George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[400] till he returns, which will be in a year from next Commencement or thereabouts. This is an arrangement I have had at heart a good while, but could not well accomplish earlier, partly because my department, being a new one, was not brought, until lately, into a good condition to leave, and partly because I was unwilling to seem to give up the College during the troubles of the late rebellion.

. . . . I have been an active professor these fifteen years, and for thirteen years of the time I have been contending, against a constant opposition, to procure certain changes which should make the large means of the College more effectual for the education of the community. In my own department I have succeeded entirely, but I can get these changes carried no further. As long as I hoped to advance them, I continued attached to the College; when I gave up all hope, I determined to resign . . . .

The fact that I am to be free in a year makes me so already in spirit; and I look back upon my past course at the College almost entirely as matter of history. There is a good deal in it that gratifies me. During the fifteen years of my connection with it as a teacher, more than half the instruction I have given has been voluntary, neither required nor contemplated by my statutes. When the finances of the College became embarrassed, seven years ago, I volunteered the resignation of $400 out of the stipulated salary of $1000, and have never received but $600 since. During the nine years a department of the modern languages has existed,¹ with four foreigners for teachers, who are generally more likely to have difficulties with the students than natives, no case whatsoever has been carried before the Faculty, and during the whole fifteen years I have never myself been absent from an exercise, or tardy at one. Moreover, within the limits of the department I have entirely broken up the division of classes, established fully the principle and practice of progress according to proficiency, and introduced a system of voluntary study, which for several years has embraced from one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty students; so that we have relied hardly at all on College discipline, as it is called, but almost entirely on the good dispositions of the young men, and their desire to learn. If, therefore, the department of the modern languages is right, the rest of the College is wrong; and if the rest of the College is right, we ought to adopt its system, which I believe no person whatsoever has thought desirable, for the last three or four years. . . . .