academy, under the guidance of skillful and vigilant professors, I should gradually have risen from translations to originals, from the Latin to the Greek classics, from dead languages to living science my hours would have been occupied by useful and agreeable studies, the wanderings of fancy would have been restrained, and I should have escaped the temptations of idleness, which finally precipitated my departure from Oxford. . . . The schools of Oxford and Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false and barbarous science; and they are still tainted with the vices of their origin. During the first weeks I constantly attended these lessons in my tutor's room; but as they appeared equally devoid of profit > and pleasure, I was once tempted to try the experiment of a formal apology. The apology was accepted with a smile. I repeated the offense with less ceremony; the excuse was admitted with the same indulgence: the slightest motive of laziness or indisposition, the most trifling avocation at home or abroad, was allowed as a worthy impediment; nor did my tutor appear conscious of my absence or neglect. Had the hour of lecture been constantly filled, a single hour was a small portion of my academic leisure. No plan of study was recommended for my use; no exercises were prescribed for his inspection; and at the most precious season of youth whole days and weeks were suffered to elapse without labor or amusement, without advice

or account." 1

The historian of the Roman Empire may not be quite a fair interpreter of undergraduate conditions at Oxford, but, when every abatement has been made, it is clear that Magdalen College, one of the most conspicuous of the colleges at Oxford, was not an agency of either scholarship or of education.

The relation of the Church of England and of Oxford and Cambridge has always been a close relation. Both as cause and effect, the colleges have prospered with the prosperity of the Church, and the colleges have suffered in times of ecclesiastical depression. This intimacy of relationship was at once commended and condemned in the age of Elizabeth. It was then

166 'Autobiography of Edward Gibbon," edited by Howells, p. 79 et seq.

said that the universities were becoming too largely seminaries for the training of the clergy. In the eighteenth century the Church of England sank to its lowest level. Though there were great scholars among her ministers, yet the secularizing policy of the State was fatal to religious efficiency. The University suffered with the Church. Thackeray somewhere remarks that the theologian in liquor is not a respectable object. The college professor is hardly more respectable. The wine cup for the bishop and for the master was a greater stimulus than were the flames which burned upon the altar of either piety or scholarship.

In the Universities the whole century was, with a few notable exceptions, such as John Henderson of Pembroke, an age of intellectual stagnation. The influences which should have ruled in the University did not rule, and the influences which should not have ruled did control. Lord Chesterfield said that he would not send his son to Oxford for he had been there himself. Never had politics influenced academic appointments and preferences with greater power or more lamentable disaster. Never was teaching more indifferent, academic government more sluggish, or collegiate conditions more deadening. Never were fellowships in their appointments more completely dominated by personal prejudice, or, in the person of their incumbents, more untrained in efficiency and intelligence. Never were undergraduates more careless of great aims or of academic discipline, more submissive to the solicitations of appetite, or less obedient to academic authority. Never, too, was academic authority less worthy of being obeyed.

In the face of such English conditions the colleges of the New World in the eighteenth century exhibited not the cardinal graces of good manners but the cardinal virtues of temperance and of hard work. They had no history. They were without prestige. Their revenues were small. Their scholarly tests and forces were few and slight. But they yet offered to humanity such founders as Franklin and Samuel Johnson, and they trained scholars and thinkers, of whom Jonathan Edwards was one. They educated for American life clergymen who worthily led the church; and they contributed citizens to the Commonwealth who were soon to create a new world power.

CHAPTER V

LATER PREREVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENTS

THE foundation of most colleges is the result of the operation of local causes. Harvard is primarily the child of Boston, Columbia of New York, Pennsylvania of Philadelphia. But the college in Rhode Island represents the coöperation of causes extending from Massachusetts to South Carolina. Like the University of Chicago in the last decades of the nineteenth century, it sprang from the devotion of members to a Church having organizations in every State; in its origin local conditions had little or no influence.

The decades following "The Great Awakening" were periods of growth of the Baptist Church in both New England and the central colonies. In 1740 in Massachusetts were six Baptist churches, in Rhode Island eleven, in Connecticut four. In 1768 the number in Massachusetts had increased to thirty, in Rhode Island to thirty-six, in Connecticut to twelve. The Philadelphia Association of churches, having representatives in no less than six States, had come in 1762 to number thirty organizations. The beginnings of a more rapid growth were already in evidence. The Church was not, like the Congregational, a New England institution, nor, like the Dutch Reformed, one of New York. If it failed in any one Commonwealth to be the standing order, it yet was respected in each. It was therefore natural that the desire to establish a college for the training of its ministry should increase as the opportunities for the work of the ministry enlarged. These churches and their ministry found themselves somewhat at variance with other ecclesiastical organizations. They believed in the separation of the State and the Church. In Massachusetts the State and the Church were one. They held, with Edwards, that only those who had met with a change of

heart should become members of the Church. They followed Roger Williams in accepting that freer teaching of liberty of conscience which was promoted in certain decades in the Puritan colonies. They clung to their own interpretation of the form of baptism, and of the rite of the Lord's Supper. In Massachusetts and Connecticut their resistance to certain ecclesiastical laws was met with fines, and in Virginia with imprisonment.

In the year 1762 the Baptist Association of Philadelphia took definite and formal action looking to the establishment of a college. Behind this result lay much observation, reflection, discussion. The place chosen was Rhode Island. Some one of the southern colonies was supposed by many to be a more fit place for laying such a foundation. South of the James no college existed. But the prevalence of influences favorable to the Baptist Church in the Colony of Roger Williams promoted its establishment there. The establishment of a college in Rhode Island did not necessitate the reconciliation of different denominations of the Church as did the foundation of King's. It did not embody any appeal to the State for special donations or for annual grants, as was the case in Yale and Harvard. Its constituency, if widely scattered, was yet devoted and singleminded. Its field of support was, if large, clearly marked.

Out of debate less in amount and less virulent than obtained in the granting of not a few charters, a charter was granted to the college in Rhode Island. Its simple reading proves its liberality. It represents human and humanistic purposes. It declares that "institutions for liberal education are highly beneficial to society, by forming the rising generation to virtue, knowledge, and useful literature; and thus preserving in the community a succession of men duly qualified for discharging the offices of life with usefulness and reputation."1 It also prohibits the use of any religious tests, and expressly asserts that the members shall ever enjoy free, full, absolute, and uninterrupted liberty of conscience. It opens its doors with equal freedom to all denominations of Protestants, and affirms that sectarian differences of opinion shall not form any

Guild's "History of Brown University," p. 132.

part of the public and classical instruction.1 But while the charter is thus broad, the association of the College with the Baptist Church is affirmed and promoted. Of thirty-six members of the Board of Trust, twenty-two are to be Baptists, five Friends, four Congregationalists, and five Episcopalians. Of the Board of Fellows of twelve members, eight are to be Baptists, and the other four may be members of any denomination. It is declared expressly that the President shall be a member of the Baptist Church, as was the president of King's to be a member of the Church of England.

Although it has been declared that one motive for the foundation of a college in Rhode Island was to secure an institution more free from denominational restrictions and sectarian tests than obtained in the case of the five colleges already established, yet the control of the College in Rhode Island by members of the Baptist Church was made full and definite. The association of the College with the Baptist Church was made more intimate than the College of New Jersey with the Presbyterian. But without doubt the government of the College, in respect to students of other than Baptist beliefs, was more free than obtained in the case of Yale, in respect to students of Episcopal faith.

The time of the laying of the foundation was the year of 1762. It was the year of the graduation at Princeton of the first president of the new college. Manning's residence at Princeton covered the last years of the presidency of Davis and the first of the term of Finley. Among his fellow-students were David Caldwell, who, on account of old age, declined an offer of the presidency of the University of North Carolina; Edwards, who became president of Union College; Henderson, Sergant, and Patterson, who became members of the Continental Congress, and Reeves, founder of the first Law School at Litchfield, and Chief Justice of Connecticut. Three years later, at the age of twenty-five, Manning was formally chosen president. In addition to the office of president, he was also made professor of languages and of other subjects. The confidence of the trustees in

'Guild's "History of Brown University," pp. 137-138.