "handkerchief" called up in the auditory.
Nor is the influence of the university in Germany exerted in matters of great national interest only. It pervades the social, literary, and political organization of the people. The least part of what characterizes an individual nation ever comes into its books. Here it finds its way from mouth to mouth to the remotest corners of the land. When Luther, the Professor of Wittenberg, spoke against indulgences, it was more than priest or monk that was heard. The voice of the monk would not have echoed beyond his cell, and the influence of the priest would have been arrested and checked before it could have been exerted beyond the limits of his parish or town. But the Professor Luther addressed himself to a more influential audience. His words were carried before many years into every part of the Empire.
Setting aside the Austrian universities, which are no longer what they were formerly, the teaching in these higher schools, whatever the State restrictions may be, is eminently free,freer than in France,freer than in England,in many respects even, however it may sound, freer than in the United States. As a result, the land is a hot-bed of the boldest philosophical systems and the wildest theological aberrations. There is no branch of speculation that does not find its representative. In law, in medicine, in philology, in history, the old methods of study and research have been revolutionized. But the State stands before the innovators, firm and conservative in its practice. And in the end it has been found, that, whatever wild theories may spring up in theology and in philosophy, the corrective is nigh at hand, and truth will make its way when the field is open to all.
It must be remembered that the German university is no preparatory school; those who enter it have gone through studies and a mental training that have made them capable of judging for themselves. They hear whom they please. Their chief study, whatever they acquire in the lecture-room, is done when alone. They attend on an average for three or four hours a day, spending as much time in the libraries, from which they have the privilege of taking out books. As a completion to their lectures, the professors generally have Seminaren once or twice a week, or Exercitationes in history, philology, etc., in which the Socratic method of teaching in dialogue is made use of. Museums and scientific collections are richly provided in the larger institutions. In some of these lectures are held: thus, Lepsius explains Egyptian archaeology in the Egyptian halls in Berlin. The libraries provided by the State, and to which all have access, are often considerable: thus, Göttingen has 350,000 volumes; Berlin, 600,000; Munich, 800,000.
As for the expenses of study, they are inconsiderable; thirty or thirty-five dollars the term will cover them, as there are generally several courses public. The students often attend for months as guests, hospitanten. As they say,"The Fox pays for more than he hears, and the Bursch hears more than he pays for." The lecturers take no notice of those present; and, provided the matriculation-papers have been taken out, the beadle has nothing to say. There is the fullest liberty of wandering from room to room, and hearing, if only once or twice, any one of the professors. As for the expenses of living, they vary. To one who would be satisfied with German student-fare and comforts, four hundred dollars a year will answer every purpose, even in the dearest cities: many do with much less. In Southern Germany, life is simpler and cheaper than in Northern, and the saying is true in Munich, that a Gulden there will go as far as a Thaler in Prussia. There are poorer students, who are exempted from college-fees, and support themselves by Stipendia, whose outlay never exceeds a hundred dollars a year.
As for the expenses of study, they are inconsiderable; thirty or thirty-five dollars the term will cover them, as there are generally several courses public. The students often attend for months as guests, hospitanten. As they say,"The Fox pays for more than he hears, and the Bursch hears more than he pays for." The lecturers take no notice of those present; and, provided the matriculation-papers have been taken out, the beadle has nothing to say. There is the fullest liberty of wandering from room to room, and hearing, if only once or twice, any one of the professors. As for the expenses of living, they vary. To one who would be satisfied with German student-fare and comforts, four hundred dollars a year will answer every purpose, even in the dearest cities: many do with much less. In Southern Germany, life is simpler and cheaper than in Northern, and the saying is true in Munich, that a Gulden there will go as far as a Thaler in Prussia. There are poorer students, who are exempted from college-fees, and support themselves by Stipendia, whose outlay never exceeds a hundred dollars a year.
When several hundred or thousand young men are thus thrown together, with their time all their own, and none to whom they are responsible for their actions, it may easily be supposed that many abuses and irregularities will occur. Yet the great mass are better than they have been represented; though regular attendance upon lectures is true only of those who ox it at home, as the phrase goes, and who by the rioting, beer-drinking Burschen are styled Philistines or Camels. These same quiet individuals, whom the Samsons affect to despise, will be found to be by far in preponderance, when the statistics of Corps, Landmannschaften, and all such clubs, are looked into; though the characteristic of the latter, always to be seen at public places of amusement with their colored caps, gaudy watch-guards, or cannon-boots, would lead one to suppose that German student-life was one round of beer-drinking, sword-slashing, and jolly existence, as represented, or rather, misrepresented, by William Howitt, in the halo of poetry he throws around it. No,the fantastically dressed fellows whom the tourist may notice at Jena, and the groups of starers who stop every narrow passageway in front of the confectionery-shops of Heidelberg, or amuse themselves of summer-afternoons with their trained dogs, diverting the attention of the temporary guest of "Prince Carl" from the contemplation of the old ruined castle of the Counts-Palatine,these are but a fraction of the German students. From, among them may be chosen those tight-laced officers who make the court-residences of Europe look like camps; or, as they are often the sons of noblemen or rich parents, they may reach some of the sinecures in the State. They make their student-years but a pretext for a life of rough debauchery, from which they issue with a bought diploma; and, in many cases, satiated and disgusted with their own lives, they dwindle down into the timeserving reactionaries, the worst enemies of free development, because they themselves have abused in youth the little liberty they enjoyed.
If the numbers be counted of those who lead the life so much extolled by William Howitt,who, by the way, has left out some of its roughest traits,they will be found, even where most numerous, as in the smaller towns, never to exceed one-fourth of those inscribed as students. The linguists and philosophers of Germany, her historians and men of letters, her professors and savans, have come from the ranks of that stiller and more numerous class whom the stranger will never notice: for their triennium is spent mostly in the lecture-room or at home; and their convivialityfor there are neither disciples nor apostles of temperance in this beer-drinking landis of a nature not to divert them from their earnest pursuits.
Truth and earnestness are the distinguishing traits of the German character; and these qualities show no less strongly in the youth who frequent the universities than in the professors themselves. The latter, conscientious to a nicety in exposing the fullest fruits of their laborious researches, are ever faithful to the trust reposed in them. Placed by the State in a position beyond ordinary ambition and above pecuniary cares, they can devote themselves exclusively to their calling, concentrating their powers in one channel,to raise, to ennoble, to educate. It contributes not a little to their success, that their hearers are permeated, whatever wild and unbridled freaks they may fall into at times, with the fullest sense of honor and manly worth, with an ardent love for knowledge and science for their own sake, not for future utility. Their sympathies are awake for the good everywhere, their minds receptive of the highest teachings. Their loves and likes are great and strong,as it behooves, when the first bubblings of mental and physical activity are manifested in action. They abandon themselves, body and soul, to the occupation of the moment, be it study, be it pleasure. Their gatherings and feasts and excursions are ennobled by vocal music from the rich store of healthy, vigorous German song, from which they learn, in the words of one of their most popular melodies, to honor "woman's love, man's strength, the free word, the bold deed, and the FATHERLAND!"
* * * * *THE PROFESSOR'S STORY
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SECRET IS WHISPEREDThe Reverend Chauncy Fairweather's congregation was not large, but select. The lines of social cleavage run through religious creeds as if they were of a piece with position and fortune. It is expected of persons of a certain breeding, in some parts of New England, that they shall be either Episcopalians or Unitarians. The mansion-house gentry of Rockland were pretty fairly divided between the little chapel with the stained window and the trained rector, and the meeting-house where the Reverend Mr. Fairweather officiated.
It was in the latter that Dudley Venner worshipped, when he attended service anywhere,which depended very much on the caprice of Elsie. He saw plainly enough that a generous and liberally cultivated nature might find a refuge and congenial souls in either of these two persuasions, but he objected to some points of the formal creed of the older church, and especially to the mechanism which renders it hard to get free from its outworn and offensive formulae,remembering how Archbishop Tillotson wished in vain that it could be "well rid of" the Athanasian Creed. This, and the fact that the meeting-house was nearer than the chapel, determined him, when the new, rector, who was not quite up to his mark in education, was appointed, to take a pew in the "liberal" worshippers' edifice.
Elsie was very uncertain in her feeling about going to church. In summer, she loved rather to stroll over The Mountain on Sundays. There was even a story, that she had one of the caves before mentioned fitted up as an oratory, and that she had her own wild way of worshipping the God whom she sought in the dark chasms of the dreaded cliffs. Mere fables, doubtless; but they showed the common belief, that Elsie, with all her strange and dangerous elements of character, had yet strong religions feeling mingled with them. The hymn-book which Dick had found, in his midnight invasion of her chamber, opened to favorite hymns, especially some of the Methodist and Quietist character. Many had noticed, that certain tunes, as sung by the choir, seemed to impress her deeply; and some said, that at such times her whole expression would change, and her stormy look would soften so as to remind them of her poor, sweet mother.