wmmimM m ■■■'■•>■'■ WHS SMH Wm$ :"i S BiSEI Four American Universities SfelsiNfflW «K Wit Ktwirc P '';■ I;,','.. -^l.j'i,, '!■..' wsJffimwaMsS. S si » Epjj |S Sfflfci 8WSm$S AM PRES LA225 .F68 1895 Four American universities . Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia. Tf HARVARD mmi • YALE • PRINCETON ^U* lllllll Ms. C COLUMBIA J ILLV5TRATED 1895 Copyright, 1895, by HaKPKR k Bkotheks. All right* reserved. CONTENTS PAGE HARVARD 1 BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON YALE 45 BY ARTHUR T. HADLEY PRINCETON 93 BY WILLIAM M. Sl.ll INE COLUMBIA , . 157 BY BRANDER MATTHEWS ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE CLASS DAT Frontispiece HARVARD SEAL 2 MEMORIAL HALL 5 PRESIDENT CHARLES W. ELIOT 9 VIEW OF COLLEGE IN 1739 11 THE COLLEGE YARD 13 SEVER HALL 17 HARVARD GYMNASIUM 19 CLAVEP.LEY HALL, CAMBRIDGE 23 STUDENT'S ROOM IN CLAVERLKY HALL, CAMBRIDGE .... 25 HARVARD BOAT-HOUSE ON THE CHARLES RIVER 27 GORE HALL 29 MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY 31 GROVES OF ACADEME 33 THE WASHINGTON ELM 37 AUSTIN HALL 39 A STREET IN CAMBRIDGE 41 YALE SEAL 4lj PRESIDENT TIMOTHY DWIGHT 49 YALE COLLEGE, 1793 51 VANDERBILT DORMITORIES 53 THE CHAPEL, FARNAM HALL, AND DURFEE HALL 57 REAR OF THE CHAPEL CI YALE RECITATION HALI 65 GYMNASIUM EXTERIOR 69 GYMNASIUM — INTERIOR 7:'. THE OLD FENCE 75 "SKULL AND BONES" HALL 76 NEW LIBRARY 77 SOUTH MIDDLE 81 STATUE OF ABRAHAM PIERSON ... 85 viii ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE observatory 88 "scroll and key" hall 89 princeton seal 94 president francis l. patton 97 JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D NASSAU HALL THE LIBRARY THE HALSTED OBSERVATORY .... MARQUAND CHAPEL AND MURRAY HALL THE PRESIDENT'S HOrSE 99 101 103 107 109 113 ENTRANCE TO THE PRESIDENT'S GROUNDS 115 THE ART MUSEUM 119 ALEXANDER HALL 124 SCHOOL OF SCIENCE 127 PRINCETON SEMINARY BUILDING . . 131 WHIG HALL 1^3 TMK GYMNASIUM 137 UNIVERSITY HALL 143 WITHERSPOON HALL 147 BROKAW MEMORIAL BUILDING 151 COLUMBIA SEAL 158 PRESIDENT SETH LOW 161 KING'S COLLEGE 163 COLUMBIA COLLEGE 165 COPPER CROWN ON CUPOLA 166 HAMILTON HALL 167 A BIT OF THE OLD AND THE NEW 169 STAIRWAY LEADING TO LIBRARY 173 EX-PRESIDENT FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 177 SILVER MEDAL OF KING'S COLLEGE — OBVERSE 180 SILVER MEDAL OF KING'S COLLEGE — REVERSE 181 INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY 185 GENERAL PLAN OF THE GROUNDS AND BUILDINGS OF THE NEW COLUMBIA COLLEGE 191 PROPOSED DESIGN FOR THE NEW LIBRARY BUILDING — VIEW OF EAST END TOWARDS AMSTERDAM AVENUE 195 PROPOSED DESIGN FOR THE NEW LIBRARY BUILDING — VIEW OF THE FRONT FACING ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH STREET 199 FOLDING PLATES: — harvard university Facing page 16 YALE UNIVERSITY " " 48 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY " " 96 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY " " 160 HARVARD UNIVERSITY j)EOM whatever side one approaches Cambridge, the tower of the Harvard Memorial Hall is conspicuous. It is an appropriate emblem of the university. It is the monument of gen- erous youth trained to the performance of duty, and prompt to offer life a willing sacrifice to the public good. No other building in the United States is consecrated by more tender and noble personal and patriotic associations — associations which, connecting the life of the university with the life of the nation, and indicating the intimate relation between ideal studies and unselfish character, afford a perennial inspiration to high conduct. The walls of the central hall are lined with inscriptions that cele- brate lofty virtues, and with tablets on which are recorded the names of those sons of Harvard who died for their country in the war for national regeneration. Through this hall every day a majority of the undergraduate students pass and repass to and from the great adjoining dining- hall, whose windows are filled with the images of the scholars and poets and heroes of past times, and whose walls are adorned with the portraits of the worthies of the university who have served the cause of learning or of the state. He must be of a dull spirit who is not moved by the silent and familiar presence of such incentives to ex- 4 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES cellence, and who at times does not feel his heart glow and quicken with the thought that, as a member of the uni- versity, he is an associate with men in whose characters and lives the worth of its teachings and influence has been ex- pressed, and that he is surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who claim of him that he show himself worthy to belong to their company. The chief and oldest seat of learning in New England, the local foundations of Harvard College were solidly laid, and its superstructure framed in accord with those fundamental principles of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which have so largely contributed to the shaping of the character of the United States. Its beginning was in 1630, and in 1050 a charter was granted by the General Court, under the seal of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, establishing Harvard College as a corporation " for the advancement of all good literature, arts, and scieuces," and this charter, with an appendix passed in 1057, is now in force precisely as first drafted, "the venerable source of collegiate authority" at the present day. But in the course of centuries the College has developed into an institution in many respects different from that contemplated by its founders. It is a novel growth of time, largely a product of ideas and con- ditions peculiar to America. Obvious as it is that the successful working of a de- mocracy is dependent on popular education, it is no less plain that the quality and sufficiency of that education are dependent upon the superior institutions of learning. Thev are the head-waters of the stream of education by which the general intellectual and moral life of the community is in large measure supplied and sustained, and it is not too much to say that they consequently possess an importance MEMORIAL HALL beyond that of any other of our institutions. But the influence of most of them is hampered by narrow means, local limitations, or sectarian restrictions. The services which the numerous smaller colleges perform in their re- spective localities are great, but it is impossible for them to offer to their students the advantages of a truly liberal education. In order to provide such an education, the term liberal must apply in the fullest sense to the institution itself. It must be free from every bond of party or sect, and so pos- sessed with the spirit of freedom of thought that its teach- ers may enjoy entire liberty of inquiry and of instruction; it must afford liberty of choice of study to its pupils, and it must be open upon equal terms to all students of what- ever race or social position. It must afford such assistance l* FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES to poor students of good character and capacity as may enable them to secure a full proportionate share of the opportunities it offers. And it must be so amply endowed as to maintain varied, disinterested, and able instruction in all the more important branches of knowledge. Moreover, its life must be recognized as an integral part of the life of the state, and it must have proved the worth and power of its discipline by the character of those whom it has nurt- ured, and by the services which they have rendered to the community. The influence and authority which a great institution of learning derives from age is hardly to be overestimated. The mere increase in the sum of the associations that at- tach themselves to it strengthens the force of its appeal to the imagination, on which the increase of its resources largely depends. "Many well-devoted persons," says the Harvard charter of 1650, " have been and daily are moved and stirred up to give and bestow sundry gifts, legacies, lands, and revenues for the advancement of all good liter- ature, arts, and sciences." The stream of such bounty widens as it flows. With the natural growth of the com- munity, the number of students increases. But though this be true, and though the growth of Harvard has been more rapid of late than ever before, it is not yet as great as it ought to be in comparison with the growth in num- bers, in wealth, and in power of the nation. The main reasons of this fact are to be found in the general condi- tions of American society during the past twenty years, rather than in the special conditions of the university. The fact, therefore, is not an exceptional one; it is true of all the leading institutions of pure learning in the United States, true of the whole system of the higher edu- HARVARD VM1VERBITT 7 cation, and it is of greater import to the nation at large than to the individual institutions themselves.* Among the obvious minor causes of the comparatively slow growth of the older colleges must be reckoned the establishment of a great number of local institutions more or less fitted to supply the demand for learning in the regions where they have been founded, and thus tending to diminish the resort of youth to the older and better equipped, but more distant and exacting institutions. The founding of many of these colleges is a natural result of the material and intellectual conditions of the community, and may, perhaps, be generally serviceable to the cause of education. It is only to be regretted when, as in such a case as the recent establishment of Clark University at Worcester, means are employed for the foundation of a new institution which could more wisely have been used to strengthen and en- large the old. For, however serviceable such a new institu- tion may become, the fact is not to be overlooked that its establishment involves a dissipation of wealth and of en- ergy. Whatever is generous in the object of the founders would be far more effectively promoted if the means re- quired for the foundation and carrying on of the new in- stitution were concentrated and applied in an already exist- ing school of learning. The lamentable waste involved in the needless duplication of the instruments of study, of * In I860 the percentage of college students to the total population of the United States appears from the returns of the Census and the reports of the United States Commissioner of Education to have been .00174; after this time there was a decline to as low as .00106 in 1887. Since then there has been a re- covery, and in 1892 the percentage had risen to .00175. But this is a miserable showing. I take these figures from an interesting paper on " The Decline and Revival of Public Interest in College Education," by Mr. Merritc Starr. Chicago, 1893. 8 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES buildings, libraries, and laboratories, would at least be avoided. But more than this, and of more essential im- portance, no new school of learning in a region where an old and vigorous one already exists can share in those tra- ditions and associations of inestimable value in education — stimulating, elevating, and refining — which inhere in an institution that has long been one of the chief sources of the higher intellectual and moral life of the community, and in the support of which the affections of many suc- cessive generations have been engaged. These are things that neither money nor mere good-will can supply. Competition among institutions of learning is of no less importance than in other fields of activity for the mainten- ance of a high standard of accomplishment, but here, no less than elsewhere, competition may be pushed too far, and to the injury of all the competing parties. In the case of these institutions the danger is not greater that through excessive competition the supply of pupils may be so divided as to be insufficient in any one among them for its healthy life, than that the supply of competent teachers may be insufficient to meet the demand for a strong body of in- structors. But while the multiplication of colleges and so-called universities has of late done something to check the normal growth of the older schools of learning, a much more es- sential and important cause of the comparative slowness in the increase of their students is to be found in the general tendency of our recent civilization to concentrate interest upon material aims, and to turn the most active and ener- getic intelligence of the community to the pursuit, not of knowledge and wisdom, but of wealth, and to the attain- ment of what are esteemed to be practical, in distinction HARVARD rxiVERSlTY f) from the ideal, objects of life. This tendency is no less obvious in the Old World than in the New. It is the most marked characteristic of our age. It must be reckoned with in all our considerations of the state of modern society, in our political speculations, and in our estimates of the worth of life in our own times. It may be deplored by those who PKKSIDKNT CHARLES W. ELIOT cherish the high opportunities of human existence, but it must be accepted as the inevitable and irresistible drift of the age, and those who hold life as meaning more than bread must set themselves, not to the vain work of stem- ming the current, but of so directing its force that in the long-run it may be rendered beneficial to those objects for 10 FOUM AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES which the best men in all times have striven. It is vain to keep back the inundation of the Nile, but some of the superabundant waters may be so turned as to fertilize the sands, and to change the flood from an instrument of ruin to a means of welfare. Egypt, said Herodotus, is the gift of the Nile. One of the results of the rapid and brilliant development of the material resources of the world, and of the natural desire which it has stimulated in all classes to secure a share in the growing wealth, has been the increased eagerness of youth to enter at an early age upon the pursuits, profes- sional or other, which lead directly to the obtaining of a livelihood and the acquisition of money. The time spent in acquiring general culture and mental resources that have no immediate relation to getting on in the world seems as if wasted to those whose desires are set upon speedy ad- vancement in the career of fortune, and they turn from the college or university to the professional school or the busi- ness office. This disposition has been confirmed by the correspondingly rapid development of science and of scientific methods of instruction during the past half-cen- tury, which has led to a higher standard of purely pro- fessional training, and to the consequent necessity for a longer period of preliminary professional study than was formerly requisite. The term of study in the professional schools now needed to equip the student for his work is longer bv one year at least, ofteii by two years, than was deemed necessary thirty years ago. A steady pressure is exerted for the lessening of the term of general education in order to secure more time for special training, and many a young man, in haste to enter his profession, gives up altogether the undergraduate course of stud v. Undoubted- HARVARD UNIVERSITY 11 ly, as regards not only the individual but also the general intellectual life of the community, this is to be regretted. The difficulty is augmented by the fact that the standard for entrance to the undergraduate department of our uni- versities has during the same period been considerably raised, with the effect of increasing the average age of the undergraduate students by one or two years. The read- justment of the proportions of time given to general culture and to special training, and the best distribution between them of the period allotted to education, is one of the most serious problems for those now engaged in the conduct of our universities. The lead in raising the standard of our professional schools, as well as of the undergraduate depart- ment, has throughout been taken by Harvard. 'J tD^xtjfmc (gt/kfy&.m)1(^am4ri^jfr.jfew- Q/wfawt View of College in 1759 12 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES But while the universities must respond, if they ;ire to perforin their great public function aright, to the demands of the community, they are also required to recognize its needs, and more especially those which must be supplied if its higher life is to be duly maintained. They must guide and lead, not merely follow the general direction of the national progress. Their proper work is not only one of teaching, but of inspiration as well. It is for them to enforce the conviction upon their students, and through them upon the community, that mere material prosperity affords no solid basis for the permanent welfare of a nation. The very continuance of this prosperity depends on the intelligence and character of the people, and thus the insti- tutions that are devoted to the cultivation of the intelli- gence and of the moral faculties are, even from a material and selfish point of view, the most important institutions of the country, and those which have the highest claim on the support of all who are engaged in the acquisition of wealth, no less than of those who cherish high ideals of national char- acter, who believe in the supremacy of spiritual achieve- ment, and who know that " wisdom exalteth them to honor that hold her fast." But although the resort of youth to the higher institu- tions of learning is by no means what it ought to be, com- pared with the growth in wealth and the increase in popu- lation of the country, nor what is needed for the protection of its material interests, and for the improvement of its civilization, yet the number of young men who yearly fre- quent them is not inconsiderable. In the present year, 1894, there are 3160* enrolled at Harvard, of whom 1656 are in * This number does not include the 346 students enrolled in the Summer ( 'nurses, most of whom are not candidates for a degree. HARVARD UNIVERSITY 15 the undergraduate department. They come from forty States and Territories of the Union, and a few from foreign countries. They represent every grade of society, every variety of creed — Orthodox, Liberal, Koman Catholic, Ag- nostic, Jew , every shade of political opinion ; and they meet and mingle on terms of even more complete equality than those which commonly exist in society. There is no community in which artificial distinctions have less influ- ence, and probably there is no one of the larger colleges of the land in which simple collegiate divisions, such as those of the annual classes and of college societies, have less ef- fect in creating distinctions in the ranks of the students. Student life at Harvard is essentially and healthily demo- cratic. In all departments, alike of study or of sport, there are no marked distinctions except the natural ones of char- acter and capacity. The rich student undoubtedly has some advantages over the poor, but they are for the most part either strictly personal, as in the ability to spend more for amusement and in the gratification of special tastes, or they enable him to belong to the more expensive and ex- clusive, but otherwise in general less desirable clubs. If he be an attractive fellow in bearing and manners, they assist him in gaining a more or less factitious popularity. But the disadvantages of narrow means are less obvious and less felt at Harvard than in society at large, and a youth of independent and reasonable character need never suffer from any hurt to his feelings because of his poverty. Of course, in college, as in the world, there are heart-burnings produced by the differences in wealth and social position, but, on the whole, the relations of the students with each other are simple, manly, and determined by character and manners rather than by any other considerations. 16 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES The evil influence of wealth is more felt here, as in other universities, in another way. Many parents who have ac- quired riches rapidly, and are desirous of obtaining social position and consideration for their sons, send them to college for this end quite as much as with an aim to a solid education, and supply them with incomes far beyond their legitimate needs. These youths form a small and unfortunate section of the college community, exposed to extraordinary temptation, and often unfitted by domestic training to resist it. They naturally fall into extravagant expenditure that leads to self-indulgence, waste of time, neglect of opportunity, and in some cases to immoral hab- its. They set a bad example which is not without effect. They raise the standard of expense even for those who are supplied with but a moderate and appropriate income. In the courses of study which they nominally pursue they are a hinderance to the progress of the industrious members of the class. They contribute little or nothing to the wel- fare of the college. But, on the other hand, they them- selves not infrequently derive distinct benefit from their college experience. They could probably find nowhere else so little false regard for wealth ; they are for the time members of a community in which other distinctions have a legitimate superiority ; they are made aware of the ex- istence of higher ideals than those which riches constitute or enable their owner to attain ; they are subjected to a discipline which the outer world of society does not afford ; the existence and the power of things of the intelligence are forced upon their attention, and it not infrequently happens that some intellectual interest is awakened in their minds, and they leave college with some mental resources and some respect for the nobler use and ends of Sever Hall. Library. -4^S s^v^ Boylaton Hall. President's House. PnklBI Hull C.iiii,! Hill OldOymnuinm H Mil II ill. VV. > ,l...n,Ll, HOOI BIRD'S-EYE VIEW < >| ll \K\ \i:i. UNIVERSITY SEVER HALL life, which, without a college course, they might never have gained. One fact of much importance which has been very no- ticeable in recent years is the marked improvement in the general spirit and temper of the undergraduate body. This seems mainly due to three causes — the raising of the aver- age age of the students ; the establishment of the elective system, which requires each of them to select and deter- mine his course of study ; and, above all, to the policy introduced and now firmly established at Harvard of treat- ing the students as capable of self-government and respon- sible for their own conduct. Nowhere else is the student more independent and more trusted than at Harvard. He 2 18 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES is treated not as a child but as a man, and the good results which have followed from this policy are obvious in the improved order, the increased industry, and the readier submission to authority that prevail throughout the uni- versity. Among fifteen hundred youths, most of them just released from the strict discipline of school, or the im- mediate control of their parents, there will, of course, be some incapable of meeting the responsibility of indepen- dence, and of making good use of its opportunities. There are some men who never outgrow a childish habit of mind. But, as a whole, with few exceptions, the students show themselves worthy of the confidence reposed in them. Even those who enter college children in disposition soon learn the folly of prolonged childishness, and acquire a manlier temper. The test to which the students are sub- jected by becoming at once masters of their own lives is a severe one. Some fail under it ; but its effect in develop- ing moral character, through the sense of personal respon- sibility, is unquestionably beneficial to a great majority. Harvard College is not the place for a youth of weak will, or of convictions in regard to right and wrong that rest on artificial snppoits. Parents who wish their sons to be con- strained to virtue by external observances and formal pen- alties should not send them hither. It is indeed true that the domestic training and the school education of the act- ual generation of American children are often lamenta- bly wanting in respect to the simplest elements of sound character, and many parents look to the college to make good defects due to their own inefficiency or neglect. But this is a charge which the college cannot undertake by direct means. It must assume that the youth of eighteen or nineteen years old who enters its gates no longer needs HARVARD UNIVERSITY 21 to be treated as an infant. Usually this assumption is correct. It would be difficult to find a better-behaved and better-mannered body of fifteen hundred young men than the students at Cambridge. Offences against good order in college are rare ; against good civic order still rarer. The high spirits incident to youth occasionally manifest themselves in exuberant display and in reckless conduct, but lively animal spirits are not characteristic of the Amer- ican temperament, and there is too little rather than too much of genuine gayety and jollity in college life. Har- vard students have outgrown some of the childish follies, the display of which was not long ago asserted as a cher- ished right, but they still hold with silly persistence to a few survivals of customs inconsistent with the prevalent spirit of good feeling and good sense. The initiations into certain societies still exhibit something of stupid folly, and occasionally of brutal inconsiderateness ; but they do not belong properly with the present order of things, and their suppression may be looked for before long as a result of the common-sense and right feeling of the students themselves. The intention to behave like gentlemen is strong among them, and the spirit of gentlemanliness is, perhaps, as vig- orous among them and as widely diffused as in society at large. The sense of honor is apt to be blunt outside as well as inside college walls, and it is not to be expected that students should have a keener perception of the fine and incessant requirements of personal honor than that which prevails in the world from which they come. The dependence of health and vigor of mind upon health and vigor of body is now the fundamental proposition in every rational scheme of education. The provision made at Harvard for the exercise required for health and for normal 2* 22 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES physical development is probably as thorough, complete, and intelligent as can be found in any institution of learning. It marks a new stage in the improvement of the university as a place of education, and there is nothing in which the life of the student of today differs more widely from that of preceding generations of American undergraduates than in the attention given to the care of the body, in the large share which athletic sports hold among college interests, and in the strong feeling aroused by athletic competitions. College games and athletic sports properly regarded are at once promotive of the intellectual interests of the stu- dents and subordinate to them. They are the sports of gentlemen who do not aim at professional excellence as oars- men or players of any game. The exact limit between pro- fessional and amateur excellence in them is not easily de- fined ; but the difference in spirit animating professional and amateur sport is obvious. The interest and the worth of sport as part of college discipline and amusement are les- sened and its character is degraded in proportion as the par- ticipants in it strive for excellence other than that which may be attained by a youth who does not allow it to be- come the chief object of his efforts, but who holds it in its right place as a pleasant and animating recreation and a manly accomplishment. Fair play, honor to opponents, cheerful acceptance of defeat, modest acceptance of victory, are conditions essential to contests between gentlemen, and if they cannot be secui'ed in intercollegiate contests, these contests must cease. The entrance of the professional spirit into college athletics has tended to promote the vice of betting upon the issue of the games. Harvard has taken the lead in the reform of the objectionable practices that have lowered the character of college athletic sports. HARVARD UNIVERSITY 23 But while athletics have of late occupied a larger share of public attention than the other parts of college training, and have seemed consequently to have a disproportionate development in college life, the progress of Harvard as an institution of mental education and of learning:, and her advance towards the position of a true university, have been such as greatly to change her relative position to all other institutions of a similar sort in the United States. The last twenty-five years have been a period of transition for her from the traditional narrow academic system to a new, lilt- era], and comprehensive system, in which the ideal of an American university— a different ideal from the English of t'LAVEKLKV HALL, CAMBK1DGE 24 FOUli AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES the German — has been gradually working itself out. The result is not yet complete, the ideal not yet realized, so far as the realization of such an ideal may be possible, but the progress towards it is steady. No work of greater impor- tance to the nation has been going on anywhere during this time. It deserves far greater popular attention than it has received, far greater popular support. It has become an in- stitution in which an American may feel a legitimate pride. An outline can render but little of the life of a great figure, but it may show its proportions. Harvard College offers this year nearly three hundred elective courses of instruction, most of them requiring attendance of three hours a week at recitation or lecture.* The main intent of an undergraduate student should be to secure instruction in those branches of knowledge likely to be most service- able for the general culture of his mind, and for providing him with intellectual tastes and resources. It is a misuse of rare opportunities if he confines himself to studies of a technically scientific character, or to such as partake of the character of the professional studies to which he intends to give his later years of preparation for life in the world. It may, indeed, be his misfortune that, obliged by narrow means to hasten his entrance to a profession which shall provide him with a livelihood, he is compelled to neglect the generous and liberalizing studies of letters and the arts, studies known collectively under the fortunate term of the humanities, in order to concentrate himself on special lines of professional work. But everything is done at Harvard to prevent or to diminish this necessity by the provision of scholarships by which a considerable part of the cost of his * In 1S93- 1 J4 the total number of hours of instruction given weekly was 761. 11 AH VA Rl> UNI I 'MMSIT Y 25 education is lifted from the shoulders of the poor, indus- trious, and capable student. The cost of living at Harvard on the most economical basis consistent with health, and including the tuition fee of $150, may be set at from $400 to $500 a year. In this sum are not included the expenses of the long vacation or the cost of clothes. Liberal pro- vision is made for the aid of the poorer students, the total STUDENTS ROOM IN CLAYEISLKY HA1.-L, CAMBKIDUK sum annually distributed amounting to not less than $50,000. This is given mainly in the form of scholarships, of which every year not less than one hundred and twenty -five, vary- ing in amount from $90 to $300, are assigned to needy and meritorious students, so that the actual cost of education at Harvard for a student receiving a scholarship of the average ■jC, FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES value of $236 need not be more than about the same sum. He can, without excessive labor, secure his degree of A.B. in three years, and if he has been wise in the selection of his studies, he will be able to enter one of the professional schools already in possession of faculties disciplined by se- rious training, and of a general mental culture of inesti- mable worth for the happiness and refinement of life. The number of teachers giving instruction in the under- graduate department and the graduate school is not far from one hundred and fifty. Ample provision, on a scale not attained elsewhere in America, is made for the needs of scientific instruction in the biological, chemical, and physical laboratories, in the geological and mineralogical cabinets, in the collections of natural history, and in the botanical gardens. But the cen- tre of the intellectual life of the university is to be found in the library, which, under the charge of its present emi- nent librarian, Mr. Justin Winsor, is administered with a liberality and efficiency unparalleled in any collegiate libra- ry in the world. The college library proper now contains about 315,000 volumes and over 300,000 pamphlets, and if the libraries of the separate schools and class-rooms be added, the total number of volumes is more than 430,000. The accessions to the university library during the ten years from ISS-t to 1S93 inclusive have been at the rate of something over 14,000 volumes annually. The number of persons making use of the library steadily increases from year to year. Seventeen years ago 57 per cent, of the students made use of it; in 1S87-88 the proportion for the whole college had increased to 89 per cent., for the three upper classes to 97 per cent. ; in 1888-89 the respective numbers were 87 per cent, and 95 per cent.; in 1892-93 the TTTTT71 !^ all* WIRE ^-^ : "-->; : • nARTAnn noAT-norsE ox the chakles r.irEK number of students who made no recorded use of the library was 41 out of a total of 1449. A more striking illustration of the general intellectual activity of the undergraduates could hardly be found. Every student is allowed to take out three volumes at a time, and to change them as often as he may desire. The total number of volumes (not in- cluding those taken out for a single night) taken out in 1SS7-8S was 05,639 ; in 1888-89 it was 68,892 ; in 1892-93 it was 80,380. The use of books within the library itself is constant and increasing. Every facility is provided to make its stores accessible and serviceable to the utmost degree. There can hardly be a greater advantage to the young student, no less than to the old, than this placing at his free disposal the treasures of a great library, and there is nothing in which a greater contrast is afforded to the com- mon practice of most foreign universities. The advanced student who returns to Harvard after a residence abroad finds in its open library a compensation for whatever other advantages a foreign seat of learning may offer. In this administration of its library Harvard has set a needed and beneficial example to all other institutions of learning. A natural doubt may, however, arise as to whether a young 28 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES student, unaccustomed to the use of books, is likely to make judicious use of the opportunity thus put within his reach; but it is to be remembered that his use will generally be guided in the first instance by the directions of his instruct- ors, and that he will thus gradually learn how to help him- self in the vast choice set before him of the books fitted for his needs or his entertainment. The advice and assistance of teachers is not confined to the class-room or the matter of studies. Every student on his entrance to college is referred to a member of the Fac- ulty, who will act as his adviser in regard to all matters in which he may stand in need of counsel, such, for instance, as a judicious scheme and choice of courses of study, or any of his social, economical, and moral interests. The stu- dent is thus brought at once into kindly human relations with a representative of the college authorities, and no parent need be afraid, lest, in sending his son to Harvard, he should be left without the help of judicious, disinter- ested, and friendly counsel. The progress of the university as a true school of learn- ing has been nowhere more marked of late than in the im- provement of its professional schools. In the Law and Medical schools this has been brought about mainly by the raising of the requirements of admission to them, by bet- ter methods and enlarged scope of instruction, by the intro- duction of thorough examinations, and by insisting upon a longer period of study as preliminary to the obtaining of a degree. The required term of instruction is now at least one year longer than it was twenty years ago. The change thus wrought in these schools is radical, and their example has done much to raise the standard of professional education throughout the country. In the Divinity School the change HARVARD UNIVERSITY 29 has been not less remarkable. The professors have been drawn without preference from denominations of widely differing creeds, orthodox and liberal alike; they have worked together in perfect harmony ; the long tradition of high learning in the profession lias been maintained by them, while their number has been increased, and the range of instruction en- larged. In all the schools the instructors, no less than the pu- pils, have felt the ben- efit of these changes, and the spirit of en- ergetic industry which animates them reacts to its advantage upon the undergraduate de- partment. But the most im- portant development of the university in late years has been that of what is now known as the Gradu- ate School — that is, the department of ad- vanced studies pur- sued by graduates who intend to devote them- selves to teaching, or to independent investi- gation and research in GORE HALL 30 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES some one of the higher branches of knowledge, or to gen- eral self-culture. The importance of these studies as essen- tial to the progress of civilization is felt in proportion to the growth of the nation in wealth and material power. The United States cannot maintain an equal position with other nations in this progress except by the fostering of these highest intellectual pursuits, and no duty is more im- perative upon our leading schools of learning than to offer the best attainable instruction in those studies by which knowledge may be increased, the level of intellectual life elevated, and the consequent moral improvement of the community secured. The teachers capable of giving this indispensable instruction are comparatively few, and the means for providing them with appropriate salaries, as well as with the leisure requisite for their own progress, are scanty as yet in every American institution of learning. It is not claiming too much to say that Harvard is, in these respects at least, not inferior to any other university in the United States. Indeed, in certain respects she distinctly leads the advance ; for she embraces within the university not only the schools of professional training, but also a collection of separate institutions devoted to the increase of special knowledge, and so equipped as to make them the rivals of the best that could be brought into comparison with them in any country. Such is the Museum of Comparative Zool- ogy, whose magnificent collections, due to the genius, the labors, and the liberality of the two Agassizes, father and son, afford to the student of zoology means as ample and as well arranged to assist him in the progress of his studies as any museum in the world ; such, too, is the Botanical Muse- um, established by the great master of American botany, Asa Gray, and presided over by teachers worthy of their HARVARD UXIYEUSITY 31 master ; such are the Chemical Laboratory, and the Jeffer- son Physical Laboratory, in which the most modern means and appliances are provided for the prosecution of a science that with astonishing rapidity is extending its triumphs in the conquest of new fields from nature; such is the Ob- servatory, for which the genius and devotion of successive directors, and the generous endowments of private persons, have secured a position in the first rank of astronomical observatories. All these and other important subsidiary MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY institutions are open to pupils prepared to take advantage of the means of instruction which they offer. For students of other subjects in science, and of literature and philoso- phy, advanced instruction is provided according to their needs and proficiency, while the resources which the library affords are even more important to the graduate than the undergraduate student. The school is strengthened by fellowships and scholarships which have been endowed by 32 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES benefactors of the university, " for the encouragement," to borrow the terms of one of these endowments, " of a higher, broader, and more thorough scholarship than is required or expected of undergraduates in all sound literature or learn- ing," or, in the words of another of the deeds of gift, " for assisting to support one or more pupils . . . preferably such as shall express the determination to devote their lives to the advancement of theoretic science and original investiga- tion." In the year 1893-94 there were 256 students regis- tered in this department, and there seems to be good reason to anticipate that its growth will henceforth be steady. To raise the standard of intellectual work in this country near- er to the highest level attained by it elsewhere, to attract disinterested scholars in greater numbers, men who pursue their studies primarily for the sake of pure learning, and not for a livelihood, scholars who in their turn shall lead the advance of knowledge, and help to supply the ever- increasing need of higher intelligence and better culture, of competent criticism, efficient suggestion and wise leader- ship in politics and in society, men who shall keep alive in themselves and quicken in others the best ideals of individ- ual and national life, who shall be fitted to guide and 'help and instruct and inspire the youth of each generation — this is the chief problem which Harvard and other of our prin- cipal schools of learning are now engaged in solving. The real vitality of a university deserving of the name depends, indeed, not so much on the excellence and abun- dance of the direct guidance which it offers along the most advanced lines of the 'ever-advancing forces of learning, as upon the spirit with which it inspires its students. The highest end of the highest education is not anything which can be directly taught, but is the consummation of all HARVARD UNIVERSITY 35 studies. It is the final result of intellectual culture in the development of the breadth, serenity, and solidity of mind, and in the attainment of that complete self-possession which finds expression in character. To secure this end, one means, above all, is requisite, which has, strangely enough, been greatly neglected in our schemes of education — namely, the culture of the faculty of imagination. For it is by means of this faculty, acting in conjunction with and under the control of reason, that the true nature and relative im- portance of the objects of study are to be discovered, and the attainment of knowledge for practical use brought into connection with the pursuit of truth as the intellectual basis of conduct. The largest acquisitions of knowledge remain barren unless quickened by the imagination into vital ele- ments of moral discipline and growth. The activity of the imagination is needed not more for the interpretation of his- tory than for the appreciation of the significance of poetic literature and the other fine arts, whose chief interest con- sists not in their works as independent products, but as ex- pressions of the inner life and highest powers of man ; it is needed not more for the recognition of the nature and the discovery of the solution of social problems than for the or- dering of the multifarious facts of the exact sciences so as to discriminate the principles or laws of which each fact is an illustration. Mathematics, physical and natural science, philology in its widest acceptance, all mere knowledge, in fine, affords the material for the ultimate work of the im- agination, and it is therefore the culture of the imagination which, if the advanced courses of study in the university are to be properly ordered, demands attention beyond that which, in the oldest and most famous institutions of learn- ing, has hitherto been accorded to it. The neglect with 36 FOVli AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES which the studies directly contributing to this culture have been treated is easily to be accounted for historically, and the conditions of our actual civilization are hardly more favorable for them than those of the past have been. It is true, indeed, that their need has become more obvious with the splendid rapidity of the progress in mere knowledge characteristic of our own times. Progress in knowledge does not necessarily involve a corresponding contempora- neous progress in intelligence, wisdom, and virtue ; on the contrary, its common, immediate, and direct effect is to strengthen the forces of materialism, and the chief efforts of our higher institutions of learning should therefore be directed to provide such education as may serve more or less to counteract this prevailing tendency. Arid this edu- cation is to be found, and found onkr, in the intelligent and comprehensive study of those arts in which men have sought to express themselves — their thoughts, feelings, and emotions — in forms of beauty. For it is these arts, prop- erly called the humanities, which set the standard of human attainment, and it is the study of them that affords the best culture of the imagination. This study should be regarded as the proper accompaniment and crown of all other studies. All others are enlightened and elevated by it. The studies that nourish the soul, that afford permanent resources of delight and recreation, that maintain ideals of conduct, and develop those sympathies upon which the progress and welfare of society depend, are the studies that quicken and nourish the imagination and are vivified and moralized by it. The greatest need of Harvard, as of other universities, at the present time, is that of endowments for fuller instruction in the learning which tends to the direct cultivation of this faculty. THE WASHINGTON ELM A striking illustration of the general indifference to it is afforded at Harvard by the disregard of the influence of architecture as an element in education, as shown in the character of the buildings erected in the last half-century, and which are evidences of the material prosperity of the university. Harvard by no means stands alone in her neg- lect in this respect. No one denies that their surroundings have a subtle and strong, though perhaps unconsciously re- ceived, influence upon the disposition of men. No one de- nies that culture of the eye in the recognition and appre- 3* 38 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES ciation of beauties of form, color, and proportion is de- sirable ; that the pleasure if not the happiness of life is in- creased by enjoyment of these things. No one denies that noble and beautiful buildings, in noble association and well designed for the purposes for which they are intended, be- come more and more impressive from generation to genera- tion as they become more richly invested with associations of human interest. The youth who lives surrounded by beautiful and dignified buildings to which inspiring memo- ries belong cannot but be strongly affected, less or more, consciously or unconsciously, according to his native sensi- bilities and perceptions, by the constant presence of objects that, while pleasing and refining the eye, cultivate his seuse of beauty, and arouse not merely poetic emotion, but his sympathy with the spirit and generous efforts of his distant predecessors. His inward nature takes on an impress from the outer sight. He may need help at first to discern the expression in the work of the beauty which it embodies, but he needs no help to feel its dignity and venerableness. The value of the influence of noble architecture, simple as it may be, at a great seat of education, especially in our country, is hardly to be overestimated ; and yet it has been either absolutely disregarded at Harvard, or, if recognized, the attempt to secure buildings that should exert this in- fluence has been little short of total failure. If some great benefactor of the university should arise, ready to do a work that should hand down his name in ever-increasing honor with posterity, he might require the destruction of all the buildings erected in the last half-century, and their recon- struction with simple and beautiful design, in mutually helpful, harmonious, and effective relation to each other, so that the outward aspect of the university should better HARVARD L'XIVERSITY 39 consist with its object as a place for the best education of the youth of the nation. Such a superb work of patriotism is hardly to be expected in this generation, but at some time it must be accomplished, by individual or by public means, if the university is ever to fulfil one of its most important functions. Conspicuous as Harvard is, there is no wonder that she is the object of constant criticism. So long as this criticism is honest and founded upon knowledge, there is nothing but good in it. But the peculiar position which Harvard occu- pies exposes her to much criticism that is ignorant, unfair, and at times malevolent. Absolutely independent as she is in matters of religion of sectarian relations, she lacks the support of any denomination,- and is exposed to attack from newspapers which, nominally religious, are actually secta- rian in character, and have at heart the special interest of denominational institutions of learning. Her old motto, " Christo et Ecdeshv" Harvard translates literally, " To Christ and His Church" — the Church that embraces all mankind. Her position is not acceptable to sectaries, and AUSTIN HALL 40 FUUS AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES the very strength which she derives from it exposes her to many an irabittered assault. Another but inferior source of unfair criticism has its origin in the disappointments which occur among the large body of her pupils and their friends. Among a thousand students there will always be a proportion of failures, and another proportion to which the special opportunities of any given institution will prove unfitted. Both these classes are tempted to find excuses for their failure in defects of the institution, either imag- inary, or exaggerated and admitting of remedy. A worth- less student, who has made a sorry affair of his college course, vents his spleen in misrepresentations of the college which could not save him in his own despite. But Harvard courts publicity. She has nothing but gain to anticipate from it. Even were it not so, she would still court it ; for her ruling desire is not for her own credit and success, but for the best progress of university education. Harvard has at least educated herself so far that jealousy is not a ruling element in her character. There is no institution of learn- ing in the world that makes a more candid and full expo- sition of itself from year to year than that which she makes in the Annual Beports of her Bresident and Treas- urer, with the accompanying reports of the heads of her different departments. They afford as complete and exact a view as possible of the actual state of the university, and they may be had by any one for the asking. The state- ment of the Treasurer is always a remarkable and inter- esting document. It presents a detailed account of the finances of the university — its investments, receipts, and ex- penditures. The value of such a statement consists not only in its effect in maintaining public confidence in the careful management of the funds in the hands of the cor- A STREET IX CAMBRIDGE poration, but also in its laying open for public comment and criticism the cost of each department of the university and exhibiting its needs. It is well understood that a uni- versity, like a hospital, should always be poor, in the sense of finding its income insufficient for the demand upon it, and of constantly expending all its available means for the promotion of the objects for which it exists. The invested funds of Harvard increase by gift or legacy to the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. For the past ten years the average amount of this annual increase has been $350,000. Large as this sum is, Harvard stands in need of much more. Her total invested funds amounted 42 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES at the close of her last financial year, July 31, 1893, to $8,390,543 — a sum inadequate to supply the means for such services to the community as she is prepared to ren- der, provided only that she has the requisite income; a paltry sum in comparison with the wealth of her gradu- ates, and in its paltriness discreditable not only to them, but to the men of wealth in the nation at large, whose privilege no less than whose duty it is to provide from their superabundant means for the higher education of the people. Harvard needs at this moment, in order to fulfil her functions satisfactorily, an immediate endowment of not less than five millions, with steady annual accessions in proportion to the steady increase of the claims upon her, to enlarge the scope and variety of her teachings ; to pro- mote original work by which knowledge shall be increased ; to provide salaries and pensions for her teachers such as shall give them a livelihood appropriate to their calling and social position, and to relieve them from anxiety in regard to the years when they shall be no longer capable of active service. But the true life of a university depends finally not so much on the abundance of its means as on the character of those who use them, on the spirit that animates its admin- istrators and instructors, and on their individual capacity to exercise a right influence upon their pupils. Harvard has been fortunate in a long succession of eminent teach- ers, who have won from generation to generation the re- spect of their pupils, and have set to them an example of devotion to duty, and of simplicity and dignity of life. It is a piece of conspicuous good-fortune that at the present time, when the transition is going on from the traditional methods and conditions of a colonial college to the forms HARVARD UNIVERSITY 43 and requirements of a national university, she has at her head one of the ablest, most foresighted, and liberal-mind- ed of public servants. The steady and solid progress made by Harvard during the twenty-five years of President Eliot's administration af- fords the promise of future advance.* No pause is possible in the course of an institution which by its very nature is forced to advance with the progress of knowledge and with the ever-increasing demands of the community. The stand- ard of such a seat of learning is continually rising. Each forward step compels the next. It can, indeed, never reach its aim, never perfectly fulfil its function. Its ideal remains constantly unattainable, though constantly more clearly defined and more distinctly visible. And yet the perma- nent features of this ideal never vary. They bear always the fair proportions of a school where truth is sought by research, inquiry, and speculation ; where the youth of a nation are taught to obtain mastery of themselves by the discipline of character as well as by acquisition of knowl- edge ; where they are helped to the understanding of their nature and duties as social beings, and are instructed not only in matters serviceable to their individual interests, but in the nobler learning by which they are inspired to subor- dinate their personal concerns to the good of the commu- nity. The ideal university is the training -place of the wisest, strongest, and best men. Such a university Harvard aspires to become. * The exceptional character of the services of President Eliot in guiding the development of the university during this period, and the "results which have made his administration the most remarkable in her history," are ably set forth in an article by Professor Dunbar, in the Harvard Graduates' Magazint for June, 1894. YALE UNIVERSITY Divinity School. Sheffield Scientific School. Kfnl Uhornlnry. |iif.Ihi-K*1I. ■ U :-■ um. Oymnanlom. SliuAlvlil skiniTlflt School '^fiiy« pitni i&L Vim ' ^^i''^ il-*?- .'•jc- ( "i >-->. .-■ s'* ** II r.l 11- mi ■■HMt [ *■ ■ '>M \ ■.,,.!.■, Ml 11.11 Soulli Middle, Ljee ii.t-.ni Hall BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL BUILDING8 OF YALE UNIVERSITY II i^jjPM^JpT is hard to give a systematic account of Yale University, past or present, because Yale itself is not systematically arranged, and never has been. At no time in its history have its meth- ods and traditions borne the impress of a consistent plan. It is the result of a growth, often quite unforeseen by those in authority, through which the collegiate school of 1700 developed with slow steps into the college of 1800 and the university of 1900. Yale College was founded, after a fashion, at the begin- ning of the last century, along the north shore of Long- Island Sound. For many years it was difficult to say what it was or where it belonged. It was not called a college, but a collegiate school, because the General Assembly of Connecticut was afraid to attract the notice of England to any undertaking of this kind. Such notice would certainly have cost the college its charter, and might readily have produced the same result to the colony itself. Its teaching force did not at first receive the names of president and professors, but was obliged to content itself with the less honorable titles of "rector" and "tutors." Even the loca- tion of the school was very uncertain, and it was oftentimes a house divided against itself. The poet's description of Harvard's earliest beginnings, 48 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES "Two nephews of the President And the Professor's son- Lord ! how the Seniors ordered round That Freshman class of one!" could not be applied to Yale ; for if the rector lived at Mil- ford and the tutors at Saybrook, the Senior class was located at the former place and the Freshman class at the latter. It was not until the removal of the school to New Haven in 1716, and the amendment of its charter in 1745, that it suc- cessively attained a local habitation and a name. The teaching in those early days was meagre enough. Even after the institution had assumed the name of a col- lege, the president was often the only man competent to give anything like professorial instruction. A professorship of divinity was founded in 1746, and one of mathematics and natural philosophy in 1770. But it was not until the administration of Timothy Dwight, the grandfather of the present incumbent, that a group of professorships was es- tablished which gave a standard of scholarship to the insti- tution, and an element of permanence to the academic body. With rare discernment, President Dwight secured the ser- vices of three young men of first-rate talent — Kingsley in the classics, Day in mathematics, and Silliman in natural science — who remained in the service of the college for nearly half a century, and who made it a college in fact as well as in name. It was hardly a Congregational college to the extent which is often assumed. Undoubtedly its foundation was stimulated by the distrust which the more conservative ele- ment in Massachusetts and Connecticut felt towards the liberal tendencies of Harvard at the end of the seventeenth century. The hopes and interests of men like the Mathers YALE CXIVEIiSITT 49 were centred in Yale for this reason. But it is none the less true that Yale was a Connecticut college rather than a Con- gregational one, and was put in the hands of Congregational ministers as being the chief educational authorities of the colony. A large part of the money given to the college in its early days came from Episcopalians. Elihu Yale was PRESIDENT DWIfiHT as much an Episcopalian as he was anything ; and Dean Berkeley was a prominent though somewhat erratic mem- ber of the English Establishment. The college itself was once, at least, near going over to Episcopacy — so near that poor old Increase ilather, in Boston, died of fright. In the middle of the last century we not infrequently find Episco- 4 50 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES pal ministers preaching in the college chapel as guests of the college authorities. The odium theologicum was not so constant a force in those days in Connecticut as it perhaps was in Massachusetts. Connecticut Congregationalism was often a political and social matter rather than a religious one ; and in its capacity as an "established " Church it had enough affinity with Episcopalianism to cause the members of these two Churches to be banded together in the closing years of the last century in defence alike against the Quaker, the Methodist, the infidel, or the democrat, as necessity might demand. The differences between the Congregationalism of Con- necticut and of Massachusetts had much to do with the dif- ferent lines of development taken by Yale and Harvard respectively. The fierce schism between orthodox and Uni- tarian in Massachusetts found little response in Connecticut, where the lines of conflict were social and political rather than intellectual. There was in Connecticut almost none of the awakening and ferment which filled eastern Massachu- setts for at least two generations. As we look back upon Yale life or Connecticut life in the early years of the nine : teenth century, we may admit that it was less varied and less active than the life of Harvard or of Massachusetts. But this difference was not without its benefits to Yale. The very absence of intellectual controversy gave it broader political sympathies and affiliations. Those matters which formed the starting-point of much of the life of Boston and of Harvard tended to withdraw Boston and Harvard from contact with the nation as a whole. People who did not understand the Unitarian controversy were frightened and repelled by the name of Unitarianism. The fact that Mas- sachusetts was always ready to take an advanced position YALE VmVERSITY 51 carried her too far for the rest of the United States to fol- low. It was so in the Constitutional Convention of 1788 ; it was so in the antislavery movement ; it was so in many essential matters which affected the development of Harvard College. By contrast with Harvard, Yale had a national character. It did not move too fast for the people of the United States as a whole. In 1800, as in 1S94, it was a YALE COLLEGE, 1793 national college. It drew its students from all parts of the country, to a far greater degree than Harvard. It was then, as now, pre-eminently the mother of colleges. Columbia and Princeton, in the eighteenth century, like Johns Hop. kins and Cornell and a hundred other colleges in the nine- teenth, have had Yale graduates as their first presidents. Another characteristic of Yale which has brought her 52 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES closer to the national life than Harvard has been her rela- tive poverty. Professors and students have both had to work for a living. There has been, unfortunately, no op- portunity to cultivate, as Harvard has done, the literary tastes and graces. Yale has not been able to number among her professors names like those of Lowell, Long- fellow, and Holmes. The Yale professors have been men engaged in actual teaching- work, and unfortunately too often overworked in their teaching. It would have been a great thing for Yale could she have strengthened the liter- ary side of her life. Yet there were advantages in the universal necessity of hard work without the graces. It created an esprit de corps which would otherwise have been unattainable. It fostered a democratic spirit among the students. Poor and rich were associated together in their work and in their play. Men were judged by their strength and efficiency 7 as men rather than by their social or pecuni- ary standing in the outside world. This democratic stand- ard of judgment was an important element both in bring- ing Yale into closer contact and fuller sympathy with the nation as a whole, and in educating the students them- selves in moral standards. At Yale, to a greater extent than at Harvard, the value of the education is due to the college life even more than the college instruction. In this respect, as in many others, the history of Yale has been like that of some of the English public schools. Even where the course and the methods of teaching have been most open to criticism, there has been an influence in college life that could not be weighed or measured, and that sometimes could hardly be understood by those who felt it, which made men of those who came under its influence, and which caused graduates to look back upon YALE UNIVERSITY 55 their years of Vale life with an almost unreasoning affec- tion. The comparative poverty, the strength of college feel- ings and traditions, and the absence of contact with a great intellectual centre like Boston, made the development of the university idea slower at Vale than at Harvard. As early as 1813 professional schools began to group them- selves about Yale College, but they were loosely attached to it, and formed no organic part of the whole. They de- pended upon the eminence of individual instructors for their success, and with the death of those instructors they sank into comparative insignificance. The counter-attractions of similar schools in large cities, with their superior facilities for attending courts or hospitals, put Yale at a disadvan- tage in these matters, as compared with Harvard, Columbia, or the University of Pennsylvania — a disadvantage which, in many of the more practical lines of study, is still felt to- day. Nevertheless, the medical school attained great emi- nence under the leadership of Nathan Smith, the law school had the benefit of an instructor of extraordinary ability in Samuel J. Hitchcock, while the early history of the divinity school is associated with the still more celebrated name of Nathaniel W. Taylor. But the connection of these schools with Yale College scarcely consisted in anything more than the fact that the names of their professors and students appeared in the same catalogue. It was not until 1843, nearly twenty years after its first foundation, that the law school was authorized to give degrees, nor were such de- grees given by the theological school until 1867. A most important forward step was taken in 1846 by the establishment of courses of graduate instruction. Little was expected from this project at the time. It received 56 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES but scant support from, the college authorities. Had it not been for the disinterestedness of its leaders, it would have been in constant danger of abandonment. But it met a real need in giving advanced instruction to those who were pursuing science for its own sake, independent of the promise of diplomas on the one hand, or the restrictions of college life on the other. The first courses were in chem- istry. Instruction in engineering was soon added. The school received the warm support of a group of men engaged in the publication of the American Journal of Science, with James D. Dana at their head. The scope of instruction was gradually widened until its courses included not merely physical science, but philology and politics. Degrees were first given in 1852. It was not until nearly ten years later that the liberal gifts of Mr. Sheffield gave the means of establishing systematic courses of undergraduate instruc- tion in the school, which from that time forth bore his name. Both in its origin and in its subsequent development the Sheffield Scientific School has been what its name implies — a scientific school as distinct from a technical one. It has attempted to teach principles rather than details. It has not attempted, as so many other schools have done, to teach a man things he would otherwise learn in the shop or the mine, but to teach him what he would not learn in the shop or the mine. Its leaders have had no sympathy with the idea that college instruction could take the place of practi- cal experience. They have tried so to shape their instruc- tion as to enable the Sheffield graduate to get the fullest benefit from practical experience. They do not try to teach mechanical details, which change from year to year or from shop to shop, but scientific principles which shall enable a YALE UNIVERSITY 59 man to turn all details to the best advantage. They use a great deal of laboratory work, but the laboratory work is treated as a means of study rather than as an end of study. It is one of the advantages of the Yale man in starting life that he knows how much he has to learn. He does not con- ceive himself equal to the master -mechanic on his own ground. He readily concedes to the master-mechanic the superiority in some points of professional skill; and the mechanic is, for that very reason, all the more ready to recognize the college man's superiority in others. It has cost Professor Brush and his associates some hard battles to enforce this view of the matter. At this very day the Sheffield School is in danger of losing grants from the national government amounting to $25,000 a year be- cause of its attitude on these points. The school has for more than thirty years enjoyed the appropriations made to the State of Connecticut for the endowment of colleges in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Before the accept- ance of the grant the college stated exactly what it pro- posed to do. It furnished instruction in theoretical princi- ples underlying mechanics and agriculture, and gave free tuition to a large number of Connecticut students. The scientific study of agriculture in America may almost be sanl to have arisen from the work of Professor Johnson and his co-laborers at Yale. It was here that the impulse started which led to the founding of agricultural experiment stations all over the country. But the agricultural interests are dissatisfied because instruction is not given in the prac- tical operations of farming. "With some honorable excep- tions, the farmers do not appreciate scientific work as the mechanics appreciate it. They want a college to teach the things which farmers know, rather than those which farm- GO FOUR AMERICAS VXIYERSITIES ers do not know. The mechanical interests, on the other hand, are eager for new knowledge, and have given the warmest recognition to the college for its services in de- veloping it. In its present condition the Sheffield Scientific School offers the student a choice of some seven courses, according to the line of work for which the student would prepare himself — one for the chemist, one for the biologist, one for the civil engineer, one for the mechanical engineer, one for the mining engineer, one for the agriculturist, one for the general business man. But each of these is a college course rather than a purely professional one. The Sheffield students have had in times past and present the benefit of instruction from men "whose eminence was far removed from the ordinary courses of applied science — men like William D. Whitney or Thomas E. Lounsburv. Daniel C. Gilman or Francis A. Walker. The scientific course has led men to their professions by a shorter road than the academic, and without the study of Greek, but it has been, in its underlying principles, a collegiate course rather than a technical one. The separate existence of two collegiate departments side bv side has constituted a distinguishing feature of Yale development. The Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard has never been of anything like co-ordinate im- portance with the college proper. The schools of Mines at Columbia and of Science at Cornell have made the ele- ment of technical training more prominent than it has been at Yale. Not a few of Yale's friends have looked at this double collegiate development with regret, and have believed that each department suffered from the lack of those elements for which the other was distin- KEAK OK THE CHAPEL YALE UNIVERSITY 63 guished. The Sheffield Scientific School, with its inde- pendent character and freer methods, attracted the pro- gressive elements, and left the academic department in constant danger of over - conservatism ; the monopoly by the academic department of traditions, of religious influ- ences, and of many of the things that did so much to characterize college life, made the course in the scientific school seem somewhat imperfect by contrast ; while Har- vard, with its fuller elective course and more progressive, not to say destructive, spirit, was combining the freedom of a scientific school with the traditions of a college. The two things at Yale seemed to be drifting further and fur- ther apart. But within the last twenty years a great change has taken place for the better. It began in 1872, when six representatives of the alumni were admitted to a place in the corporation of the college. In itself this change amounted to little, for the clerical element in the corporation was left in a majority, and could do anything it chose without let or hinderance ; but it was significant and fruitful in giving a degree of publicity to the man- agement of the college which it had never before pos- sessed, and in bringing the alumni into fuller co-operation and sympathy with the college government. Meantime a change was going on in the faculty as well as in the corporation. The administration of President "Woolsey, which terminated in 1871, had borne the impress of his personality in every detail. A man of tremendous force, first-class scholarship, and high ideals, he had secured fellow-workers of the same sort, and had infused the whole college with a spirit of thorough work and lofty aims which has been worth more to it than anything else in its whole history. But President Woolsey was born before 1)4 FOUR AMERICAS UNIVERSITIES the days of modern science ; and though he acquainted himself with its results, he scarcely sympathized with its fundamental spirit. His attitude towards science was not unlike that of Sir George Cornewall Lewis or Professor Jowett ; and his force of character and purpose was so great as to hold the whole college to his own lines of thought. His successor was a man of less intensity of purpose, and though conservative himself, did not keep the work of the college from broadening. In 1876 the progressive element in the academic faculty became strong enough to begin the introduction of the elective system in Junior and Senior years. In 1884 it was carried still further — not to the extent which pre- vailed at Harvard, but sufficiently far to stimulate the in- tellectual life of the college and increase the opportunity for active work in new lines. In ISSti, with the accession of President Dwight, the scientific school obtained its due recognition as a co-ordinate department of the university, and the way was paved for greater co-operation between the different parts than had previously been possible. Meantime the life of the students in the two schools had become assimilated much more rapidly than the courses of study. This was chieflj' due to the increasing develop- ment of athletics as a factor in Yale life. When the stu- dents of the two departments worked side by side in the boat, on the diamond, and in the still fiercer character school of the foot-ball field, no narrow traditions of college life or college association could prevent the recognition of prowess, the formation of friendships, and the mutual in- fluence on character of the men in the two departments. Thus a separation, which seemed at one time to involve some danger to the intellectual and social development of YALE UNIVERSITY 67 Yale, and to force the students to a choice between science without tradition on the one hand, or tradition without sci- ence on the other, has proved in the end a benefit. It has enabled the university to meet at once the needs of those who must shorten their period of professional study and those who must lengthen it. To the former, the Sheffield School offers a combination of college life and professional study in a three years' course. To the latter, the college offers a full four years' course, which is but a preparation for subsequent professional training. The separation fur- ther allows a freedom in the choice of courses of study, without that danger of random election of easy optionals against which the Harvard authorities have so constantly been compelled to fight. It enables the system of pre- scribed courses of study and examination to be carried out to a very considerable degree without involving the at- tempt to force all types of intellect into one mould. There is reason to hope that the closer co-operation between the college and the scientific school is but the beginning of a similar tendency with respect to other de- partments. In his championship of the university idea, President Dwight has done away with much of the spirit of isolation which once prevailed. He has a number of difficulties to overcome, but the spirit of the age is on his side. We know more about the connection between differ- ent branches of knowledge than w T e did thirty years ago. The process of specialization has been accomplished by an increase of mutual dependence, and the different depart- ments of the university have come to recognize this. The scientific school has long had the co-operation of the art school in parts of its instruction. The academic depart- ment has now begun to seek the same co-operation. In 68 FuVK AMERICA.X UNIVERSITIES the courses of graduate instruction, students of every de- partment, undergraduate and professional alike, meet side by side with mutual advantage. In all the special schools there have been men — like Baldwin in Law, Fisher in Church History, or Weir in Art — whose work is as indis- pensable to the non- professional student as to the profes- sional. The various collections, chiefly in the Peabody Museum, have a usefulness not bounded by the lines of any department. The work of a paleontologist like Marsh, or of geologists and mineralogists like the Danas, is not for any one class alone, but for the whole scientific world. The increase of laboratory work, whether in chemistry, or physics, or mineralogy, or biologj r , or ps3 r chology, has tended to bring students of different departments more and more together ; and a similar result is accomplished by gatherings like the mathematical club, the classical club, the modern - language club, the philosophical club, or the political -science club, where undergraduates, grad- uates, professional students, and instructors meet on an equal footing to read and discuss papers on subjects of common interest. With university extension — that is, with the effort to lecture to classes outside of the membership of the uni- versity itself — Yale has had little to do. This is not so much from lack of sympathy with the movement as from lack of time on the part of the instructors. Their strength is so fully occupied with the regular students that they have little left to devote to extra ones. For the same rea- son Yale has discouraged the attendance of " special " stu- dents who are not graduates of any college nor pursuing any of the recognized courses for a degree. It may be occasionally a hardship to exclude a zealous man from YALE UNIVERSITY 71 special privileges, but in the majority of eases it is a worse hardship to allow a man who has more zeal than train- ing to take the time of an already overworked instructor from the teaching of his regular students. If a man (or woman) is a college graduate, Yale will offer him what- ever facilities she has available. If a man is not a col- lege graduate, the rule is that he must study in one of the regular coui'ses provided for the attainment of a de- gree. To the graduate of any college Yale offers the choice of more than two hundred courses of instruction. Twenty- four of these are in psychology, ethics, and pedagogics ; twenty -nine in political science and history; twenty -six in Oriental languages and Biblical literature; thirty -two in classical philology; thirty -three in modern languages and literature ; forty in natural and physical science ; twenty- five in mathematics, pure and applied. Besides these, there are courses in drawing, painting, and art his- tory, in music, and in physical culture. It is a question whether the philosophical department of any university in Germany offers as wide a range of teaching. Among all these courses the graduate has absolute freedom of choice. It is assumed he knows what he wants, and is able with the advice of his instructors to select that which best fits his individual case. lie can study for a degree or not, exactly as he pleases. The Yale degree of Ph.D. is not given for any defined course or specified amount of work-, but for high scientific attainment, of which evidence is given by theses embodying original research. Side by side with the courses of graduate instruction, and partly coincident with them, we have the work of the pro- fessional schools — in theology, law, medicine, and art. In 72 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES each of these there is a prescribed course of instruction, usually occupying three years, and leading to a degree or diploma at the end. In the law school, however, the de- gree of LL.B. is given at the end of two years ; and for those who are able to study longer, courses are offered lead- ing to the degrees of M.L. and D.C.L. In the theological school nearly all the students are college graduates ; in the other professional schools the non-graduates are in the ma- jority. In this last respect Yale is at a disadvantage as compared with Harvard or Columbia. The effort, which the Columbia authorities have so successfully carried out, of making the fourth year of the college course serve at the same time for the first year of professional study, has not found its counterpart in Yale. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, the professional schools have grown up on an independent basis, and are reluctant to sacrifice any part of the separate jurisdiction which they have acquired. In the second place, the university has no large disposable endowments whose income can be used in smoothing the way for a combination. Every part has to work for a living, and therefore has to be left free to get it in the best way it can. Finally, in spite of all that has been done to broaden the courses of instruction, the under- graduate departments have a separate life of their own, and an esprit de corps of their own, which make the problem of fusion at Yale much harder than at Columbia, or even at Harvard. For though the instruction of undergradu- ate, graduate, and professional students is losing its separate character, though they meet in the same laboratories and the same lecture-rooms, nevertheless there remains much in the social and intellectual life of the several parts which continues absolutely separate. The college remains a col- THE OLD FENCE lege, even though it has become part of a university. A striking instance of this separateness of undergraduate life is seen in the very slight effect produced by the admission of women as graduate students in 1S92. It scarcely affected the college life in any definable way. For years past, in- deed, women had been attending some of the graduate classes by individual arrangement with the instructor, and no one had even been troubled by it, It was thought better to recognize the position and work of such students, and give them the degree of Ph.D. if they deserved it. Since this recognition there are naturally a good many more women in the graduate classes than there were before; and where graduate and undergraduate instruction are coinci- dent it has resulted in their admission to undergraduate class-rooms. But it has not in any sense encroached upon 7C FUVR AMERICA X UNIVERSITIES the privacy of college life, or affected the traditions con- nected with it. To a man who knows what college life really means, the recent action in the graduate department at Yale does not involve the admission of women to Yale College any more than it involves the admission of men to Ynssar College. It rather involves an emphasis on the es- sential distinction between the college life which has been developed by men and women separately and the univer- sitv work of training specialists, where there need be no distinction of sex. The two undergraduate departments at Yale have certain obvious points of difference from one another; they have cer- tain less obvious but more fundamental points of similarity which distinguish them from the professional schools, and even from the undergraduate de- partment of a university like Harvard. They dif- fer from one another in that the required studies of the "academic" de- partment are largely classical, while those of the Sheffield School are predominantly scientific ; in the fact that one gives the degree of B.A. after four years' study, while the other gives the de- gree of B.S. after three years : and in the fact that one has two years of prescribed work and afterwards a direct choice SKCLL AND HONKS HALL yale university 79 of electives, while the other has one year of prescribed work and afterwards a choice of courses or groups of study, in- stead of individual studies. They also differ in the fact that the academic department has the dormitory system devel- oped in a high degree, while the scientific school does not ; so that the facult}' of the former is obliged to take greater oversight over the conduct of its students than is the case with the latter. But both departments are alike in requiring from their students a high degree of regularity as to at- tendance and continuous stud}'. The constant pressure to work is not only much stricter than in the graduate or pro- fessional schools, but stricter than in the undergraduate department of Harvard or Princeton or almost any Ameri- can college. Harvard is strict about her degrees and lax about the previous course of her students. If a man has been idle for four years he will lose his "degree. Yale, on the other hand, has no room for idlers in her elective halls. Her facilities are so far overcrowded that every bad man elbows a good man out of place. She has no room for the vast number of "special" students — a few of them deserving, the majority incompetent — who clamor for en- trance at every large university. A man must pass certain examinations or he cannot enter Yale. He must be regu- lar in his attendance or he will be sent home. He must maintain a certain standard of scholarship or he will be " dropped." This stringenc} 7 of requirement is the heritage which Yale has received from President Woolsey and the group of men who worked under him. However much the undergraduate may chafe under it or rebel against it, it is this which makes college life and college reputation what it is. No body of young men, left to go their several ways, good or bad, will work out the mass of college traditions 80 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES and college sentiments which help to mould and make a man in a wa} 7 that mere book study can never do. There is no room in an article like this to describe these college traditions and customs in detail; nor are the asso- ciations that gather round the Fence, or "Mory's," or the ( )ld Brick Row. of a kind which can readily be reproduced in black and white. Every college graduate must fill the picture out for himself. It is enough to say that the special characteristic of Yale life which has distinguished it from other colleges has been a keener intensity of competition than exists almost anywhere else. It shows itself in every form of effort — literary and athletic, political and social. For a few coveted positions on the college journals there are dozens of men toiling months or years to offer the best essays or stories or reports of current events. For a few positions of honor on the athletic teams there are hundreds of men running their regular courses of exercise, and filling the sidewalks of New Haven with costumes calculated to strike the stranger aghast. And so in every department of college life. The contest takes its keenest and perhaps most questionable form in connection with the secret-society sys- tem. The societies of the academic department at Yale differ from those of most other colleges in not running- through the course, but changing in successive years of study. No man who is ambitious for college success can afford to rest on his laurels in the earlier years of his course. An election to one of the societies of Sophomore or Junior year is chiefly thought of as a stepping-stone towards the higher honor of election into the narrower circle of " Skull and Bones," " Scroll and Key," or " Wolfs Head." As the time for Senior-society elections draws nigh, the suspense on the part of the candidates becomes really terrible. When YALE UNIVEBS1TY 83 the afternoon of election finally arrives, the scene is perhaps the most dramatic in college life. There is a crowd gath- ered on the campus — all interested, and some fearfully so. One Senior after another appears from the different society halls, and silently seeks his man amid the throng. At last he finds him ; a tap on the shoulder sends a Junior to his room on what is probably the happiest walk he has ever taken ; there is a moment's burst of applause from the crowd, varying in intensity according to the popularity of the man chosen, but always given with good-will, and then every one relapses into anxious expectation, until the whole series of elections has been given out. On the whole, the Senior-society choices are given with conscientious fairness. There are mistakes made, sometimes bad ones, especially mistakes of omission; but they are as a rule bona fide mis- takes of judgment, and not the results of personal unfriend- liness or chicane. There is a good deal of wire-pulling among those who hope to receive the honor, but surprising, ly little among those who are to award it. Opinions differ as to the merits of the Yale society system ; but there can be no question that it is a characteristic product of Yale life, with its intensity of effort, its high valuation of college judgments and college successes, and its constant tension, which will allow no one to rest within himself, but makes him a part of the community in which he dwells. Can Yale keep these characteristics unimpaired amid in- creasing numbers of students and increasing complexity of outside demands ? Can it preserve its distinctive features as a college in the midst of its widening work as a university ? Can it meet the varying intellectual necessities of modern life without sacrificing the democratic traditions which have had so strong an influence upon character ? Can it give the B4 FOUR AMERICAN US1VERS1TIES special education which the community asks without endan- gering the broader education which has produced genera- tions of "all round" men, trained morally as well as intel- lectually ? These are questions which every large college has to face. They are not peculiar to Yale. If Yale feels their difficulty most, it is because she is the largest repre- sentative of the traditional American college idea, which Harvard has, to all intents and purposes, abandoned. The difficulty is enhanced by several factors outside of the educational sphere. In the first place, the demands of mod- ern life make teaching more expensive. There are more things to teach, and therefore there is need of more men, while in each line there is more competition for the services of first-rate men, both inside and outside the teaching pro- fession. The day has passed when college professors formed a class by themselves, who would not or could not engage in work elsewhere. With the increasing study of science in its various forms there has come increased contact between university life and business life. The scientific man can often, if not generally, make more money by expert work than by teaching; and under such circumstances it is not always easy for the university to retain his services. The social demands upon the professors have taken a different shape from what they had forty years ago. Plain living and high thinking is no longer the ideal of professional suc- cess in any line. Under these circumstances a college with limited funds finds it hard to secure enough men of the right kind. The increase in the number of students enhances rather than lessens the difficulty. Additional students are often a source of expense rather than of profit. Teaching is not a work which can be performed by wholesale. No teacher, not even the most talented, can do for a class of STATUE OF ABRAHAM PIKIWON YALE UNIVERSITY 87 one hundred what he would do for a class of ten. Each in- crease of numbers makes it all the more difficult to avoid the danger of having the class too large, or the instructor too small ; nor is an increase of tuition fees to be thought of except as a last resort. Side by side with this difficulty comes a still greater dan- ger, in the effect of modern life on the students themselves. While the standard of life throughout the community was simple, there was every chance for the democratic spirit of equality to assert itself. The difference between what the rich student and the poor student could command was com- paratively slight. It was at most a difference in rooms and in food, in dress and in comforts — differences which the healthy public sentiment of a college could afford to disre- gard. But to-day there are differences between rich and poor which no one can wholly despise, even though he may respect the poor man more than his rich companion. Each complication of social life inside and outside of the college creates a reason for legitimate expenditure of money, which prevents the poor man from feeling an absolute equality with the rich. The problem of lessening college expenses is one of vital importance for the future of American college life, and is perhaps the most serious difficulty with which the members of the Yale faculty have to contend. But in meeting these difficulties Yale has certain marked and strong advantages. To begin with, all the traditions of Yale's social life work in the direction of valuing men for their character rather than their money or their antece- dents. Though the college standard of character may be imperfect, and though college sentiment may tolerate wrong methods of study, and evasions in dealing with the authori- ties, the general fact remains that, such as the standards are, 88 FOUR AMERICAN UXiyESSITIES they are applied vig- orously and impar- tially ; that there is a respect for work and a respect for unselfishness — a re- spect for all that constitutes a gen- tleman in the best sense — that renders futile any attempt to make money take the place of charac- ter, or social antece- dents take the place of social qualities. Those who thought that the democratic spirit of Yale was bound up with the Spartan simplicity of the Old Brick Eow have been happily disappointed. The gifts of Farnam and Durfee, of Law- rence and White, of Welch and Vanderbilt, have provided the students with larger comforts without distorting their moral standards. Thei'e are parts of the secret - society system which are in more or less constant danger of becoming rich men's cliques and undermining the democratic spirit ; but there is every reason to hope* that this danger will be suc- cessfully resisted in the future, as it has been in the past. OBSERVATORY YALE UNIVERSITY 89 The development of college athletics has been of great service in counteracting some of the dangerous tendencies of the day. Open to criticism as athletics may be for their unnecessary expense, for the betting which goes on in con- nection with them, and for the distorted views which they encourage as to the relative importance of different things in life, they yet have a place in education which is of over- whelming importance. The physical training which they involve, good as it may be, is but a small part of the benefit achieved. The moral training is greater. "Where scores of men are working hard for athletic honor, and hundreds more are infected by their spirit, the moral force of such an emulation is not to be despised. Critics may object, and do object, that athletic prowess is unduly exalted, and that it involves distortion of facts to rate the best football - player o r best oarsman higher than the best scholar or best debater. But the critic is not wholly right in this. There is a disposition in the college world to recognize in the highest degree any- thing which redounds to the credit of the college. Let a stu- dent write something which brings honor to his college, whether 'SCROLL AND KKT " 1I.1LI. 90 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES in science or literature, and there is no limit to the recogni- tion he receives from his fellows. Let a football-player strive to win glory for himself instead of for his college, and his fellows have no use for him. "What the critic deems to be preference for the body over the mind is in no small measure preference for collective aims over individual ones. It may be a short-sighted view of the matter to think of the high-stand man as working for himself, and the athlete as working for his college. Yet it is one which contains a large element of truth ; and the honor paid to college ath- letes is based on a healthful recognition of this half-truth which the ci'itic so often overlooks. Athletics, if properly managed, have still another moral advantage in training the students to honor a non-com- mercial standard of success. In these days, when the almighty dollar counts for so much, this training is of first- rate importance. Of course athletics maj' be so managed as to be worse than useless in this respect. The least taint of professionalism, however slight, destroys the whole good ; the growth of betting endangers it. Yale has by constant effort kept clear of professionalism, and much of her suc- cess in athletics has been due to this fact. Betting is harder to deal with, and constitutes a real evil, but not one for which athletics is so directly responsible as many people assume. On the whole, as athletics have been managed at Yale under the constant advice of the alumni, and without either fear or favor from the faculty, they have done great good and little harm, both physically and morally. If there is danger of distorted sense of proportion among the students, it is to be remedied not by less encouragement to athletics, but by more encouragement to study. Yale emphatically needs more money for teaching purposes. YALE UNIVERSITY 91 Gifts of dormitories have done good ; gifts like those for the Peabod\ T Museum, for the Kent, and Sloane laboratories, for lecture -halls like Osborn and "Winchester, have done still more good; but they are wholly inadequate to meet the public demands. So fast have the numbers grown that there is to-day not a lecture-hall in Yale College which will accommodate all the students who want to take a single course of instruction, much less a laboratory which will give the room needed for the study of chemistry to all who ask it. Whatever can be done in the way of educational de- velopment without money or with limited money Yale is trying to do. Her success is attested by her growth in numbers and public recognition, and yet more by the un- swerving loyalty of her members in every capacity. PPv I N CETO N U X IV E 1? SIT Y Ill ^PINIONS vary about the character and value of life in the various great districts into which cli- mate, race, and other factors divide the domain of the United States, but not about the existence of different characteristics. There was once an enterprising "educator" who located his university, as he extensively advertised, "midway between the North and the South, the East and the West," that he might secure the advantages of all the cardinal virtues in their totality for his nursling. But the points of the compass and the essential features of the three or four great zones into which our country natu- rally falls alike refuse to blend. Fortunate land if only sufficient difference persists to prevent the stagnation of perfect homogeneity ! To be cosmopolitan in character is in our time to be commonplace. So far the older, pre-rev- olutionary colleges of America have escaped this reproach ; the new-comers are still too young to declare a settled and mature individuality. Princeton therefore accepts with gladness the place so often assigned her as a type, and finds honor in leading and guiding a great cohort to the warfare which sound education makes the condition of its favor. In a land where the conditions of overgrown, self - conceited, and boisterous youth prevail as they do in ours, there are but 9(5 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES two barriers against a relapse into barbarism — morality and intelligence ; these, of course, are both included in the highest education, and the former is synonymous, except for the generation or two which discards the motive power of faith and runs by inertia, with religion. But within the limits of so broad a generalization there is abundant room for wide divergence in detail. "While it is to be hoped that all the great universities seek the same treasure, they vary widely in their traits and in their methods. The interac- tion between them is very constant, and develops strong personality. Students and their advisers are instinctively, though often not consciously, aware of it, and in general the patronage of each seat of learning corresponds to its historic development. The divergence of opinions at New Haven which led to the foundation, in 1746, of Princeton was in some respects but another manifestation of the essential difference be- tween Puritan and Covenanter. They were always har- monious enough in the presence of a common danger, but. whether in the mother-land or in America, they were also sufficiently divided by race and instinct to seek divergent paths in the absence of pressure from without. Accord- ingly a place was chosen in the very heart of the Middle States, as they then were the focus of the Scotch and Scotch-Irish life, which was destined to transform itself into that pure Americanism which has been in evidence from the days of the Mecklenburg declai'ation until the present. To this influence was associated two very potent ones with neither Scotch nor Scotch -Irish blood, namely, that of the English Quakers on one side, and that of the neigh- boring Dutch to the north and the northwest on the other. The catholicitv, therefore, of the college was as naxcETOx vm yehmty 97 characteristic in its foundation as it has been in its history, especially as four of the first board of trustees were mem- bers of the Church of England. And so, at the suggestion of the colonial Governor, Belcher, the first great structure was christened Nassau Hall, after William III., " of glori- ous memory." Just as the New England of the last centu- FRANCIS L. PATTON ry now stretches westward within the northern line of States to the Pacific, the Middle States have kept their relative size and influence in the broad band of common- wealths which they have either populated entirely or share with men of New England origin across the Mississippi Valley and the Rocky Mountains to the Golden Gate. 7 98 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES While the Princeton, which is still in New Jersey, does not equal in numbers the Yale in New Haven or the Har- vard in Cambridge, she does not yield to them in her wider influence, for she has been the mother of many colleges, about twenty -five directly and indirectly, which are now scattered from Khode Island — for Brown Uni- versity is in a sense her daughter — to California.* Many of these have long since put off all tutelage to become centres of independent influence, but there is a sense in which with their parent they belong to one system and represent one definite aim. The bonds of friendship with New England have never been severed, they have rather been strengthened by separation, and knit firmer in the interaction of systems sufficiently different to foster indi- viduality, but enough alike to cherish in each respect and admiration for the other. On the other side her relations with the South have been close and intimate. The history of the southern Atlantic and Gulf States might almost be written in the biographies of Princeton graduates. In proof of this we have but to recall names like those of * The following are some of the colleges founded by Princeton men or under Princeton auspices : Brown University, Union College ; Ham- ilton College, which sprang out of Hamilton Oneida Academy, founded by Rev. Samuel Kirkland, but was organized as a college under the au- spices of Yale; Washington College, Pennsylvania; Jefferson College, Pennsylvania; Washington-Lee University, which was first Liberty Hall, then Washington College, and is now as above; Hampden -Sidney Col- lege; Washington College, Tennessee ; Greenville College, Tennessee ; the University of North Carolina ; Winsborough College, South Carolina ; the University of Georgia ; the University of Ohio; Cumberland University, Tennessee ; Austin College, Texas ; the University of Cincinnati ; Wash- ington College, Indiana ; Transylvania University, Kentucky. For the others, facts sufficient to justify publication are not in the author's pos- session. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 99 James Madison, Ephraim Brevard, Gunning Bedford ; of the Lees, Bayards, Dabneys, Davies, Pendletons, Breckin- ridges, Caldwells, Crawfords, Baches, Hagers, and Johns ; and many others which shine in the pages of Princeton history. It was her arduous labor, moreover, which de- stroyed the virus of French influence in Southern educa- tion, inoculated as it was into Virginia and the Carolinas by Quesnay's scheme of a French Academy and by Jeffer- son's sympathy. It was likewise through the teaching of her sons that religious tolerance was secured in Southern colonies dominated by the English Church. Princeton, moreover, stands second to none of our Amer- ican colleges in the part her graduates have played in the general history of the United States. Her roll of fame is JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D. 100 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES long in proportion to her numbers. It would be a waste of space to enumerate names, but she has given to her country nine of the fifteen college graduates who sat in the Constitutional Convention, one President, two Vice- Presidents, four Justices of the Supreme Court — one a Chief Justice — five Attorney- Generals, and fifteen other cabinet officers, twenty -eight Governors of States, a hun- dred and seventy -one Senators and Congressmen, a hun- dred and thirty-six judges, forty-three college presidents, and upwards of two hundred professors, half of whom have been appointed since Dr. McCosh became President. . It is a safe assertion, therefore, that in the Middle and Southern States no single educational influence has been as powerful as that of Princeton. Her relation to the history of the United States stands visibly embodied in Nassau Hall, the most historic college or university building in America. When first completed it was visited by travellers as the largest building then in the colonies. Within, the walls of this now venerable and still stately pile were quartered the troops of contending British and Americans in the Kevolutionary war. The Continental Congress used it for their sittings when driven from Philadelphia, and adjourned in 17S3 to attend the college Commencement in a body. Its walls still bear the imprints of the cannon-balls used in the battle of Prince- ton, and on them hangs a portrait of Washington, painted by Peale. It was paid for with the money given as a per- sonal gift by the former for the use of the building by his troops, and fills the frame which once contained the effigy of George II. Nine signers of the Declaration of Independence fre- quented its halls — two were graduates, and three were NASSAU HALL officers of the corporation which controlled it — and its windows blazed with light in a grand illumination when the news of the sio-nin^ reached the town. Aaron Burr studied in its class-rooms, and his body was borne from its walls to the neighboring graveyard. For all these reasons, therefore — her age, her history, her leadership in founding colleges throughout the South and middle West, and in furnishing them with professors, the distinctive character of her education, and the relation she bears to one of the three great race elements which have combined in our aboriginal and primitive American- ism — Princeton asserts a position among the foremost uni- versities of America, and struggles to fulfil the solemn 7* 102 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES duties of a vanguard in the development of a certain type of life, manners, and thought. How far she is justified in the hope that her future will shine with greater lustre than her past can only be shown in an account of her equipment and the plan of education to which she adheres. The corporate title is the College of New Jersey, and in that State lies the town of Prince- ton, midway on the old King's Highway, which became later the stage route between Xew York and Philadelphia — the two great cities which so far outstrip all others of the Middle States in intelligence, wealth, and population. The village lies on the first swell of the foot-hills which develop into the Appalachian range. The university build- ings stand in a commanding line along the crest of this ridge, overlooking to the southward the farmsteads, or- chards, and fertile fields which fill the horizon as it stretches away in green billows to the sea. The soil of the township is loam underlaid by sand and gravel, and thus the inhabitants enjoy good natural drainage, ample water supply, a fruitful husbandry, and a mild and genial climate. The nearer view caught by the approaching trav- eller, and the more distant one from the windows of the ex- press trains which hurry by three miles to the south, alike display a scene of rural beauty and rich landscape which recalls Gray's familiar lines on a distant view of Eton. The effect of this central position upon the organic life of the college with its correlated and affiliated schools has been marked throughout her history. She has never been slack in her duty to her own State, whose leaders in politics and the Church have largely been trained by her ; but she has been from the beginning unprovincial to a very high degree, as the introductory remarks to this sketch abundantly prove. Il <^&$*^u*'' PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 105 While endowed and wisely ruled by a corporation the ma- jority of which consisted of men of one State and one de- nomination, yet the minority has been most influential throughout, and her advantages of site and studies have drawn to her lecture-rooms since the beginning men from each metropolis, from all the States, and from every re- ligious sect. The ease of access to Princeton — and once in a lifetime every American, several times in each year many Americans, pass between the commercial and political capitals of the land— will always insure her against narrow- ness either in creed or clientage. On the other hand, her peaceful home amid groves and lawns and gardens will al- ways assure the " atmosphere of peaceful studies,'' so diffi- cult to create elsewhere than in the repose of a country neighborhood. It is well known that Princeton has no School of Medi- cine, though she has a thoroughly equipped School of Biol- ogy. She has had and will almost certainly have again a School of Law. The School of Theology is closely allied, but has not the same corporate relation to the university as the divinity schools of Yale and Harvard, which, either wholly or partly, are free from denominational control. It is, however, the largest in the land, and independent and autonomous as it is, has an identical moral force as regards the completeness of university life in the academic character of Princeton. For our purposes, therefore, and under these reservations, we shall use the caption at the head of this article inclusively. All told, but excluding the residences of professors, there are in the town thirty -nine completed buildings devoted to educational purposes. It must be confessed that the arrangement of this great number of edifices, most of them large and commodious, 106 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES many of them very costly and architecturally admirable, while presenting a splendid front to the street, is otherwise the result of hazard and caprice. At least that is the effect produced by the commixture of a series of plans formed under successive boards of trustees, with varying notions of the ultimate size of the college. Nature alone has forced the semblance of a plan by the conformation and contour of the grassy expanses which they fill. Another element of unity is the material of which most are constructed, a dur- able brownish sandstone, soft in color and variegated in tints, which comes from quarries either close at hand or at no great distance, near either Newark or Trenton. But the general effect is the pleasing one of order in disorder, and the splendid trees and rich lawns form a kind of solvent, in which the virtues of each ingredient appear perhaps at their best. First to be mentioned of that which these buildino-s con- O tain are the libraries, which number in the aggregate a hun- dred and sixty-six thousand volumes, excluding pamphlets, and which by the liberality of their management and gen- erous gifts to their funds constitute in a high sense the focus of academic life in Princeton. As far as statistics have been available, it is believed that the number of vol- umes distributed to readers is a trifle larger in proportion than anywhere else. There are also five museums ; namely, of the History of Art, of Geology and Paleontology, of Comparative Anatomy and Natural History, of Mineralogy, and of Biblical Antiquities. The first three of these have large buildings, provided with galleries, lecture-rooms, and workshops. There are two astronomical observatories, one of which contains the great equatorial of twenty -three inches' aperture, and all the appurtenances of such a splen- rmxcEro.x uxiveihhty 107 did instrument on a proportional scale ; the other is the ob- servatory of instruction, fully equipped with a nine-and-a- half-inch equatorial, with reflecting telescopes, transits, prime vertical, chronograph, and a computation-room, all devoted entirely to the use of students. Besides these, there are the usual laboratories, physical, chemical, mineralogical, psycho- logical, and biological, all on a scale which has been ample until within five years. To meet new demands they have recently been nearly doubled as to accommodation, and fit- ted with the most perfect apparatus. There are in addition recitation-rooms and amphitheatres of various sizes — suffi- cient in all for the instniction of a thousand students — a speech hall, and the handsome new buildings of the large and flourishing literary societies. We have been recalling, of course, only structures devoted entirely to strictly educa- tional aims. There are in connection with them the splen- did Alexander Hall, which is a theatre for commencement ■< 2 IT ilk* ' affix THE HAI.STEO OBSERVATORY 108 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES exercises and other public functions, the handsome Mar- quand Chapel, the hall of the religious association, the gym- nasium, and eleven dormitories, with chambers for about seven hundred students. But these also, like those of the other class, are entirely inadequate to even the present wants of the university. To preserve that precious collegiate life which once characterized all institutions of the higher learn- ing in the United States, and which still survives in perfect development in Princeton, there must be new and larger dormitories, or, better still, hostels or inns or colleges, what- ever they should be called, which would attract to their walls men of similar tastes and standing, and under the careful supervision of the university give their inmates food as well as lodging. It will no doubt astonish many to know that the cause of Princeton's reticence as to her money affairs has not been clue to opulence. It is true that the munificence of her patrons and benefactors for the last quarter of a cen- tury has been a superb illustration of private benevolence. But it is none the less true that the establishment thus created has rendered her endowments and foundations at the present low rate of interest ridiculously inadequate. It is a well-known paradox that no university can be prosperous which is not on the verge of bankruptcy. The helmsmen of Princeton's course have been and are practical men of wide financial experience and devoted loyalty. They have shunned many a hidden rock and sunken reef by the private liberality of themselves and others, but it is becoming evident that the public must soon be taken into their confidence. Every student in our great universities who pays every fee demanded is yet a founder's beneficiary, because the actual cost of his tuition is nearly PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 111 double what is ever exacted, and the trifling charge for the use of libraries, laboratories, recitation-rooms, and apparatus is merely to guard against wanton destruction. It is clear, therefore, that every additional student is a charge to the foundation, and that educational prosperity may mean pe- cuniary impoverishment. Splendid buildings, well-equipped libraries, and learned professors draw numbers of students and stimulate zeal. They are the permanence of the struct- ure, but they do not increase the supply of vital energy which must be gathered and expended day by day on every incoming and departing generation of eager youth. The disproportion between the apparent energy or potential and the kinetic or actual work done is preposterous. In fact, if it were not for the steady subscriptions of the few unknown givers who make up deficiencies, and the self-denying de- votion of many underpaid workers, the activity of Prince- ton would often be curtailed where it is now most benef- icent. She has to face the constant diminution of income from vested funds, due to the reduced rates of interest. The greater number of students calls for more instructors and for means to supply the teaching force, to which, as has been said, any possible increase of income through tui- tion fees would be utterly inadequate. Without contem- plating new co-ordinate schools of professional education, the existing Faculty of Arts must be increased by the addi- tion of several departments and the subdivision of some of the existing chairs. The library fund, moreover, is alto- gether inadequate. The most immediate and crj'ing want of Princeton is that of new lecture and recitation halls, and these, if built, would, without special endowment, be a charge on the col- lege funds, not to speak of the fact that such buildings 112 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES yield no revenue. In this connection it should be remarked that for the men of rare gifts but slender means who are so often the glory of seats of learning, her present endowments are far too slender. Fellowships have proven themselves to be priceless in the furthering of research and the train- ing of teachers. The demand at Princeton bv worthy can- didates is sadly disproportionate to the supply. Finally, many of the wisest friends of the university contemplate the establishment in the near future of a School of Law, for which of course large funds will be needed. Even aside from this last project it seems not too much to say that a million dollars could worthily be employed at once. In- deed, it would be more frank to say that without it the institution will almost immediately be dwarfed in its legiti- mate and wholesome development. There are fifty professors, twenty- nine instructors, and eleven assistants and administrative officers in all the Princeton institutions, and a total of about thirteen hundred students in all departments. There are also twelve fellow- ships, some open only to graduates of Princeton, others, as part of the broader university work, open to all candi- dates. These yield from four to six hundred dollars a year, and enable their holders to devote their entire time to re- search. About thirty -five hundred dollars in money or gold medals is annually distributed in various prizes to stimulate generous endeavor in learning. The number of scholarships yielding free tuition to their undergraduate holders is eighty. A circle with a radius of six or seven miles drawn around the village would include four hun- dred and fifty more boys and young men preparing for college, including, as it would, the Lawrenceville School, the Pennington Academy, and the Princeton School — the three i ^ THE PRESIDENT S nOI'SE employing in the aggregate a corps of about thirty-five masters. The onset of such a battalion of academic forces, men and officers, is comparable to that of any great educa- tional centre, and in some respects is beyond that of most. For, in the first place, the teachers and the students have a singleness of purpose hard to preserve amid the temptations and distractions of large cities ; in the second place, Prince- ton stands third, if not second, in the number of her stu- dents pursuing the strictly academic course — which varies but little from that which was once called the college course, or the preparatory course for professional training, but which is now beginning to be called the education of a gentleman — and first in its theological students, who pursue the science next akin to philosophy and all humanistic learning; and, thirdly, no less than forty -two States fur- nish each its quota of students, and there are representa- tives from eleven foreign lands. The number of living grad- uates is not far from four thousand. 8 lit FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES The writing of autobiography is always ticklish work, and particularly when it is supposed to illustrate heredity. In other words, to write your life before you were born, while you are living, and after you are dead must be the task of either a philosopher or a humorist. Hence, in one who is neither, caution in attempting to depict the Prince- ton type of education, either in the past or the future, is very necessary. As to the past, however, some things are clear. Until the first years of Dr. McCosh's brilliant ad- ministration the course was almost entirely a required one. It was substantially the same as that of other first- rate institutions, compounded in well-tried proportions of the standard specifics — to wit, the classics, mathematics, belles-lettres, science, and philosophy*. The last two were given as much prominence as was compatible with old- fashioned notions, and the names of Henry, Guyot, and Dod will illustrate both their close alliance and the sterling character of the doctrine. That there was real vigor and initiative in both school and laboratory is proven by names like Philip Freneau, Boker, Leland, and "William C. Prime in literature and art criticism, or by those of the Alexan- ders, Hodges, and Millers in theology and the pulpit, or in public life by the long array of names already given. The annals of the medical profession and the bar would afford similar testimony. But, on the whole, Princetonians pride themselves on their contributions to public life in men of action. ' There has always been something in political Calvinism favorable to state founding on lines of liberty and authority duly blended, and to administrative and public life according to the American type. Only the initiated understand how thoroughly unsettled are educational theories at the present day the world over. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 117 On the revival of learning and science after the war, our most ambitious and adventurous youth flocked to Ger- many, because she alone was supposed to have solved the problem of university education. Several things happened in the ensuing years as a consequence : a sudden drift from the pursuit of letters to the study of linguistics, a tremen- dous upheaval of scientific studies, which was wholesome, but unduly emphasized their proportionate value in educa- tion, a consequent disorganization of the old college plan by the aggregation of new professors and departments, and an un-American boldness in relying on theory for a solution of the new questions, with a corresponding disregard for our own very respectable historical growth in the educa- tional line. I refrain from recalling the Continental views as to text criticism and text-making in the Scriptures and the classics, as to state socialism in political science, the tremendous emphasis of Teutonism in history, and other exotic cuttings in philosophy and science which were at once ingrafted on our own stock, wherever their anient discoverers got a seat in professorial chairs. The general result was utter confusion. As the light breaks in upon the chaos, we find that common-sense is re- asserting itself; the real value of German educational im- pulse, immense as it is, is now understood to lie in a judi- cious application to our own universities, which are rooted in the soil of our separate and independent national life, of reforming principle, but of neither foreign experience nor foreign influence. In fact, our young and daring adven- turers are growing older, and the nation draws them back to their bearings. A few brilliant and useful experi- ments are being tried in lately founded institutions, and one of them seems destined to survive. In the case of 8* 118 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES the oldest three American universities it is gratifying to observe that they have been receptive and cautious, al- though in different proportions. The outcome, startling enough at first, is yet just what might have been expected. With open arms for the new, they have yet taken a firm stand on their previous experience, and kept enough of the old to preserve unbroken their historic continuity. To il- lustrate Princeton's position, it must be explained that of the three, Harvard departed furthest from the old norm common to all, and Yale has kept the closest. By an intricate system of maximum and minimum re- quirements, by a minute subdivision of her old standard of admission into subjects, and by the addition of certain other subjects in science and modern languages, which might be substituted for or added to the old, Harvard broadened the basis of admission and elevated her demands somewhat. Yale modified her requirements by the addition of modern languages, and by demanding improvements in the character of preparation in English and the classics. Princeton made almost no change except to arrange like Harvard a system of maximum and minimum requirements ; the former being optional, the latter demanding an increase both in the quan- tity and the quality of what was to be offered in the old subjects. The result is that candidates for all three uni- versities are trained side by side in the same schools and according to the same standards until within three months of the entrance examination, when they are separated to be specially trained for the respective variations in preparation for each. The Harvard student is after entrance substantially free from all restraint in choice of his studies. Or rather he was, for experience has shown that he is not quite fit for such feJb 1 '■ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 121 absolute emancipation, and now an adviser in the faculty is provided for every candidate for a degree. In Yale little liberty is allowed throughout the Freshman and Sophomore years. The high-class students are taught according to their capacities in separate divisions, but every Yalensian pursues for two years substantially the same genei'al course as every other. Even in the Junior and Senior years certain courses are prescribed. For the remaining hours the coming teach- er, theologian, lawyer, or physician has his free choice from a full dish, lavishly provided, of such courses as ma}' lead up to his chosen profession or satisfy his personal yearnings. Princeton has had for about the same time, perhaps for a little longer, a plan similar but different, and, since the ad- vent of Dr. Patton to the presidency, substantially modified. All the studies of the Freshman year, except the one mod- ern language elected by the student, are required, provision being made for advanced instruction. In the Sophomore year the standard branches — classics, mathematics, English, and history, with a fair proportion of time devoted to sci- ence and modern languages — are again required, but in Lat- in, Greek, mathematics, and modern languages the student elects either two or four hours each as he may choose, thus enabling him to devote himself with greater zeal to one or other, as he hopes in the higher years to become a candidate for honors in literature, science, or philosophy, or as his tastes dispose him. The prescribed studies of Yale are Greek, Latin, mathe- matics, English, and the modern languages, excluding all science in the two lower years, and physics, astronomy, logic, psychology, and ethics in the two upper years. To these Princeton adds in the lower years logic, history, and science — namely, chemistry, botany and zoology ; and in the 122 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES upper years she demands political economy, but leaves as- tronomy elective. The time devoted to required studies in the upper years is substantially the same in both, with a slight preponderance on Princeton's side. It will thus be seen that with what seems at first sight a striking similarity to that of Yale, the tendency of Prince- ton's system is fundamentally different from hers and from that of Harvard. In the first place, she has so far yielded to modern agitation as to require of all her graduates a knowledge of at least the elements of five natural sciences. Two of these, physics and chemistry, have sufficient time allotted for great thoroughness. The others are given in outlines merely. Some will say such courses have no place in university training, and should either be given in pre- paratory schools or left to the option of each student. But they are nevertheless strenuously supported by others as giving every educated man a chance to pursue the natural sciences under more competent guidance than can be had in schools, and so fit him to fairly weigh their claims when he comes to years of choice, and not disdain them from sheer ignorance or inherited prejudice. By this procedure, moreover, no window into the scientific " palace of de- light" is darkened for the man of culture. He has his glimpse, even if he does not enter in. The prescribed studies of the Princeton system, therefore, are not alone those of the olden time, but the area is in- creased by the addition of much science. General training is broadened, if not intensified. These central studies are logically and consecutively introduced, and elasticity in pro- viding for individual wants is secured as early as Sopho- more year by leaving each student free to take more or less Latin, Greek, and mathematics, as his inclination prompts, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 123 but requiring a substantial amount of these from all. In this way it is believed that the value of the much-coveted degree of Bachelor of Arts is in no way diminished, nor its meaning materially altered, though everything essential has been conceded to the scientific reformers. In the upper years the rights of that age of choice which falls some- where between nineteen and twenty-four are fully respected by providing various and numerous elective courses in clas- sics, English and modern languages, in mathematics, the cor- related and the natural or biological sciences, and in philoso- phy pure and applied in all its branches, in history and its cognate subjects. And this brings us to the second important peculiarity of the Princeton system, in that it is compelled by the struct- ural arrangement of the studies of Freshman and Sopho- more years to emphasize the grouping of electives. This is because the recjuired studies embrace an introduction to every great department of elective work. The invaluable class of " general excellence " students have the same open and inviting door as of old. The subtle influences of the time card — that is, of hours allotted to certain branches — are all used to draw them to standard subjects. But the born or developed specialist has from the opening of Junior year a fair chance to rival the other in the race for honors. The elective courses fall naturally under certain rubrics in their announcement, and the hours are carefully so arranged that he may fill all his open time by courses in his chosen line of work, and special honors are provided for him. The elective system thus affords the maturer mind of the man whose profession is chosen the opportunities either for in- tense application to a scholar's specialty, or for such a propaedeutic as shortens by one year at least, perhaps by 124 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES two, the special training for life-work in the learned pro- fessions. And so, finally, the examinations fall unconscious- ly into a kind of tripos system, in which every regular stu- dent puts about two-thirds of his elective time into the divisions of some one line of work for thoroughness, and another third into a different course for general culture. The trend, therefore, of academic training in Princeton is towards the cultivation of aptitudes, and the creation of that small but precious aristocracy of scholars, men who from childhood ride their hobby because they early recog- nize their gifts, and so attain heights which serve as land- marks for the great mass of broadly educated men. At the Photof raplieil by R. H. Rose Si Son ALEXANDER HALL PRINCETON VNIVERSITY 125 same time she hopes she has saved for the nation, within the lines of her influence, that general training which made educated Americans of earlier generations so habile and adroit, and still makes the professional men who have had it the superiors of those who have not, whether their work is in science, philosophy, or the arts. The circumference of liberal training is, according to her system, segmented into schools of philosophy, of history and political science, of jurisprudence, of classical literature, of art and archeol- ogy, of English literature, and of the modern languages for the humanities ; on the scientific side, of mathematics, of natural and physical science, and of biology. It is hoped soon to add a school of Semitic languages, or rather to de- velop the one already tentatively instituted. Most of these have both graduate and undergraduate divisions, securing thorough scientific treatment according to various stages of advancement, and holding out inducements to students of the highest attainments. If it were possible to enter more into detail, mention should be made among many other important matters of the great impetus given to the study of pure philosophy in the last twenty years by the great energy of Dr. McCosh. That impulse bids fair to be lasting, for his successor has the interests of that department at heart, and at this mo- ment the number of students enrolled in it is very large. Great care, moreover, has been given to the arrangement of English studies. They are ranked equal to any others, and the learning and zeal given to their furtherance awaken a feeling of just pride in all Princetonians. The School of Science in Princeton was founded with a most interesting end in view, to relieve the academic de- partment of undue pressure for the introduction of science, 126 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES and to provide a corresponding liberal training for youth who wished to substitute modern languages for classics, or science for philosophy, to get a somewhat wider knowledge of applied mathematics, and to secure manual training in the use of apparatus in laboratories and drawing-rooms. The degrees to be given were Bachelor, Master, and Doctor of Science, and every undergraduate was required to take certain academic branches as a liberalizing element in his education, but as a supplement a course in civil-engineer- ing was incorporated in the same plan. Beautiful quarters, with a luxurious equipment, were provided, and the aca- demic departments of physics and chemistry were put under the same roof. It was supposed that graduates of the School of Science would have the same broad and untechnical training as other college graduates, and would then proceed to their specialties, whatever those might be. The school has been in operation for twenty-five years, and it seems as if an intelligent opinion might now be formed as to the success of the original design. There was certainly no relief to the pressure for admission of science into the academic department, as no college in the land makes such demands on its required course in that re- spect. Last year sixty -two per cent, of its students were in the technical departments of Electricity and Civil-Engineer- ing, while certainly one-half the remainder were in training for other technical professions. The writer recalls a very small number who have either pursued graduate work for a professional degree, or advanced to learned professions by study elsewhere. That is to say, the school has found its success and justification elsewhere than was anticipated; for the great majority of its graduates are men with practi- PHIXCETOX UNIVERSITY 129 cal technical training, fitting them to enter at once on the duties of professional life. It is hoped and believed by many, however, that powerful influences which have been at work from the beginning may prove equal to realizing the aim of general culture, and produce a large number of unprofessional graduates. Such forces are those exerted by the instruction of both scientific and academic students in the same classes by instructors in psychology, politics, and literature. All scientific students, moreover, are carefully trained in the writing of essays in their regular course, and, as will be seen further on, in the student associations. Alone: this line of technical education the school is a success, its numbers increase year by year, the standard of admission is steadily rising, and by the addition of new de- partments it is widening the sphere of its influence and use- fulness. There are some who see in such rapid develop- ment of professional schools parallel with the college course a menace to the influence and prestige of liberal education. Such anxiety is not well founded. When universities first sprang into existence, it was by establishing different facul- ties in different places. That plan survived until a recent date in France, and has, from the necessity of the case, been extensively followed here. Central and southern Europe, on the other hand, gathered all the faculties as far as pos- sible to common centres, into close propinquity and relation to each other. The result is obvious in the history of education. The collective intellectual labor of men who all live by their brains creates community of interest and strength of movement. Mutual appreciation takes the place of mutual distrust among students and professors of various subjects. The narrowness of the humanities offsets 130 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES the narrowness of science and the practical rigidity of the useful arts. Most men bred in universities have learned more from their association with fellow-students than from their teachers. In every line of investigation and mental drill there are educational value and liberal training, much more in some than in others, but much in all. Large bodies of men who do such work interact wholesomely on each other when brought into daily contact by vicinage. If the humanities are weakened or profaned in such association, or the pursuit of science and knowledge for its own sake is endangered, then the boasted self-effacement of their votaries and the vaunted strength of ideals ought to be shown up as unfit in the struggle for existence. But such is not the fact. On the contrary, they nowhere shine with such brightness, nor work with such success in leavening the whole lump of educated men. But these truisms receive special emphasis in Princeton by the fact that all the students of whatever stripe are eli- gible to membership in the great literary societies, or " halls."' as the college parlance shapes its phrase from their respec- tive buildings. These associations are now absolutely unique, as the older colleges which once had similar literary socie- ties have, with a few exceptions, now lost them. The two Princeton halls were founded respectively one by James Madison and associates, the other by Robert Ogden, Will- iam Paterson, Luther Martin, Oliver Ellsworth, and Tap- ping Reeve. Of these six men, three were afterwards train- ers of the Constitution, one was Chief-Justice of Connecti- cut, one was Attorney-General of the United States, one was Chief-Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and one was President. There is no need to describe the char- acter of these associations thus founded, nor the impress PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 131 their founders put upon them. That character has persist- ed to the present day, although the quaint first names of Plain - dealing and Well-meaning have been changed to American Whig and Cliosophic. They have handsome and solid buildings, as near alike as possible, so that their keen rivalry may be purely literary. Their management is absolutely without interference by the faculty, except as graduate members in that body have SEMINARY BUILDING the same privileges as others. The nights on which they meet have a place in the student's calendar as "hall night." In a high degree they conduce to the political and literary training of their members, as the rivalry for their honors is intense, and the large membership — about 400 in one, and 450 in the other— both insures a dignified critical audience, and gives field enough for selection to guarantee high abil- ities and a thorough training in those who rise to the top. 132 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES Their public contests are in oratory, debate, and composi- tion. Since 1S76, of the 42 first honors, 19 have gone to one and 23 to the other. It is an open secret that they are modelled as closely as may be on the House of Representa- tives, with a view to training their members for public life and making them familiar with parliamentary custom. These few words will indicate the high value of such aux- iliaries. They afford that distinction which noble youth so earnestly covets not only in the pala?stra, but in the forum and the porch. The largeness of their interests trains men to leadership without reference to the pettiness or grandeur of enterprises. They more than double the regular training of the university in politics, history, and literature. They form a charming social centre, democratic and American in the numbers which have access to the hearth-stone. They secure the somewhat inconsiderate and rude but invaluable training of }'outh by youth under restraints which prevent its degradation into brutality. They give every man that fair chance among his equals which restrains effrontery while it cures bashfulness and develops efficiency. Their enthusi- asm is as great to-day as it was in the last century, and they are better equipped than ever for their work. Since the great movement was inaugurated which estab- lished athletics as a permanent element in school and uni- versity life, Princeton has not been without glory in out- door sport. She has from the outset been a doughty oppo- nent to both Yale and Harvard, and in those games which she plays has had her due mead of victory in intercollegiate contests. Her success has certainly been great in propor- tion to her numbers. This is not a matter of slight signifi- cance nor of college advertisement, and at the risk of running counter to public prejudice, I venture a few words 3 wf PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 135 of serious comment on a theme of the highest importance. The subject should be viewed from several aspects. The first one is trite enough, that as patriots and educators col- lege managers are bound to provide physical education as well as moral and mental. This is admitted on all hands ; the question is how to reach the result. Some would have military drill, discipline, and uniforms, with an instructor from the officers of the regular army, as provided gratis by the general government. Others would take the dimensions of every limb, calculate the proportions of the body, auscul- tate for every defect, in lungs and heart, and then, under med- ical supervision, provide the apparatus needed to expand the chest, or draw down a shoulder, or decrease the waist, and send the young Apollo with his perfect proportions and graceful walk on his journey through the world. A third method is to provide a free gymnasium, also with a compe- tent instructor, leaving its use in preparation for sports of various sorts to the option of those who engage in them, or wish to, and provide a stimulus for the largest possible num- ber to use it by the development of the glorious and ex- hilarating out-door games — base-ball, foot-ball, lacrosse, and rowing — in the management of the students themselves. It is clear that the first of these propositions would add a new study to the student's already overburdened course, and emphasize unduly the military conception of life in our civil institutions. The second must go down under the simple consideration that it makes work out of play, and like the former destroys all spontaneity and initiative on the part of the student. If military drill and gymnastic exercises are really a portion of a liberal education, make them so openly, incorporate them in your scheme, but still leave time for recreation. The third one, therefore, is the 136 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES correct conception. "We firmly believe in the value of physi- cal training, but athletics is quite another thing, for it in- cludes the moral element in the conduct of sport, which is sec- ond to no other. A great Frenchman, distressed by the dull and heavy temper of the Lyceen and the gloom of his life, has recently supported the powerful and successful move- ment inaugurated in his native land for the introduction of American and English games. He wishes to bring with them the joyousness, the robust vigor, and the initiative of English and American boy life. We may not give our young men liberty in their studies, he argues — we know how that leads to sciolism; nor yet in their morals — bitter experience precludes that ; where, then, shall they have freedom? In their sports. I do not quote, but give as correctly as possible from memory what I read some time ago. This has been in substance the Princeton practice and system from the beginning. The time of college years is too precious to be devoted to the work of mere physical training. Yet recreation is essential. When voung men, therefore, play from the love of it, they get both. And as intercollegiate sports were managed for many years, they get far more — namely, the experience of large enterprises ; the character of generous submission to defeat, with perse- verance to begin all over and try again ; and self-restraint, with courtesy to the weaker, in victory. This was so when out-door sports were conducted for the sake of sport, as they once were, and will be again when the true bearings of harmonious co-operation and pluck upon winning shall be rediscovered. It is certain that' in the intense rivalry of such contests victory will go only where fine traditions are guarded, and where the right spirit is perpetuated by the |«H ir,n PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 139 active interest of every man according to bis powers. There can be nothing vicarious in athletics ; neither the power of money, nor the influence of social rank, nor the supervision of committees can replace the unity of movement which combines a whole society into one uplifting, forceful effort at the crisis. Any in-door recreation or exercise, while it has its place, is, after all, a poor shift for out-door sport. It is a serious truth that other nations wonder at the proud position of the Anglo-Saxon race, and that they attribute the fine ripe qualities of maturer life to the beginnings born on playing- fields and developed in the seriousness of conflict. These mimic battle-fields demand the same cpialities as real ones, and no great game is won without the moral support of the non-combatants. Union, organization, enthusiasm, pluck, high principle — every one of them is as much the price of atldetic as of martial victory. It is humiliating, when we have the precious possession of taste and power in such a matter, to find it belittled and discouraged in so many ways. Instead of being grateful for the Spartan element in the training of its youth, America is either ignorant of its value or opposed to its exercise entirely. The social side of Princeton life differs by the whole heavens from that of any other university on our side of the water. It is a strange combination of town and coun- try which produces this effect. It is nearer to the great cities than any college which is not in and of them. A run of an hour and a half in an express train brings it to them and them to it. Yet that is sufficient distance to secure entire isolation from the influence of the counting-house and the " street," or from the attractions of the drama or the whirl of winter gayety. The morning paper from New 140 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES York or Philadelphia is on the breakfast-table, but Vanity Fair is behind the lenses and screens of the diorama. Most of the time, therefore, Princeton is left to its own resources, but in the intervals it has the stimulus from without which gives a strong enough fillip to make the blood course freely. The town itself, moreover, has but one interest. There are no manufactures, no courts, no fairs. With the exception of a few gentle families of independent means, who either belong to the old gentry of the State or find the village a pleasant place of retirement, the inhabitants consist of the professors or other attaches of the college and seminary with their families, and of those who in some direct or in- direct way provide for their necessities. It is evident that such a social organism must have very exceptional traits. The steady habits, plain living, and ab- sorbing duties of professors all tend to retirement and isolation. The occupants of the various chairs, moreover, are brought from wherever they may be found, and if fitted for their position they have that sturdy individuality which does not easily blend into homogeneity or bow to tradi- tional habits. The association of families like these, there- fore, might be expected to show something of conscious effort and restraint. But, except for a trifle of old-fashioned formality, the new-comer is not aware of any eccentricity, because the limitations of small number prevent the forma- tion of cliques, and constant companionship soon produces ease and a quiet toleration of individuality in others. There is plenty of entertaining — teas, receptions, suppers, and quiet dinners, simple and unostentatious, but warm with hospi- tality and genial enjoyment. For the men there is a social club, the " Nassau," which at intervals, like other similar country associations, opens its doors to women also. The PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 141 constituent elements in such society never quite combine in chemical union to the extent of personal obliteration, but their very persistence has the charm of the unforeseen. And to this is added greater variety by the constant visits of strangers from at home or abroad, drawn by the pres- ence of some friend in the college, or by curiosity and the ease of approach. Princeton society lies away from the hurly-burly of the great world, but it is on that account neither uninteresting nor fossilized. Free from affectations, its danger is in self-complacency rather than in envy. There exist in Princeton several learned societies, with a total membership of about eighty. They average twenty members, though they are not of equal size. They are com- posed exclusively of professors, fellows, and graduates, and are styled the Science, -Philosophy, and Literary clubs re- spectively; and the first has now thrown off two sections — mathematical and biological. The sphere of each is kept so large that they enclose all the intellectual activity of the university. Each meets once a month, and divides its meetings into two classes — those for original papers, and those for the reports of what the world is doing in its line. The proportion of the former to the latter is as two to one approximately. These societies are the most potent influ- ence in stimulating to research, and the creative activity of their members is largely enforced by the necessity of keep- ing step in a progressive bod}'. Many of the original con- tributions are printed either in learned journals or in the Bulletin — a quarterly appearing during term-time, and de- voted to the interests of the trustees and faculty. It is not uncommon either for the papers thus offered to be again read in what is known as the library meeting. The Presi- dent's mansion is very large, and at intervals he throws 142 FOVH AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES open his library and the adjoining rooms to the upper class men — Juniors, Seniors, and graduates. An essay by a pro- fessor, fellow, or some invited guest is read. Then follows a discussion, introduced by some one versed in the subject of the paper, and afterwards thrown open to all present. Such meetings have been very frequent for twenty -one years, and are prized by the aristocracy of scholars among Princeton students as the most invaluable opportunities of their university life. The attendance is as high as a hun- dred and fifty, and the session often lasts two hours and a half with unflagging interest. Stiffness and coldness are banished from both the club and librar\' meetings by the fact that they are not ordinarily held in public rooms, but in the inviting privacy of a friendly home, under the shade of an hospitable roof-tree. The assurance of any one not a student in aspiring to delineate even the salient features of student life is simply incalculable. If it be true — as, alas, it is true — that one- half of the world ignores the doings of the other, and if even parents in the intimacy of domestic life meet with such surprises in the lives of their children, what shall be said of the privacy witli which the student cloaks himself before all except his fellows? And yet there are some matters of interest which cannot be hidden. Princeton students come, as was noted in another connection and ac- cording to the last catalogue, from some fort3 T -two States and eleven foreign lands. While New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania furnish the largest quotas, yet there are so many and different towns, cities, and rural districts repre- sented that no social class or local influence or professional clique can determine standards of living and thinking. Then, too, there are no Greek -letter fraternities to gather PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 145 iii and crystallize social sets, although, of course, where men congregate like will more or less foregather and collogue with like. So it happens that there is a constant flux, ar- rangement, and rearrangement of associates. The poor are not debarred by the costly machinery of life from meeting the richer, nor these by the existence of self-consciousness from the invaluable intimacy with the self-supporting. In fact, the whole scale of expenditure is comparatively low, necessary expenses running from three to seven hundred dollars a year, and this begets social equality. The friends of Freshman year are, moreover, not necessarily those of Senior year; in general experience, quite the reverse is the case. The community of social life depends on what may be called the home life of the students' chambers, and on the intercourse at table in the various boarding-houses scattered throughout the town. This latter matter is one of very serious import. Some influential man gathers together a number (ten or upwards) of his acquaintance, and secures board for them where accommodation is to be had. lie is in a measure responsible for the character of the food and cooking, and intermediates between the Boniface and his guests. In return for these services he has his own seat at table without charge. This is, of course, one of the best- known ways of supplementing slender means. The scale of charges differs according to circumstances, and furnishes food at various prices to suit every purse. A generous friend once provided a spacious hall, with all the appurtenances of an excellent restaurant, large enough to seat two-thirds of the young men, and for a year or so furnished excellent food at a reasonable price. But his customers (!) finally fell away. For some it was too dear, for some too cheap, and 10 146 FQVR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES for all too public. It was one of the sights to visit the •' commons " at dinner-time, and the diners would have none of it. The old institution of eating-houses or clubs, with their uninspected dietary and precious privacy for talk and joke and debate, has long since reasserted itself. It seems to have been largely the social element which reinstated them, and it is certainly that element which sustains them. Princeton college rooms are, on the whole, very commo- dious and reasonable in price. There are far from enough of them, and, as a consequence, they are in great demand. The athletics of spring and autumn keep nearly all but the most diligent out-of-doors in recreation-time. In addition to the " University " and "Brokaw," two fine large athletic lields, with club-houses, dressing-rooms, and every variety of baths, there are several other grounds available for base- ball, foot-ball, lacrosse, and tennis. In those seasons and at the proper hours every vista shows groups of students clad in flannels and absorbed in games. Boating has un- fortunately fallen out of the list of Princeton sports, al- though there is an admirable boat-house nearer to the centre of life than at either Yale or Harvard, and the Delaware and Karitan Canal affords better facilities for rowing than either the Isis or the Cam. But in the long evenings of the winter term the undergraduates' cham- bers are his delight. Adorned with every trophy and souvenir dear to the heart of youth, many of them are most attractive. And when the logs — real' logs still in Princeton — are heaped on the hearth in the early, and sometimes the late evening too, song and joke mingle with the tinkle of the guitar and mandolin, or often the louder tones of the piano and the cornet break through the cur- tained windows and float vaguely to the passers' ears. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 149 Student associations are very numerous. There are, of course, the various boards of athletic management and the gymnastic associations, but there are besides the glee club, the banjo club, the dramatic association, the chess club, the hare-and-hounds club, the kennel club, the gun club, and more of the same class. Then there are always a number of de- bating clubs for private practice, and of late there have been very enthusiastic Shakespeare, Browning, and other literary associations. They all have their active supporters, and keep up a vigorous interest and vitality. In addition there ai'e five social organizations with an average member- ship (confined to upper-class men) of about twenty, that rise to the dignity of houses in which there are dining-rooms, reading-rooms, bedrooms for graduates, and all the various paraphernalia of a club. If the Princeton man is largely thrown for society upon himself and his fellows by the ab- normal conditions of a small town, he is amply able to meet the emergency. Yet the social intercourse of many with the families of their instructors and governors is very constant — as con- stant, in fact, as they care to make it, for they are very wel- come with their budgets of news and the latest joke and their bubbling spirits. But, on the whole, it must be con- fessed they prefer their own kind, and when there is to be a great social event, as at Commencement or at intervals dur- ing the winter, the undergraduates like to organize and man- age it themselves, and have their friends from home share their pleasures. Youth is not slow to express opinions or give utterance to the passing impression. Those of old Nassau are no exception ; they demand all sorts of things through the medium of their press, which is, however, con- ducted with admirable gravity and self - repression. They 10* 150 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES want lectures and music and entertainment ; but when the lectures and the like come, it must be confessed that they are not very much run after, or even very well supported. They frankly censure what they consider censurable in their daily paper, they crack their jokes in an illustrated comic weekly, and in their excellent monthly magazine they discuss all sorts of things without restraint, but with force and good-nature. Si I'esprit sert a tout, il ne suffit d rim,. No account of Princeton, or of any other seat of learning for that matter, would be complete without mention of her attitude to re- ligion. The oldest and largest seminary of the Presbyterian Church is situated in Princeton. For years its theology and the name of the town have been associated in the public mind, and they have been so compounded into one word that the parts may never be separated. Logically enough, how- ever, when you consider, the college proper has always been unsectarian, containing nothing whatsoever in its charter to compel the election of its officers from any denomination or profession. It has always taught the Bible as a part of its course, and continues to do so. There is instruction by the President in the Evidences of Christianity, and a chair of the Harmony of Science and Keligion. There are daily chapel services, where alone is seen impressively the unity of the university. These have been conducted for the most part by clergymen, but are often enough in charge of officiating laymen. There is an old and distinguished religious society, the Philadelphian, ever characterized by piety and mission- ary ardor. There is throughout the institution an active, intense, spontaneous religious life. But, like all wholesome activities, it all comes from personal impulse and convic- tion. The university exists for the sake of sound learning. The instruction given in the philosophical and historical de- • #\ TO ! -+■ PltlXCETON UNIVERSITY 153 partraents shuns no difficult questions because of their rela- tion to faith. But it has no conscious aim to turn out men machine-made in their conscience and convictions. Men of all sects, including Roman Catholics and Jews, are heartily welcomed. They can and do avail themselves of its advan- tages without any sense of illiberal treatment, or of narrow- ness and bigotry in the spirit of the place. • After all that is said in the fashionable philosophy of our day about organisms and organic life, society is formed by individuals, and resolves itself into individuals. When, therefore, we weigh a state, or a family, or any other pha- lanstery of men, our first inquiry is, where and what is the individual — the race can take care of itself. In this series every writer holds a brief for the university which is his theme. He must be pardoned for blindness to fault and kindness to virtue. It is notorious that the loyalty of Prince- tonians often rises into rapture, and so, to be outdone by no other, I must close with an effort to sketch the Prince- tonian as it is hoped that others see him, and so throw in his weaknesses first and in shadow. Thomas Jefferson was a man very careless in dress, and without even an affectation of that strange but desirable thing we call style, as Mr. Adams, the latest and best his- torian of his first administration, testifies. Evidence, how- ever, is adduced to show that he was in this respect like the class of Virginia gentlemen to whom he belonged. Something of that old influence still lingers in the uni- versity where so many of them were educated, and there is a lounging easiness of garb and manner in the student at work in Princeton which many would gladly see at the van- ishing-point. Athletics have introduced motley costumes, from the head-gear to the shoes, and these too often appear 154 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES where they have no relation whatever to the matters in hand at the time. Born perhaps of the same pai'entage, but incidental to young manhood, is a certain wilfulness, or rather proneness, to accept very little on authority. In for- mer days there was an old-fashioned attitude of defiance towards the faculty which came of separation and misunder- standing. This began to disappear when the college weekly was transformed from a critical journal into a daily news- paper. For a time also there existed a formal conference- committee, composed of professors and students ; this com- pleted the process of reconciliation, and, having done its work, no longer exists. The students, for example, take entire charge of the honor question in examinations. The case of any one suspected of dishonesty is investigated by them, and the culprit, if he prove to be one, is reported by them to the faculty for expulsion. It is but occasionally that any ill-considered or headstrong opposition to consti- tuted authority is shown. There is always the crumpled rose-leaf, and where wellnigh the whole undergraduate life is independent, having its initiative within itself, whether as to choice in work, or in the literary societies, or in the management of gymnastics, sports, and intercollegiate con- tests, it is not unnatural that something of the same force should go over into departments where the youth is still in tutelage and under the strong hand of control. On the other hand, the absolute equality and democracy produced by the meeting of all sorts and conditions of men from everywhere compel the wiping off of old prejudice and predisposition. Nothing is so pre-eminently charac- teristic of Princeton student life as this. The univer- sity puts its stamp indelibly on the renewed surface ; the Frincetonian is ever amenable to just discipline, and sub- PM1XCET0X UNIVERSITY 155 mits with grace to regulations which must be stringent where the exercise of the civil power is largely in the hands of men dependent for a livelihood on the good- will and patronage of the students, in a community where, therefore, the highest exhibition of law and its majesty is in the fiat of the university administration. Such a combination of needful obedience and equally needful command in young men produces strong character, and in the great centres and among the learned professions Princetonians hold their own, with a body of experience behind them as valuable in real life as it was in the schools. The Princetonian is perhaps bluff, but he is also tender; he sees straight and behaves promptly, but not ruthlessly; he marks down a sham quick- ly, and is not given to toadying ; he has reverence for much in this world and the next, and is not given to theoretical " isms," honestly respecting things which have their roots in the experience of the past and in the institutions of his country, himself among the number. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IV ^?P l(gK @)HE amazing development of the commerce and ■^1 manufactures of New York is patent to all of It us ; we cannot help seeing it ; but most of us have found it easy to overlook the development of the intellectual life of the cit\ T , which is equally amazing. Sixty years ago the literary centre of the United States was probably in Philadelphia; thirty years ago it was cer- tainly in Boston ; to-day, few could deny that it is in New York, when it is remembered that four out of every live of the great monthly magazines and weekly journals are is- sued from this city, and that a very large proportion of the American men of letters of to-day live in or near the me- tropolis. And here, on Manhattan Island, are congregated also the most of the prominent artists of America — paint- ers, sculptors, decorators, and architects. New York is so used to its commercial supremacy of America that we New-Yorkers forget that this primacy of New York is the growth of a century only. In 1790 the population of New York was 33,131, while that of Boston was 18,03S, and of Philadelphia, 28,522. " So late as 1709," said Mr. Seth Low, in one of the addresses he made when he was installed as President of Columbia College, "it was considered a rash prediction that New York might one day equal Newport, Rhode Island, as a commercial city " ; and 160 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES President Low took pride in pointing out that it was to a son of Columbia, Pe Witt Clinton, that we owe the Erie Canal and the ensuing mercantile supremacy of this city. A development as remarkable as that which has taken place in the commerce of New York withiu the past hun- dred years, or as that which has taken place in the intellect- ual life of New York within the past fifty years, has taken place in Columbia College within the past twenty -five years. From what was a little college of the narrow in- land type only a score or so of years ago, Columbia has grown into a large university worthy of a mighty city. This growth has been so gradual that many even of the graduates of the college fail entirely to appreciate the fact or to grasp its significance. So it is that those of us who have followed the expansion of our alma muter are never surprised when we hear Columbia treated now as a small college and then as a great university. We are not sur- prised because we recognize that both of these descriptions are fairly accurate. Columbia is at once a small college and a great university. To explain this paradox, one needs only to draw attention to the exact meaning now attached to the words college and university, formerly treated as though they were al- most synonymous, and even to-day often carelessly con- founded. In a sentence or two it is not easy to make clear that distinction between these words which is now gaining acceptance in America, and which is quite different from that obtaining in England, where a college is a component part of a university (much as New York is one of the United States) ; but the attempt must be made. What the American college is we all know ; it is an institution aim- ing to give its students, in a four years' course, what is called BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Looking North from Forty-ninth Street, COLUMBIA VXlYEllhlTY 161 a liberal education. What an American university ought to be we are beginning to perceive ; it is an institution aim- ing 1 to jruide its students in advanced work and to train them in investigation. It is the duty of the college to give breadth ; it is the duty of the university to give depth. The students who apply to a university for further instruc- PRESIDEXT SETH LOW tion are supposed already to have a liberal education ; in other words, the university begins where the college leaves off. The college should send forth men of culture ; the uni- versity should take some of these men and carry their edu- cation further and make each of them master of a specialty. 11 162 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES Perhaps concrete examples will best emphasize the dis- tinction : for instance, Amherst is a fine specimen of the American college of to-day, while Johns Hopkins, although not yet at its full development, suggests the type of the American university of to-morrow. " If I am right," said Mr. Seth Low, in his presidential address at a recent convention of the College Association of the Middle States, " the difference between a college and a university is to a great extent a difference in aim." Accept- ing this view, it is obvious that only evil can result from any confusion of purpose — from the attempt, for example, to crowd university work into a college curriculum. But there is no reason why the university and the college should not form parts of the same institution, each keeping strictly to its own aims, and each aiding the other. This is the state of affairs at Columbia ; the college and the university exist side by side, and yet perfectly distinct. The college is a small college ; if we reckon by the number of its undergrad- uates, it is no larger than Amherst. The university is a great university ; if we reckon by the number of its stu- dents, there are now only three larger in the United States, — Harvard, Yale, and the University of Michigan. Founded more than a century after Harvard, a little more than half a century after Yale, and only eight years after Princeton, King's College began to give instruction in 1754, under a charter which placed among the first governors ministers not only of the Church of England, but also of the Presbyterian, the Lutheran, the Dutch Keformed, and the French Protestant churches, and which provided that these governors should make no laws " to exclude any Per- son of any religious Denomination whatever- from equal Liberty and Advantages, or from any of the Degrees, Lib- COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 163 erties, Privileges, Benefits, or Immunities of the said Col- lege, on Account of his particular Tenets in Matters of Religion." The first class of eight students was taught in the ves- try-room of the school-house attached to Trinity Church ; and in the year after the college opened the church granted to it a piece of ground " in the skirts of the city/' On this land, bounded by Church, Barclay, and Murray Streets, the governors erected, in 1756, a building thirty feet wide by one hundred and eighty long; and in this building — the situation of which is now commemorated by the street called College Place — the college remained for a century. Here Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and Gouver- neur Morris laid the foundations of their knowledge. Here the college was revived after the Revolution — King's Col- lege no longer, but Columbia — -the first use of the name of Columbus in connection with any of the institutions of the continent he had discovered. Here the new Columbia KING s COLLEGE— From mi Old Print 164 FOUR AMERICAS USIVERSITIES College graduated De Witt Clinton and Hamilton Fish, who worthily continued the tradition of Hamilton and Jay. Here the college saw the city — which had had only ten thousand inhabitants when the first class of freshmen met — grow steadily and sturdily until its population had increased fifty-fold in the space of a century. Then, in 1S57, a hundred and three years after its foun- dation, Columbia College transplanted itself to the corner of Madison Avenue and 49th Street, a situation at that time as obviously "in the skirts of the city" as the orig- inal grounds had been when the college first took posses- sion of them. Although this was never intended to be more than a temporary resting - place, pending the selec- tion of a permanent site, the college will have remained there nearly forty years. There Charles Anthon concluded his useful career ; there Henry Drisler brought to an end fifty years of honorable service ; there President Barnard broadened the instruction, and enriched the courses, and made ready for the expansion of the college into a univer- sity, which took place there after he had been succeeded by Mr. Low. Buildings were erected one after another as necessity demanded, among them a nobly planned library and a group of lecture-rooms called Hamilton Hall, in honor of the most distinguished of Columbia's sons. At last there was no room for any more buildings, and still the college was crowded and cramped and uncomfortable. Again the city had grown up and surrounded the college, and again came the irresistible demand for removal. While the col- lege itself had increased the number of its scholars, it had slowly surrounded itself with technical schools more than one of which had in attendance on its courses more stu- COLUMBIA UXIYEIMITY 165 dents than the college itself. The problem that faced Mr. Low when he assumed the presidency, in 1890, was two- fold ; it was at once internal and external ; it was first to develop the organization so as to show the exact condition of the college and its relation to the elements of a univer- sity which were in existence on all sides of it ; and, sec- ondly, to find a piece of land somewhere " in the skirts COLUMBIA COLLEGE (1S50) of the city" to which Columbia might remove finally, and on which it might expand freely and indefinitely. Of the technical schools which had slowly clustered about Columbia, the earliest was the School of Medicine. In 1767 Columbia, then King's College, established the first medical faculty in New York and the second in the colonies. In 1814: the professors were allowed to resign in order to be- come the faculty of the independent College of Physicians 11* 166 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES and Surgeons founded some seven years before. In 1860, by joint resolution of its trustees and those of Columbia, this College of Phy- sicians and Surgeons became the medical department of Columbia, copper crown on cupola but for thirty years the connection between the two was little more than an alliance. In 1891 this alliance was turned into a union, the College of Physicians and Surgeons (which had been a proprietary medical school) surrendering its indepen- dence and becoming an integral part of Columbia. Thus Columbia acquired not only lands, buildings, and funds val- ued at one and three-quarter millions of dollars, but it gained also a medical department of the highest reputation, fully manned, and fully equipped. High as has been the reputa- tion of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the past, it is likely to be yet higher in the future, for the consolida- tion with Columbia has enabled the trustees to increase the requirements, both for admission find for graduation, thus raising the standard of medical education, without regard to the probable decrease in the number of students which such a course might entail temporarily, and without regard to the consequent decrease in the fees which had hitherto been the sole support of the school. It is the opinion of many of those best able to judge that in the history of med- ical education in America there is no more important step than this taking over by Columbia of the College of Physi- cians and Surgeons. The second of the technical schools to come into exist- ence was the School of Law. As far back as 1798 the col- lege had a professorship of law, the professor being James : C - ■ - HAMILTON HALL Kent ; and Columbia proudly recalls the fact that it was to her students that Chancellor Kent first, delivered his famous Commentaries on American Law, originally published in 1826. But it was not until 1858 that the School of Law was formally organized, with the late Theodore W. Dwight as its warden. As a teacher of law, as an expounder of princi- ples, Dr. Dwight had no rival in our time ; his lucidity was marvellous. Under his management the Columbia Law School soon became one of the foremost in the country. At first he was almost the only lecturer, but one by one other chairs were created. Dr. Dwight resigned the wardenship two years before his death in ls;»2; and methods of instruc- 168 FOUli AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES tion have since been adopted which are not dependent, as his were, upon his own extraordinary gift of exposition. The course of instruction has been lengthened and strengthened year by year, and the staff of instructors has been increased, while the students have also the privilege of attending the lectures on public law, on Eoman law, and on constitutional history given by the professors of the School of Political Science. In 1864, six years after the beginning of the School of Law, Columbia founded a School of Mines, which proved its usefulness at the very first, and which soon attained to a foremost position among the technological institutes of America, By degrees it has widened its scope, until it has courses not only in mining engineering, but also in civil, mechanical, electrical, and sanitary engineering. It is, in fact, a school of applied science in a very wide sense of the term. More than that, it is also a school of architecture, having at the head of this department Mr. William E. Ware. Perhaps the School of Mines, narrow as its name is, offers as much instruction in applied science and in architecture as any institute of technology in America. Sixteen years after the School of Mines was started Co- lumbia established its fourth professional school, and the first one which was not intended to prepare men simply for the practice of a profession. The School of Political Sci- ence, founded in 1880, was modelled upon the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques of Paris. It was the first institution of the kind to be opened in any English-speaking country. Its purpose is " to give students a complete general view of all the subjects of public polity, both internal and external, from the threefold point of view of history, law, and phi- losophy." It has courses in history — political, economic, A HIT OF THK OLD AND THE NEW COLUMBIA UN1YEKSITY 171 legal, constitutional, and diplomatic— in political philosophy, in international, constitutional, and administrative law, in comparative jurisprudence, in political economy, finance, and social science. From the beginning the School of Po- litical Science has maintained a high standard, admitting no student who has not completed a college course to the end of the junior year. It has been very chary of its degrees ; it has had more than one thousand students, and it has grant- ed the degree of Ph.D. to less than twoscore of them. Its faculty edits the Political Science Quarterly, one of the most authoritative journals of its class, having a high reputation both in this country and in Europe. The School of Polit- ical Science is in part a symptom and in part a cause of that revival of interest in political speculation here in America which Mr. Bryce has declared to be one of the most remarkable of recent developments. When Mr. Seth Low was called to the presidency of Columbia in 1890 this was the condition in which he found it. The college itself had grown but little in the pre- ceding half century, and yet around the college four flour- ishing professional schools had grouped themselves. Al- though three of these were governed by the trustees of the college, each maintained its own independence, and made little or no effort towards co-ordination and co-operation. Within three years after Mr. Low's accession these hetero- geneous bodies were brought into harmony, the College of Physicians and Surgeons becoming in fact as well as in name the Medical School of Columbia. Already in 1890 certain of the professors of the college had begun to give courses intended primarily for graduate students. From this nucleus was evolved, partly by the establishment of new chairs 'and partly by re-assignment 172 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES of existing professorships, the School of Philosophy, which conducts the advanced courses in philosophy, philology, and letters. To this faculty are committed English, both lan- guage and literature, Greek and Latin, French and German, Italian and Spanish, Sanskrit and Avestan, Hebrew and Assyrian ; to it the courses in philosophy, in psychology, in ethics, and in the history and principles of education are also intrusted. In like manner a School of Pure Science was formed by the creation of a department of biology with four instructors and by the transfer from the School of Mines of the chairs of botany and astronomy. The professors of geology, math- ematics, chemistry, physics, and physiology have also seats in this faculty. (Indeed, it is not at all uncommon for a Columbia professor to sit in two faculties, whenever his subject is one which is difficult to assign precisely to either, or which really belongs to both.) In the departments of bi- ology and physiology unusual advantages are offered to ad- vanced students, for whose use tables are especially sub- scribed for in the marine station at Wood's Holl. Of these six schools which thus clustered about Colum- bia three were primarily technical, intended to train men to practise as physicians and law} r ers, as engineers and ar- chitects; and yet even these professional schools felt the broadening influence of their close association with an in- stitution intended to give a liberal education. The other three schools — that of Political Science, that of Philosophy, and that of Pure Science — were not technical schools at all; they were really university faculties offering advanced courses chiefly to post-graduate students. Taken altogether, these three schools may be called the Columbia equivalent of what at Harvard is termed the Graduate School. In STAIRWAY LEADING TO LIBRARY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 175 1894—95 they announced nearly 500 courses intended for graduates — more than 30 in classical philology, 20 in ro- mance philology, 30 in philosophy and education, more than 20 in Oriental languages, 30 in English, 30 in history and political philosophy, 30 in public law and comparative ju- risprudence, 30 in economics and social science, 10 in bot- any, and 10 in biolog}'. Here, perhaps, is the best place to note that there are now 24 University Fellowships (each of the value of $500 a year) open to advanced students whether graduates of Columbia or of any other college maintaining equivalent standards. And here, also, I may record the recent establishment of the Columbia University Press, intended to do for Columbia what the Clarendon Press does for Oxford. Again and again had the trustees of Columbia, appreciat- ing the opportunity which a great city affords, formula-ted projects for developing the college into a true university. A special effort had been made in 1857 to establish a post- graduate course, abandoned after the first year, during which, however, Marsh delivered his invaluable lectures on the history of the English language. Even as late as 1857 neither the college, nor the city, nor the country, it may be admitted, was ready for post-graduate work. But thirty- five years had wrought a great change : Mr. Eliot had re- made Harvard; Mr. Gilman had established Johns Hopkins; the times were ripe at last. In the college itself and in the schools around about it were all the elements of a great university needing only formal organization and cautious expansion. The unrelated parts had to be welded into an organic whole ; and this was accomplished before the end of the third year of Mr. Low's administration. The old college with its four-year course of under-grad- 176 FOUH AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES uate work was distinguished by the honored name of the School of Arts, and with it Columbia had then seven schools; and these schools together constituted a university covering every department of the great European universities except the faculty of theology — a deficiency since made good by alliances with the various theological seminaries already established in the city. The college itself had its traditions, which were jealously guarded, and the Medical School, the Law School, and the School of Mines had enjoyed years of autonomy. In the new organization the independence of every school was carefully respected ; and in matters af- fecting itself alone it was allowed to continue to manage its own affairs almost as freely as it had aforetime. Ev- ery school had its own faculty, who elected a Dean as its administrative head. Every school sent its Dean and one other elected delegate to a University Council presided over by the President ; and to this University Council the trustees have given a certain authority over internal af- fairs. The trustees manage the finances of the institu- tion, they appoint the more important officers, and they have a right of veto on the acts of the University Council. The several faculties, on the other hand, meet monthly to discuss their own needs, each having two representatives on the University Council. Thus, while the trustees retain the financial administration, tbey have committed the general educational administration to the University Council. This organization has been developed out of the exigencies of the situatiou ; it is not ideal, perhaps, yet it is satisfactory ; it is not as cumbrous as it may seem ; it has given Columbia a government at once solid and flexible, apportioning power and responsibility equitably and advantageously. It was this special organization, peculiar to Columbia, EX-PRESIDEM' FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 179 which permitted the next step whereby the college (that is, the School of Arts) and the university (that is, the six other schools) were more closely united, and whereby a new solu- tion was found for one of the most pressing problems now confronting those in charge of the higher education in the United States. Within the past quarter of a century, under the lead of Harvard, the chief American colleges have been increasing their entrance requirements, with the result of raising the average age of the student at graduation nearly a year. "Within the last ten years the chief schools of law and of medicine have lengthened their courses of study to cover three and four years instead of two. In consequence of this double action the period of education has been ex- tended unduly, and the age at which a .young man is pre- pared to enter upon the practice of his profession has been postponed for quite two years. That this is a hardship no one denied ; and it presses most severely upon the students who seek the best training, for it is only at the best col- leges and at the best schools that the increase has taken place. Various methods of meeting the difficulty have been pro- posed. At Harvard, President Eliot has suggested that a student be permitted to do the work of four years in three — if he could. At Chicago, President Harper has divided the college year into quarters, a student being allowed to take any quarter in the year as a vacation, and being allowed also to go without vacation if he chooses, and thus to take the twelve required quarters in three years of incessant work. The disadvantages of both the Harvard plan and of the Chi- cago are twofold — first, they allow an unwholesome pressure continued for three years without intermission; and, second, they authorize a shortening of the college course from four 180 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES years to three, and so permit a student to deprive himself of one-fourth of those indirect benefits of college life, which are quite as important as the direct instruction received from the professors. In the atmosphere of a good college there is something broadening; and in the daily contact with SILVER MEDAL OF KING S COLLEGE — OBVERSE one's classmates there is something awakening and stimulat- ing. Any reduction in the length of the college course must needs reduce these advantages proportionately. Wholly different from the plans of Harvard and Chicago is that which has been adopted at Columbia, and which was possible only in a college forming part of a great university. No man can graduate from Columbia in less than four years, but the instruction given by the School of Arts (that is, by the college strictly so called) ceases at the end of the Junior year ; and in the Senior year the student is free to select his COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 181 courses from among those offered by the six university fac- ulties. He must elect a total of fifteen hours a week, but under certain restrictions he can take these where he pleases — in the School of Philosophy or in the School of Political Science, in the School of Pure Science or in the School of Mines. He may, if he choose, take the first year's work in the Law School or in the Medical School ; and his work will count for the A.B. degree, and also for the M.D. or LL.B., as the case may be. Pie cannot take the A.B. degree in less than four years, but if he intends also to take an M.D., or an SILVER MEDAL OF KINGS COLLEGE — REVERSE LL.B., or a B.S. (in architecture, for example), or an M.E., he can shorten by one year the time required to take both degrees. But he remains a Senior; the class organization is kept intact ; the class feeling continues ; the college spirit is 12* 182 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES alight; the student is still an under -graduate; he is still touching elbows with his classmates, however widely they may be scattered through the various schools ; he is still breathing the atmosphere of culture. It is this : it is the privilege of stimulative companionship; it is the obligation to consider higher things than mere bread-and-butter stud- ies; it is the association with ardent spirits full of youth- ful ambitions — it is this which is the best gift a college has in its hands. By the Harvard proposition and by the Chicago project the college course could be cut down a year, and an under-graduate could cut himself out of one- fourth of this precious having. By the Columbia plan the year is saved in both ways — the under-graduate is doing a post-graduate work ; but by so doing he is yet getting the benefits of a full four -years' course. In other words, the old college — the School of Arts — has been put under the professional schools, and thus made the foundation of the university. If the undergraduate does not intend to be a lawyer or a physician, if he does not desire to pursue one of the learned professions, if he is studying merely for culture and training and to fit himself for the battle of life, then he loses nothing by this plan, for in his Senior year he chooses his whole fifteen hours in the schools of Political Science and of Philosophy, and of Pure Science, where he has the incalculable advantage of studying side by side with post- graduates already imbued with university ideals. Thus he soon has occasion to discover that the difference between college tasks and university work is not merely quantita- tive, but qualitative also, and that where the college sought to give breadth the university seeks to give depth. He finds out that it is not the size of its enrolment that makes COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 183 the greatness of a university, but the originality of its in- structors and the spirit of its students. There is no doubt that the raising of the age of gradua- tion in our colleges and the simultaneous lengthening of the course of the professional schools have had a tendency to deter men who had resolved to be lawyers or physicians, engineers or architects, from taking the college course as a preliminary to their professional studies. President Low has expressed his belief that the system introduced at Co- lumbia will do much to offset this unfortunate tendencv. Columbia, so its President declared in his report for 1892, " does not offer men less, but greater, inducements to con- tinue their non-professional studies, if they can, for the full period of four years. More than this, while they are pursu- ing their professional work, all the resources of the univer- sity are at their command to enable them to continue other studies which interest them or to make good deficiencies." And Mr. Low added that "it is .too soon to speak with cer- tainty, but it is believed that the result of this system will be to keep many men at Columbia for six years who otherwise would stay but four years in the School of Arts, or even a shorter time in one of the professional schools only." The college having thus been made what it should be, the foun- dation of the university, the Seniors cannot but be tempted to further graduate work in the future ; probably many more men will remain a fifth year at least, to take the A.M. degree, and it is a fact that in 1894 there were more than a hundred graduates of the college continuing their studies there under one or more of the university fac- ulties. "Whatever place can draw together the greatest amount and the greatest variety of intellect and character, the most 184 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES abundant elements of civilization, performs the best func- tion of a university," said Lowell ; and Newman has also suggested that a great city is a university in itself. Per- haps it is not too much to say that only in a great city can a great university, with its allied faculties, be maintained adequately. And as the distinction between the American college of the present, remotely modelled on the British public-school, and the American university of the future, broadly patterned after the German universities — as the distinction between these institutions, wholly different in purpose, gets to be better apprehended, and as the true university is developed here and there throughout the United States, probably the managers of most of the coun- try colleges will discover the futility of any attempt to divert these institutions from their path of usefulness as colleges, and the hopelessness of all efforts to expand them into universities. By the mere fact of their geographical position certain institutions are indicated as colleges, and certain others are suggested as possible universities. With- in a radius of an hour's travel by rail, Harvard is in the centre of a population of about a million ; so is Johns Hop- kins ; so is the new University of Chicago. Before these three institutions, therefore, lie the limitless possibilities of real university development. Within the same radius about Columbia there is a population nearly as large as the sum of the populations which surround Harvard and Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago. The modern university needs the metropolis, with its museums, its galleries, its theatres, its libraries, its theo- logical seminaries, its art schools, its conservatories of music, its hospitals, and its charitable institutions. The centre of education in France is in Paris ; the new Uni- COLUMBIA UXIVERXITY 187 versity of Berlin has pushed rapidly to a front place in Germany ; the University of Vienna has no second in Aus- tro-Hungary ; even in London the need is felt of a teach- ing university which shall gather into one the scattered educational forces of the British capital. The semi-rural- ity which gives Yale and Princeton, for example, an ad- vantage over Columbia as a college becomes a distinct dis- advantage when they seek to expand into universities. By the time a young man is old enough to undertake univer- sity work he is old enough to take care of himself — if he ever will be. At Columbia the college holds its own stanchly, and is now stronger and more firmly established than ever before, but its attendance is not large ; in 1891—95 it has less than 300 under-graduates, while the total number of students at Columbia this year is about 2000 — of whom some 600 are graduates. That students from all parts of the United States appre- ciate the advantages offered by Columbia can be made evi- dent by a few figures. The constituency of Columbia as a college is mainly local ; its constituency as a university is more than national : it is international. President Low reported that in 1893-94: the 575 graduate students at Colum- bia represented 118 colleges and universities in the United States and 18 in foreign countries. It is to be noted that in almost every American university, except Johns Hopkins and Harvard, the graduate students are principally gradu- ates of the institution at which they are continuing their studies ; at Columbia, in 1893-91, only 102 of the 575 gradu- ate students came from the college itself. This indicates that the young men of the United States are beginning to understand that there is now a great university in the me- 188 FOUR AM ERIC AX UXIVERSITIES tropolis of the country offering opportunities for advanced study not surpassed anywhere else. Perhaps no other symptom of the recent expansion of Columbia is quite as striking as the development of its library. In 1S70 the library was housed in a single room over the chapel ; and it was open only one hour a day, five days in the week, and eight months in the year. In 1894 the library occupies a noble building of its own ; and it is open fourteen hours a day, six days a week, twelve months in the year. Twenty -five years ago it had some 15,000 volumes only ; now it has nearly 200,000 bound vol- umes, and its growth in a single year has almost attained to 20.000 volumes. The students have absolutely free ac- cess to the shelves, and are allowed to help themselves at will to such books as they wish to read in the library itself, a privilege of which they avail themselves to the utmost. Thev also drew out in 1893-94 for use in their own homes ■±2,015 books (not volumes merely). The library of Columbia is also the depositary and cus- todian of the books of various learned societies. Among its own special departments is the architectural collection given and endowed by Mr. S. P. Avery in memory of his son. The Avery Architectural Library now contains more than 12,000- volumes; it is already one of the richest in the world in books about architecture, art, and archaeology ; and, thanks to the constant munificence of Mr. Avery, it is steadily enlarging. Nor is the student in New York at all dependent on the library of Columbia, for he has access not o\\\y to the Astor Library and the Lenox Library (in which are now the books of George Bancroft), but also to the libraries of the Bar Association and of the Academy of Medicine, and to the COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 189 innumerable special collections of clubs and associations and societies which abound in New York and with which Co- lumbia has the most friendly relations. And these are not the only alliances Columbia has made for the benefit of her students. From the beginning the connection of the School of Medicine with the hospitals has been close. Of late there has been arranged an alliance, so to speak, with three theological seminaries, whereby Colum- bia gains most of the advantages of a divinity school, and whereby she is enabled greatly to enlarge the opportunity for new combinations of study, which it is one of the most important duties of a university to secure. Friendly rela- tions have been established also with the American Muse- um of Natural History and with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in both museums many courses of lectures have been given this past winter by professors of Columbia. Whenever the new Botanic Garden, to be established in Bronx Park, comes into being, Columbia will be able to utilize that also, under arrangements already made, where- by the management of the garden has been offered to her. If, as may be hoped, a Zoological Garden follows in due course, no doubt Columbia will be able to make a treaty with that as well. The suggestion thus carried out was due to Bishop Potter. who declared several years ago that " such affiliation of the college to institutions of various learning around it would at once enlarge their usefulness and ennoble our own, and go far towards the realization of one's dream of the ideal university." The alliance between Columbia and the theological seminary, like that between Columbia and the American Museum of Natural History, is evidence that the college is tending to take its place as the core of 190 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES the intellectual life of New York. To a host of learned societies having no formal relation to the college itself, and yet working towards the same literary, scientific, his- torical, and artistic ends, the college is hospitable. " There are some twenty -rive or thirty such societies practically domiciled within the college walls, and finding there their working and efficient centre," said Bishop Potter, who also asked : " Did you ever walk up Madison Avenue of an evening? For, if so, you must have seen that at night the windows of the college gleam like a light -house — true symbol of the illumination that streams forth on every hand." Not wishing to keep her light under a bushel, Co- lumbia has freely aided Cooper Institute, many of the lect- ures there being now given under the authority of the col- lege. With two other of the institutions of New York, both educational, the relation of Columbia is almost too intimate to be called an alliance. These two institutions are the Teachers College and Barnard College. The Teachers College was planned and founded by a Columbia professor, Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler, at pres- ent Dean of the School of Philosophy, and is now, so far as the opportunities for students are concerned, practically a part of Columbia. It has, however, a separate board of trustees and a separate financial administration. The aim of the Teachers College is to train highly educated and well-equipped teachers of elementary and secondary schools, as well as superintendents, supervisors, and specialists in the principles and practice of teaching. It maintains a school of observation and practice. In spirit and in method it is a genuine university department— doubtless the most exten- sive and ambitious as yet anywhere developed by the very Unassigned Un assigned B.r.r..i s v. GENERAL PLAN OF THE GROUNDS AND BUILDINGS OP THE NEW COLUMBIA COLLEGE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 193 modern movement for the scientific study of educational problems. By formal contract the faculty of Philosophy of Columbia has full control of the courses at the Teachers College leading to the degrees of A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. ; and it is Columbia which grants these degrees to the students of the Teachers College. Barnard College, named after Mr. Low's predecessor in the presidency of Columbia in recognition of his efforts to further the higher education of women, is a college for women that offers the same collegiate opportunities to the one sex that the School of Arts offers to the other. Most of the instruction at Barnard is given by Columbia professors, and no instructor can be appointed at Barnard without the approval of the President of Columbia. In other words, while Barnard cannot yet proffer to its students all the courses offered at Columbia, it has no course which is not given at Columbia also ; its standards are absolutely equivalent ; its examinations, both semiannual and final, are precisely the same ; and Columbia grants its degrees to the Barnard graduates. It is pleasant to record that Barnai'd has now safely passed the experimental stage, and must be reckoned among the active forces in the higher education of the country. Stress has here been laid — perhaps unduly — upon these partnerships and alliances of Columbia because it is only by dwelling on such arrangements that the reader can be made to see clearly the peculiar position of the university. The disadvantages under which a college labors when it is in the centre of a mighty city are obvious enough, but the correla- tive advantages are not so easily apparent and must needs be pointed out. So also the present organization of Colum- bia has been explained — perhaps unduly — because it is thus 13 194 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES that it is easiest to make clear to the reader the successive stages of the expansion of the college into the university of which it is now a component part. And what makes it far more difficult for any one to seize and report upon the salient features of Columbia than it is to perform a similar service for Harvard or Yale or Prince- ton is the fact that this inner and, so to speak, spiritual de- velopment of Columbia has been accompanied by a physi- cal expansion which is making necessary a removal to a site whereon the institution may find room to spread itself free- ly and indefinitely in the future. Once more Columbia is about to transport itself to " the skirts of the city." Its third and final site is one of the finest possessed by any uni- versity in the world. It is on the plateau between Morning- side Park and the Riverside Drive, between Grant's Tomb and the new cathedral of St. John the Divine. In 1892 the trustees of Columbia bought a piece of land two and a half times the size of Madison Square, and bound- ed by 116th and 120th streets, Amsterdam Avenue, and the Boulevard. The grounds thus acquired are a little larger than the Yale campus and a little smaller than the Har- vard yard. After consultation with a committee of lead- ing architects of New York and with Mr. Olmstead (the designer of Central Park), the trustees of Columbia empow- ered Messrs. McKim, Mead & White to prepare preliminary plans for the disposition of the chief of the new buildings with which these new grounds are to be adorned and made useful. In his account of Harvard, Professor Norton has declared that " the value of the influence of noble architect- ure, simple as it may be, at a great seat of education, es- pecially in our country, is hardly to be overestimated ;" and he thinks that it has been so disregarded at Harvard COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 197 that it would be a work of patriotism to destroy all the later buildings there and reconstruct them " with simple and beautiful design, in mutually helpful, harmonious, and ef- fective relation to each other, so that the outward aspect of the university should better conform to its object as a place for the best education of the youth of the nation." It is such a reconstruction as this that Columbia is now about to attempt, with a full understanding of the obligations of so great an opportunity and with the earnest desire to erect buildings not only perfect for their several purposes, but beautiful in design, and related one to another harmoniously and effectively. Some of the halls whose positions are indicated on the ground-plan finally adopted by the trustees must be put up before the university can be removed ; others can be added from year to year as they are needed, and as the money shall be given for their erection. The cost of the site was $2,000,000, and the plans prepared call for an ultimate ex- penditure of some $3,000,000 more, for which the college must rely on the liberality of its friends, and on the gener- osity of the citizens of New York. Here occasion serves to correct a current misunderstand- ing. Columbia College is popularly supposed to be very rich ; and it is a fact that only one or two universities in the United States are as heavily endowed. But for the work before it Columbia is not rich enough. Its rent-roll is prob- ably as large now as it is ever likely to be. Its budget for 1894-95 is over $700,000, of which less than $300,000 comes from the fees of its students. Even for the actual work of instruction it already finds itself cramped, so broad has been its recent expansion. As President Eliot said at the alumni dinner which followed the installation of President Low : 13* 198 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES " It is simply impossible to carry on a great university in this expensive city with any such meagre resources as those which Columbia now possesses. She must have manifold more." And the President of Harvard told us that he spent $800,000 a year, and that Harvard had received in gifts of money within a score of years $5,000,000 in addition to $2,500,000 worth of buddings and .lands. The trustees of Columbia have wisely decided to rely on gifts and bequests for the new buildings needed on the new grounds, and not to divert to construction any of the money they now use in instruction, holding that it is the teaching staff which makes a university, and not the outward show of bricks and mor- tar. In no respect has the example set by Johns Hopkins been more useful than in the exhibition by its first president of his conviction that a university needs a soul more than a body, that the men who are to teach in it are more impor- tant than the stone walls which shelter them. It was Car- field who declared that Mark Hopkins at the other end of a log was a good enough college for him ; but he thus laid himself open to the obvious retort that the end of a log was not a good enough college for Mark Hopkins. Whether or not the teaching staff of Columbia numbers on its roll a Mark Hopkins need not now be discussed ; it does number many sincere investigators and many earnest instructors. Although there is more than one new chair which we hope to see soon established, the list of instructors is already very large — larger than at any other American university excepting only Harvard — and for purposes of advanced work perhaps the largest of all. Omitting the fellows, who give no instruction, and omitting wholly the staff of the library, in 1893-94 there were 25S professors, lecturers, tu- n * -»-•— PROPOSED DESIGN FOR THE NEW LIBRARY B0ILDING VIEW OK THE FRONT RACING ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH STREET tors, and assistants of one kind or another engaged in the actual work of instruction. It is pleasant to be able to declare that the relations of the instructors and the students are satisfactory. Of the 2000 students, about 600 are graduates, and the presence of so many maturer scholars has a wholesome effect in raising the standard of college ethics. The under-graduates are treated as gentlemen, and they are expected to behave as gentlemen : rarely, indeed, is this expectation disappointed. Discipline is as mild as may be ; and the student has thus the wholesome freedom which trains him in self-control. Now and again the freshmen and the sophomores rush against each other in serried ranks ; and here and there we 200 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES have outbreaks of animal spirits, to be considered not as evidences of total depravity, but to be accepted rather as " useful conductors for the natural electricity of youth," to use Lowell's apt phrase, "dispersing it or turning it harm- lessly into the earth." The chief student festivals are the Triumph of the Soph- omores, the Junior ball, and Class-day. Under the assimilat- ing influence of the secret societies, the literary societies, the musical clubs, and the athletic association, the under- graduates of the Arts and of the Mines foregather now far more than they did a quarter of a century ago. It must be confessed that in the absence of dormitories the student body of Columbia perhaps lacks a little of the homogeneity to be found in some other institutions. But the under-grad- uate gets his share of college life for all that, and he finds his enjoyment in it ; and he has a marked character of his own. He has the urban characteristics ; he takes polish easily ; he wears well. In their association with men from other colleges the students of Columbia have won the double reputation of being gentlemen and of having pluck. Their athletic record has been marred by no squabbles, and even in defeat they have showed grit to the end. They are not unlike the city troops in the Civil War, which, although they might seem slight in build, turned out well and stood the strain as sturdily as any. It cannot be denied that Columbia is not one of the great athletic centres of the country ; and for this there are many reasons, some of which are temporary only and will tend to disappear when Columbia is firmly established on its new site. The college has been cramped in a single city block, with no grounds for exercise, and with no adequate gymna- sium until the fall of 1893 ; and, therefore, athletic work COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 201 was undertaken under most adverse circumstances. Yet Columbia has won a race now and then ; and it once sent its four over to Henley and carried off the Visitor's Cup. It has held the tennis championship, and in track athletics its record is highly honorable. Of all the agencies which advertise a college as distin- guished from a university none is superior to a successful eight on the river, to a victorious nine on the baseball dia- mond, to a triumphant eleven on the football field. Second only to these, as a means of attracting students, are its own graduates who have won positions in other institutions. Un- til within the past ten or fifteen years Columbia sent forth but few educators. Of late she has seen her sons appointed to many important professorships throughout the country. But in the past she trained more publicists than professors. The tradition of Hamilton and Jay has always been strong, and there has been no time since the Revolution when a very large proportion of the men prominent in the public life of New York were not graduates from Columbia, from the day when De Witt Clinton was governor of the State to the day when Mr. Abram S. Hewitt was mayor of New York and Mr. Setli Low mayor of Brooklyn. This, indeed, has been the position of Columbia in the past, and this prescribes its work in the future. It has been chiefly a college for New-Yorkers ; while it will continue to be a college appealing especially to the three or four mill- ion people now congregated near the mouth of the Hudson River, and while it will strive always in the future to do its duty to the city as in the past, Columbia is now also a uni- versity, situated in the metropolis and drawing to itself de- voted teachers and ardent students, not from the city alone, but from the whole couutrv. And it is the belief of those ■202 FOUR AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES who know it best and love it best, that Columbia has be- come a university without in any v?a.y impairing its power to accomplish what Curtis declared to be the prime duty of the American college — that it shall equip and thor- oughly train American citizens. " When I say that the American college is now required to train American citi- zens," Curtis continued, " I do not mean that it is to abdi- cate its highest possible function, which is not to impart knowledge — not to impart knowledge, gentlemen — but to stimulate that intellectual and moral power of which I speak. It is a poor education, believe me, that gives us accuracy in grammar instead of a love of letters; that leaves us masters of the integral calculus and slaves of sordid spirit and mean ambition. When I say that it is to train Ameri- cans, I mean not only that it is to be a gnome of the earth, but also a good genius of the higher sphere. With one hand it shall lead the .young American to the secrets of ma- terial skill; it shall equip him to enter into the fullest trade with all the world ; but with the other it shall lead him to lofty thought and to commerce with the skies. The college shall teach him the secret and methods of material success ; but, above it all, it shall admonish him that man does not live on bread alone, and that the things which are eternal are unseen." THE END if f-