USA > Vermont > Vermonters : a book of biographies > Part 12
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NATURE, of ten years earlier. In very different vein is that product of the Puritan, MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN SAINTS AND MIRACLES, 1876. The sunset of life brought no mystical sym- pathies. Inded, neither the gold-light nor the shadow of age falls across the work of his later time. As a reviewer in the pages of THE NATION, he was active to the last. The editor remarks that, "his mental vigor and youthful enthusiasm remained ab- solutely unimpaired to the end of his venerable career."
Nothing in Mr. Marsh's noble life became him more than the leaving of it. His last day, July 23, 1882, was passed high above the Arno, the river of Florence, under the heavy shade trees of Vallombrosa that Milton loved. In the evening came his quiet farewell. He lies in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome near the graves of Keats and Shelley. Thus his life stretches, "from the sweet vale of the Queechy to the banks of the Tiber."
JAMES MARSH
By Evan Thomas
JAMES MARSH was born in Hartford, Vermont, July 19, J 1794. He had a goodly heritage of mind and character from his parents. His father was a substantial farmer, an important citizen of the town, and an active member of the Congrega- tional church. His paternal gradfather, an emigrant from Con- necticut, was a member of the convention which declared for the independence of Vermont and was the first lieutenant governor of the State, an office to which he was several times re-elected.
James attended the local school, and at this time had no other thought with reference to the future than that of becoming a Vermont farmer. At eighteen, however, he decided to con- tinue his studies, prepared for college, and was graduated from
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Dartmouth College in 1817. The same year he entered An- dover Theological Seminary, from which he received his theo- logical degree in 1822, his course having been interrupted by two years of service as tutor in Dartmouth College. This com- pleted his institutional education.
The period immediately following his graduation from An- dover was one of painful suspense, owing partly to impaired health but principally to vocational indecision. The ministry, teaching, and literature were apparently about equally attractive and promising. The next two years were spent largely in travel- ling for the benefit of his health and in efforts to settle the matter of vocation. In New York, Princeton and Philadelphia he made valuable contacts with eminent scholars and divines, through whose influence he obtained a professorship of languages at Hampden Sidney College, Virginia. This practically settled the question of vocation. He was to be an educator, and the wisdom of the choice was amply shown by his conspicuous success in the field of higher education. He resigned his professorship in 1826 to accept the presidency of the University of Vermont. He was not well fitted, however, for administrative duties, and in 1833 he exchanged the presidency for the more congenial professorship of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, which he taught with conspicuous success the remainder of his life. His tastes and aptitudes were those of the philosopher rather than of the man of affairs.
Two days after his ordination to the Congregational ministry at Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1824, he was married to a niece of President Wheelock of Dartmouth, and the young couple immediately left for their new home in Vir- ginia. Four years later Mrs. Marsh died, and in 1830, Mr. Marsh married her sister. Of this union three sons were born, all of whom were graduated from the University of Vermont. Two were graduated from Union Theological Seminary, became Congregational ministers and spent most of their lives on the faculty of Pacific University, Oregon. The other was engaged
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in educational work in the Sandwich Islands. The second wife died in 1838.
In physique Doctor Marsh was tall, slender, and in later years had something of the proverbial scholar's stoop. His voice was weak and not well adapted to public discourse. His health was never robust, but in spite of this handicap he did an immense amount of work and was active almost to the last. In the Spring of 1842, he suffered much from hemorrhage of the lungs, from which he died early in July of that year.
Doctor Marsh had a clear mind, a quick understanding, and received strong and lasting impressions from what he read. He had the instinct of the student and his intellecutal activities were intense and unremitting. Though very inadequately pre- pared for college, his scholastic standing was always high. At Andover he extended his studies far beyound the prescribed curriculum, even to the extent of familiarizing himself with much of the German Biblical learning of the day. During his senior year in the seminary an article of his was accepted by the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, a very high compliment to an under-graduate. Some of the translations from foreign langu- ages, which at a later date made his name so widely and favorably known among scholais, were begun in his college and seminary days. Had his educational advantages been equal to theirs he would easily have been the peer of the best European scholars of the age.
As a thinker, he was what would be called a progressive. He was not disputatious, contentious or iconoclastic. His temper was that of the true student who is animated by the simple, honest desire to get at the truth and reality of things, even at the sacrifice of preconceived and long cherished opinions. To him human opinion is capable of enlargement and subject to " correction. Even the church is not merely the custodian of an unchangeable creed, but rather a living organism springing from the good seed which Christ sowed in the hearts of his disciples. Doctor Marsh's spiritual kinship was with the Puritan John
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Robinson, who maintained that, "God hath yet more light to break forth from his Holy Word." He respected profoundly whatever in theological doctrine had profoundly interested and moved humanity. Much of the theology of the New England of his day he felt compelled to reject. But while rejecting their theology, he was constitutionally averse to insulting the theo- logians. He made a sharp distinction between their conclusions and their earnest and sincere efforts to learn and set forth the ways of God.
President Marsh was essentially a student, a scholar and a teacher. He was neither a theologian nor a philosopher in the sense that he gave rise to a "school" of theology or philosophy. He was original in the sense that he accepted no man's dicta, that he mastered every subject in its principles, and that he worked out for himself and expressed in his own language whatever system he accepted. Had he lived longer, had he en- joyed freer associations with men of learning at home and abroad, and had he been less occupied with perplexing prob- lems of finance and administration, he would have left a deeper impress upon the thought of his day. But with all the limita- tions under which he labored he was a real and generous con- tributor to the higher life of his country.
The writer of the present paper would give the first place to his stimulating and wholesome influence upon his students and his contemporaries in the ministry and educational work. He brought to them high ideals of scholarship, imparted to them much of his enthusiasm for the things of the mind, aroused an inquiring spirit, encouraged a tolerant attitude towards differing views, and upheld the most exalted views of human life and destiny. Among those students profoundly affected by his teaching was the late Professor W. G. T. Shedd, an outstanding American theologian of the last century.
He contributed appreciably to educational progress. The late President M. H. Buckhamn, in a most favorable position to form a trustworthy judgment, once wrote: "The greatest teacher
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this University ever had was James Marsh." He was the precursor of the most advanced educators of today. In his writ- ings and in accounts of his classroom methods may be seen germs of the elective system. In his tutorial days at Dartmouth his free and easy ways with the students, expressive of his con- viction that the best education comes from intimate personal contact between student and professor, was prophetic of the tutorial methods now beginning to find favor in American colleges.
He exercised great influence upon the intellectual life of the country by his translations, principally from the German. His translation of Herder's SPIRIT OF HEBREW POETRY is a masterpiece, and it had a wide circulation among the more educated people of the country.
Marsh's greatest contribution to the study of philosophy and theology, however, was his famous introduction to Coleridge's AIDS TO REFLECTION. This is the most important piece of writing he ever did, and it placed him in the front rank of American scholars. His INTRODUCTION was preferred by the Coleridge family to the rival introduction prepared by Professor James McVickar of Columbia College. In an account of Marsh's work which appeared in the BIBLIOTHECA SACRA, soon after Marsh's death, Doctor Noah Porter, afterwards president of Yale, wrote: "His (Marsh's) essay preliminary to the AIDS OF REFLECTION and his criticism on Stuart's COMMENTARY ON THE HEBREWS are among the first specimens of writing in their kind."
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1
LARKIN G. MEAD
By Charles E. Crane
E VERY reader who dips deeply into Vermont history must sooner or later come to agree that there were indeed "giants in those days," and one reason for it perhaps was that the odds were more in their favor. Larkin Mead, for instance, was one of nine children, and a 9 to 1 chance of an outcropping of genius in a family is greater than the prevailing 2 to 1 chance! And this comparison is, it seems to the writer, worth a marginal note in any book on Vermont Traditions and Ideals.
But talents in the Mead family came like a run of shad, and though some of Larkin Mead's very promising brothers and sisters died before they had opportunity to show what they could do, one of them, William Rutherford Mead, became one of the world's most distinguished architects, and a sister, Elinor, became the charming wife of William Dean Howells, the novel- ist and editor of THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. There are worthy things that might be said of other of the Meads, going to prove that "family" does mean something even in a democracy-but it is with the individual, Larkin Mead, the sculptor, that the Mead genius had its romantic turn.
It was almost an even hundred years ago that Larkin Mead was born, Jan. 3, 1835-and, to be sure, it was not exactly in Vermont but across the Connecticut, in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. But within four years the family had moved to Brattleboro, and the boy grew up a thorough young Vermonter, showing early traits of artistic genius. At nineteen he was weighing nails in the Williston and Tyler hardware store in Brattleboro, and behind the counter, in odd moments, was cut- ting a pig in marble. This particular object of art happened to attract the attention of a Water Cure guest-for Brattleboro then drew many cultured people to its hydropathic institute-
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and in accordance with the advice of this gentleman, the young clerk forsook hardware to study art in New York.
Two years later, he returned to Brattleboro and opened a drawing school in the Brattleboro Town Hall. He possibly had an eye to publicity as well as art, for on the last night of the old year, 1856, he and his chums, the Burnham brothers, formed a "Recording Angel" in snow at the junction of Linden and Main streets. It was a pretty thing to do, prettily done, and the weather aided in preserving the snow angel for many days, during which it became the talk of all New England. Reporters from the city papers came to see it, and Mead deservedly secured some write-ups, which, quite unexpectedly, made him famous over-night.
Soon after this, it is recorded in Miss Cabot's ANNALS OF BRATTLEBORO, Mr. Mead received several commissions ; one from Nicholas Longworth, Esq., of Cincinnati, Ohio, for a duplicate of the snow image. Another replica of the snow angel was later made and now stands in All Souls church in Brattleboro. A full-length colossal statue of Ethan Allen was made by Mead for the State House at Montpelier, where it still stands, and an- other for the Hall of Statuary in Washington. When the Civil War broke out, Mead went to the front for six months as an artist for HARPER'S WEEKLY, and while making a drawing of a Southern fort for the government, he barely escaped with his life, being within range of a sharpshooter, who sent a ball whizzing past his ear.
After his Civil War experience, Mead went to Italy and re- ceived a cordial welcome from the sculptor, Hiram Powers, also a Vermonter. For a long time he lived in Venice as an attaché of the American consulate, the consul being William Dean Howells, who was in love with Mead's sister Elinor. How the brilliant, artistic, aristocratic, Elinor Mead, crossed the seas with her brother Larkin to marry the young author, Howells, has been only one of two romances in the Mead family. The other romance was Larkin Mead's own case of love at first
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sight. He was walking in the piazza of San Marco in Venice one day when he saw a beautiful Italian girl. For months afterward she was the idol of his dreams. But he had no idea who the girl was, He finally moved to Florence, where he had his studio, but still could not work for thinking of the beauty he had chanced to meet that day in the piazza of San Marco. Off he went again to Venice, determined to search until he found the girl, which finally he did, and through arrangements made at the consulate he gained the acquaintance of the family -a fine Venetian family. To Mead's surprise the girl's love was quite as instantaneous as his had been, and it was not long before the beautiful Marietta di Benvenuti became Mrs. Larkin G. Mead. Neither could at that time speak the other's language, but love surmounts all difficulties, and it even surmounted the disapproval of the Pope, who would not grant a dispensation for the wedding, which, accordingly, was a purely civil one. Directly after the marriage, Mead brought his Italian bride to Brattleboro to visit his parents.
Although Florence and Venice were longer his home than Vermont, he never lost contact with Brattleboro, and was proud to call himself a native of New England. He died in Italy in 1910, three years after he had made his last visit to Brattleboro.
Larkin Mead's work alone would be achievement enough for any one family, but on top of it his brother, William Ruther- ford, built quite an equal fame as architect-the Boston Public Library and a score of other memorable buildings in this country being the work of his firm, McKim, Mead and White. He founded the American Academy in Rome and died in Paris in 1928.
The moral of the whole tale is that the Meads, the Hunts, the Bradleys, and many of the early aristocratic families of Brattle- boro bore distinguished fruit not in the case of one individual alone, but often three or more members achieved fame, and all to the glory, directly or indirectly, of Vermont. They helped to enrich Vermont's traditions and ideals.
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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL
By Joseph L. Hills
USTIN SMITH MORRILL, a Vermont country lad, came J in time to stand before kings. Son and grandson of men who might have posed for Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith," there gathered about his bier the President and his cabinet, the Supreme Court of the nation, diplomats, Senators, Congressmen, men and women from every walk of life. They gathered there because they knew and honored and loved him for what he was and for what he had done.
He was born in Strafford, Vermont, one-hundred twenty years ago, 1810, the eldest of ten children. His grandsire settled there in 1795, and Nathaniel, Justin's father, set up his shop in the "lower village." The lad's schooling ceased at the age of fourteen when he hired out to the village storekeeper at $30 a year. After six years of clerking, he entered into partnership with his first em- ployer, in which association he remained during fifteen years of active and successful trade. He then withdrew from the firm, bought a small tract of land, married and settled down at the age of thirty-five to quiet life in a country village. His active work seemed accomplished; but it really had hardly begun.
In 1854, but slightly known outside of his immediate neigh- borhood, he became a candidate for Congress and was elected by the slender majority of fifty-nine votes. How narrow the bridge over which passed to national opportunity and fame the man whose legislative career is almost matchless in our history in its length, breadth and height! A change of thirty votes, of one in five-hundred fifty, in a rural district remote from the great centers of national activity, would probably have left him at home forever.
Mr. Morrill began his notable career of forty-four years, twelve in the House, thirty-two in the Senate, at the age of
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forty-five. At the time of his death his term of service had been longer than that of any of his predecessors. He was indefatig- able. He is said to have made more than a hundred set speeches, and his name appears in the records no less than two-thousand seventy-seven times in connection with the introduction of bills, resolutions, petitions, in discussing pending questions, making set speeches and the like.
The clearness and simplicity of his expositions, his remarkable grasp of details as well as of broad, general principles, and his unfailing courtesy toward opponents, coupled with unyielding firmness in main- taining the rights of himself or his committee, made him remarkably successful in guiding a piece of projected legislation through the con- fused tangle of a running debate . ... The range of subjects to which he gave intelligent attention, and to the discussion of which he con- tributed either opinions or facts, fills one with constant surprise. The wonder is how any man could speak so frequently in the course of running debates and on so wide a range of topics without dropping into the merest commonplace.
The Senator was especially responsible for the enactment of three outstanding measures or groups of measures: (1) He was the author of the first Morrill tariff law, after which all sub- sequent successful protective tariff measures have been patterned. (2) He was vitally concerned with many measures dealing with the construction of important public buildings in Washington. (3) He inaugurated and carried to sucessful issue the creation of a nation-wide and nationally subsidized system of higher edu- cation.
The first tariff bill of 1861 was designed in part to meet a pressing, indeed an appalling, national emergency. It was dis- tinctly and avowedly protective in character. Modified from time to time and, as was inevitable, replaced by other enactments, this measure became the backbone of the federal fiscal system. Except from 1893 to 1897, during which time the so-called Wilson Act was in operation-Mr. Morrill's basal thought as ex- pressed in the tariff act of 1861 as proved to be a veritable financial cornerstone.
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To Senator Morrill more than to any other man of his genera- tion do we owe the splendid architecture of the Capital City. The Washington Monument remained unfinished for more than a quarter of a century, a reproach to the nation, and he was active in sceing to it that the stately shaft was completed. He was much interested in the erection of the imposing and com- modious building used by the State, War and Navy Depart- ments. He had no small hand in the reconstruction of the western front of the Capitol, more particularly its impressive system of marble terracing. In his fertile brain was conceived the idea of setting apart the former Hall of Representatives as a Statuary Hall. And, most important of all, he was vitally concerned with the designing of the splendid building which houses the Congressional Library. Indeed his last speech in the Senate was made in behalf of a proposed building for the Supreme Court. The plea then fell upon deaf ears, but now, a generation later, the edifice is to be erected.
While in the House of Representatives, Mr. Morrill intro- duced and pushed to successful conclusion a measure granting public lands to the states wherewith "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." As a result, colleges have been erected in forty-eight states, in Alaska, Hawaii and Porto Rico; such great institutions as Cornell, California, Illinois, Penn State, Ohio State, Wisconsin; such relatively mod- est ones as are to be found in the smaller states of the Union, in- cluding Vermont; and, also, colleges, schools and institutes for the colored race. Further federal legislation, some of it devised by him, has increased the scope and power of the in- stitutions he launched until, in some respects, they have become as a whole the most powerful and beneficent agency of higher learning in the entire land.
It seems passing strange that a country storekeeper should have fathered a tariff system that has stood the test of seventy years. One wonders whence arose 'the fine, artistic sense evi- denced in enduring architecture. How came it that one whose
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schooling ended when he was fourteen years of age should have sponsored and created a new and untried system of national education? Yet such were his mightly contributions to national welfare.
Senator Morrill looked the part, a splendid specimen of physical manhood, with finely modeled head and classic features. And his mien bespoke the man. "Horace forsaw him: 'Integer vitae, scelerisque purus.' " It was no mere lip service but just appraisal that led his long-time colleague, the late Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, to say: "We offer this man as an example of an American Senator than whom so far we have none better."
ALDEN PARTRIDGE
By K. R. B. Flint
A
LDEN PARTRIDGE, the founder of Norwich University,
was born on a farm in Norwich, Vermont, January 12, 1785. He attended the district schools until he was sixteen years of age when he was encouraged to prepare himself for college and to enter Dartmouth in August, 1802.
Before completing his course at Dartmouth he received an ap- pointment as cadet artillerist in the United States service with orders to report at once to the commanding officer of the Military Academy at West Point. In October, 1806, he was commissioned as first lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers and the following month was assigned to the teaching staff at West Point in the department of Mathematics. In January, 1815, following a brilliant record of service covering nearly a decade, he was ap- pointed superintendent of the United States Military Academy.
In April, 1817, Captain Partridge resigned his commission in
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the army, having been relieved of the duties of superintendent the previous January, and during the next two years he de- voted much of his time to the dissemination of the views which he held regarding education and national defense. At the time of his resignation from the service he was one of the best known officers in the Army and had met with marked success in his work at the Military Academy both as administrator and teacher. He was years ahead of his time and may well be called the Prophet of Preparedness. The following extract from one of his lectures on education presents some of his views regarding the defects in the educational system of America :
The system of education adopted in the United States seems to me to be defective in many respects: First, it is not sufficiently practical, not properly adapted to the various duties an American citizen may be called upon to discharge. Second: Another defect in the present system is the entire neglect in all our principal seminaries of physical education, or the cultivation and improvement of the physical powers of the student. Third: Another defect in our system is the amount of idle time allowed the student. Fourth: A fourth defect is the allow- ing to students of the wealthier class too much money, thereby induc- ing habits of extravagance and dissipation highly injurious to them- selves and also to the Seminaries of which they are members. Fifth: Is the requiring all students to pursue the same course of study. Sixth: Is the prescribing the length of time for completing, as it is termed, the course of education. By this means the good scholar is placed nearly on a level with the sluggard, for whatever may be his exertions, he can gain nothing with respect to time, and the latter has, in consequence of this, less stimulus for exertion.
In the early part of 1819 Captain Partridge was engaged in the exploring survey of the Northeastern boundary under the fifth article of the Treaty of Ghent. Later in the year, how- ever, he resigned this position in order that he might establish at Norwich, Vermont, the American Literary Scientific and Military Academy which in 1834 was incorporated as Norwich University. In this enterprise it was possible for him to put into practical operation the theories which he had so long ad- vanced and defended and, as the head of this unique Institu-
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