Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/591

Rh deepest impression upon him was his study of Guizot's Civilization in Europe, under Dr. Woolsey.

In December, 1853, he went abroad for further study, having as fellow-traveler his college mate (now the well-known President of Johns Hopkins, and at this moment his colleague on the Venezuelan Commission). After a few weeks in England and several months in France, spent in studying French, reading the French historians (Thierry, Mignet, Thiers, Chateaubriand), listening to lecturers like Laboulaye at the Sorbonne and the College of France, chatting with the old soldiers of the Revolution at the Invalides, making historical pilgrimages throughout the northern and central provinces, everywhere reveling in architecture and music and haunting the old book shops, he was invited by the American minister to Russia, ex-Governor Seymour, of Connecticut, to join that legation as an attaché.

Accordingly, in October of 1854 he made his way, via Brussels, Cologne, and Berlin, to St. Petersburg. It was the stirring time of the Crimean War, and the young diplomat found his attachéship no sinecure. His knowledge of French made him valuable as an interpreter; he became the companion of the minister in his interviews at court and at the foreign office, and took a most interested part in the ceremonial attending the death of the Czar Nicholas and the accession of Alexander II. Yet he found much time for study. Huge scrap-books were filled with clippings on the progress of the war; the book-stalls afforded rich store for his rapidly growing collection on Russia and Poland; and the archives of the legation even gave him material for research in American history. He there, under the inspiration of Mr. Seymour, became interested in the character and policy of Jefferson, and drew up the nucleus of the study later published in the Atlantic Monthly on Jefferson and Slavery.

But he tired of the restraints of official life, and in June, 1855, resumed the career of a student, first wandering in Germany and Switzerland, then matriculating at the University of Berlin. There he heard Boeckh, Lepsius, Friedrich von Raumer, Karl Ritter, and tried in vain to follow the lectures of Ranke. With the Easter vacation he was off for Austria and Italy, and lingered till late spring beyond the Alps, in the company of his fellow-student and close friend Frieze, the Latinist. Crossing then the Alps, and lingering but a little among the Roman ruins of southern France, he turned his footsteps homeward, reaching America in time to share the commencement festivities of his alma mater and to receive at her hands his Mastership of Arts.

It was then, with his future profession all undecided, that he chanced to stray within sound of the voice of President Francis Wayland, who was delivering at Yale one of the addresses of the