A Williams Anthology | Page 9

the
satisfaction that one has, because he can do it, was perhaps difficult for
Everett. Most men who heard him pardoned the failure. It was easier

for Dickens. His life was in some sense less splendid but more real.
The amusement and good feeling which it is always the aim of the
dinner speaker to create, were largely the aim of Dickens' life. The
humor, the knowledge of human nature, that he always had at
command, were employed in his writings and daily thoughts to enliven
and cheer men. No wonder then that his speeches are models of breadth
and sweetness and appositeness, and that good judges regarded him
when living as in this department of expression unrivalled.
He who is so guided by the love of letters engrafted on the love of man
as to give constant and ample expression to these motives, will be
neither a reformer without grace nor a scholar without manliness. Give
to such a man a flow of animal spirits and a dash of wit, and he should
be not unapt to entertain even when poised on the dangerous wing of an
after-dinner speech.
Review, 1870.
THE STUDENT COMMUNITY
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE '67
A very interesting and significant feature of university life in the early
days was the great part played by students in the scholastic community.
They were not only included in the group described by the word
"faculty," but they were charged with administrative and executive
functions. The movement toward self-government, which has already
borne fruit in many of our colleges, is in no sense a modern influence;
it is a return to a condition widely prevalent in the early history of
university organization. Not only did the students share, through
various deliberative bodies, in the determination of the gravest
questions of academic policy, but, in many cases, the executive head of
the university was not only chosen by them but was often one of their
number. The rector of the Italian universities was in most instances a
student, often under twenty-five years of age. The rector of the
University of Paris, who was charged with the gravest administrative
functions, took precedence of the archbishop, and sat at times in the

royal councils with princes and nobles, was originally elected by the
student communities, and was often a very young man; and yet Paris
was essentially a university of professors. Bologna, which was a
university of students, was governed directly by the general assembly
of undergraduates. Whether governed by students or by
masters,--alumni as we should say,--these historic institutions were
essentially democratic, and the student seems on the whole to have
been the most important figure; not only because at the beginning he
formed the constituency for the popular teacher, but because later when
these throngs of students formally organized he had the largest share of
privileges and for a long time the controlling voice in the management
of affairs.
"Universities," said Professor Croisat at the centenary of the University
of Montpellier in 1889, "do not come into the world with a clatter.
What we know least about in all our history is the precise moment
when it (Montpellier) began." It is impossible, in many instances, to fix
the date of organization of many of the foremost of the older
institutions; they were not made, they grew. There was a deep necessity
for their existence in the intellectual and spiritual condition of the times,
and they sprang into being here and there, in Italy, France, Spain, and
England, in response to that need. They were notable, at the beginning,
not for academic calm, but for turbulence and vitality; for they were not
universities of science, they were universities of persons. The
differences of scholastic rank were not very sharply defined. In early
days, whenever the university body was formally addressed by Pope or
Emperor, the students were named in the same sentence as the masters.
It is unnecessary to recall here the changes in condition which have
separated the student class sharply from the teaching body and divorced
it almost entirely from governmental functions. What is significant for
the purpose of this article is an apparent disposition in many quarters to
recede from the extreme position of entire exclusion of the student
body and a tendency to move in the other direction. That tendency may
become very marked and lead to a very radical change of policy in the
government of colleges, a change so radical as to be revolutionary in its
effect. It is certain that the government of colleges, like that of states,

must from time to time undergo marked modifications if it is to remain
vitally representative of, and harmonious with, the growing and
changing life of the college. In healthy institutional life there is free
play and interaction of all the