After all, the Review was the first literary
power in America, even though it paid almost as little in gold as
the United States Treasury. The degree of Harvard College might
bear a value as ephemeral as the commission of a President of the
United States; but the government of the college, measured by
money alone, and patronage, was a matter of more importance than
that of some branches of the national service. In social
position, the college was the superior of them all put together.
In knowledge, she could assert no superiority, since the
Government made no claims, and prided itself on ignorance. The
service of Harvard College was distinctly honorable; perhaps the
most honorable in America; and if Harvard College thought Henry
Adams worth employing at four dollars a day, why should
Washington decline his services when he asked nothing? Why should
he be dragged from a career he liked in a place he loved, into a
career he detested, in a place and climate he shunned? Was it
enough to satisfy him, that all America should call Washington
barren and dangerous? What made Washington more dangerous than
New York?
The American character showed singular limitations which
sometimes drove the student of civilized man to despair. Crushed
by his own ignorance -- lost in the darkness of his own gropings
-- the scholar finds himself jostled of a sudden by a crowd of
men who seem to him ignorant that there is a thing called
ignorance; who have forgotten how to amuse themselves; who cannot
even understand that they are bored.
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