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The mode of organization of such a university I can not now touch upon, but would merely say a few words in regard to the relations which its faculty of sciences would sustain to education generally and to the progress of science. Such an institution requires a large endowment, not to be expended in costly buildings, but in museums, laboratories, collections of nature and art, and in sustaining liberally a corps of professors worthy of the institution and of the country. If the common school were so organized as to be fit for all, as it is already in some of our cities; if it led to the high school and college, and then to the university, so that our youths who have the time and talent necessary should find an open way from the beginning to the end of the system, these institutions would help, not hinder each other; waste of time, money, and intellect would be avoided, and the youth of our country be truly educated. 1

(2) By Rev. Charles Brooks, Massachusetts:

The Anglo-Saxon blood on this side of the globe must faithfully educate and peacefully lead the other races. It is our destiny and we must fulfill it. We must, therefore, establish a national system of free and universal culture upon the broadest basis of pure democratic republicanism, and then carry it into effect by the united wisdom and the resistless energy of a rich, powerful, intelligent, and Christian people.

Such a system, suited to our thousand years of future growth and nameless millions of inhabitants, will place us at the head of the nations, while it becomes the progressive agency, the conservative power, and the eternal blessing of our national life.

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And the natural continuation of this system is the true republican idea of education. Carry out this republican idea, that every child has a right to culture, that every town is bound to see that its children receive education, and it follows that every State is morally and politically bound to develop all the talents that God sends into it, and it is therefore the duty of the State to establish a free college, and thus to carry education still onward and make each child what God designed that he should be. This, I apprehend, is the true republican idea of education. This is the idea which I wish to see established in all the republics of South America; and after all this comes the noble plan which has been so admirably and eloquently described by our retiring president, a university into which the best scholars from our colleges may go and receive from the country such culture of the peculiar talents which each possesses as shall fit him to answer the purpose for which he was born into the world; that he may fill the spot which God ordained that he should fill; that he may work without friction in his own proper place in the world.2

(3) By Prof. Benjamin Peirce, of Cambridge, Massachusetts:

There is one subject spoken of in the address of the retiring president in which, with him, I have taken great interest, and with him have suffered disappointment. It is the establishment of a great university. I can, as he can, speak upon the subject, now at least, with independence. There was a time, when we were engaged in our efforts at Albany, when I should have been willing to embark in such an institution; when, against the entreaties and almost the tears of my family and friends, I should have been willing, for the sake of the cause of education in the country, to have abandoned existing connections with another plan of learning to join that institution. But since that time I have designedly made such engagements as will make it impossible now. I am, therefore, as free as the president to speak upon the subject. It seems to me to have a very close and important connection with the subject referred to by Rev. Mr. Brooks-the duty of the Government to educate every citizen; its duty because, if for no other reason, it is good economy on the part of the State to educate every one of its citizens to the utmost extent; just as good Id., Vol. II, p. 87.

1 Barnard's Journal of Education, Vol. 1, p. 477.

economy as for the farmer to make the most of every portion of his stock. The State will be benefited by educating every man to the highest point that he can be, and it will by the best investment it can make of its funds to invest them in intellect developed to its utmost capacity.

It seems to me that a great university in connection with the colleges and high schools is of the greatest importance, because it gives the only means of adapting education to every variety of intellect.

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I know it is a popular doctrine that genius will find its way; but I doubt whether genius will necessarily be developed of itself. We have another popular doctrine which is much nearer to the truth, which is, that opportunity makes the man. We can not have a great man unless he has ability, but neither can we have a great man who has not an opportunity worthy to develop him. It is important, therefore, that in our public provision for education we should afford this opportunity.1

The oration of Dr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould, the astronomer, on July 15, 1856, before the Connecticut Beta of the Phi Beta Kappa Fraternity of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, should also be cited:

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The purport of my words to-day is this: Shall our zone-bounded realm, lighted by Southern Cross and Northern Crown, shaded by its fir and larch and palm and vine, bearing in its maternal bosom the hope, not of a hemisphere, but of a world; whose presence is a speck in contrast with its awfully portentous future; with a richness of resources and a teeming wealth surpassing that of any other empire on the earth shall we Americans never aspire to what suffering Leyden craved, what conquered Prussia looked to for regeneration, and without which all the clustered glories of the Rhine lacked their highest charm? No more must the long procession of our youth toil through its weary pilgrimage across the Atlantic wave in search of that mental sustenance which it has the right to demand at the hands of its fatherland.

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But it may be asked by some: What means all this clamor for a university when we have already a hundred and twenty-seven in the land, and every year is adding to its numbers? The reason is very simple. It is not of colleges that we are speaking; it is of a university. By college I understand the high educational seminary which, if not the most exalted for the students of specialties, is yet the highest for the youth who seek that mental discipline, that classic culture, that literary refinement which must be drawn from the bosom of an alma mater, and of which we say "emollit mores nec sinit esse feros."

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By "university," on the other hand, I understand the universitas litterarum, the Пavεлioτημov, an institution where all the sciences in the complete and rounded extent of their complex whole are cultivated and taught, where every specialty may find its votaries, and may offer all the facilities required by its neophytes. Its aim is not so much to make scholars as to develop scholarship, not so much to teach the passive learner as to educate investigators, and not merely to educate but to spur

Surely there can be no confusion as to the boundary line between these two distinct institutions. One is designed to answer the demands of the community and of the age; the other to point out the paths and lead our country on to a high, nobler, holier, sublimer eminence than it could otherwise attain or than would otherwise be striven for.

Centralization is a word and an idea now far from popular. But this, like most other principles, has its good as well as evil consequences. And while we, under democratic and republican institutions, feel the full force of the objections to that political centralization under which we see so many nations of the old world tottering and sinking, we are too apt to overlook the incalculable, the unspeakable ad

1 Barnard's Journal of Education, Vol. II, p. 88.

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vantages which flow from the concentrated accumulation of a whole nation's genius and talent. There is no substitute for the "encounter of the wise." Like that of flint and steel it strikes out without cessation the glowing sparks of truth; like that of acid and alkali it forms new, unexpected, and priceless combinations; like the multiplication of rods in the fagot, it gives new strength to all while taking it from none. A spiritual stimulus pervades the very atmosphere electrified by the proximity of congregated genius, its unseen but ever active energy-floating in the air, whispering in the breeze, vibrating in the nerves, thrilling in the heart-prompts to new effort and loftier aspiration through every avenue which can give access to the soul of man.

Such centralization is eminently distinguished from political centralization, and by this peculiarity, among others, that far from being a combination for the sake of arguing and exercising a greater collective power, it acts, on the contrary, to augment individual influence. While forming a nucleus for scientific, literary, artistic energy, it is not a gravitation center toward which everything must converge and accumulate, but is an organic center whose highest function is to arouse and animate the circulation of thought and mental effort and profound knowledge. It is a nucleus of vitality rather than a nucleus of aggregation. An intellectual center for

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a land is a heart, but subject to no induration; it is a brain, but liable to no paralysis; an electric battery which cannot be consumed; it is a sun without eclipse, a fountain that will know no drought. To such a university our colleges would look for succor in their need, for counsel in their doubt, for sympathy in their weal or woe. There is no one of them but would develop to new strength and beauty under its genial emanations; none so highly favored or so great that its resources and powers would not expand; none too lowly to imbibe the vitalizing, animating influences which it would diffuse like perfume.

We want no university keeping up with the times and commending itself to the public approval. We want one which shall be just as far ahead of the age as is consistent with being within hail; which shall enlarge and expand the mind and taste and appreciation of the public, compelling the admiration of the public, not soliciting its approval. We want a university which, instead of complying with the demands of the age, shall create, develop, and satisfy new and unheard-of requisitions and aspirations-which, so far from adapting itself to the community, shall mold that community unto itself, and which through every change and every progress shall still be far in advance of the body social, guiding it, leading it, urging it, drawing it, pulling it, hauling it onward.

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The university will contain a soul, a restless, striving, throbbing, impelling, shaping, creative vitality; and will become, not an Italian, nor a French, nor an English, nor a Spanish, nor a German, but preeminently an American university-glowing with American fire, pulsating with American aspirations, and, strange as the words may sound to us to-day, radiating with what will then be American scholarship, American depth of thought, American thoroughness of research, American loftiness of generalization. It will bring the refining power of ancient lore and classic elegance to balance and counteract the all-pervading tendency to mere material science; it will leaven the tone of thought throughout the world by introducing the precision of exact science where the vagueness and confusion of the school men have long reigned; it will lift the philosophical and philological sciences to a far higher scope and standard as specialties, while it unfetters the struggling mind from the incubus of an antiquity which recognizes no progress, a conservatism which excludes all things which are or ever have been new. For I assure you that there never existed a university which surrendered either to conservatism or radicalism; never a university which was not eminently nationalizing in its tendency. Under the most absolute despotisms the universities have been

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nurseries of political liberty; under the most intolerant of creeds they have fostered freedom of thought.

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Found the American university and throngs of European youth shall crowd its halls, carrying back with them American ideas to ennoble their own lands, bringing hither with them counterpoises of transatlantic thought that shall ennoble ours, and both by their coming and their going cementing the family of nations in bonds of mutual sympathy and attachment; found it, though it cost the whole revenues of a capital. Let earth, air, and sea bring their tribute; let California and India pour in their gold, and the busy marts of men their gains, till this great work is done. Thus shall we achieve the glory of a nation, the welfare of a continent, the advancement of the race, and crown the clustering hopes of humanity with more than full fruition.1

The paper contributed by "An Alabamian" (possibly the able president of the University of Alabama) to the American Journal of Education, in 1857, is in the same vein:

* * * That end is the enlistment of the United States of America in the enterprise of founding a great national university. This can only be accomplished through the million. A people is to be enlightened in regard to a thing which they can not comprehend, but which, by possibility, they may be made to apprehend sufficiently to lead to action. What grander labor ever awaited performance? It is to be done, if at all, through the instrumentality of American scholars. They are fully alive to its importance, but they contemplate with aching hearts the difflculty of the task.

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Here, then, we may rehearse in brief the three chief reasons why the idea of an American university, so timely and beneficent in its conception and so respectably enunciated to the world, seems to have fallen immediately into oblivion.

1. A want of confidence in the permanency of the Federal Union.

2. A lack of ability on the part of the people to discern the need of such an institution.

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3. The inadequacy of the means hitherto employed in its promotion. We are in pressing need of an American university. We can have one if we will. Let us use the requisite means. We have excellent colleges; let them be sustained We have excellent State universities, (so called); let the States rally to their sup port. But the more these are multiplied and patronized, the louder and more urgent is the demand for a national university.

In order to be national it should be located upon common ground. Under existing circumstances it would be wholly impracticable in New York, or Alabama, or anywhere outside the District of Columbia. The Smithsonian Institution and the National Observatory form a worthy nucleus. If each State should appropriate $200,000 toward an endowment a fund would thus be created of more than six millions, upon the strength of which a very respectable beginning could be made. Its permanent nationality would seem to require that each State be equally represented, both in the fund and in the management.

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And it may not be amiss to add that a great Southern university is already spoken of; the establishment of which would defeat forever the project herein considered. It would doubtless be followed (if not preceded) by a great Northern university, and then a great Western university. There would then be three grand centers of attraction and influence, tending rather to destroy than cement the Union. To avert such a consequence, let the plan of an American university be matured without unnecessary delay. Sectional enterprise can not long be held in abeyance. Shall we hear a response from the North ? 2

1 Barnard's Jour. of Education, 1856, pp 273-293.

2 Jour. of Education, Vol III, p. 215.

LII. The efforts of John W. Hoyt, as United States Commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1867, whose official report of some 400 pages, submitted to the Secretary of State after a personal inspection of every university in Europe and America, concludes as follows:

So much is already beyond question, namely, that the university of the future is to be, not the mere college of America, nor even the college supplemented by one or more poorly equipped professional schools; not that loose aggregation of grammar schools, supplemented by a few poorly attended courses of university lectures, that wear the title by courtesy in England; not the French grouping of academic faculties, limited-especially in the departments of letters and science-to a quite too narrow field of study; not the university of Spain, or Portugal, or Italy, from whose faculties for the higher general culture the powers of attraction and inspiration have long since departed; not the Scandinavian or Slavonian university, cast in the mold of medieval times, or at the best a mixture of the old and more modern types; nor yet the Germanic university, found, with but minor modifications, in all the states of Germany, in Austria, Switzerland, Holland, and Denmark, and which, though wherever found it represents the highest existing type, is nevertheless everywhere too limited in scope and generally too lax in its regulations.

It is to be not any of these, but rather an institution more ample in its endowment, broader in its scope, more complete in its organization, more philosophical and practical in its internal regulations, and certainly not less high than the highest in all its educational standards; an institution above and beyond the best of the gymnasia, Latin schools, high schools, academies, and colleges, and, on its own higher plane, for the extension and diffusion of all branches of knowledge; a broad and noble institution where the love of all knowledge, and of knowledge as knowledge, shall be fostered and developed; where all departments of learning shall be equally honored, and the relations of each to every other shall be understood and taught; where the students devoted to each and all branches of learning, whether science, language, literature, or philosophy, or to any combination of these constituting the numerous professional courses of instruction, shall intermingle and enjoy friendly intercourse as peers of the same realm; where the professors, chosen, as in France and Germany, after trial, from among the ablest and best scholars of the world, possessed of absolute freedom of conscience and of speech, and honored and rewarded more nearly in proportion to merit, shall be, not teachers of the known merely, but also earnest searchers after the unknown, and capable, by their own genius, enthusiasm, and moral power of infusing their own lofty ambition into the minds of all who may wait upon their instruction; a university not barely complying with the demands of the age, but one that shall create, develop, and satisfy new and unheard-of demands and aspirations; that shall have power to fashion the nation and mold the age unto its own grander ideal; and which, through every change and every real advance of the world, shall still be at the front, driving back from their fastnesses the powers of darkness, opening up new continents of truth to the grand army of progress, and so leading the nation forward, and helping to elevate the whole human race. Such an institution would be to the world its first realization of the true idea of a university.1

LIII. The efforts of John W. Hoyt, by his address before the National Educational Association, at its annual meeting in Trenton, N. J., August 20, 1869, on University Progress, wherein it was urged that 66 a true university is the leading want of American education,” and that the association should "neither take rest nor allow rest to the country" until such an institution had been planted and firmly estab

1 Exposition Reports, Vol. VI, pp. 397, 398.