Cambridge boasts itself as the residence of four or five men well known to fame on the American and also on the European side of the ocean.  President Felton’s* name is very familiar to us; and wherever Greek scholarship is held in repute, that is known.  So also is the name of Professor Agassiz, of whom I have spoken.  Russell Lowell is one of the professors of the college—­that Russell Lowell who sang of Birdofredum Sawin, and whose Biglow Papers were edited with such an ardor of love by our Tom Brown, Birdofredum is worthy of all the ardor.  Mr. Dana is also a Cambridge man—­he who was “two years before the mast,” and who since that has written to us of Cuba.  But Mr. Dana, though residing at Cambridge, is not of Cambridge; and, though a literary man, he does not belong to literature.  He is—­could he help it?—­a “special attorney.”  I must not, however, degrade him; for in the States barristers and attorneys are all one.  I cannot but think that he could help it, and that he should not give up to law what was meant for mankind.  I fear, however, that successful Law has caught him in her intolerant clutches, and that Literature, who surely would be the nobler mistress, must wear the willow.  Last and greatest is the poet-laureate of the West, for Mr. Longfellow also lives at Cambridge.

* Since these words were written President Felton has died—­I, as I returned on my way homeward, had the melancholy privilege of being present at his funeral.  I feel bound to record here the great kindness with which Mr. Felton assisted me in obtaining such information as I needed respecting the institution over which he presided.

I am not at all aware whether the nature of the manufacturing corporation of Lowell is generally understood by Englishmen.  I confess that until I made personal acquaintance with the plan, I was absolutely ignorant on the subject.  I knew that Lowell was a manufacturing town at which cotton is made into calico, and at which calico is printed—­as is the case at Manchester; but I conceived this was done at Lowell, as it is done at Manchester, by individual enterprise—­that I or any one else could open a mill at Lowell, and that the manufacturers there were ordinary traders, as they are at other manufacturing towns.  But this is by no means the case.

That which most surprises an English visitor on going through the mills at Lowell is the personal appearance of the men and women who work at them.  As there are twice as many women as there are men, it is to them that the attention is chiefly called.  They are not only better dressed, cleaner, and better mounted in every respect than the girls employed at manufactories in England, but they are so infinitely superior as to make a stranger immediately perceive that some very strong cause must have created the difference.  We all know the class of young women whom we generally see serving behind counters in the shops of our larger cities.  They are neat, well dressed, careful,