The medieval monk shunned the world and the society of his fellow men, but the modern man has discovered virtue in both. It is greatly to the honor of the founders and builders of the College of William and Mary that they applied so early in the eighteenth century the idea of education in a social, municipal, and political environment. Williamsburg was the first exponent of a noble educational policy, to which this country will sooner or later return. It was policy which struggled into existence in Prussia in 1810, when that child of conflict, the University of Berlin, was born in the capital of a kingdom that was to found an empire.

Wonder is often expressed that colonial Virginia, with her population widely dispersed, should have produced so many eminent public men, who became leaders in the American Revolution and who afterward gave such practical and sovereign direction to American politics. Virginia is called the mother of presidents, but the College of William and Mary, the alma mater of statesmen, is only another name for Virginia. The secret of that great family of patriot-politicians lies in the union of home education with the higher education, in the blending of private with public training, after the manner of our Mother England. In Virginia the historic process began with English traditions of family culture; it developed through the personal administration of rural estates, through vestry meetings and county courts and the House of Burgesses. The evolution of a higher class of politicians, of professional men and cultivated gentlemen, was first accomplished at Williamsburg, that school of citizens, churchmen, and statesmen. There were no educated lawyers in Virginia until the college began its preparatory work. Bishop Meade says: "The best ministers in Virginia were those educated at the college and sent over to England for ordination. The foreigners were the great scandal of the church.”

Religious, political, and educational forces in society always thrive. best by association, not necessarily by union. This was true of ancient society, and it is no less true in the modern state. While the separation of the school from the authority of the church and the separation of the church from the sphere of the state are among the greatest contributions of America to the world's advancement, nevertheless the association of these great forces must be preserved in a modified form. Neither the state nor the church nor the school can reach its highest efficiency when any one of these three institutions is cut off from association with the other two. A government without the support of religion and education, means ultimate lapse into moral and political anarchy. Ecclesiastical organizations, unrestrained by law and unenlightened by reason, may interfere with civil liberty and check the progress of thought. Schools, colleges, and universities, without public support and legal protection, without moral and religious associations, are hopelessly crippled in their usefulness to society.

In colonial Virginia there was an entente cordiale between the college, the church, and the state. The clergy held their conventions' in the college buildings, and, before the capitol was built, the House of Burgesses used to assemble in the academic halls. The head of the college was the head of the church in Virginia, and there was a representative2 of the college in the House of Burgesses down to the Revolution. These facts merely illustrate the intimacy of educational, ecclesiastical, and political relations in that social microcosm at Williamsburg.

Never before or since in this country was there such a constant object lesson for students in the art of government and in the constitution of society. The College of William and Mary, almost from its original planting, was a unique seminary of history and politics-of history in the very making, of politics in the praxis. Without identifying the two subjects, we may accept the view of Gustav Droysen, Prussia's great historian, who says, "What is politics to-day becomes history to-morrow." The young Virginians did not study text-books of historical and political science. They observed the real things. The proceedings of their fathers at the capitol were to the sous analogous to those living processes of nature that are observed under the microscope in the modern biological laboratory. We might, however, better liken the position of the early Virginia students to that of the lesser clergy and inferior nobles, who came with the great barons of the realm to those itinerary Parliaments of England before the House of Commons was instituted. These young vassals and dependents looked on while their superiors took counsel with the royal Governor, the quasi king of Virginia. The day was to come when these budding knights and burgesses would themselves form a popular assembly, a new House of Commons called the Continental Congress, to shape the history and politics of a nation.

It is interesting to look over the catalogue of students at the College of William and Mary a few years before the outbreak of the American Revolution, and to notice what men this institution was training for service to state and country. There in 1759 was Thomas Jefferson, son of Peter Jefferson of Albemarle, author of the Declaration of Independence and of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and founder of the University of Virginia. By these three deeds he wished to be known to posterity. It would be glory enough for the College of William and Mary if she had educated him alone who is the father of American political thought and the first promoter of real university education. The roll of honor does not stop with Thomas Jefferson. There, too, appear Benjamin Harrison, Carter Braxton, Thomas Nelson, and George Wythe, all signers of the Declaration. There also are Peyton Randolph, first president of the Continental Congress, and John Tyler, first governor

An extract from the faculty records, August 29, 1754, illustrates this point: "Resolved, unanimously, Yt Mr. Commissary Dawson be allowed ye use of ye Hall and great room during ye meeting of ye clergy."

2 Hening, iii, 241, 356.

of Virginia; Edmund Randolph, Attorney-General and Secretary of State; Beverly Randolph, governor of Virginia; John Mercer, governor of Maryland; James Innes, attorney-general of Virginia; James Monroe, President of the United States; John Blair, Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States; and John Marshall, the great Chief Justice. For seventy years previous to the Revolution, there had been an annual average of about sixty students at the College of William and Mary. At the outbreak of the struggle for independence there were seventy students. Thirty-seven of them left college and joined the Continental army. Three professors also took arms for their country's cause. The institution, however, continued its educational work throughout the war until the memorable siege of Yorktown, when the college was temporarily closed for the accommodation of the American troops and their French allies. That school of churchmen, statesmen, and citizen-soldiers saw enacted before its doors the closing scene in one of the greatest dramas in modern history, when Washington and his Virginians, the Continental Army and the French allies, drew their investing lines around the forces of Cornwallis.

Upon the surrender of the British forces at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, the president and professors of William and Mary sent an address of congratulation to Washington. He replied on the 27th of October, in a letter addressed to the "President and Professors of the University of William and Mary," accepting their felicitations and rejoicing at the return of peaceful security to his fellow citizens. "The seat of literature at Williamsburg," he said, "has ever in my view been an object of veneration. As an institution important for its communication of useful learning, and conducive to the diffusion of the true principles of rational liberty, you may be assured that it shall receive every encouragement and benefaction in my power toward its re-establishment. The sick and wounded of the army, whom my necessities have compelled me to trouble you with, shall be removed as soon as circumstances will permit-an event which will be as pleasing to me as agreeable to you."

One hundred years after the surrender of Cornwallis, representatives of England, France, Germany, and the United States united at Yorktown for the commemoration of that international event in which all these nationalities had once participated. A monument was then dedicated. Not long after this celebration the national monument to Washington was completed in the Federal City. Quite recently the old alliance between America and France has been nobly symbolized by the erection of a colossal statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. But amid all these monumental works and historical commemorations, there has been no thought of that old college in the Yorktown peninsula, the college which trained the statesmen of the Revolution, and which gave Washington his first public commission and opened the way to his entire career.

A brief review of the relation of William and Mary to George Washington will throw new light upon this great public character, and explain the origin of his idea of a national university.

WASHINGTON MADE SURVEYOR BY WILLIAM AND MARY.

It is interesting to trace the evolution of men as well as of institu tions. It is generally known that Washington began his public life as a county surveyor, but, in all probability, few persons have ever thought of his service in that office as the historical and economic germ of his political greatness. Most people regard this early work as a passing incident in his career and not as a determining cause. And yet it is possible to show that Washington's entire public life was but the nat ural outgrowth of that original appointment1 given him in 1749 at the age of seventeen by the College of William and Mary. That appointment, in the colonial days of Virginia, was the equivalent of a degree in civil engineering, and it is interesting to observe what a peculiar bias it gave to Washington's 4ife before and after the Revolution. As we have seen already, the land system of Virginia was early placed under the control of the college authorities, who appointed all county surveyors and also the surveyor-general, who represented the economic interests of the institution and took certain fees for its support. From the lowest position as surveyor Washington rose to the very highest. It was his early practical career as a measurer of land that first made him favorably known to influential Virginians. There were but few men really competent for the work of a surveyor in colonial times. Washington's services were in great demand throughout the counties of Virginia. He not only surveyed private farms and plantations in settled districts, but also public lands and land grants on the western frontiers, among the Alleghanies, and along the upper branches of the Potomac.

It was Washington's excellent public service as a surveyor which led to his public commission as a militia officer in command of a military district for the defence of the Virginia frontiers against the encroachments of the French. It was his special knowledge of the back country and its people, acquired as a civil engineer, that led to his diplo matic commission from the seat of government in Williamsburg to the

It would be interesting if one could find Washington's first commission as a public surveyor. In lack of it, the following later form, found in the Calendar of Virginia State papers, vol. iii, page 246, will illustrate the probable character of the appointment: "We, the president and professors of the College of William and Mary, do certify his excellency, the governor, that we have examined Samuel Taylor and, having found him properly qualified, we do nominate him to the office of surveyor of the county of Cumberland.

"Given under our hands and the seal of the college, this 2d day of August, 1782.

"J. MADISON, President.

"J. MCCLURG.

"ROBT. ANDREWS. "CHS. BELLINI."

commandant of the French posts in the Ohio Valley. From this expe dition of Washington, at the age of twenty-one, when he surveyed French forts and French schemes with all the skill with which he had formerly surveyed land, proceeded the entire train of English policy leading to war with the French for the possession of the territory lying back of the Alleghanies. This frontier war established the military reputation of Washington, and made him commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces. His froutier record in the French and Indian war was the stepping stone which raised him at the outbreak of the American Revolution to the position of commander-in-chief of the continental army.

If the Revolutionary war had never occurred, George Washington would have been one of the foremost men of his time. His superiority. would have appeared in great economic enterprises for the public good, enterprises growing out of that original office of county surveyor which actually led him by a development process to take the office of surveyor general of Virginia and that of general-in chief of the armies of the United States. Of course that humble agrarian office, conferred upon a young Virginian by the College of William and Mary, did not make its incumbent great, but it gave an opportunity for greatness to develop. Washington's genius was economic. His mind grasped the practical questions of his time-the land question in the Ohio Valley, and its connection with the opening of a channel of trade between the Atlantic seaboard and the Ohio River. The conquest of that territory by the English, the search in that quarter for good bounty lands, the instincts of an explorer and of a civil engineer, made Washington appreciate more keenly perhaps than most of his countrymen the economic significance of the great West. Long before the Revolution, indeed, as early as 1754, he began to study the problem of connecting the tributaries of the upper Potomac with those of the Ohio, and of binding the East to the West by ties of economic interest.

WASHINGTON ACQUIRES 70,000 ACRES OF Land.

The facts indicate that George Washington was one of the most enterprising men in America. In 1763 he wrote to William Crawford, a Virginia officer, whom he had taught the art of surveying and who had served his chief as a land-looker in the back country: "By this time it may be easy for you to discover that my plan is to secure a good deal of land." Exactly how much land Washington patented in the course of his life it is impossible to say, but at the time of his death he owned over 70,000 acres, principally in the Ohio Valley, Kentucky, the Northwest Territory, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York along the Mohawk River, and in Virginia along the line of the Potomac and elsewhere. In the historical library at the Johns Hopkins University is a map of The economic side of Washington's character has been traced by the writer in the Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. iii, pp. 55-91.