Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge

[17] F. H. Hedge and Tutor William Everett. Other instances of literary families-more, perhaps, than any other place in America has produced --might be added to these; but these are enough to show how a literary atmosphere was produced by which the young people of Cambridge were inevitably moulded. The passage into literature seemed an easy thing when so many of one's elders had already accomplished it, each in his own fashion.

To these influences may well be added that of a group of cultivated foreigners, escaped from revolutions or prisons in Germany and Italy, and finding at last (from 1826 onward) a foothold in Harvard University. Such were Charles Follen, Charles Beck, Pietro Bachi; and to these must be added (1816) that delightful and sunny representative of Southern France, that living Gil Bias in hair-powder and pigtail, Francis Sales. To these was later joined (1847) the attractive and inspiring Louis Agassiz. There were also in Cambridge several private libraries which were, for their period, remarkable; as that of Professor Convers Francis, rich in theology and in general