Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/149

 Motley's Training ^33 ment among his contemporaries over the industry evinced by his later work. Harvard was followed by two years of study at Gottingen and Berlin and of foreign travel. George Bancroft, then fresh from his own German experience, had been a teacher in Motley's school at Northampton. Probably it was due to his influence that German was taught, as it was not a usual subject in the school curricula of the twenties. The young student was thus partially prepared for his plunge into Hanoverian university life and did not lose his first months in struggling over lin- guistic elements. Perhaps the most interesting contribution to his training given by the Gottingen episode was his ac- quaintance and intimate association with Count Bismarck, the foundations of a life-long friendship. The American had an exceptional opportunity to know a contemporary from an environment totally different from his own by heritage and tendency. Later, he had the stUl rarer chance of glimpses at the inside happenings or intentions of Prussian politics. He saw a master mind in the making and in the doing, as few of his generation could. The friendship has, moreover, per- mitted posterity some peeps at the Iron Chancellor in his mo- ments of relaxation, a few of his intimate letters to the American having been published among those of Motley. Most delight- ful are the young student's own letters home during his Wan- derjahre. He worked hard, indeed, at law in both universities, but it was the glimpses of Europe and the htiman side of its life, both past and present, that were the really vital part of the educational results for the young American. Intellectual Germany was still palpitating with the influence of Goethe, whom he was just too late to see, and he was deeply impressed by the atmosphere. He met scholars, such as Tieck, then at work on his translation of Shakespeare, and he learned what minute research could be. At the same time Motley retained an impressionistic attitude towards history which was wholly un-German. He always saw the past instinct with life. He is constantly reconstructing. "If you wiU allow me to mount my hobby, as Tristram Shandy would say," he writes from Rome in 1834, "and call fancy to the aid of history, the scene will be different, at least more lively." Thus he and his imagination travelled together, congenial companions.