PAGE. Japan, Suicide in Jones, W. Bence. What Can be Done for Ireland? 166 239 Journalism-The Newspaper. By Robert Collyer.................................................................. 187 Kaufmann, Moritz. Nihilism in Russia.. .... ..... Literary Work-Does it Pay? (Belgravia) Lord, Nathan ....................... 163 17 11 Los Angelos, Cal. Hittell Chiese of San Francisco. Lowell, James Russell. Part II.-Essayist. By H. R. Haweis...............................、 38 Japanese Bathing Sammarinese Habits. San Francisco Life. Macmillan, Hugh. Early Celtic College Massachusetts Taxation Matthews-Sheridan Duels.. "Middlemarch" Analyzed Monastery of St. Paul of Thebes.. Newspaper, The. By Robert Collyer Nihilism in Rus ia. By Moritz Kaufmann. Oldest Religious Buildings in Christendom. By Henry Holmes Packard, Alpheus S. Reminiscences of Bowdoin Pierce, Franklin Poetry Geist's Grave. By Matthew Arnoid. Political Economy-The Irish Question. By W. Bence Jones................ 239 Sheppard, Nathan. George Eliot's Analysis of Motive............................................. 84 Spencer, Herbert. Political Organization in General...................................................................... 24 Stowe, Calvin E. Subscription to Articles of Faith. By Dean Stanley....... Suicide in India.... in Japan.. in Prussia ............... ........ ..................... ..................... 55 163 165 170 Temperance, New Departure in. By Washington Gladden... ..... Tenant-right in Ireland. ............... Travels-Californian Society. Glastonbury British and English.. ........................... 215 105 .................... 239 385 142 325 In Chinatown, San Francisco.................................................................... 195 Monasteries of St. Antony and St. Paul.................................................................................. THE LIBRARY MAGAZINE. VOLUME 7, FEBRUARY, 1881. REMINISCENCES OF BOWDOIN. THE writer, in the following pages, gives some of his recollections of the early years of Bowdoin College, and of the college days of some of the students who afterwards came to fill high places in the country. He has, without constant acknowledgement, availed himself of materials at hand collected in a history of the college and its graduates, now nearly ready for the press. The first decisive movement for a college in the District of Maine was made in 1788, when the Cumberland Association of Ministers and the Court of Sessions each petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for the establishment of a college in that county, but, from causes which need not be detailed, no effectual action was taken until 1794, when, leading men favoring the scheme of two such institutions, one in the western, and the other in the eastern portions of the State, Williams College was chartered in 1793, on the western border of the State, and a second, the following year, in thè eastern portion, to which the name of Bowdoin was given by the Legislature, in memory of Gov. James Bowdoin. In consequence of the honor thus done to the family name, Hon. James Bowdoin, son of the Governor, became, while living, the generous patron of the college, and, at his death, by bequest. The prospect of what the District of Maine was to be, more than what it was then, gave favor to the project of rearing a college in a remote and, as then regarded, unattractive portion of the State, its towns being for the most part on the line of the coast, while the interior was sparsely settled. When the college, after much deliberation and discussion, rivalry of places for the honor of its location, and manifold hindrances, was opened eight years after its incorporation, in 1802, in Brunswick, as a central position and a compromise between conflicting claims, Augusta was but a suburb of Hallowell, itself but a village with only a weekly mail. Bangor had no church edifice for twenty years after, and a few miles beyond the Penobscot, the horseback traveler entered an almost unbroken forest extending to the St. Croix. Lewiston was a mere hamlet with a mill or two on its falls. But the founders of the institution, in large proportion Harvard men, knew what they were doing, and were fortunate in selecting for the executive government of the infant seminary, its first President, Rev. Dr. McKeen, well-known in Massachusetts, a fessors and tutors, Cambridge artmouth graduate; and its pro men. The writer entered college in 1812, and, with the exception of the period between his bachelor and master's degrees, has been connected with the college to the present time. The traditions of the six preceding years from the first commencement were then fresh. The first president and professor were inaugurated, with ceremonial imposing for the time, September, 1802, and, in lack of an edifice in the small village spacious enough for the great occasion, under a tent on the verge of the pine grove in rear of the present college grounds. The public dinner which followed was laid in the lower story of the only college hall then erected, which is referred to on account of an incident, the foundation of one of our college reminiscences. The apartment was decked with evergreens of oak leaves, and among the sweepings after the dinner an acorn fell by the side of the door step. It vegetated, the next spring it sent forth a tiny growth that caught the eye of Thorndike of the first class, which he carefully took up, and, with leave of President McKeen, planted in his garden, then a part of the present college grounds. Carefully nurtured, it grew, and is now the Thorndike oak, the only specimen of that tree on the campus, and, as literally and singularly coeval with the life of the college, is an object of respect and reverence; under its shade are held the parting exercises of every graduating class during their Commencement week. Prof. Parker Cleaveland began his life-long eminent service in the college in its third year as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. The citizens of Topsham, on the opposite shore of the Androscoggin in 1807 constructed a sluiceway to convey lumber from above the falls and rapids to the river bank below for transportation down the river. The sluice, however, devised for the sole benefit of the lumbermen, proved a means of promoting a science of which the millers had not dreamed. The enterprise rendered it necessary to open a passage through ledges of rock; the work exposed to view crystals and minerals of unknown but possible value, which were submitted, with caution and mystery, to Prof. Cleaveland's reputed science, which put him on investigating such books as the library had, or he could borrow from other sources, and thus awakened in him a new passion, which in a few years resulted in his brilliant mineralogical lectures that attracted hearers from outside the college for forty or more years, and, in 1816, in the publication of the first edition of his Mineralogy" by the Boston house of Cummings & Hilliard which made him what he has been called, the "Father of American Mineralogy," and his name and that of the college to be known in the scientific world. The establishment at that period of a college was a novel event, beyond the experience of our day, when so-called colleges are counted by hundreds in the land. Its first commencement was notable when the District of Maine, and even New Hampshire and Massachusetts, were largely and brilliantly represented in this, as it was regarded, far-off region. Several of its first class were from those States, The experiences of that occasion, the long and wearisome travel to reach Brunswick; the few houses in the villages on both sides of the river opened for strangers; sleeping rooms and floors filled and covered with sleepers or those trying to sleep; a pelting storm, compelling the adjournment of commencement exercises to a second day; and the second day with tempest and rain still driving with unabated fury; the church edifice, then unfinished, ill-affording shelter (the president in the pulpit with an umbrella overhis head) passengers losing their way, and overturns in the Egyptian darkness; fun and jollity throughout, made it a tradition for years. I will refer to two members of a former college generation, as I have been well situated for knowing of what I write. The first, Charles S. Davies (1807), graduated with a somewhat brilliant record. His class, the second in the history of the college, numbered three, but the Faculty continued to make three do double work by giving each two parts. Davies was reputed to be the author of the device of their "Order of Exercises," with the Greek heading Hermes Trikephalos. His reputation flowered with almost premature bloom at the next commencement in 1808, when he pronounced an oration before the Peucinian Society, which attracted notice, and was published in the Boston Anthology, with a flattering introduction by Jos. Stevens Buckminster, one of the editors. Mr. Davies, besides his honorable position in the law. was a man of letters, esteemed in literary circles. Of those early years, the second I mention, one perhaps equally conspicuous, is Nathan Lord (1809). Although young he took high rank in college, and became an assistant of the eminent Dr. Abbot, at Phillips Exeter Academy, itself a distinction for a young man. The writer was among his pupils, and knows of his singular popularity in office. For forty or more years as president of Dartmouth College, Dr. Lord is honored in the memories of a host of its alumni and friends for vigorous understanding, unflinching courage and eminent influence and address as an executive and teacher. The writer, when he recalls his college contemporaries, though classes were small, and reflects on the influence which has proceeded from that small body of youth and young men that sat with him in any general exercise, is reminded of the reply of Luther, I think, when he was wont to bow when he entered his school, "because I |