These colleges that thus sprang up in the last years of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth century, in places as remote as the valley of the Susquehanna and of the Androscoggin, and as Vermont and Virginia, had several elements in common. In the number of their students they were small. They were alike distressingly poor in endowment. Their equipment was of the slightest sort. Union College had at the close of its second year a faculty consisting of the president and one tutor, and the number of students was thirty-seven. The first three presidencies of the College are a history of crushing anxiety arising from financial embarrassment. The life of the students was of the simplest and barest sort. In 1815 a graduate, writing of the dormitory at Williams College, says, not a room was papered or even had a carpet; he adds: " And I do not believe the entire furniture of any one room, excepting perhaps the bed, could have cost, or would have sold for, five dollars. I have before me a bill of the furniture of the Senior recitation room in 1816, including the locks upon the doors, and find it amounts to $7.26. And from the best sources to which I can refer, I do 'not think the expenses of a student in the College could have ordinarily exceeded two hundred dollars a year, all told."1

But these colleges, if they were alike in their limitations and disadvantages, were also alike in their more important elements.

The colleges established as local or denominational foundations in the years following the Revolution represented and continued the classical tradition. This tradition had, and still has, several limitations; among them are narrowness and remoteness from present vital problems. But this tradition did, and does, embody the experience of two great races at important periods: it is historical. This tradition also represents a noble body of literature: it is æsthetic. It sets forth languages which are themselves models and examples of logical thoughtfulness and exact discriminations: it unites philosophy and archæology. Whoever, therefore, accepts this appreciation of the ancient past, accepts forces which are among the most precious which the past can offer. Furthermore, these colleges were alike in

1 Durfee's "History of Williams College," p. 22.

possessing personalities in their chairs of instruction who were vigorous in thought, single in mind, pure in heart, of high purpose, and devoted to the opportunity of training men. These men were not themselves primarily scholars; they were primarily men. Their chief purpose was to train a large manhood in their students. They had been ministers and preachers, and they had hardly changed their profession in becoming teachers; they substituted a desk for a pulpit. They belonged to the Albrecht Dürer type of men. They sacrificed grace to truth. To them religion was a chief concern, and the church its chief representative and organ. They were vigorous and rigorous, the descendants of the Puritans of the Bay Colony and of the early Irish-Scotch immigrants.

The colleges were also similar in attracting students of high purpose, of seriousness and of soberness. The boys went to college, and were not sent. They were, like the community, poor. Education was to them not a luxury to be enjoyed; it was an opportunity won by hard labor, and it embodied a result which became an agent for the enriching of the world. They were earnest in character as they were strong in body. Sons of the soil, they were hardy, simple, ambitious. What they knew-and the field was not large-they knew well. What they thought-though the range was not broad-they thought clearly, and what they felt -although their experiences were narrow-they felt strongly.

The undergraduate life, too, in all these individual colleges, was essentially the same. It was plain, orderly, studious, thoughtful. It was free from distractions. An early graduate of Williams College says: "The amusements of the students, a subject fraught with so many difficulties and dangers in most colleges, were simple and few. There was always a pleasant social relation and intercourse between them and many of the families of the town. And a ball once or twice a year, Commencement Ball being one, and an occasional ride to Pownal, or 'The Cave' in Adams, or The South Part,' constituted the principal portion of the fashionable dissipation of time in which they indulged."1

'Durfee's "History of Williams College," pp. 23, 24.

The elaborateness of modern college life was fifty years in the future. The system of numberless clubs and fraternities was not to be begun for at least a generation. The first boat race was not to be rowed for forty years, and the first baseball game to be played for thirty. The college life, like the life beyond college walls, was a serious business. The men lived ever in their 'great Taskmaster's eye.'

The influence of such personalities, placed in such environmént, could not fail in every college to eventuate in noble, sound, and serious character. Such influence made neither athletes nor æsthetes. It did not create scholarship, it could not promote culture. It embodied the cardinal virtues and the cardinal verities. It stood for strength. It made men who had an aim to serve their fellow-men, and of a type of the Christian faith which sent these men as missionaries to the new west and the Asiatic east. It represented that profoundest and most lasting of all forms of power, the power of a person. Its prevailing at mosphere was manliness, and its consummate, comprehensive result was manhood.

The contributions, too, which such colleges made to the life of the new Republic were largely a contribution of strong and vigorous personality. The value of such an offering was, and is, priceless.

CHAPTER X

THE LAYING OF NEWER FOUNDATIONS

THE significance of the development of the higher education in America in the fourscore years that have passed since the foundation of the University of Virginia is no less great than the significance of the development of the American people occurring in the same period. The enlargement of territory, the growth of wealth, and the increase in the complexity and elaborateness of the art of living are no greater, great as they are, than is the development of the American college and university.

In the last eighty years, covering the principal time of the westward movement of civilization, twenty-two states have been established. In this period no less than five hundred institutions for the higher education have been founded. As the movement of this population represents the most important immigration of modern history, so the installation of the forces of education embodies the most impressive illustration of the advancement of a free people. The civil and political establishments of a new state have proved to be the precursor, by only brief intervals, of the laying of foundations of the higher education. Indiana was admitted to the Union in 1816. Its population was about 150,000. Its first college was founded four years after, Hanover and Wabash in 1832, and Franklin in 1834. Illinois became a state in 1818 having a population of less than 60,000. Shurtleff College was founded in 1827, McKendree in 1828, Illinois in 1829, and Knox in 1837. Alabama became a state in 1819, and the university bearing its name was founded in 1831. Missouri became a state in 1821, its people numbering only 66,000, and its first institution of the higher education, St. Louis University, began its existence in 1829. Michigan was admitted to the Union in 1837, having a population of 212,000, and in the very same year its university dates its actual existence. Iowa became a

state in 1846. Its people numbered almost 200,000, and Iowa Western University had already established itself by two years; and two years after, in 1848, Iowa College was founded. Wisconsin was admitted to the Union in 1848, and Beloit College was founded only a year later. California became a part of the - Union in 1850, with less than 100,000 inhabitants, but before this time had occurred much discussion regarding the establishment of a university. Minnesota became a state in 1858, and its university was founded ten years after. But for years previous to the formal establishing of a university in Minnesota, Indiana, and many other commonwealths, foundations of the higher education had been laid or projected.

The westward movement of the wave of population was interrupted temporarily by the great war. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities the movement again commenced and progressed with accelerated speed. In the four years, however, of the war, efforts made in the establishment of colleges suffered, but were by no means suspended. The number of colleges to which charters were granted from 1861 to 1865 was about one-half of the number which were founded in the four years either preceding or following the great conflict.

Kansas was admitted as a state in 1861; its people numbered a few thousand more than 100,000. In the year of the close of the war three colleges were there established. Nebraska was made a state in 1867, and Doane College was established five years after. Colorado had founded a college two years before the date of its admission to the Union in the Centennial year, when its population was less than 200,000. Washington, Montana, and South Dakota became states in the year 1889. In the year following Washington and Montana founded colleges, and South Dakota had established its university seven years before.

It is well, however, for Americans to remind themselves that sacrifices for the higher education are not confined to America. The canton of Zürich, Switzerland, having a population of about three hundred and fifty thousand and an area of less than seven hundred square miles, supports a famous university; and Basel, with a population of less than a hundred thousand, maintains a university founded before the discovery of America.