called, both by friends and enemies, "the New England Way; and it is curious indeed that even at that early time, when the Colony was clinging most precariously to the edge of the continent, a reaction went back from it to the Old World which was productive of remarkable results.

And now as to John Harvard. What can be said about his foster sons? It was in 1636 that the General Court passed a vote to establish the College, but the College was not on its feet until 1638, when it received Harvard's bequest. The first class graduated in 1642, and more than half of them went back to England. Some of them had illustrious careers. From other classes also many returned. Let us spend a few minutes in reviewing the career of one. George Downing was the son of John Winthrop's sister Lucy. He graduated in the first class at the age of eighteen. He was full of brilliancy and insatiable ambition. At first as a minister he went to the West Indies, and preached there with great effect; but very soon appearing in Old England, he became a chaplain among the Ironsides. Nor did he adhere long to the clerical duty to which he was first appointed; he soon assumed the character of a soldier, and rose rapidly to the rank of Scout Master General, or chief of the intelligence department, as it would be nowadays, a place requiring the greatest alertness and vigor of mind. He so distinguished himself that he grew to be a favorite with Cromwell, who after peace came made George Downing his principal diplomatic agent. He sent him to Italy, where he was the instrument of Cromwell in his interference to prevent the massacre of those

slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,

as Milton puts it, the Waldensian Protestants in their valleys of Piedmont. Later we find him in France, where, in conference with Cardinal Mazarin, the ruling spirit, he caused the English power to be respected. Thence he proceeded to The Hague, then, as now, a centre of diplomatic influence; and while there he had negotiations with Russia, with the Scandinavian countries, with Germany, with Holland itself. His work was conducted with ability; and it was through him, to a large extent, that there was such a recognition as came to prevail upon the Continent of the greatness of the power which had sprung up across the channel.

His Harvard culture had done great things for him. As an accomplished logician he could deal with intrigue and indirection. He was an expert Latinist, and Latin was the diplomatic medium of those days. The thoroughly efficient instrument of the English Commonwealth, he did man's work in bringing about a nobler state of things in England.

Alas that there should be another side to the picture. At the Restoration George Downing went over to Charles II, and served him as resolutely and as zealously, apparently, as he had served Cromwell. With treachery which seems execrable, he was the means through whom old comrades of his were arrested and turned over to torture and execution. He enjoyed fat things at the hands of Charles II as a reward for the baseness which even in that degenerate age seemed extraordinary. If he could only have died when Cromwell died! If the wounds which Benedict Arnold received at Saratoga had been mortal, he would have been now one of the greatest figures of our Revolutionary War. And so, if George Downing had died at the close of the English Commonwealth, there would have been few names among the long list of Harvard worthies that better deserve to be honored.

So much for the England into which John Harvard was born. Now to outline the figure against this background! How distinct can we make it? We are told by wise men that heredity and environment are two factors which, working upon the personal element, are almost omnipotent in shaping the man. What can we say as to heredity in the case of John Harvard?

The river Avon is one of the most beautiful and interesting of English streams. I have a pleasant recollection of following it many scores of miles through the English Midlands. Rising not far from Naseby, flowing through Northamptonshire a thread-like rill, from there bordering Leicestershire, a silver ribbon, it reaches Warwickshire. At Stratford, with the resting-place of Shakspere near by, I had one evening the river, lighted with the hues of sunset, at my feet, a broad and brilliant scarf. Of course, the great association with Stratford is and always will be with Shakspere. Here it was that he passed his youth; here it was that he got the color and setting for As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream; became acquainted with the maidenly grace which he embodied afterwards in Perdita; the awkwardness of his clowns and the.

clumsiness of the country justices; and from the neighboring castles of Warwick and Kenilworth he received impressions of those feudal grandeurs of which he was afterwards to make such magnificent portrayal. We shall always associate Stratford with Shakspere. But henceforth, for Harvard men, there will be a most interesting association with the family of John Harvard. Hither some twenty years ago came Mr. Waters, an antiquarian. He had satisfied himself by a course of investigation, the record of which reads like a thrilling detective story, the culprit in the case being unfriendly Fortune, who has undertaken to steal from the world the memory of a benefactor, he had satisfied himself by his investigation that the maiden name of John Harvard's mother was Katherine Rogers, and that she was a daughter of Thomas and Alice Rogers of Stratford. Mr. Waters came to Stratford to see what further he could find out, putting up at the Golden Lion. Walking through the street he noticed, as visitors generally notice, a beautiful old Elizabethan house in the High Street that attracted his interest, and he asked the landlord what the story of the house It had no story; nobody in Stratford knew anything about it. It was simply the old house in High Street. But Mr. Waters, again in the High Street in the afternoon, when the western sun falling strongly on the front brought out its beautiful carving, saw beneath the great window the date 1596 and the initials T. R. and A. R.; and it flashed upon him as by spiritual suggestion that those were the initials of Thomas and Alice Rogers, and that he had found the home of the grandparents of John Harvard. Practised antiquarian as he was, he at once pursued the matter. He went to the birthplace of Shakspere, where the borough records were kept, and there, in an upper room, discovered the proofs that in the time of Elizabeth the house was the home of Thomas and Alice Rogers, his wife, and he made it certain that from that house Katherine Rogers went forth to be married to Robert Harvard.

was.

Thomas Rogers was a substantial burgess in the time of Elizabeth at Stratford. He was what we should call a market-man, a provision dealer, a butcher; he prospered in his private affairs and also won the esteem of his townsmen, being elected to be the bailiff or mayor. Now he built the old house in High Street, the handsomest place in town, where he lived with his wife Alice. Sons and daughters came to them in good number, and at length among

the younger members of the family came a daughter, Katherine, who, at the age of twenty-one, in the year 1605, there is every reason to believe, was a beautiful and amiable girl.

Side by side with Thomas and Alice Rogers in Stratford had gone forward the life of John Shakspere and Mary Arden, his wife. John Shakspere was a man in the same calling and station. He, too, was, as we should say, a market-man. He was less successful in his private affairs than was Thomas Rogers, but he, too, had the esteem of his townsmen, for he was made alderman of the little borough of two thousand people, and finally he, in turn, attained to the position of bailiff.

There is every reason to suppose that the intimacy was great between the families of Thomas Rogers and John Shakspere. The latter too had sons and daughters in good store; the two families indeed came forward two and two. William Shakspere and Charles Rogers were contemporaries in the famous grammar school in Stratford of which the two fathers were officially trustees in their character as public magistrates, there and also upon the village green. William Shakspere with Charles Rogers, Richard Shakspere with Richard Rogers, Edmund Shakspere with Edward Rogers, and so on. The two mothers went to the same church, and were close neighbors. The two fathers, it can scarcely have been otherwise than that they were associates, and probably sometimes competitors, in their business; and, sitting side by side on the council bench of the little borough, they sustained together a public responsibility. There is every reason to suppose that there must have been an intimacy between the families.

Meanwhile, in London, at Southwark, a hundred miles away,and that meant a great deal more in those days than at the present time, was going on the life of Robert Harvard. He was a man twenty-nine years old, and a widower, and in 1605 was ready for a new marriage. It is the surmise of Mr. Henry C. Shelley, to whose very interesting book I acknowledge obligation, that it was William Shakspere who introduced Robert Harvard to Katherine Rogers; but the surmise of Mr. Waters seems to me more probable, that Thomas Rogers, a man of rather large affairs, who would sometimes, probably, make business excursions as far as London, might have become acquainted with Robert Harvard, a man in the same calling with himself, there in Southwark, and