The enlarging number, greater usefulness of, and more adequate support given to, libraries find their proper symbol in the enlarged and more fitting building. If, in the earlier time, the more conspicuous building was the chapel or the recitation hall, the more conspicuous building of recent decades has been the library itself. The Low building at Columbia, and the building erected in memory of Mrs. Fiske at Cornell, the worthy structure built by a son of Bowdoin, as well as the library at Princeton, represent the most beautiful and impressive types of academic architecture. In them and in other buildings the advantages of light, quietness, freedom from dirt, dampness and overheating, and security are embodied. The most serious loss which Har vard College ever suffered was the burning of Harvard Hall and its library in 1764. The fire destroyed books, apparatus, and other treasures which had been accumulating for a century and a quarter. The building of the college library, as well as the library itself, represents one of the noblest results of academic administration.

The library, in all relations, stands for the intimate associa tion of the college with the work of the world. It embodies the purest thought, and conserves the richest achievement. Above all other collections of books it should keep out all dross. Most books as they fall from the press fall into the ocean of forgetfulness, and sink by their own weight. The college receives the books which have life, the books which, as Lowell says of Gray, 66 may have little fuel but real fire. It wishes to possess all the books which are as unquenchable flame. Ex-President Low (from manuscript) has defined the university as "the highest organized exponent of the intellectual needs of man." The library may be called the highest organized exponent of the supply of these organized needs of man. He also says that the university "is an organized exponent of the questioning spirit in man.". We may still further define the library as an organized exponent of the answer to the questioning spirit in man.

It is through the library that the college comes into relations with life universal, vital, and human. The library appeals to humanity of every range. The chemical laboratory is for too many only a condition which appeals to the exterior senses only.

!

Laboratories of other departments are likewise as meaningless. But a great collection of books awakens in the most stupid wonder, and in all other persons emotions higher than wonder, according as the intellectual receptivities are nobler. Most vital, too, are these relations. Into the library has come the blood of humanity, and the college man drinks deep of this inflowing life and gives himself in deeper devotion to humanity. It is not too much to say that whatever of the universal may belong to the university belongs more to the library than to any other part.

In respect to availability for the use of both members of the teaching staff and of students, the library of the American college is superior to the libraries at either Oxford or Cambridge, or to those of the German universities. The accessibility of books is as much superior in the American institution as the European collections themselves are superior to those of the American. Frequently as many days are required for drawing a book in the library of a German university as are minutes in drawing one in the American college.

CHAPTER XX

GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTION AND DEGREES

THE development of the American college has resulted in the establishment of instruction for graduates and for those preparing for the chief professions. The spirit of the American people, eager for advancement,-has been most clearly indicated in this development. The colleges have, from the beginning, offered a certain amount of instruction for graduates. The offerings have usually been informal, and the teaching, in no small degree, personal. It has represented an individual service, given on the part of the teacher and received on the part of the student.

The first important endeavor made to offer instruction to graduates occurred at Yale in the fifth decade of the last century. Woolsey was Professor of Greek, and the Sillimans, father and son, were glad to receive advanced students. In the first two years of Woolsey's presidency a formal beginning was made. Among the reasons assigned for the establishment of the new department were chiefly the demand, and allied with this the advantages which would thus accrue to the men who received the instruction, as well as to the cause of scholarship. The Depart ment was organized upon more or less of a personal basis. The payment of instruction was to be made to the teachers themselves" as they may think proper." Instruction was offered by President Woolsey twice a week in Thucydides or Pindar. This plan continued for several years. The number of students was small and did not increase. Neither was the Department enlarged until the year 1872. The number of students in the eighth decade remained substantially, as for the larger period, at fifty.

In the year 1872, when Yale was reorganizing its Depart ment of Graduate Instruction, Harvard was making also a formal beginning. This beginning was the result, in part at least,

of the enlargement of the elective system of studies. The elective system necessitated at Harvard, as it always necessitates, an increase in the number of teachers. The system also encouraged, if it did not oblige, students to pursue their work to an extent which had not formerly been possible. The system created a scholastic atmosphere; it gave birth to scholarly aspirations. Out of such conditions arose the movement for graduate instruction. It represented the culmination of the German influence in the higher education of America. The Graduate School stood and stands for the Philosophical Faculty of the German university.

The movement for graduate instruction was built upon collegiate foundations. Its great significance was, and is, as a symbol of the vitality of the education given by the American college. Out of the discipline of the college arose the inspiration of and for scholarship. If, as says President Gilman:

"The lessons to be inculcated during a college course include obedience to recognized authority, the performance of appointed tasks, punctuality in meeting all engagements, and attention to physical development. To acquire knowledge, to master the arts of clear reasoning and fit expression, to test the capacity for different kinds of intellectual exertion, to develop a desire to master difficulties, and to form intellectual friendships and associations, are among the ends to be sought in a college life."

It is also true that graduate work represents freedom, the patient and prolonged cultivation of a small field of knowledge, a nobler appreciation of the worth of knowledge itself, and the endeavor to make good the hope of offering some contribution, however small, to its accumulated treasures. The relationship between undergraduate and graduate instruction is the relation between general and special culture. As President Hall of Clark University has said:

"One makes broad men, the other sharpens them to a point. The college digests and impresses second-hand knowledge as highly vitalized as good pedagogy can make it, while the university, as one of its choicest functions, creates new knowledge by research and discovery."

"Seventh Annual Report Johns Hopkins University," by President Gilman, p. 7.

"Clark University," 1889-99, pp. 53, 54.

The progress of graduate instruction received a great impulse in the establishment of Johns Hopkins University in the year 1876. The prudent guidance and conservative inspirations of its President, Daniel Coit Gilman, made largely for the spread and worthy popularity of the higher instruction. Clark University at Worcester, established in 1889, continued the tradition established at Baltimore. The Catholic university at Washington, for a less broad constituency, promoted the general movement. Historic colleges also introduced higher instruction. Several of them were moved rather by hope of what they might do than by reasoned assurances of their ability to serve graduate students. State universities were able to persuade legislatures that it was the duty of the community to provide facilities for research. The work of research in not a few state universities began with the Department of Agriculture. From this Department-on its face most remote from the higher scholastic relations-the endeavor for scholarly research extended into the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The scholarly endeavor has awakened, in a generation, a constantly increasing response on the part of American youth. From a few score of students in the year 1872, the number has increased to more than seven thousand. The increase has been gradual, representing a development of interest and of facilities. The number of graduate students has now become so large that the special purpose of fitting themselves as teachers in college no longer controls. Not a few such students become teachers in high schools and academies; and also not a few enter other callings than that of the teacher.

It also should be confessed that this growth in the graduate school has occurred nothwithstanding the fact that the academic career has, to many able men, lost a certain degree of attractiveness. It is also the testimony of those who are most immediately concerned that the ablest men are not seeking academic careers. The reasons of this condition are to be found in the industrial, financial, and social relations of American life.

Graduate instruction follows collegiate. Either by the side of the college, or as a part of its more regular instruction, or as an independent foundation, has grown up the school of applied