Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 2
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[219] writings as a whole produce a deepening impression of merit. Here was a large personality, all of a piece, singularly free from repressions, and with no closet for a skeleton to lurk in. Beecher's openness of soul—exhibiting frankly his delight in beautiful things and in human contacts—is perhaps his characteristic note, and together with the great historical interest of his work will probably go far to render it permanent.

Mark Hopkins was one of a group of clerical college presidents and teachers in whom the old interest in systems was transferred from theology to ‘anthropology.’ The group includes men like Francis Wayland (1796-1865), President of Brown University (1827-55); Archibald Alexander (1772-1851), professor at Princeton; James McCosh (1811-94), President of Princeton (1868-88); and Noah Porter (1811-94), President of Yale (1871-86). All of these turn from dogmatic theology to psychology, ethics, and the relations of the human mind to Christianity. They produce textbooks on ‘Christian Evidences,’ ‘Moral Science’ or ‘Moral Philosophy,’ and ‘Mental Philosophy,’ for the most part in a vein of Scottish dualistic realism modified by Sir William Hamilton's Kantian importations.

Mark Hopkins, like Beecher, came of tough-minded stock in a tough-minded region. He was the grandson of Mark, one of three younger brothers who were reared by the benevolent Samuel Hopkins. He was born at Stockbridge, graduated in 1824 at Williams College, and spent the next two years there as tutor. In 1829 he took a degree in medicine at the Berkshire Medical College in Pittsfield, but in 1830 returned to Williamstown as Professor of Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric. Though licensed in 1833, he did not accept a pulpit, but in 1836 became President of Williams College, where he did main service until his resignation in 1872. He remained at Williamstown as President Emeritus, and as a general counsellor to the college and to the very wide community of his pupils.

The influence to which they testify is accounted for not only by his strong, gentle, and sympathetic personality, but also by his mastery of those pregnant generalizations which interest growing minds. He was from first to last a man of ideas. It would be too much to expect that among so many ideas even the majority should be original, and in point of fact