HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA
THE liberally educated Englishmen who came to America in the first half of the seventeenth century were graduates of either Cambridge or Oxford. Neither St. Andrews, the oldest of the colleges and universities of Scotland, nor Glasgow, nor Aberdeen, nor Edinburgh, the youngest, had directly influenced them. Although the Pilgrims had made their home in Leyden for twelve years, yet it is evident that the new university, founded by William of Orange as a reward to the citizens for their mighty and triumphant resistance in the great siege, had not offered its advantages to this godly people. Paris and the other continental universities had affected the emigrating Englishman only, or chiefly, as the power of these great and historic foundations had touched Oxford or Cambridge.
It was the happy fortune of the one hundred Cambridge and Oxford men who came to America before 1640 to be members of those universities at a time of academic prosperity. The liberal and liberalizing spirit of the Renaissance was still potent. The literary influence of Protestantism, within and without college walls, was showing itself in noble refinement and manly vigor of character. Forty years after Francis Bacon entered the University of Cambridge, he criticised in his "Advancement of Learning," the English university system. His criticisms are directed to the same weaknesses which prevail to-day. They are touched with the modern spirit. He regrets that men study words and not
1 Book I and first sections of Book II.