Ten years ago the First Assembly offered to the world the Chautauqua Idea. It promised an almost ideal summer life, where health and thought and brotherly love should abound. Ten years have passed, and now the question is, has the scheme been carried out? Is the Assembly a practical idea, and is it a permanency? The answers are most decided. The original plan has not only been put into practice, but, when enlarged an hundred fold, has been proven practicable. Is it a permanency may be a harder question, but the tenth Assembly has, we believe, in many ways proven it so. First, the character and growth of all departments of Chautauqua work show them to be needed institutions, and necessary institutions, as a rule, become permanent. The steady, healthy growth of the different branches of work shows how enduring is the Idea; the Normal department increased its alumni this year to over 1,200; its plans for future work are much more elaborate than ever before, its course of study much superior. The annual report from the School of Languages shows a steady increase. Over two hundred full tickets were sold in the school this year, and twenty-six different states were represented.

The Teachers’ Retreat for 1883 shows a great increase over previous years:

In 1879 there were enrolled 15 members.

In 1880 there were enrolled 133 members.

In 1881 there were enrolled 105 members.

In 1882 there were enrolled 76 members.

In 1883 there were enrolled 223 members.

The C. L. S. C. has reached the enormous membership of nearly 50,000. Besides the advance in the different schools, the attendance at the Assembly was unprecedented. In the earlier years of an institution this might mean very little—a boom, and nothing more—but in the tenth year, when the place has become well-known, it does mean a great deal. These people, too, were not all new friends. Chautauqua has been able to keep its old friends, while every season it has added hosts of new ones. The whole exterior showed it. When streets are lighted by the electric light, and houses are built on stone foundations, lathed and plastered, and furnished with modern improvements, a town has reached a period of durability. Things are built to stay. Chautauqua puts up no more shanties. It has become a city, not of a day but for all time.

The genuine hearty enthusiasm which animates the workers and friends of the movement is, to us, a most excellent reason for believing the institution lasting. There is a feeling among many that enthusiasm is a weakness, a quality not exactly in good form, not in keeping with cultured minds. This is a mistake. Enthusiasm, combined with good sense and industry, is the best equipment for any enterprise. As Emerson says, “A man is at his best when enthusiastic,” and we believe Chautauqua is most successful when most enthusiastic—most sure of permanence because capable of always inspiring others with enduring enthusiasm.

The great Assembly opens its doors to every one, but few realize the real value of the idea, or appreciate the conditions of society which make feasible such an idea. Said an eminent German, after having studied the Assembly thoroughly: “You Americans do not appreciate this wonderful plant of yours. In my country we could not have a Chautauqua; no other country under the sun could support such an institution. It is peculiarly American.” We do not appreciate the Idea. It is too ideal for the practical minds of the day. But though we may not grasp its full meaning, the Tenth Assembly has proven that people are beginning to understand the practicability, the breadth, and the permanence of the Chautauqua Idea.

Necessity is a word which in its use depends on circumstances. What is necessary to a people in one age may not have been to their ancestors a generation earlier. Time was when the masses of men were not required to act with intelligence of their own, but to follow the decree of the privileged few or obey the behest of the autocratic individual. Illustrations of such a state of society remain. They are to be found wherever the autocracy or oligarchy, whether political or ecclesiastical, continues its sway.

Under such conditions it is easily seen that the only education required is obedience, blind and unquestioning. All that goes beyond this only makes the individual unhappy and embarrasses authority. Hence, since her ambition has been absolute power, the wisdom of that favorite motto of the Romish church, “keep the people in ignorance,” a motto which she has done her best to put in practice.

But our age and civilization have fallen upon other conditions. Obedience is still required, and indeed ever must be, but it is no longer with eyes tight shut, but open; and we are not only encouraged, but by the very conditions of society, are required to ask questions concerning the very grounds of obedience. Something has taken the place of infallible Church and infallible State. That something is enlightened conscience and educated judgment.

In this country the corner-stone of whose stability and permanence must rest on obedience born of intellectual and moral enlightenment, some things have become, and daily are becoming more and more apparent. It is apparent that universal education of a certain kind, a kind that includes to no small degree both head and heart, must go with universal suffrage. It is neither treason nor heresy to say that in the light of experience and of the signs of the times, neither our common schools on the one hand, nor our academies, colleges and universities on the other, are competent to meet and provide for all the educational needs of the American people. Too much can not be said in praise of these institutions. They have been the conservators of our national ideas in the past. But we are growing, and citizenship means higher responsibilities and higher obligations than aforetime. The common school which fits a man for the transactions of ordinary business and prepares the foundation for a higher development, does a great work; but the man who settles down to life without further inspiration and opportunity can hardly be fitted for the higher work and duties of the home and society. Whence then comes, or can come, this inspiration and better preparation? Thus far in our history it has come through the seminary and college. But it is evident that not more than one in twenty of the American youth can have these higher advantages. Reduce the expense to the minimum and there are still insurmountable barriers in the way. It needs no argument, therefore, to show that an organization with the plans, aims and methods of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle has a mission which bears the sanction of necessity. The wide gap between the common school and the college must be filled, and only can be filled by that which brings the means of education to the home; to the youth learning his trade, to the man or woman in the midst of daily duties and employments. The demand is for that which will fill the atmosphere about life with aspiration and the spirit of inquiry. It is for that which will furnish suggestions, a plan and a guide to lead the inquiring mind. Precisely this is the C. L. S. C. Here is its mission and here its necessity—and the necessity likewise of all kindred similar organizations which are yet to spring up and follow in her course.

It is strange how sometimes an opinion altogether untenable, which some one has broached, is taken up by others, and comes in time to be accepted as true by a considerable number. It was some twenty-five years ago that a Miss Delia Bacon published an elaborate argument whose end was to show that not William Shakspere, but Lord Francis Bacon, was the author of the immortal plays which bear the former’s name. She first gave her discovery—unquestionably of the highest importance, if correct—to the world in a magazine article; but afterward embodied it in quite a large volume, to which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an introduction, though he did not accept the writer’s theory. This was the beginning of a controversy which is still alive. Perhaps the number has never been very large of those who believe that the glory of Shakspere belongs to Bacon; but there have always been some to entertain the preposterous notion, from Miss Bacon to Mrs. Henry Pott.

The latter lady has recently issued a book which has excited some interest. The title—somewhat drawn out—is, “The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies (being private notes, circa 1594, hitherto unpublished) of Francis Bacon, illustrated and elucidated by passages from Shakspere.” Mrs. Pott’s undertaking is one more in the line of Miss Delia Bacon. By a comparison of the Bacon notes, in forms of expression and thought, with passages of the Shakspere tragedies and comedies, she endeavors to verify the theory that the great English philosopher—author of the “Novum Organum,” and characterized by Pope as “the greatest, wisest, and meanest of mankind”—is also author of the works accorded to the Bard of Avon. That she succeeds in her task she herself evidently entertains no doubt, but probably not many will agree with her. She finds correspondences and similarities in passages compared where her readers will try in vain to find them; and it is putting the matter mildly to say that her undertaking is a great failure.

Considerable ingenuity and much enthusiasm have been shown by advocates of the theory which makes Lord Bacon the author of the works of Shakspere; but the theory is an absurd one, with nothing whatever to support it. The internal evidence, contained in the works of the two authors, not only gives the theory no support, but is alone enough to a sane mind completely to demolish it. The whole cast of Bacon’s mind, as shown by his known writings, was as unlike as it could be to that of the person who wrote the Shakspere dramas and sonnets. And what other evidence is adduced by those who would have us transfer to another the laurels of the man who was easily the greatest mind in all literature? None whatever. The truth is, it is the improbability from the nature of the case—or, as some would say, the impossibility—that such a person as William Shakspere, the son of a Stratford yeoman, with limited educational opportunities, whose youth was by no means promising, should have produced the works to which for two centuries his name has been attached, which is at the bottom of the theory which gives the authorship to another. This, and nothing else, originated the idea, and keeps it alive. We are told that to believe in Shakspere as the author of these works, universally acknowledged as unapproached and unapproachable, is to believe a miracle. “Whence hath this man this wisdom?” it is asked, as was asked of the Divine Man; and we are reminded that the stream never rises higher than the fountain. Shakspere could not have produced the works—the power was not in him, it is reasoned, but the wise Bacon might have done it; therefore people search for the wherewithal to substantiate an assumption giving the authorship to the latter. But we must believe the miracle; there is no escape. Did Milton write the “Paradise Lost,” and Lord Bacon the “Novum Organum?” Is the Iliad the work of Homer? It is just as certain that the Shakspere writings were the offspring of Shakspere’s genius. We admit the marvel, but there is no setting aside of the fact. And when we are asked to explain how this man could have acquired the power to produce these prodigies of human genius, we can only say, the Maker gave it to him.