This thing I advance with
some hesitation. But it explains the inflated patriotism of the
carefully-prepared speech of the governor and the political (not
partisan) spirit of all the other speakers. Oxford and Cambridge have
long furnished the country with a learned clergy, a learned Bar, and
(but this is past) a learned House of Commons. The tradition of
learning lingers still; nay, they are centres of learning beyond
comparison with any other universities in the world. Harvard also, I
suppose, provides a learned clergy; but its principal function, as its
rulers seemed to think, is to send out into the world every year a
great body of young men fully equipped to be leaders in the country.
This is its chief glory; to do this effectively, I take it, is the
chief desire of the president and the society.
It cannot be denied that this is a very important duty, much more
important, for a special reason, in the States than it is in Great
Britain. I used to marvel, before making these observations, at the
constant flying of the stars and stripes everywhere; at the continual
reminding as to freedom. 'Are there,' one asks, 'no other countries in
the world which are free? In what single point is the freedom of the
American greater than the freedom of the Briton, the Canadian, of the
Australian?' In none, certainly.
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