UC-NRLF MMMi i! Ill ! $B 2b2 Dm ^''-^"l^ ^^S^' M^,:^^^^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from ' IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/americancollegesOOthwirich AMERICAN COLLEGES THEIR STUDENTS AND WORK BY CHARLES F. THWING 3 » ■» SECOND EDITION. REVISED AND ENLARGED, NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 27 AND 29 West 23D Street 1883. ^^ ^^;;?^ COPYKIGHT, O. P^ PUTNAM'S SONS, 1878. PREFATORY NOTE. The favor extended to this volume prompts the issue of an enlarged and revised edition. The additional material comprises the three chapters, "Wealth and Endowment," "A National Univer- sity," and "Woman's Education." The revision, although made on every page, has resulted in changes the greatest in Chapters I. and II. and in the Appendix. Although absolute accuracy in a work of this character is not to be attained, the hope is indulged that its errors are few and of slight relative importance. C.F.T. Cambridge, Mass. 532Gau CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAGS. Instruction i CHAPTER II. Expenses and Pecuniary Aid 26 CHAPTER III. Morals 40 CHAPTER IV. Religion 55 CHAPTER V. Societies 69 CHAPTER VI. Athletics and Health 81 CHAPTER VII. Journalism 91 CHAPTER VIII. Fellowships .107 CHAPTER IX. Choice of a College 117 CHAPTER X. Rank in College a Test of Future Distinction . 125 • CHAPTER XI. Wealth and Endowment 143 CHAPTER XII. A National University 166 CHAPTER XIII. Woman's Education 178 Appendix 201 Index 211 AMERICAN COLLEGES. CHAPTER I. INST RUCTIO N The most delightful feature of the history of college education in America is the constant ex- pansion of the curriculum. The course of study in the first years of Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and all the older colleges was very narrow and meager. In Harvard's first decade the ability " to read the originals of the old and new Testament into the Latin tongue, and to resolve them logically, withal being of godly life and conversation," were the only conditions de- manded of the student for obtaining his first degree. But the enlargement of the course of study has from the very first been constant, thorough, and at times ex- ceedingly rapid. Never more rapid has been this enlargement and improvement than within the present decade. The requirements of admission are increas- >^ 2 AMERICAN COLLEGES. ing in the amount and accuracy of the knowledge demanded. By the recent advance in science, the scientific studies in college are quadrupled in number and extent. The introduction of the elective system into many colleges is opening fields of knowledge to the college man which have been before closed, except to the special investigator. These characteristics, so admirable and assuring of the progress of the higher education in our country; render, however, any repre- sentation of the studies offered by a college inaccurate for any great length of time. And yet so constant and so regular are the relative advances made by the principal colleges in respect to the breadth and variety of their curriculum that their relative positions remain substantially the same for a series of several years. The following estimates, therefore, serv^e to represent the amount of the instruction given by the different colleges, not only in the present year, but also in the past two or three years, as well as the gen- eral character of college studies which will probably prevail for the next three or five years. The conditions of admission to a college determine to a large extent the character of the instruction of the Freshman year. These conditions are highest at Harvard, and lowest at the small colleges of the West, Harvard's requirements for admission are more than than those of the University of Michigan, Michigan's TNSTi CTION. 3 more than those of Yale, with the exception of Greek, and Yale's slightly more than those of Amherst. Michigan, though admitting the graduates of the best High Schools of the State without examination, re- quires in general a more extended knowledge of mathematics than Harvard, but a less extended read- ing of Latin and Greek. The requirements of Har- vard over those of Yale comprise a wider acquaintance with Latin poetry, a considerable quantity of Latin prose, a book of Herodotus, a slightly more advanced knowledge of mathematics, an elementary knowledge of one of the physical sciences, and of ejther French or German. But, leaving out Harvard, and possibly the University of Michigan, the amount of the re- quirements for admission to our colleges presents no great or essential difference. Six or eight orations of Cicero, six books of the ^neid, three or four books of the Anabasis, and one, two or three books of the Iliad, beside the Latin and the Greek grammar, represent the principal classical requirements, and arithmetic, algebra, and the simpler portions of plane geometry represent the mathematical. A general knowledge of ancient history, English grammar, and modern geography is also usually requisite to admission. But the quality of the knowledge required for en- tering our colleges is subject to greater variations than its quantity. One college demands a fa;; more critical 4 AMERICAN COLLEGES. and definite knowledge than another. The examina- tions at one college are written, as at Harvard ; at another, oral, as at most colleges ; and at another, both written and oral, as at Yale. One college ex- amines the applicant for three days, as Harvard ; and another, for only one or two, the usual length of time. One college accepts the certificate of a teacher as a truthful indication of the student's worth, and sub- jects him to no examination worthy the name, while another pays little or no heed to it. It is usually re- garded that the entrance examinations at Williams, Dartmouth or Bowdoin are easier than those of Amherst, Amherst's easier than those of Yale, and Yale's easier than those of Harvard. Harvard's en- trance examinations are commonly acknowledged the hardest, and she rejects about fifteen per cent, of ap- plicants. Though more exacting than formerly, most eastern colleges reject less than ten per cent. In the following comparisons of courses of in- struction. Harvard and Yale are selected as types of the largest eastern colleges, Amherst as the type of eastern colleges of the average size, as Brown, Dart- mouth, Princeton, and Middlebury as the type of small colleges, as Bates and Colby. The University of Michigan, though its course of study is far more flex- ible than is usual with most colleges, represents the large colleges of the West, Oberlin those of the aver- INSTRUCTION. 5 age size, and Beloit the better class of its small colleges, such as Marietta, Olivet. Into one or an- other of these six classes nearly all our three hun- dred colleges easily fall. Although no one of the col- leges named precisely represents all other colleges of its class, each may serve as a general type of them. Amherst may represent Dartmouth and Williams, though the course of instruction at Amherst is some- what different from the course of instruction at either of the sister institutions. The classics still continue to form a large part of the course of instruction of most colleges. Though the required study of Latin and Greek ends at Har- vard with the Freshman year, yet the elective courses are more than sufficient to occupy the students' at- tention for the three remaining years. These courses are twenty-seven in number, and provide sixty reci- tations a week. Besides the Greek authors usually read, Harvard offers a course in philosophical Greek, and in Latin, several unique courses. Twelve courses in the Semitic and Indo-Iranian languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, Assyrian, Arabic, and Sanskrit are provided. At Yale, about three-fifths of the work of the first two years is devoted to the clas- sics, and the authors are Herodotus, ^schylus, Cicero, Tacitus, and others usually read in college. The required study of Latin and Greek ceases with 6 AMERICAN COLLEGES. the Sophomore year, but if he choose, the student can still give about one-fourth of the work of the remain- der of his course to them. In his Senior year he also has the opportunity of studying Sanskrit. At Am- herst, about two-thirds of the Freshman and one-third of the Sophomore and Junior years are spent upon Latin and Greek. The hardest Greek read is the " PhiHppics," and the hardest Latin, Quintilian and Tacitus. At Middlebury, the type of the small East- ern college, Latin grammar, Livy and the Odyssey come in the Freshman year, and the most difficult Greek in the course is probably the " Medea " of Euripides. The instruction in classics ends with the first term of the Junior year. At Michigan, the class- ical instruction is not dissimilar in amount and quality to that of Amherst, but at Oberlin and Beloit easier and fewer authors are read. The mathematical instruction in our colleges is less in amount and covers a shorter space of time than the classical. It begins in the Freshman year usually with either solid geometry or the more ad- vanced part of plane, and, passing through trigon- ometry and analytical geometry, ends with mechanics or the calculus. At Harvard, the Freshman recite between three and four hours a week in solid and analytical geometry, plane trigonometry, and advanced algebra. Though no mathematics are prescribed after INSTRUCTION, 7 the first year, ten elective courses offer ample oppor- tunity to the student who wishes to continue the study. Two courses in quaternions are provided, and, so far as I know. Harvard is the only American col- lege at which this new branch of mathematics can be studied. At Yale, about two-fifths of the Freshman and Sophomore years are spent upon mathematics, the study beginning with advanced algebra and end- ing with conic sections and mechanics. During his last two years, if he wish, the student may study cal- culus and analytical mechanics to the extent of four recitations a week, and, during a part of his Senior year, he may devote a small portion of each week to astronomy. The student at Amherst gives about one-third of his Freshman, and about one-fifth of his Sophomore year to the study of mathematics. Be- ginning with the more advanced plane geometry, he may study algebra, trigonometry, conic sections, and, if he wish, calculus. At Middlebury, the mathemat- ical instruction begins with algebra in the Freshman year, and ends, at the close of the second year, with calculus. About one-third of the first two years is devoted to the study. At the University of Michigan also, mathematical studies occupy the student's atten- tion for about one-third of the time of his first two years. But these studies in geometry, trigonometry and calculus are of a more advanced character than 8 AMERICAN COLLEGES. those at Middlebury or Amherst, and more advanced than the prescribed mathematical studies at Harvard. Oberlin requires her students to spend about one- fourth of their Freshman year upon mathematics, and permits them to elect calculus as one of the three studies of the first term of the Sophomore year. De- scriptive geometry can also be studied for a single term in the Junior year. Beloit pays as much atten- tion to the study of mathematics as Oberlin, but her students hardly succeed in reaching as advanced a stage of knowledge. The facilities for learning the modern languages in our colleges have vastly improved within a few years. Twenty years ago it was difficult to find a graduate who could read French with ease, or German at all. But now no one pretends to call himself thoroughly educated, unless he reads, writes, and speaks these languages with fluency. The facilities for studying Spanish and Italian are still exceedingly meager in most colleges. At Harvard, considerable attention is paid to these as well as to French and German. An elementary knowledge of either French or German is a condition of admission to the college ; and the study of one of these languages composes about one-fifth of the work of the Freshman year. Besides the prescribed course, eight elective courses are offered in German, affording nineteen hours of INSTRUCTION, g recitation a week; and in French, eight elective courses, with fifteen hours of recitation. There are three elective courses in Spanish, and three also in Italian. Cervantes, Calderon, Tasso, Dante, and Pe- trarch are the chief authors read. A course in the comparative philology of the romance languages is also offered. Two courses in Anglo-Saxon and early- English are provided for the student interested in the study of his vernacular ; and in EngHsh literature also, several courses are offered, beginning with Chaucer, and reaching to this century. Though at Yale, a knowledge of French is not required for admission, the language may be elected for four recitations a week during the Junior and Senior years; students are not, however, allowed to elect it unless already having a knowledge of the elements of the language. German is a prescribed study of the Junior year for three reci- tations a week, and may be elected in the Senior year for four recitations. About one-quarter of the work of the Junior year may be devoted to the study of Shakspere or of other English authors. Anglo-Saxon may be elected in the second term of the Junior year for four hours a week ; and " linguistics " offers an entertaining course of study for a short time in the Senior year. The student of the modern lan- guages at Amherst, though having an elementary knowledge of the French grammar on admission, re- 10 AMERICAN COLLEGES, news his study of the language with his second year, and may continue it several successive terms with about 'four recitations a week. German he is required to study for a single term, with four ex- ercises a week, and he may also elect it for five terms. Italian and Spanish he can study during the last two years, but to them he usually gives comparatively little attention. English literature he also studies for a like period of time, with three or four recitations a week. Middlebury is accustomed to provide instruction in French for her students, though the facilities for its study are meager. Most colleges, indeed, provide at least a small amount of instruction in the language. German she crowds into four recitations a week of a por- tion of the Junior year. English (Trench's "Study of Words " and " English, Past and Present ") forms part of the instruction of one term of the Sopho- more year ; and English literature (Taine) is studied somewhat in the first term of the Senior year. But most colleges offer very meager opportunities for the study of the origin and growth of either our lan- guage or our literature. At the University of Michi- gan, the study of French may begin at an early stage and may be continued during the remaining years of the course. Italian and Spanish are among the elec- tive studies for those fitted to pursue them. To INSTRUCTION. 1 1 both the English language and literature considerable attention is given. At Oberlin, the study of German begins in the first term of the Sophomore year, and it may form about one-third of the student's work for the remainder of the year. The study of French is limited to a single term ; and, as in most colleges, the student has no opportunity of learning either Spanish or Italian. English literature may be studied in the Senior year. At Beloit, as at Middlebury, French is now set down in the curriculum ; and German is studied for only two of the twelve terms. To English literature, however, the student is able to devote con- siderable attention. The instruction in the various departments of science in our colleges has hardly kept abreast with the discoveries of the last ten years. A natural con- servatism and the expense of procuring scientific ap- paratus tend to make the college instruction in science several years behind the promulgation of scientific truths. ^Harvard, however, fosters in many ways the scientific studies of her students. Besides a prescribed course of two recitations a week in physics, in the Freshman year, she offers eight elective courses, with twenty-three exercises a week. In chemistry, she pro- vides, in addition to a prescribed course of lectures in the Freshman year, nine elective courses, extending through the three remaining years. I n natural history 12 AMERICAN COLLEGES. eighteen courses are offered, with forty-four exercises a week. At Yale, the student during his Junior year has three recitations a week in physics ; and in the first term of the year an equal number in chemistry. Astronomy is taught both as a required and an op- tional study. A series of lectures is delivered in the Senior year upon evolution and cosmogony; and geology is a required study of the first term of the year. Elective courses in the various departments of natural science and physics are also offered, with about twelve exercises a week during the Senior year. Zoology may also be studied for a short time in the Junior year. The instruction in science at Amherst is of a very comprehensive character. It begins in the middle of the second year with chemistry, and, after passing through mineralogy, astronomy, bot- any, biology, it ends at the close of the Senior year with comparative zoology and geology. About two- thirds of the work of the Junior year is of a scien- tific nature. Middlebury provides instruction in the Sophomore year in natural philosophy, and later in chemistry for several hours a week ; and in the first term of the Senior in zoology (Orton), with two reci- tations a week, and in the second and third terms in geology (Dana), with four recitations. At the University of Michigan a large share of the work of the Junior year may be devoted to physics and INSTRUCTION. 1 3 astronomy. Several elective courses in science are offered in the Senior year, providing about twenty- five hours of recitation each week. The course of study in astronomy is more extended than that offered by any other of our colleges. The student at Oberlin begins his scientific studies with natural philosophy (Olmsted) and botany (Gray) in the last terms of his Sophomore year. About one-third of the work of the five succeeding terms he may devote, if he wish, to astronomy, chemistry, zoology and geology. The student at Beloit has advantages similar to those of his brother at Oberlin ; he has, however, little or no instruction offered him in zoology. In most colleges, the instruction and lectures in science are supple- mented by the work of the student in the laboratory. Chemical laboratories are established in many colleges, but physical laboratories in but few. The advantages our colleges afford their students for the study of philosophy are as various as those they offer for the study of science. At Harvard the prescribed course in philosophy, has, with a lack of wisdom which this is not the place to question, lately been abolished. But the elective courses, eleven in number, are advanced as well as elementary. Be- ginning with Descartes, a continuous study is made of his successors, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and of Kant, and the post-KantianSv T4 AMERICAN COLLEGES. The course in Schopenhauer and Hartmann is the only course in the German philosophy of the present day given, so far as I can discover, in any American college. The instruction in philosophy is rather criti- cal than dogmatic ; its purpose is to explain the dif- ferent systems rather than to teach a system. Though more attention is paid to intellectual than to moral philosophy, yet the various ethical theories can be studied in the Senior year, with several recitations a week. In political economy, seven elective courses are offered, comprising Mill, Cairnes and Carey. At Yale, as at most colleges, the philosophical studies are relegated to the Senior year. Elementary logic is studied for several weeks in the Junior year; and about one-third of the work of the Senior year is of a philosophical character. Instruction is given by means both of text-books (Porter, Schwegler's His- tory) and of numerous lectures. Political science is a required study of the Senior year, with Mill as the prin- cipal text-book. An elective course is also offered during the second term, with two exercises a week. At Amherst also, about one-third of the work of the Senior year is devoted to philosophy. Hickok and Schwegler are the leading authors studied. Political economy is also taught, but to a somewhat less extent than in either Yale or Harvard. At Middlebury, after the elementary logic of the Junior year, Calder- INSTRUCTION, 15 wood*s " Moral Science" is studied, with four recita- tions a week for a single term ; and, in the winter one recitation a day is devoted to Butler's " Analogy." In the spring term similar attention is paid to the his- tory of philosophy. Political economy is also studied for a single term, with four recitations a week. At Michigan, logic and psychology are required studies of the first half of the Senior year ; and moral phi- losophy and the history of philosophy are elective studies of the second term. They can, therefore, be made to occupy a large part of the student's time. Political economy is taught in no less than seven distinct courses. The student at Oberlin, like the student at Yale and Amherst, may devote about one-third of his Senior year to philosophical studies — Butler, Porter,. Fairchild representing the principal text-books in mental and moral phi. losophy, and J.^.S. Mill in political economy. At Beloit, mental philosophy is studied for a brief period in the Junior year ; and about one-third of the Senior is devoted to logic, moral philosophy and the evidences of Christianity. In most colleges, especially in those under the strongest religious influences, an elemen- tary study is made of these evidences. In but few colleges does history receive that at- tention which it is almost universally admitted to de- serve. In most cases the only instruction offered in 1 6 AMERICAN COLLEGES. it consists of a course of lectures, necessarily of a very general character, which, putting the student in possession of mere skeletons of theories and of events, fail both to inspire him with love for the study, and to prompt to independent reading and thinking. Har- vard offers very fair advantages for historical study. The prescribed course, comprising Freeman's " Out- lines," the Constitution of the United States, and a study of the English system of government, has lately been abolished; seventeen elective courses are offered, with forty hours of recitation a week. Besides gen- eral courses in European history, a course in medi- aeval institutions is offered, which, in its scope and aim, is unique in college instruction. An extended course of study of American history is provided ; and a single course in diplomatic history is also offered. At Yale the course in history comprises Hallam's "Constitutional History," Woolsey's " International Law," Doyle's " United States," and lectures. But in the first term of the senior year, England's early history may be taken as an optional study for four hours a week, and throughout the year a course in modern European history is provided. At Amherst about one-third of the work of three terms of the Senior year is devoted to history and political science. Political science is taught in con- nection with the historical rather than the philo- sophical department. The instruction in history con- INSTRUCTION. 17 sists, in the main, of an extended course of study upon the general history of Europe. At Middlebury the instruction in history is represented by Guizot's " History of CiviUzation," in which the student recites four hours a week for a single term. The same amount of time is devoted to international law, with Dr. Woolsey's " Manual" as a text-book. The Uni- versity of Michigan provides extensive and excel- lent facilities for the study of history. This subject, like any other, may be begun and pursued at the reasonable choice of the student. No less than nine- teen courses are provided. The later history of England and the history of the United States are presented with special fullness. Considerable prom- inence is also given to the study of institutions. At Oberlin, the instruction given in history con- sists chiefly of a course of lectures delivered in the second term of the Senior year. At Beloit, ancient history is studied at the beginning of the first and second years ; and in the first term in the Junior year, Guizot's work and the mediaeval his- tory of France form a part of the course. It is only within a few years that our colleges have given any instruction in the fine arts. Ten years ago a professorship of the history of art was estab- lished at Harvard, and the department is now, by 1 8 AMERICAN COLLEGES. means of the seven elective courses, one of the most important and popular. Six elective courses in music are also provided, with fifteen recitations and lectures a week. Yale has a " school of the fine arts," whose aim is to provide thorough technical instruction in the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture ; to furnish an acquaintance with all branches of learning relating to the history, theory and practice of art. The course covers three years, and, though it is distinct from the regular college course, is open to all who wish to avail themselves of its advantages. Vassar, in consequence, perhaps, of being a college for women, devotes considerable attention to the fine arts. Be- sides instruction in vocal and instrumental music, op- portunities are offered for " drawing, painting, and modelling in clay and wax." Most of these courses, however, do not belong to the regular curriculum, and considered as a body, our colleges offer only the most meager instruction in the fine arts. Considerable attention is now given to rhetoric, writing and speaking, in all the colleges. At Har- vard, instruction is given in rhetoric for two hours a week during the entire Sophomore year, with Profes- sor A. S. Hill's treatise as the principal text-book. Six themes or compositions are written ihthe Sophomore year, ten in the Junior, and four in the Senior. In INSTRUCTION. 19 about twelve of these twenty essays the style of writ- ing is chiefly considered, and in eight the thought. An advanced elective course also in rhetoric and composition has recently been established. In elocu- tion the professor gives instruction to those wishing it, and about one-third of the Senior class, besides a few other students, avail themselves of the privilege. At Yale, the study of rhetoric begins about the mid- dle of the Freshman, and ends only with the Senior year. In the first term of the Sophomore year, an exercise in composition is held once in three weeks ; and in the Junior year " forensic disputations " occur twice a term. In his Senior year each student writes four compositions. During a part of the Sophomore year, exercises in declamation also are held. At Am- herst; throughout the four years, exercises in either composition or declamation, or both, are held every week ; and there is probably no college at which greater attention is paid to these departments of edu- cation. Extemporaneous speaking also is cultivated by constant exercises. At Middlebury, weekly ex- ercises in composition and rhetoric are held. At Michigan, the rhetorical and English exercises occur in each week of the Freshman year ; during the Sophomore year, each student is required to write five essays ; and in his Junior year, if he elects the sub- ject, to write and deliver several "speeches." At 20 AMERICAN COLLEGES. Oberlin, every student is usually required to write six essays, and take part in- six debates in each of the four years of his course, and a brief study of rhetoric is also made. At Beloit, weekly rhetorical exercises are held in which the student " is called occasionally to bear a part." But, beside, the instruction given by the colleges, the societies of the students present other opportunities for both writing and speaking. These societies are more popular at Yale and Amherst than at Harvard ; and, in general, they flourish better in Western than in Eastern colleges. Though a few elective or " exchange " courses of instruction have been for years offered by most col- leges, it was not till the accession of the present pres- ident of Harvard that the system of elective studies was introduced. Though introduced at Harvard in the face of much opposition, the system has, by its intellectual and moral advantages, converted opposi- tion into staunch support. It constantly grows in popularity with both professors and students, and each year the number of elective courses is increased and their scope enlarged. At this time (i 883-1 884), one hundred and forty-four courses are offered, pro- viding nearly four hundred recitations a week. Students are not permitted, however, to avail themselves of the privileges of the system till the Sophomore year. All the studies of the Freshman INSTRUCTION. 21 year are prescribed, and about one-seventh of those of the Sophomore year. With the exception of sev- eral essays, the studies of the Senior year and the Junior are elective. The liberty of choice is shown by the fact that one can, during his course, take, as regular studies for a degree, only thirty-six of the nearly four hundred hours of electives. With the academic year of 1876-77, Yale introduced a system of optional studies. Each Junior and Senior "is re- quired to have four exercises a week in an optional study ; " that is, about one-third or one-fourth of the work of these two years is elective. Regarding a study, having four exercises a week for a year as a " course," there are usually offered two courses each in Greek, Latin, French and mathematics,one course in German, and what may be regarded as one course, though more than equivalent to four weekly exercises, in Anglo- Saxon and English literature. European history, as- tronomy, meteorology, mineralogy and mathematical crystallography, geology and paleontology are studied for a single term with four exercises, or more, a week in each, and American history, political economy and physics for a similar period with two exercises. Zoology, linguistics and botany each occupies half a term. Sanskrit may be studied for one year, with two double exercises each week. Amherst has about seventy elective courses, covering the general field of 22 AMERICAN COLLEGES. knowledge. They are opened to the student in the middle of the second year, and during the remainder of his course he can devote about one-third of his time to them. But Middlebury, the type of small eastern colleges, is accustomed to offer no elective studies to her students. In consequence of the recent reorgani- zation of the departments of instruction of the Univer- sity of Michigan, one-half of its studies for the Bachelor's degree have become elective. About one hundred and twenty courses are offered, in a large number of which either six or four recitations are held each week for a half year. At Oberlin, during the principal part of the last three years, four studies are assigned to each term, from which the student is required to choose three. But Beloit, the type of small western colleges, usually offers no elective courses, and this is the case with most colleges, both East and West. The University of Virginia, how- ever, offers, and has offered for years, with its various " schools," a system of study which is entirely elective. The following table shows the number of hours of instruction a week which twenty of our representative colleges have for several years been accustomed to give in the principal subjects of study. At Amherst, for example, there are on an average twenty-one and two-thirds recitations in classics made by all the dif- INSTRUCTION, 23 ferent classes each week. Both prescribed and elec- tive studies are included in the estimate. Classics^ Ancient Mathe- Mod- Sci- Philos- His- Fine Lang's, matics. Lang. ence. ophy. tory. Arts. Amherst .' ..21% \oyi 9 17^ 6^ 5 i>f Boston 25 6 i6 10 12 81 Bowdoin 21 >^ 7^11 12^ 8>^ 6 o California 26 6 13 14 9 00 Cornell 32 12 10 10 10 10 o Dartmouth. 20 10 4 12 10 20 Hamilton 22 11 2^ 10 10 4^ o Harvard 61 29 74 68 23 28 21 Michigan 28 1215 32 9 8 o Middlebury 18 10 4 13 11 41 New York 24 12 2 18 8 60 Northwestern 22 7 15 13^^ 7 4^ o Oberlin 24 12 10 13^^ 12 i i Princeton 30 9 7 15 10 20 Trinity 23 6>^ 9 I2>^ 940 Vassar 27^^ Zyi 21 31^^ 10 2 17^^ Vermont 21 12 12 15 9 6 ^ Virginia 15 19 13 22 4 40 Wesleyan 26 10 11 27 20 5 o Yale 38 17 20 25 14 80 It is impossible to obtain absolute accuracy in estimates essentially so indefinite, since courses of instruction vary each year, and are often different from the published list of studies. Yet, for purposes of comparison, these figures may be regarded as suf- ficiently accurate. 24 AMERICAN COLLEGES. But it is not the mere amount of the instruction with which a college provides its students that makes it either great or good. The quality, the tone of that instruction is of equal, if not greater, importance. Its thoroughness and its accuracy, the discrimination, carefulness and patience in thinking which it demands and cultivates, determines, to a large extent, whether a college shall be a first-rate or only an indifferent instrument in the formation of scholarship and men- tal discipline. But upon this critical question opinion varies with all the degrees of the graduate's knowledge of and fondness for his alma mater ; and no precise estimates can be obtained. Yet it is commonly ac- knowledged that certain characteristics are specially fostered by the instruction given in the different col- leges. The typical Yale graduate is ready and thorough ; the Harvard, exact and full ; the Amherst, patient and earnest ; the Williams, well-rounded and well-balanced ; the Dartmouth, independent ; the Middlebury, careful and discriminating ; and the Mich- igan, direct and clear. Positiveness of conviction and readiness in reaching conclusions are in general fos- tered more by the best western, and the critical habit of mind more by the eastern, colleges. Yet these characteristics are very general, and cannot be pressed with close exactness. It is also usually recognized that each college has INSTRUCTION. 25 one or more departments in which its instruction ex- cels. At Yale, students and graduates regard the in- struction in international law and history, Greek, political economy, and in several branches of science as of eminent excellence. At Amherst, that given in philosophy and advanced Greek ; at Williams and Oberlin, that in philosophy ; at Michigan University, that in mathematics, English literature, and history ; and at Harvard, that provided in philosophy, science, Greek, French, and the Fine Arts is generally ac- knowledged to be of unusual worth. But the value of a department of study to the student depends to a great degree upon his aptitude for it ; and, therefore, most diverse judgments may be formed regarding its excellence. This value is often precisely the op- posite of the estimate of the general public respecting it. For it is as original thinkers and authors that the majority of college professors attain a reputation; but the qualities that fit one for pursuing original in- vestigations, or for elaborating a philosophical system, may unfit him for the patient and painstaking work of the teacher's desk. It is, therefore, oftentimes true that a great scholar, of national reputation, is only an indifferent teacher. 26 AMERICAN COLLEGES. CHAPTER II. EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. The expenses of college men of similar tastes and equal wealth are often of the most diverse amounts. The annual expenditure of two students, occupying the same room, sitting at the same club table, and economizing with great care, may differ by ^50 or ;^ioo;andthe expenditure of two wealthy students, of like tastes and surroundings, usually varies by any amount from ^200 to $800. It is, therefore, in the nature of the case, impossible for one writer's esti- mates of the expenses of the students in the different colleges, precisely to correspond with the estimates of other writers. But the labor and care bestowed upon the following averages allow the assurance that they are as accurate as their essentially indefinite nature permits. The extremes of the total annual expenses of EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. 27 Students at Harvard, which may be considered the representative of city colleges, — like Yale, and the colleges in the city of New York, — are about ^450 and ;^3,ooo. But the poor, economical student, who stints himself to ^450, lives in narrow quarters and eats the cheapest food ; and the rich student, spending ;^3,ooo, lives as luxuriously as the wealthiest New York or Boston families. But these amounts are extremes; more poor students spend $SS^ or $600 than $4^0 ; the expenses of the majority of wealthy students do not exceed ^2,500, and there are only half a do^n among the eight hundred who succeed in consuming ^3,000. The poor student pays for tuition ;^I50, as does the rich ; for room-rent, with chum, ^22 ; for board at the Memorial Hall Club, in which are many of the rich, as well as all of the poor stu- dents, ^152 ($4 for 38 weeks). The cost of his coal and gas is about ^30, and of his text-books not less than ;^20. These five items amount to ^374, without including either clothes, washing, or travelling ex- penses. He provides furniture for his room, which (a chum bearing half the expense) costs about ^50 ; but a room furnished at the beginning of the Fresh- man year requires no special refurnishing afterward. The total annual expenses, therefore, of a Harvard student, of the most rigorous economy, cannot be less than ^425, and probably will amount to ^500. 28 AMERICAN COLLEGES. The expenses of a wealthy Harvard student may be thus estimated: For tuition, ;^I50; for room-rent, which is $i6o higher than at any other college, $^QO, — but a room renting for this sum is one of the best of col- lege rooms in America ; for board, at ;^8 a week, ^304 ; for attending theaters, concerts, suppers, ;^500, — the largest item in the expenses of many a Harvard man ; for society fees and subscriptions, ;^400 (the initiation fee to one club, the Porcellian, is $500) ; for private ser- vant, — a luxury which about half the students enjoy, — $30; for horses, ^150; for coal and gas, ^75; and for books, $100. This total amount of $2,000 in- cludes, however, the cost of neither clothes, washing, travelling expenses, nor furniture. The cost of fur- nishing a college room elegantly is not less than 1^500, and may amount to ;^ 1,000. The annual expenses, therefore, of the average wealthy student at Harvard amount to ^2,500. A few wealthy students spend more, many less ; the limit on the one side being ^2,500 or ^3,000, and on the other ;^ 1,000 or ;^ 1,500. What is true of expenses at Harvard applies mutatis mutandis, and without the mutattda being considerable, to Yale and other large city colleges. The most of the necessary expenses, however, are less at Yale than at Harvard. The extremes of room-rent are $2^ and $140, and tuition is 1^140. The poor student can, therefore, pass a year at Yale for from EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID, 29 $50 to ^100 less than at Harvard. To the wealthy student, moreover, New Haven does not present as favorable opportunities for spending money in attend- ing places of amusement as Boston ; but the societies at Yale are more expensive than the Harvard societies. To the wealthy student, therefore, and the student of average means, the expenses of four years at Yale do not differ essentially from the expenses of four years at Harvard. But if these large colleges have been charged, as they have been, with being the " colleges of rich men's sons," their aid given to indigent students is very generous. Yale has some thirty-two scholarships, yielding annually sums varying from $46 to §120, with an average of §60. The basis of their bestowal is — first, the poverty, and, secondly, the scholarship of the recipient. She also distributes, as do many col- leges, a considerajDle amount among her students who intend to be ministers. She annually devotes not less than $15,000 to the aid of this class, and of other needy students. Harvard has one hundred and eighteen scholarships, whose annual incomes vary from $40 to S3 50 ; their total annual income is about $28,000, and, therefore, the average income of each scholarship does not vary far from $235. The basis of their assignment is — first, scholarship, and secondly, character and poverty. A rich stu- dent, whose rank is high, does not care to receive 30 AMERICAN COLLEGES. one ; and a poor student, whose rank is low, cannot Twenty-nine scholarships are thus annually distrib- uted among the high-ranking, indigent students of each class. The highest scholars receive the largest scholarships, and the smallest scholarship is usually received by one who holds the fiftieth place in a class of a hundred and fifty. Besides scholarships, she annually either gives or lends to indigent students ^3j500. She is also so strongly buttressed by her Thayers, Lowells, and other wealthy friends, that she ventures to say in her annual catalogue that " good scholars of high character, but slender means, are seldom or never obliged to leave college for want of money." It is a well-known fact that the expenses of students at country colleges are lighter than at city colleges. The reasons of the fact are the familiar reasons that indicate that a family can live more cheaply in the country than in the city. Not only are the neces- saries of board, rent, clothing, fuel, and tuition cheaper, but also the temptations to spend money in concerts, theatres, suppers, and in every species of pleasant ex- travagance, are fewer. These et ceterUy which form so large an item in the annual budget of a Harvard or Yale man, are trifles in the cash-account of an Am herst or Dartmouth student. A poor student at Am- herst — which may be regarded as the type of large EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. 31 country, as Harvard is of large city, colleges — spends annually about ^350, and the rich student about $ 1 ,000. Tuition is the same for both, — $ 1 00 ; but the poor student probably has a room whose rent, with a chum, is only $iZ\ and the rich student, one whose rent, without a chum, is ^125. The poor student boards in a club at ;^3 a week ; and the rich, in a fam- ily at %6. The former limits his expenses for books to the cost of his necessary text-books, — ^15; the latter, if he be a man of taste, expends in this way j^ioo. $\% buys the coal and lights of the one, $10 those of the other. The one expends in society taxes and subscriptions ^15 ; the other, ten times that sum. The poor student probably spends nothing for either horses, concerts, theatres or suppers ; the rich, ^150. The annual expenses, therefore, of a student of the most rigorous economy at Amherst, or at colleges of the same character, are about $1^0, being from $^0 to ^100 less than at Yale, and from ^100 to ;^ 150 less than at Harvard ; and the expenses of a rich Amherst student, varying from ;^ 800 to ^1000 or ^i 100, are from 1^500 to $2,QQO less than those of a wealthy Yale or Harvard man. The man of average means — the most frequent type of the college student — spends ;^500 at Amherst, and at Yale or Harvard, ;^8c)0. If the expenses of their students are less, so also the pecuniary aid given by Amherst and like colleges 32 AMERICAN COLLEGES. is, in all cases, less than that given by Harvard, and, in many cases, less than that given by Yale. Am- herst and Dartmouth are exceptionally generous. The former has sixty-three scholarships, with an aver- age annual income of $86 ; and the latter, one hun- dred, of S70 each. - Amherst, like Yale, distributes the income of $75,000 among students who are can- didates for the ministry. In all colleges, besides the aid derived from scholarships and beneficiary funds, students assist themselves by manual labor, teaching, and tutoring. Manual labor offers the inducement of exercise as well as of money, and at Cornell and western colleges, considerable of it is done. Teaching was more in vogue seventy-five years ago than at present. A few Bowdoin and Dartmouth students still spend their winters in those " ruby founts of knowledge," — coun- try school-houses, — but the practice is .discouraged by all college faculties. In Yale, and especially in Har- vard, a good deal of tutoring, or coaching, is done ; and, at $2 an hour, it is^the most remunerative kind of work. A recent graduate of Harvard carried himself and his brother through college with money earned in this way. Many interesting and striking comparisons between the character of an education obtained at our different colleges, and its cost, are suggested by the annexed EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. 33 tables. It is as true in regard to education as in re- gard to commodities, that what costs most is best. Expenses at Yale and Harvard, which are by many con sidered the best, as they are the largest of our colleges, are by far the highest. The large country colleges in the east, as Princeton, Dartmouth, Amherst, follow Harvard and Yale in respect to expenses ; and are, in turn, followed by small country colleges, as Hamilton. Expenses at large western colleges, as Michigan and North-western Universities, are about the same as at small country colleges in the east. Small western colleges, represented by Beloit and Illinois, graduate their students at the least expense. The Yale or Harvard student of average means, spends nearly twice what the economical student of the college spends, and one-half or one-third of what the wealthy student spends. The expenses of the average Amherst or Dartmouth man are nearly double those of his poor, and one-half those of his rich, brother ; and the same proportional expenditure obtains at Michigan and North-western Universities. The same ratio holds good at small western colleges also. The economical student is graduated at Beloit, for ^800 ; at Dart- mouth, for ^i,2CX) ; at Harvard, for ^1,800 ; the student of average means for, respectively, ^1,200, ^2,cxx), and and $l,2QQ ; the wealthy student for ^2,000, ;^3,6oo, and any amount from ^6,000 to ^12,000. The ex- 34 AMERICAN COLLEGES. penses of the poor student at Harvard are almost equal to those of the rich student at Beloit, or to those of the average student at Dartmouth ; and the ex- penses of the average Harvard student are as high as those of the rich Dartmouth student. What one wealthy man at Yale or Harvard spends would educate from ten to twenty poor men at Beloit or Illinois, or from six to twelve poor men at Dartmouth. The pecuniary aid given by colleges varies in amount as much as the expenses. As a rule, subject, however, to variations, those colleges whose students spend the most, offer the most aid, as Harvard ; and those whose students spend the least, offer the least aid, as most western colleges. The basis of the be- stowal of aid is generally threefold, — scholarship, need, and character. Many colleges, however, offer special pecuniary privileges to students who intend to be ministers. Expenses at Vassar, the only college exclusively for women given in the following table, are about the same as expenses at large country colleges in the east. The economical Vassar woman spends, however, more than her economical brother at Cornell or Union ; but, if she is wealthy or of average means, her expenses are probably less than those of her brother of the same pecuniary ability. The distinctions of wealth are not so marked at Vassar as at most colleges for men, and EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. 35 there are fewer temptations for spending money. The students at Wellesley and at Smith college are, as a class, less wealthy than the Vassar students, and their expenses are correspondingly lighter ; at the former institution the annual charge for room, board, and tuition is only $250, and at the latter ;^350. It may be added that expenses at Oxford and Cam- bridge do not essentially differ from expenses at Har- vard and Yale. An Oxford student who spends ^750 is called economical, and one who spends double this sum is not charged with extravagance. But all " reading " (hard-working) meA at these English uni- versities can obtain more aid than students at Amer- ican colleges. Scholarships average from ^200 to ;^50o, and fellowships from ;^ 1,000 to ^2,000. In the German universities, nearly every item of expense is cheaper than in either the best American colleges or the English universities. The aid given to indigent students is also less ; the principal part of which is the privilege to attend the lectures on credit, payment being postponed till the beneficiary has entered either the public service, or one of the learned professions. The first set of columns in the following table gives the extreme and the average price of the annual rent of rooms in twenty-five American colleges ; the second, the extreme and the average price of board ; the third, the tuition ; and the fourth gives the ex* 36 AMERICAN COLLEGES. treme and average amounts of the total annual ex- penses : College. Room-rent Annual. Board, Weekly. Amherst $18 — 125 — 45 $3.00—6.00—4.00 Beloit 10 — 20— 15 1.50—3.50 — 2.50 Boston University 60—120— 80 3.00—8.00—4.00 Bowdoin 90 — 25 2.75 — 4.00 — 3.00 Brown 20—155—50 3.00—5.00 — 3.75 Un. of California 30 — 100 — 50 4.00 — 9.00 — 5.00 Columbia 300 — 450* Cornell, about 45 2.50 — 6.00 — 4 co Dartmouth 20 — 50 — 30 2.50 — 4.00 Hamilton 6 — 36— 20 3.00—5.00—4.00 Harvard 22 — 300 — 125 4.00 — 8.00 — 6.00 Haverford (Friends') 4.50 Illinois '. 14 — 50 — 28 2.50 — 4.0c — 3.50 Michigan Un 3°~~ 80 — 40 1.50 — 5.00—3.00 North-western Un 10 — 50 — 20 1.80 — 6.00 — 2.50 Oberlin 9 — 36 1 .75 — 4.00 — 3.00 Princeton 27— 86 — 50 3.25—7.00—5.00 Trinity 40 — 100 — 54 3.00 — 6.00 — 5.00 Tufts 15 — 100 — 50 3.50 Union i2ot 3.00 — 5.00 Un. of Virginia 15 — 30 2.25 — 4.50 — 3.00 Wesleyan Un 12 — 36 — 24 2.75 — 5.00 — 3.50 Williams 15 — 60 — 30 3.00 — 6.00—4.00 Yale 25 — 140 — 50 4.00 — 8.00 — 6.00 Vassar Room and Board, S300 . 11 .t; c 3 c $100 36 100 75 100 Total Ex- penses, Annual. 200 75 9.3 150 $350—1 200 — 300—1 300— 35°— !• 250 — I 600 — 3 300 — I 300— 350— 450—3 45 9 120 90 75 75 90 140 100 200 — 17s— 250— 250 — 350—1 300 — I 350—1 300— 300 — 300—^1 300—1 400—3 500 — I ,000 — 500 500—300 ,000 — 500 800 — 500 000 500 ,200 — 500 ,000 — 800 100 — 500 900—500 800—450 ,000 — 800 425 500 — 300 700 — 370 600—350 750—350 ,2CO — 600 i000 — 500 ,000—550 800 — 500 900 — 500 ,000 — 5C0 |000 — 500 ,000 — 800 ,000 — 600 * Board and room. t Room-rent and tuition. The most important induction which this table affords is, that at thelargemajority of our colleges an annual expenditure of $500 is sufficient to allow the EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. 37 Student to avail himself of the full advantages of the education which they afford. At Columbia, Yale, Harvard, ^700 or $Zqo are required ; but at Princeton, Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth, and the large majority of the best eastern colleges $500 supports the student with comfort and respectability. At the best of the western colleges ^300 or ;^350 is equivalent to $500, as expended in the best of the Eastern, with per- haps the exception of Harvard and Yale. The pecuniary aid that is given to students in many of the colleges is considerable, and its amount, except- ing the present financial depression, increases each year. In the case of a few of the following colleges, several of their scholarships are not at present avail- able, as at Harvard and Amherst ; but in the case of others, the amount of the pecuniary aid is slightly larger than is indicated. For this amount annually varies with the liberality of the friends of the college and with the income of the college funds. AMOUNT OF AID FOR STUDENTS. Amherst. — 63 scholarships of $86 ; income of $80,000 to candidates for ministry. Beloit. — Tuition free to candidates for ministry, and to a few others ; several scholarships. Boston University. — 65 scholarships of $100. 38 AMERICAN COLLEGES, Bowdoin. — 27 scholarships, average ^60; also, a bene- ficiary fund of ^550. Brown. — 100 scholarships average ;^8o; income of ;^8,ooo ; and deduction on tuition fee. University of California. — No aid, but tuition is free to State students. Columbia. — 40 scholarships, and tuition free to needy students. Cornell. — 128 scholarships, and opportunities for self support. Dartmouth. — 100 scholarships average $70. Hamilton. — 27 scholarships average $80 ; also, $3,000. Harvard. — 1 18 scholarships average $235; also, $4,500. Haverford (Friends'). — "Several" scholarships of $225. Illinois. — 7 scholarships of $36. Michigan University has neither scholarships nor beneficiary funds. North-western. — Small amounts loaned to candidates for ministry. Oberlin. — 102 scholarships each usually equal to the tuition ; income of $7,000. Princeton.—" Limited " number scholarships of $75 ; to candidates for Presbyterian ministry, $30. Trinity. — Scholarships amounting to about $4,000. Tufts. — 27 scholarships average $75 ; tuition free to ten students ; also, gratuities. EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. 39 Union. — Numerous scholarships averaging ^loo. University of Virginia. — Tuition free to candidates for ministry and to very needy students. Wesleyan University. — A " limited " number of scholarships of $75. 41 scholarships of about $1 50. Williams. — $9,000 is divided among needy students. Yale. — 32 scholarships of 860; $15,000, for candi- dates for ministry especially. Vassar. — Income of at least $100,000; 4 scholar- ships. 40 AMERICAN COLLEGES. CHAPTER III. MORALS. As the custom of drinking intoxicating liquors is less prevalent in the community to-day than a century or a half century ago, so among college men the popu- larity of tippling habits has steadily decreased in the course of the last hundred years. During the eighteenth century, at Yale College, the evils of in- temperance were a constant source of anxiety to its officers, and numerous were the resolves of its Cor- poration intended to effect their decrease. In 1737 the Corporation observed that on " Commencement oc- casions there is a great expense in spirituous distilled liquors in college which is justly offensive," and adopted measures to lessen the consumption of the costly- beverages. Nine years later it passed a law, whose prohibitory character may have nursed a col- lege rebellion, that " the Butler shall not keep or sell in MORALS. 41 the Buttery more than twelve barrells of strong beer in one year." The members of the graduating class at the Commencement season, however, were allowed exceptional privileges. Each was permitted to buy '' one quart of wine and one pint of rum," though it is expressly stated he can have no other " kind of strong drink " in his " chamber." * At the same period of 1760 and 1761, a similar laxity of college law and sentiment prevailed at Harvard regarding the use of liquor. At Bowdoin, too, at the beginning of the present century " in each college room there was a sideboard sparkling with wines and stronger stimulants." And on Commencement days its gradu- ates, as those of other colleges, entertained their friends with " rum, gin, brandy, wine," etc.f But the college-drinking cus'toms of fifty and a hundred years ago are now thoroughly changed. Yale College no longer buys each year " twelve barrels of strong beer " for the use of its students. The Harvard student entertains his friends with punch only in the face of impending suspension. And the Bow- doin man, like all the dwellers in the Maine-law State, is compelled to buy his brandy at the " town * Professor Fisher's Centennial Discourse on the History of the Church of Christ in Yale College. Appendix. t Prof. E. C. Smyth's Three Discourses upon the Religious History of Bowdoin College, p. 8, and Appendix. 42 AMERICA COLLEGES, agency," and under this limitation can secure it only for medicinal purposes. A similar elevation of custom and sentiment regarding intemperance has. taken place in all the older colleges, as it has in the general community. The number of the students in New England col- leges who are addicted to the use of intoxicating liquors to a greater or less degree varies, it is esti- mated from carefully prepared statistics, from about one-eighth to about three-fifths. It is usually acknowl- edged that intemperance is more prevalent at large than at small colleges ; and that among eastern col- leges as small a proportion of Amherst and Williams men are addicted to drink as at any New England college. At certain western colleges, however, a case of drunkenness is seldom known to occur. This is true with regard to Oberlin, one of whose rules is, as it is also the rule of other colleges both east and west, summarily to expel the student guilty of intox- ication. At the University of Michigan, with five hundred students in the college, and double this num- ber in the university, " cases of drunkenness," one of its professors writes me, " are exceedingly rare." College opinion regarding the immorality of in- temperance varies to as great a degree as the propor- tion of men in different institutions who are addicted to the habit. In most country colleges of the east, MORALS. 43 where the temptations to indulgence are the fewest, intemperance is reprobated as a vice and a crime. In- flammation of the eyes, except as occasioned by the midnight study of Greek, is regarded as a " scarlet letter " of disgrace. The intemperate student is not only shunned by his classmates, but if, " while the fit is on him," he chance to reel before a professor's eyes, he is at once compelled to drink the hemlock of summary dismission. In western colleges the case is similar. Though among western students mere drinking is not so harshly frowned upon as in some of the Puritan colleges of the east, yet drunkenness is as severely anathematized in the University of Wiscon- sin as in the University of Vermont. But among the students of our largest and in many respects best col- leges of the east, there is a tendency, which exists in spite of all the efforts of the governing boards to crush it out, to look upon drunkenness as a rather necessary escapade of hot-blooded youth. It is seldom that in these colleges indulgences in liquor costs the tippler the loss of either a friend or an acquaintance. The college officers, however, are inclined to deal severely with him, and either the disgrace of a repri- mand or a temporary suspension is the penalty he usually pays for his offense. In regard to that vice from which the college, as well as the community, suffers irreparable injury, it is 44 AMERICAN COLLEGES. impossible to write with a high degree of definiteness. It is very gratifying to say that a much smaller pro- portion of college men are addicted to it than to drunkenness ; but it is very humiliating to be obliged to confess that, as far as can be judged, its prevalence has vastly increased within the last score of years. A condemnation, on the part of the students, is meted out against the former vice similar to that which is felt regarding intemperance, but as a rule far more severe and more just. College faculties, also, mani- fest much greater rigor in dealing with it than with drunkenness. The causes of the difference in the moral condi- tion of the students of most large colleges, the -majority of which are located in or near cities, and that of the students of small colleges situated in the country, are numerous and diverse. They are found to exist i)Oth in the pre-college training of the students, and in the character and surroundings of the colleges. The chief consideration relating to the pre-college influence of the students at large city colleges, is the fact that the vast majority of them were brought up and reside in cities. About one-half of the Harvard men, for example, reside in Boston (within a radius of eight miles of Beacon Hill), New York city and Brooklyn. The homes of a large part of the other half are in cities of the size of Cleveland or Worcester, MORALS. 45 Only a small proportion of the whole number, there- fore, reside in country towns. Nearly one-half of the Yale students, also, live in cities of at least fifty thousand population ; and one-fifth have homes in New York city and Brooklyn. But in country col- leges the large majority of the students were born, bred, and live " sub tegmine fagi " — under the vine and fig-tree. Three-fifths of the Bowdoin men reside in the country towns of Maine. Williams seldom has more than three or four Boston or New York men in a class. Illinois college, according to a recent cata- logue, has not a single student from Chicago. At Michigan University, three-fifths of the students re- side in the State, and the State contains only one large city. Dartmouth, Amherst, Middlebury, Be- loit, in fact all country colleges, draw the majority of their students from the country. The fact that so large a proportion of the students at certain of our colleges are city-bred, affects the question of their morality in various ways. Not a few of these students are immoral on their entering col- lege. The pre-college influences, outside of their own homes, have for many of them been excellent prepar- atory schools for Sophomoric dissipation. Even the home influences, in not a few cases, have failed to out- weigh the evil attractions of the gambling table and its accessories. At one of our large colleges, it is esti- 46 AMERICAN COLLEGES. mated that six-sevenths of the immoral men reside in cities of at least twenty-five thousand inhabitants. But it is seldom, though sometimes the case, that a student from the country, when he enters a country college, is immoral. The vicious class in the country towns is not the student class. Not only the purity of the student's home but the associations of his coun- try life have been elevating. Vice in its various forms is to his eyes " a painted ship on a painted ocean." The Freshman, therefore, at large city colleges, is usually more disposed to dissoluteness than his brother at small country colleges. The students at large colleges in the city are wealthier. As the city is wealthier than the country, so the average student at large city colleges receives a larger income than the average student at the coun- try college. It is needless to say that money is not only the sine qua non to indulgence in Sophomoric peccadillos, but it is also the immediate occasion of dissipation. A wealthy student with an annual allow- ance of ^2,000 is an excellent Faust for some Mephis- topheles. But a poor student, stinted to ^300 annu- ally, cannot " afford " to be immoral. " Gold were as good as twenty orators, And will, no doubt, tempt him to anything." There are, it must be acknowledged, vices that are as cheap as dirt, and that can be enjoyed in the coun- MORALS, 47 tiy, as well as in the city, college for the merest pit- tance. But, as a rule, cheap vices are not attractive to the college man of dissolute proclivities ; and, there- fore, the poor student is not so subject to their temp- tations as is his wealthy classmate. Our large colleges are, moreover, from the fact that they are large, subject to vices from which the small colleges are inherently free. In classes of one hundred and fifty or of two hundred men, immoral- ities do not stand forth in so bold relief as in classes of twenty or fifty. A single black sheep in a flock of twenty is a more prominent object than are ten in a flock of two hundred. The notoriety, therefore, sure to follow his dissipation, may debar a student at a small college from vice ; but its comparative absence in a large college may urge the student into dissolute habits. In a large college, once more, the esprit de corps is strong. The immoral men are sufficiently numerous to form a ring for mutual " aid and comfort," and they buckle themselves to each other by common habits and purposes. But the two or three men of evil pro- pensities in a small class feel nothing of that assur- ance which numbers give. In their loneliness they are more inclined to find cheer in their Plato than in drinking 'from the flowing bowl of punch. The situation of colleges in and near large cities 48 AMERICAN COLLEGES. presents numerous opportunities for vicious indul- gences. If Yale were located at Williamstown, Harvard at Hanover, Columbia at Ithaca, the moral character of their students would be elevated in as great a de- gree as the natural scenery of their localities would be increased in beauty. Small towns like Brunswick, Hanover, Williamstown, Amherst and Ann Arbor, offer few opportunities for either the formation or in- dulgence of evil habits. But a consideration of far greater importance than either the moral condition of our colleges or the causes that influence college men into dissolute courses is the methods by which this moral condition may be elevated and purified. All the various means which tend to promote moral reformations in the community tend thereby to produce corresponding results among college students. There are, however, certain methods whose observance would especially tend to root out college immoralities. Most of the methods which I venture to suggest are followed to a greater or less extent in the large majority of the colleges, but a stricter enforcement of certain of them could not, in any college, fail to be of the highest service both to the college and the community. First, The inquiry regarding the morals of those applying for admission should be more critical. It is a requirement at most, if not all, colleges that the ap- MORALS. 49 plicant present a certificate, signed by his teacher or some other " responsible person," of his " good moral character." But this certificate, for the purpose for which it is designed, may not be worth the paper on which it is written ; for of its signers the college often knows nothing. A student, therefore, of the most depraved tendencies has no difficulty in making his character appear to his college examiners as white as he chooses. I know a case in which a graduate of one of the Phillips academies, of most dissolute habits, presented himself for admission at a New England college with a certificate signed by a classmate whose character probably was hardly superior to his own. To insure, therefore, the certainty of excluding im- moral men, the college should require that the certifi- cate of. the applicant be signed only by those of whose right to sign it is, either directly or in- directly, cognizant. At the same time also, many of the preparatory schools and individuals, as pri- vate tutors and clergymen, should exercise much greater strictness in their bestowal of certificates of moral character. The college and the school can thus work together in elevating the moral tone of their students. Second. The college officers should exercise more strict supervision over students of evil tendencies. A college officer should not only have a room in each 4 50 AMERICAN COLLEGES. college dormitory, as is now the custom, but he should be especially alert for detecting any disorderly prac- tices committed by the men under his care. Third. Whenever what is judged to be sufficient evidence is offered that a student is guilty of heinous offences, he should be summarily expelled. By re- maining in college he usually takes to himself seven others worse than himself, and his last end, including that of his companions, is worse than his first. The summary expulsion of half a dozen men from cer- tain of our colleges for habitual tippling and other vices, would to a large degree wipe out these evils. Fourth. Students should be, as any citizen, amen- able to the civil law. From this law in petty offences custom makes them substantially free. It is only a short time since that a police officer in a college town endeavored to obtain entrance to a room in which he knew disorderly practices were being committed. Defied by the students, he was obliged to appeal to a college professor. The students at one of our colleges flatter themselves with the pleasant fiction that a police officer has no right to venture on to the college campus to arrest a law-breaking student. There is no reason why the municipal law should not touch the disorderly collegian as well as any disorderly citizen. The proper relation of the college student to the government of the city in which he abides is well MORALS. 51 stated in the position assumed by the University of Michigan. This University holds, that its " students are temporary residents of the city, and, like all other residents, are amenable to the laws. Whenever guilty of disorder or crime, they are liable to arrest, fine, and imprisonment, and can claim no peculiar exemp- tion from public disgrace and legal penalties." Fifth. The moral condition of most colleges would be greatly elevated by more intimate association of the professors and the students. The intimacy of this association is far more easily gained in a small than a large college. But the moral influences with which every college, large as well as small, desires to surround her men, would be vastly augmented by means of the personal association of instructors and students. The precise methods that may be adopted for accomplishing this purpose differ in different in- stitutions, but some method should and can be em- ployed in every college by which the professor can directly influence the moral as well as the intellectual character of his students. Sixth. It should hardly be necessary to suggest that the moral character of college officers ought to be worthy of the highest respect of the men under their charge. But in certain of our colleges, students are willing to acknowledge that the moral character of some of their professors neither commands 52 AMERICAN COLLEGES. nor deserves their esteem. A college whose professors are known, with a reasonable degree of certainty, to be immoral cannot demand moral purity of its Fresh- man. The upright character of the professor is the first condition for demanding upright character in the student. Seventh. The seventh and last method that I beg to suggest for promoting the morality of college life is the refusal of his degree to any student of thoroughly dissipated habits. If it is true, as is currently reported, that Harvard, at her Conimencement in 1877, refused to bestow degrees upon certain men on the ground of their notorious dissoluteness, the example may be fol- lowed with profit by other colleges. The liability to lose that bit of parchment, for gaining which he is spending four years, acts as a fitting restraint upon the immoral inclinations of any undergraduate. There are, however, not a few considerations in regard to the moral welfare of our colleges which lighten up this picture that may appear in certain points lamentably dark. The age of the men on entering college is now, and has been during the century, steadily increasing. With age comes that self-control and that conscious- ness of responsibility which are the best barriers to dissoluteness. At Harvard the average age of admis- sion is now about eighteen and a half years, and during MORALS. 53 the last score of years the average has risen six months. (President EUot's Report for 1874-75). To the increased maturity of the undergraduates may be attributed in part the disfavor with which hazing is coming to be regarded by students. In several colleges this puerile and inhuman custom is obsolete, and in most obsolescent. There was probably, moreover, never a time in the history of American colleges when their standard of scholarship was so high as it is at present. Students are now obliged to work with that carefulness and thoroughness which tend to wean them from dissolute courses. In many colleges they can find no time to be immoral ; but in other colleges an increase of the amount of the work would be of use in restraining from vicious indulgences. The moral condition of American colleges is, so far as the writer's knowledge extends, far superior to the condition of the English University of Cambridge, and, judged by Cambridge, of Oxford, also. In his " Five Years in an English University," Mr. Bristed says (Revised Edition of 1874, pp. 413, 414) : "The reading [hard-working] men are obliged to be toler- ably temperate, but among the rowing men there is a great deal of absolute drunkenness at dinner and sup- per parties. . . . The American graduate is ut- terly confounded at the amount of open profligacy 54 AMERICAN COLLEGES. going on all around him at an English university ; a profligacy not confined to the rowing set, but includ- ing many of the reading men and not altogether spar- ing those in authority." Into a condition of such moral depravity American colleges have never fallen ; and there is no valid reason to believe they ever will fall into it. RELIGION. 55 CHAPTER IV. RELIGION. Religion was the corner-stone in the foundation of our older colleges. Harvard, founded in 1636, sprang from the " dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches/' and bears the name of a Congregational clergyman. Its welfare was the frequent topic of sermons, and the constant burden of the prayers of the early colonists. Yale, founded at the close of the seventeenth century, was designed to inculcate a more orthodox Christianity than Harvard was supposed to represent, and to educate a ministry for the New Haven colony. Princeton, established in 1746, was intended to supply " the church with learned and able ministers of the Word." Dartmouth was founded in 1769 on the fundamental principles of the Christian religion. Bowdoin was dedicated in its first years to the Church of Christ. And Amherst was planted in 1825 for 56 AMERICAN COLLEGES. the sake, primarily, of training men for the foreign mis- sionary work. Indeed the strong rehgious character of nearly all the older colleges at their foundation is indi- cated by President Witherspoon, of Princeton, in saying, " Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the Cross of Christ ; cursed be all that learning that is not coincident with the Cross of Christ ; cursed be all that learning that is not subservient to the Cross of Christ." But not only in the purposes of the establishment of the early colleges was the religious element mani- fest, but also in their government and instruction. At Harvard, many of the early "laws, liberties and orders " related to the Christian duties of the students : " Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eter- nal life." " Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures twice a day that they be ready to give an account of their proficiency therein, both in theoretical observations of language and logic, and in practical and spiritual truths." " They shall eschew all profanation of God' s holy name, attributes, word, ordinances, and times of worship ; and study with reverence and love, carefully to retain God and his truth in their minds." These and similar rules relating to religious and moral conduct, formed the large body of the laws to which the first students at Harvard RELIGION, 57 were subject. They were not, moreover, dissimilar to the first laws of many of the oldest colleges. The course of instruction, also, was thoroughly imbued with the religious element. The Hebrew language was studied in common with the Latin and the Greek ; and the Old Testatment and the New, in the original, formed one of the principle books of linguistic study. " To read the original of the Old and the New Testament into the Latin tongue," was the chief condition to receiving Harvard's first degree. A portion, also, of the undergraduates were required to repeat in public, ser- mons, memoriter^ whenever requested by the proper authority. But this marked religious bias in college government and instruction has now passed away. The under - graduate is still required, in most colleges, to atten3 ^h^^^r h twice on the Sabbath, and p ray ers daily, in the chapel, but beyond these si mple requirements th e ^olle ^e usuallv makes no religious demands upon him . TEeinstruction, too, has lost its deep religious col- oring. Hebrew is relegated to the divinity school ; and the only direct study made of the New Testament is a recitation in its Greek of a Monday morning. But the custom of devoting the first exercise of the week's work to New Testament Greek is obsolescent. • Its chief purpose is to prevent the student from studying on the Sabbath unsabbatarian subjects, but as its in- 58 AMERICAN COLLEGES, fluence in this respect is inconsiderable, the custom is slowly passing away. A study of the evidences of Christianity and allied topics is also made in many colleges, but it is brief and cursory ; and the enlarging field of human knowledge renders it expedient, in the judgment of many college officers, to consign the Christian evidences and similar subjects of study to the theological seminary. The A merican college has, the refore, ceased to be in i ts or^amzafmn, o- overnment, a nd instruction a distinctively religious institution. ^ Yet in the establishment and organization oi many of the western colleges, the religious idea is still very prominent. Not a few of the colleges in Ohio, Illi- nois, Iowa and adjoining States are outgrowths of home missionary movements, and are primarily de- signed for the training of a Christian ministry. The first educated men that, as a class, entered the North- west territory and the territories bord^iring the western bank of the Mississippi, were the home missionaries. Their aim was to permeate the new West with Chris- tian influences; and among the earliest and most effective means they employed, was the establishment of colleges. These colleges were, therefore. Christian in their origin, purpose and operation. Iowa College' was founded in 1847, by the famous "Iowa" or "Andover Band" (a dozen graduates of Andover Theological Seminary, who entered Iowa in 1846), and RELIGION. 59 rfias been, and still is, one of the chief instruments in (j:he evangelization of that great State. Western R e- serve Coll ege sprang from the desire of the honi g rm>- sionaries of a s chool for educating minist ers. Illinois College wasTounded by the Home Missionary Asso- ciation. The first years of Oberlin College were thoroughly pervaded with Christian influences ; and the spirit that ruled its founders is indicated in the in- scription on a banner that waved from a flagstaff in the little village — " Holiness unto the Lord." Many, therefore, of the recently established colleges of the west are pre-eminently Christian in their foundation and purposes. — Indeed, in the case of the vast majority of our three hundred colleges, the religious element, though of little weight in the legal organization and scholastic working of the college, has a most impor- tant influence in the daily life and on th e character of \ the students^ / The professors and instructors are, as a rule. Christians. Though it is seldom that a religious test is made a cohdition to holding a post of instruc- tion, yet, as a matter of fact, the large majority of the members of college facult ies are communicant s in the church^Amherst exacts no religious creed of heT instructors, yet, it is the testimony of President Seelye that, "we should no more think of appointing to a post , of instruction here an irreligious, than we should an / M 60 AMERICAN COLLEGES. immoral, man, or one ignorant of the topic he would haveto teach." In Princeton, also, no religious test lis required, but Dr. McCosh writes that, ** most of lour instructors are Presbyterians, but we commonly Lbave members of other religious denominations." In Brown University the case is similar ; though de- manding no religious pledge, " it WQuld-4Qu btless de- A .-<;line."- says President Rob inson, " to take _an atheist /^ V o r a prof essed^ eptic .asj^^ri ofegsor r Oberlin Col- lege, also, has " no confession of faith prescribed by jcustom for the instructors in any department of the /college," writes its president, " but it is customary, and / has been from the foundation of the school, to ap- / point as instructors such only as give evidence of I Christian character, as this term is commonly under- v^tonH^^^prnong "pyyangphVal b<^hf v^^^*^ " Though the Itate University of Michigan, too, demancTs no religs lous conditions of its professors, yet " as a matter o f [agr,^' sa^^ s President Angell, " the gre at majority of ^r instructors have always been communicants in ^churc^s." At Yale and Harvard, also, a large num- I'ber of the professors are recognized as Christians. Though, therefore, the large majority of the colleges require no religious confession of their professors, the great body of their professors are believers in the ^religion of Christ. The American college, as now con- ducted, is devoted to the promotion of knowledge and RELIGION. 6 1 intellectual discipline ; but the Christian character of its pro fessors renders its influence Ch ristiriri in thft.' highest degree. The American college is Christian m the same way in which the American government can be said to believe in the existence of a God. Though the existence of a Supreme Ruler is unac- knowledged in constitution or statute, yet it is con- stantly recognized in the carrying on of all the de- partments of the Stale Into the life of the students, also, religion is thoroughly ingrained. About one-half of the thirty-*^ one thousand men and women who are now pur suing / regular college courses are professed Christians^ The proportion of those who are, to those who are no t, professed Chri stians varies with colle ges. The low - e st extreme is probably (in general terms) one to four , . a s at Harvard, and the highest nine to ten, as at Ober- ) Jin : at Dartmouth and Bowdoin, one from every three I students is a Christian ; at Yale, two from every five \j at Michigan University and ^ffie stern Reserve, on e ^ from every two ; at Pr inreton. Rrown TTniVer<^ify, Ri- ppn, an d lVl arietta, three from every five ; at Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, Wesleyan University, Iowa, and Berea, four from every five. About fifteen thou- sand, therefore, of the thirty-one thousand college stu- dents in the country may be regarded as Christians. The increase in the proportion of Christian col- 62 AMERICAN COLLEGES. Hi\ le gians with in the la st twenty-five years is most gratifying. In 1853 only one man in every ten at Harvard College was a professor of religion ; at Brown, one in every five ; at Yale, Dartmouth and Bowdoin, one in every four ; at Williams, one from two ; and at Amherst, five in every eight. At Mid- dlebury the ratio was as it is now, four from every five students being Christians. (Tyler's Prayer for Colleges, p. 136.) In these seven representative col- • leges, selected at random, t jie proportion of Christian students has increased in a most remarkable degree in the last quarter of a century. But the advance, as compared with the religious condition of the colleges in the first years of the century, is still more marked. At that time the flood of French infidelity was sweep- ing over the land, and the effects it wrought in the col- leges were most disastrous. At Harvard and Yale the number of Christian students was probably fewer than at any other period in their history. " In the first classes " at Bowdoin College, founded in 1802, writes Professor Smyth,* " I can learn of but one who may have been deemed, at the time of admission, hopefully pious." At Williams there was, near the same period, ** but one in the Freshman class, who be- longed to any church ; none in the higher classes." \ * Religious History of Bowdoin College, p. 7. \ History of Williams College, p. iii. RELIGION. 63 But within the course of two generations, so thorough have been the religious changes, that it is safe to say at the present time at least one-half of American col- lege students are Christian men and women. The religious life of college men is manifested in various methods of Christian endeavor. In many colleges, as at Dartmouth, Iowa, are societies which bear the same relation to the . Christian students as literary societies bear to literary students. These so- cieties hold weekly or fortnightly meetings, with a programme composed of orations, debates, and essays upon religious topics ; and they are also the spring whence flow the religious activities of the college. Their members frequently organize mission Sunday schools in the city or town in which the college is located, and in many colleges noble results have been thus accomplished. Three such schools are supported by the students of Olivet College, six by those of Beloit, and ten by those of Iowa. Prayer-meetings are also held each week in the college, and are con- ducted and supported by both professors and students. In many colleges, moreover, exists a church, of the denomination which the college represents, and with a membership made up principally of the college offi- cers and students. Yale, Amherst, Tufts, Dartmouth, and a large number of other colleges, have churches which are the religious home of many of their Chris- tian students. 64 AMERICAN COLLEGES. But the most important characteristic of the re- ligious life of the college is the revival. The revival is both the cause and the result of that Christian tone and color which mark the great majority of American colleges. It is of more frequent occurrence, of longer continuance, of greater pervasiveness, and of a calmer, intellectual character among college men than in any other class of the community. At Yale, Harvard, and Bro wn, revivals have of lat e years oeen infrequent^' Tut at most colleges it is seldom that a college gen- eration has passed away without first passing through a revival of religion. In nearly every year Amherst College experiences such an awakening. Its extent and intensity vary much with different years ; and in recent seasons, the winters of 1870, 1872, 1876, and 1878, are noteworthy as witnessing an unusual de- gree of spiritual interest. At Princeton, each of the • last twenty-five classes, with one or two exceptions, has in the course of the four years passed through a revival reason ; and it was only a few years since that over a hundred students were converted in a single term. Wesleyan University, Dartmouth, Williams, Hamilton, and other eastern colleges are not infre- quently subject to special revival influences, and a considerable proportion of their students become Christians during their college course. jfl the colleges for women, as Vassar, Wellgsley, RELIGION. 65 Smith, the revival spirit is also very pervasive. Al^ most three-sevenths o f the Vassnr g^^^^ritQ gr^^ C\^r\^. tians. and several become so in the four years of their Sollege.life. Wellesley College was founded express- ly in the interests of the Church of Christ, and the revival influence of its founder, though now dead, pervades the whole college. A large number of the students which Smith College, in the Connecticut valley, gathers is Christian, and all the influences of this Amherst for women are as Christian as they are scholarly. ^ "Rni- if iQ prnbaV>iy ir> fi.^ wf^^fprn rnlle^es that re- v ivals are most frequent and extensive. I n many oi them" revivals occur as regularly as the coming of the winter, and, considered as a whole, about one-half of their students become Christians during the four years of the college course. This is especially true in regard to Oberlin and Iowa College. /\t Mar^j-j-^ and Ripon, about one-th ird of the studen ts are con- ve rted in the four years ! It is very difficult, as one of itsformer students remarked, to graduate at Iowa College without becoming a Christian ; and the case 'is si milar in ma ny of the eminently Christian colleges of tffTew est. . — ^^hfiJSkpecialmeans that are employed in occasion- ingjxvivals in the^oUe^e COtnmunity are similar to t hose thatare USed m brmgmg about i'evivals iiTthe lu( \ ^ AMERICAN COLLEGES. community at large. Into eastern colleges, however, the professional revivalist is seldom called. College revivals spring far more naturally from the conditions of college life than from the condition of religious life in the general community. The though tfulness which college studies engender, and the culture which they foster, incline the attention to religious topics. The prolonged intimacy of the friendships of Christian and non-Christian students leads many into piety. ^ The Christian influence and zeal of professors and in- structors awa ken a desire in their pupils tor a nobler '^ a nd better life. The . frequent prayer-meetings, the endeavors of religiou s societies, the religious earnest- ness of Christian students, arouse and sustain inquiry u pon spintTiai question s. And the influence of the Day of Prayer for Colleges, the last Thursday in every January, a day which has been observed in some colleges for fifty years by special prayer for the conversion of college men, is most efficient in awaken- ing revivals of religioij/ In many western collegesA '^In-addition to thesem^eans, revivalists are frequently \ employed, and the results of their work are often very J extended and thorough. The frequency and the thoroughness of revivals in our colleges are indicated in the fact that Yale College, in the course of its history, has experienced no less than thirty-six, which have resulted in at least RELIGION. 67 twelve hundred conversions; Dartmouth College, nine, resulting in two hundred and fifty conversions ; and Middlebury and Amherst at least twelve each, resulting, in the case of the latter college, in three hundred and fifty conversions. (Kirk's Lectures on Revivals, p. 148.) Th e most interesting feature in the college re- vival is it s entir e freedom f rom sprt-grinn infinpnrpq Denominational interests seldom show themselves in a college revival of the religion of Christ. Indeed, this is the case in regard to the general religious as- sociations of the Christian students. Although most of our colleges are sectar ian, yet the'^^CLiAiia.ii influ- ences they possess over their students are slight. At the preiitiHl time, of three hundred and eleven colleges, four represent.*the Universalist denomination, nine the Episcopal, eleven the " Christian," fourteen the Luth- eran, fifteen the Congregational, thirty-three the Pres- byterian, thirty-seven the Baptist, thirty-seven the Roman Catholic, and forty-nine the Methodist. The remainder is shared among the smaller denomina- tions, as the Friends, or the Moravians ; but seventy- seven of the whole number are non-sectarian. (Report of Commissioner of Education for 1880, [with correc- tions.] ) But in the large majority of the two hundred and fifty colleges, which are regarded as denomina- tional, excepting, of course, the Roman Catholic, the 68 ^ AMERICAN COLLEGES. Christian life of the students is in a marked degree free from denominational influences. Students work together in the same religious society for years with- out perhaps knowing whether A or B is a Methodist, a Baptist, or a Congregationalist. The Christian sect to which they belong is of hardly more consequence in their mutual association than is the State or city in which they were born. SOCIETIES. 69 CHAPTER V. SOCIETIES. The division of college societies into open and secret organizations cannot be made with exactness. The doings of the open society are usually manifested to whomsoever cares to look at them, but ofttimes are half veiled from the students* curiosity. The methods and work of the so-called secret society are in certain cases concealed with Masonic strictness, and in others are revealed with childlike frankness. The open societies are far more numerous than the secret. They are more popular with the western than with the eastern students, but nearly every college has at least one public, open society. Har- vard has several open societies, whose membership is elected and comprises in the Sophomore year about one half of the members of a class of the average size, and in the succeeding years a somewhat smaller pro- 70 AMERICAN COLLEGES. portion. With her several secret organizations Yale, too, has at least two societies which deserve to be called open, the recently revived Linonia and the Gamma Nu of the Freshman year. Princeton, pro- hibiting secret societies, rejoices in several of the open type, three of which are in a very flourishing condition. And Cornell, Amherst, Oberlin, Iowa Col- lege, and the vast majority of our colleges are well equipped with the students* societies. The open society is usually of a literary character ; and the programme of its weekly or fortnightly meet- ing consists of orations, debates, essays and similar exercises. But natural history societies, art and musical clubs, French and German clubs, also flour- ish in a few of the colleges, as Cornell and Harvard. The degree of merit of the literary and other work of these societies is most diverse. In certain of the Harvard societies, in Yale's, Princeton's, Oberlin's, not to name others, it is high; but in those of many col- leges the performances manifest a need of clear thought and a verbiage which are as saddening as they are common. To the intellectual and literary development of the student these societies are of either great or little service, or of positive injury, according to the discre- tion with which he uses them. There can be no doubt but that the open literary societies have, in the SOCIETIES. 71 past, been of much use in the training of students. They have supplemented the curriculum. The cur- riculum has been the most defective in affording instruction in writing and speaking ; and the society, requiring a constant practice in these two arts, has, to a large extent, remedied these defects. But these defects of the past, in the college course of study, are now in a great degree wiped out. The colleges are constantly increasing the amount of the attention paid to the oratorical and literary accomplishments, and, therefore, the need of the literary society is now far less urgent than it was fifteen, or twenty-five, or fifty years ago. But even at the present time the literary society of his college offers advantages to the student which, if properly used, may prove of great value. These advantages may be summarized as consisting chiefly in the increase in his ability to think on his feet, facing an audience, in the increase in his facility of expression, in the practice in writing, in the acquaintance with parliamentary law and order which it necessitates and augments, and in the friend- ships which it fosters. But with these excellences of the open society system are linked two dangers to which the society student is peculiarly subject. The first and the more perilous is the temptation to neglect his regular col- lege work for the sake of delivering a creditable part ^2 AMERICAN COLLEGES. in his society ; and the second, but hardly less peril- ous danger, a tendency to substitute bombast and verbiage for clear and condensed thought. If the student is faithful to his regular work and presents to his fellow-members the results of only patient and painstaking thinking, his society may prove of the best service to his literary and forensic culture. But the influence and importance of the secret, are in many colleges much greater than of the open, soci- eties. The secret society system at Yale is of at least as great importance as at any other college, and the honors which it offers are to some students in every class more attractive than the honors of high scholarship. Amherst and Williams have four or five chapters each of the principal societies, and many of the social and class-political interests of the students cluster about them. In Brown University, Hamilton, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Cornell, Union, Columbia, Wes- leyan, and Michigan University, as well as in Yale, Amherst, and Williams, the system of secret societies prevails to a considerable extent; and probably in about one hundred of our colleges at least a single chapter is founded. The principal secret societies which have estab- lished chapters in different colleges are seven in num- ber, and bear the names of the Alpha Delta Phi, the Delta Kappa Epsilon, the Psi Upsilon, the Kappa SOCIETIES. 73 Alpha, the Sigma Phi, the Chi Psi, and the Delta Psi. The three first-named societies have by far the largest number of chapters, and, though there are frequently additions to the list by means of new foun- dations, and omissions in consequence of dissolutions, each of the three has about twenty-five chapters. The remaining societies have some ten chapters each, established in as many different colleges. The first chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi was founded at Ham- ilton, in 1832 ; the first of the Psi Upsilon at Union, in 1833 ; and the first chapters of the Delta Kappa Epsilon at Princeton, Bowdoin, and Colby University, in 1845. Of the other societies the large majority of the chapters have been established within the course of the present generation. The total membership of the seven organizations from their foundation aggre- gates about twenty-nine thousand names, over one half of which are enrolled under the Delta Kappa Epsilon, the Alpha Delta Phi, and the Psi Upsilon. The size of the chapters differs from year to year, and with the different colleges. It is seldom that more than thirty of the undergraduates are enrolled in a single chapter, and the number often falls as low as five or six. But besides the secret societies, with chapters in the different colleges, bearing a relation to each other similar to that which the Masonic lodges bear to one 74 AMERICAN COLLEGES, another, several colleges have societies which are distinctively their own possessions. Among the secret societies of the latter type, the " Skull and Bones " and the "Scroll and Key" of Yale, hold the most prominent place. Founded in 1832 and 1841, they have for a generation been a most influential factor in Yale life. The membership of each consists of fifteen men of the incoming Senior class, elected by the graduating members on the eve of Commencement. Among the members are usually the ablest thinkers, the highest scholars, the most popular and the repre- sentative men of the class. An election, therefore, to either society is a deeply coveted honor. About each the strictest secrecy hangs ; and what occurs within their stone, windowless, tomb-like halls is a constant riddle to the New Haven student. But from the high literary and scholarly ability of many of their members, and from the advance made by most of them in literary studies, it is not difficult to infer the general character of their weekly meetings. The influence of both associations in Yale life is very potent ; and the interest which the graduate members feel in them appears to be more warm and lasting than that respecting any other feature of the college. Unlike Yale, Harvard has no societies that can be called secret in the sense in which the " Skull and Bones " and " Scroll and Key " are secret. Although SOCIETIES. 75 chapters of the principal societies have been estab- lished among her students, none of them have at present an active existence ; and it is probable that no secret organization would be allowed to be formed in the college. The " Hasty Pudding Club " and the Pi Eta approach, however, the most closely to the secret type, although the character and the work of both are familiar to all the students. The former is a dramatic and social club ; and the latter of the same nature, tinged with a literary hue. The period of membership covers the last half of the Junior, and the first half of the Senior, year; and the number of members usually embraces about half the men of a class. Popularity and intellectual ability are the con- ditions most important in obtaining an election, al- though, ofttimes, the best scholars are members of neither association. The conditions of membership in the societies which are composed of affiliated chapters in the dif- ferent colleges are as general and as diverse as those favorable to obtaining admission to the peculiar or- ganizations of Yale and Harvard. These conditions vary in the case of the same society in the difEerent colleges, and also in the case of different societies in the same college. For admission to certain chapters wealth is the only essential ; to others only scholar- ship and intellectual abiUty ; to others literary excel- 76 AMERICAN COLLEGES. lence and eminent social qualities ; and to yet others all those indefinable qualities which make a " fine fel- low." The qualities that favor an election to a secret so- ciety indicate in general the character of the work and of the pleasures which its members cultivate. In at least one chapter in nearly every college the work is of a literary character ; and to the preparation of orations and essays the members ofttimes give more attention than to the preparation of similar exercises for the college professor of rhetoric. The literary so- ciety has proved, with not a few graduates, to be an admirable training school for the editorial desk, the bar, the pulpit, and the platform. Another society is specially devoted to the discussion of political ques- tions, which it does with quite as much sagacity and with far more decorum than the usual session of the House of Representatives. But the most common type of the secret society is the social, and, indeed, whatever may be the phase specially represented by the society, the social invariably receives a consider- able degree of emphasis. The social bias of the club is indicated in cards, games of various sorts, con- versation upon topics both high and low, and in the weekly or monthly dinner spread in the rooms. In the social society the warmest and the most lasting friendships of college life are formed, and, in the SOCIETIES, 77 judgment of many graduates, the fostering of intimate friendship is the most valuable of all the results which secret societies effect. Regarding the expenses of membership, only the initiated have accurate knowledge, and they are not permitted to exhibit their financial budgets. Yet cer- tain general conclusions are evident. The initiation fee seldom exceeds thirty dollars, and is frequently much less ; and the annual tax varies with the actual expenses. If a society is composed of a few wealthy men, this tax may amount to a hundred dollars, but in other cases it does not exceed twenty. If the mciTi- bership comprises both the poor and the rich student, the rich often relieves his brother of all financial bur- dens. The poor is seldom or never compelled to pay beyond his means ; the rich is usually glad to give of his abundance. The expenses of the buildings, which the society either owns or occupies, is often very great. The marble building of the " Scroll and Key," at New Haven, cost about fifty thousand dollars; and that of the " Skull and Bones " is worth at least twenty-five thousand. The Alpha Delta Phi has a very good building at Amherst, and the new hall of the Kappa Alpha, at Williams, cost fifteen thousand. These funds are contributed in a large measure by the grad- uate members, and the undergraduates bear but a small proportion of the heavier expenses of the society. y^ AMERICAN COLLEGES. The interest which many graduates feel in their society is usually very deep and warm. Their con- nection with it does not cease on graduation as with the college. They are still its members, are consulted in reference to alterations in its methods of work, are always, on Commencement and other occasions, wel- comed and entitled to its hospitalities. They also form associations similar to the alumni associations of the college, and by frequent meetings keep their interest in its welfare fresh and strong. In the mu- tual helpfulness of its members, after as well as before graduation, the college secret sodN^ is akin to the Ma- sonic or Odd Fellow system ; and many cases might be recited of aid given in the late war by Unionist to rebel, or by rebel to Unionist, making his need known by the signs of the association, on the ground that once they were, or still are, members of the same so- ciety, though in widely separated colleges. Regarding the usefulness and the injury effected by the secret society system in American colleges, the m^t opposite positions are held by college of- ficers. The late President Chadbourne of Williams, Chamberlain of Bowdoin,maintain that their influence on the whole is beneficial; but Chancellor Howard Crosby, recently of the University of the city of New York, Presidents Robinson of Brown, and McCosh of Princeton, oppose them on strong grounds ; one col- SOCIETIES. 79 lege president writes of their " babyishness," and an- other calls them an " unmitigated nuisance." The principal objections which may be urged against them have been summarized by Dr. Crosby, as : 1. "They are pretenses, and thus at war with truth, candor, and manliness." 2. " The opportunity given by the secrecy to im morality." 3. " The confidence between parent and child is broken, and hence destroyed, by these secret so- cieties." 4. They " interfere with a faithful course of study." 5. " Natural use of these societies for disturbance of public order." 6. " Their evil influence upon the regular literary societies of the college, which are instituted as ad- juncts of the curriculum." 7. " Their expensiveness." But the truthfulness of these objections would be denied by many college men. For, though the grounds upon which the objections are based exist in certain societies, they are not, it would be claimed, necessarily inherent in the system. On the other hand, the arguments most generally urged in their favor are the friendships which they foster, the literary and forensic discipline they give, the home which they afford to the homeless student, 8o AMERICAN COLLEGES. and the mutual helpfulness which they extend to both undergraduate and graduate member. In many col- leges, therefore, and among many students, they are regarded with much esteem; but in other colleges they are the bane of three-fourths of the students and the object of constant fear to the governing boards. ATHLETICS AND HEALTH, 8l CHAPTER VI. ATHLETICS AND HEALTH. College athletics may be divided, though not with precision, into those sports which are played to a great degree for their own sakes, and into those which are sought less for their own sake than as a condition of the best mental exertion. Cricket, foot-ball, base- ball, boating, tennis and lacrosse, compose the for- mer class ; and the exercise usually performed in the gymnasium the latter. Cricket and foot-ball have never obtained that standing among American college men that immemo- rial usage has given them among English school boys. For at least half a century, however, the students of several of the older colleges have played the games with varying degrees of interest and expertness. Cricket has at times been very popular ; and foot-ball at several periods, as in the sixth decade of the pres- ent century, has aroused all the energies of the under- 6 82 AMERICAN COLLEGES. graduate nerve and muscle. Only few cricket clubs are now organized ; yet foot-ball elevens are formed in many of the colleges. At the present time base-ball occasions an interest which neither cricket nor foot-ball has ever command- ed. The date of the origin of the game cannot be determined with exactness. The Knickerbocker Club of Hoboken claims the year 1845 as its birth- year ; but it was not till fifteen or seventeen years later that it began to assume an important place among the athletic sports of college men. Base-ball has now become as common and popular in our col- leges as cricket was or is at the English schools. Nearly every college has its nine composed of the best players among its students ; and in the largest colleges class nines are also formed. During the ball season, covering the fall and the spring months, con- stant practice in playing is had on the grounds allotted by the college for the purpose ; and in the winter months the candidates for the nine engage in those exercises which specially fit them for effective service on the ball field. Tournaments are held each spring for the college championship among sev- eral colleges ; and the games of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Amherst, and Brown, by reason of the large number of their students and other causes, arouse a high degree of enthusiasm. But the cham- ATHLETICS AND HEALTH. 83 pionship ball usually rests in the hands of either Har- vard or Yale, though it has lain in those of Prince- ton. It is, however, as at Oxford and Cambridge, in boating that the principal athletic interest of the stu- dents is focalized. In the middle of the fifth decade of the current century the first boat clubs were formed in the colleges. In 1843 at Yale and in 1844 at Har- vard clubs were first organized which, though com- posed of few members and awakening little enthusi- asm, are the beginnings of the present extensive system of American college boating. The growth of the system has been very rapid. Nearly every col- lege in the East which is situated near a river or a lake has its boat club ; and in several of the larger colleges, as Cornell, Harvard, and Yale, class and other crews are organized. The interest of the stu- dents in the sport is fostered by the intercollegiate regattas which occur every July, and by the contests between rival crews of the same college. The first regatta between college crews was rowed on Lake Winnipiseogee in August, 1852. Harvard and Yale were the only contestants, and the result was a victory for Harvard. The first regatta in which more than two college crews participated occurred in July, 1859, in which Yale and Brown were beaten by Harvard. Sixteen large and notable regattas have since been 84 AMERICAN COLLEGES. pulled. Of them Harvard has won in eight, Yale in four, and the Amherst Agricultural, Amherst, Colum- bia, and Cornell in one each. In 1 87 1 the National Rowing Association of the American Colleges was organized. In two years it had grown to include the eleven colleges of Yale, Harvard, Wesleyan, Co- lumbia, Cornell, Amherst, Dartmouth, Amherst Agri- cultural, Bowdoin, Trinity and Williams. Between the crews of these colleges the regatta of the famous " diagonal finish line,'* was rowed on the Connecticut at Springfield in ,1873. But the difficulty of finding a suitable course for so many boats occasioned the dissolution of the Association ; and in the year of 1878 the chief interest in college boating returned to cen- ter, as of old, upon the annual contest between Har- vard and Yale. The rowing of American college men, though con- stantly improving in style and swiftness, is not equal to that of the Oxford and Cambridge oarsmen. The English universities have at least three advantages in regard to boating, not possessed by our colleges. The number of students from whom a crew can be selected is far greater in either of the universities than in the largest of our own colleges. In England, too, consid- erable attainment is made by many men in the art before going to Oxford or Cambridge ; but here many men never handle an oar before entering college. A THLETICS AND HEALTH. 85 The English people, moreover, and the English jour- nals, manifest a deeper interest in the annual race be- tween Oxford and Cambridge than is excited in this country by the college regattas ; and therefore the English university oarsman has inducements for hard training not possessed by his Harvard or Yale cousin. But in spite of these advantages, the two occasions on which the undergraduate crews of the two coun- tries have met indicate the excellence of American college oarsmanship. In 1869 the Oxford four, "the finest four-oared crew that ever rowed on the Thames,' beat the Harvard four over a course of four and a quarter miles by only six seconds. The victory of Columbia at Henley, in July, 1878, also proves both the improvement and the present effectiveness of American undergraduate rowing. The training that is requisite to occupying a seat among a college six or eight is long and severe. In the winter daily practice in the gymnasium with rowing weights and Indian clubs and frequent runs of three or four miles in the open air, and in the spring and summer daily pulls on the water form the most approved methods of training. The diet, also, par- ticularly near the time of the race, is carefully at- tended to. Previously to 1867 the bill of fare was very limited ; beef and mutton were the only meats and rice the only vegetable generally allowed. Watei 86 AMERICAN COLLEGES. and milk alone were drank, and in very small quan- ties. But in that year a change in EngUsh opinion regarding the regimen best adapted to men in training, increased the number and the amount of the articles of diet, and at present the men are per- mitted great liberty of choice in eating and drinking. The purpose now is to keep up and to increase, not as formerly to decrease, the weight while doing a full amount of work in training. The present system is justified by the time that has been made in the re- cent races, the quickest ever made by our undergrad- uate crews. A similar, though not as rigorous, course of training is pursued by the base-ball men. The effect of constant attention to these sports upon the health and length of life of the rowing and ball men is on the whole excellent. This has been con- clusively proved by the investigations of an able English writer in regard to the health and longevity of the English boating men. The chief danger lies in the liability to disorders of the heart, caused by sudden exertions ; but as those peculiarly subject to these diseases seldom touch an oar or a bat, the evils thus occasioned are slight. But not a few men of weak constitutions have been made vigorous and muscular by their college rowing and ball-playing. The effect of attention to boating and ball upon scholarship is not as excellent as upon health and in ATHLETICS AND HEALTH. 8/ increasing the length of one's days. Though with some marked exceptions, the scholastic rank of boat- ing and ball men is low. The expenditure of the energy necessary to an indulgence in the sports de- creases the amount of the thought and study that might otherwise be given to Tacitus and the Calculus. But the men who even in the largest colleges pay special attention to boating and ball hardly exceed thirty in number, and they are usually of that class which is not attracted to scholarly pursuits. Their athletic interests, therefore, absorb those energies which would in many cases be given to other work than that of the curriculum. Yet there are notable in- stances in which the enthusiasm of a brilliant scholar in his Greek and philosophy has decreased in propor- tion as his enthusiasm in boating or ball has in- creased. Within the last decade the physical exercises of college men have developed along an altogether new line. "Athletic Associations" have sprung up in many colleges, whose purpose is to cherish the love of such sports as running, walking and jumping. Contests are held either once or twice a year ; and at them prizes are offered, in competition, to the swiftest walkers and runners of the college. Though the intercollegiate contests are no longer held, 'as several years ago, at Saratoga, yet the interest 88 AMERICAN COLLEGE^ in these forms of physical exercise is well main- tained in a large number of colleges. It is not, however, in cricket or foot-ball, base-ball, boating or "athletic associations " that the interests of the large body of students center : these interests con- centrate in the gymnasium. Probably about one half of the whole number of colleges has a gymnasium fur- nished in a greater or less degree of efficiency with parallel and horizontal bars, iron and wooden dumb- bells, bowling alleys, rowing weights and similar ap- paratus. It is hardly a score of years, however, since a well-equipped gymnasium has conie to be regarded as an essential instrument in college education. Yale's gymnasium was not built till 1859, and Harvard's and Amherst's not till the next year. Previously, how- ever, the Yale and Harvard men had been accustomed to exercise on apparatus erected in the open air. The proportion of the students in the different colleges who avail themselves of the privileges of the gymna- sium is very diverse. In Yale about one-half of the men exercise with a greater or less degree of regularity ; in Harvard about two-thirds; and in Amherst, which, unlike most colleges, makes attendance obligatory for half an hour on four days of the week, eighty-four per cent of the students are present at the regular exercises. Thie results that flow from a constant and careful practice in the gymnasium are numerous and excel- ATHLETICS AND HEALTH. 89 lent. To it is due in a large measure the improved bearing and better health of the present genera- tion of college men. The typical college man is no longer sallow-faced, hollow-chested and weak- kneed, but of strong nerves, muscular and vigor- ous. His health is better, his strength greater than the health and strength of the average New York or Boston clerk of the same age. His freedom from sick- ness is indicated by the testimony of Dr. Hitchcock, of Amherst, regarding the students under his charge. " Dr Jarvis says that the amount of time lost by each laborer in Europe is from 19 to 20 days each year ; and the Massachusetts board of health state that in 1872, in this commonwealth, each productive person lost 13 days by sickness. A man here is put on the sick-list if he is absent more than two consecu tive days from all college exercises. With this as a comparison, between the years of 186 1-2 and iZ'j^-'j inclusive, 23.30 per cent of the college have been entered on the sick-list, or, every student in college has constructively lost 2.64 days each year by illness; and every sick student has averaged 11.36 days of absence from college duties. During this same period 48, or three each year on an average, have left college from physical disabilities, although 16 of these have returned and entered again their own or a succeeding class. The causes which produced 90 AMERICAN COLLEGES. these removals were in 7 cases, constitutional debil- ity ; in 6, typhoid fever ; in 5, consumptive tenden- cies ; in 6, weak or injured eyes, and single cases be- cause of other infirmities. During this period of 16 years, 16 students have died while connected with college — 10 from typhoid fever or its results, 3 by violent deaths (all of them during vacation), 2 by con- sumption, and I by brain fever." Although Harvard and Amherst, with regular professors of physical education and hygiene, pay more attention to the gymnastic exercise of their stu- dents than other colleges, results of similar excellence flow from the gymnastic work of students in many institutions. But the effect of regular practice in the gymna- sium upon the mind is as marked as its effect upon the body. It is a commonplace to say that regular physical exercise is a condition of the best mental ex- ertion ; but as a matter of fact it is true that the best students are most conscientious regarding their exercise. It is not the working eight or ten hours a day which kills students, but it is the lack of exercise, the late hours of study and other indiscretions. But by regular work in the gymnasium for a half or three- quarters an hour daily, or by a walk of three or four miles, the faithful student may be sure of keeping his body strong, his mind clear, and his rank near the head of his class. JOURNALISM, 91 CHAPTER VII. JOURNALISM. It was a hundred and ten years after the first newspaper was published in America that, as far as I can discover, the first college journal appeared. In i8cK) the Dartmouth students issued a paper called " The Gazette," which is chiefly memorable as con- taining in 1802-3 numerous articles by Daniel Webster, then a graduate of one year's standing. They were signed " Icarus," a pseudonym at the time unacknowledged, but which a few years later Mr. Webster confessed belonged to himself. Yale, in the course of the present century, has had several jour- nals, the jnajority of which, for pecuniary and other reasons, have enjoyed but a short lease of life. The first was " The Literary Cabinet," an eight-paged fortnightly, whose first number appeared in 1806. The publisher announced that it was his " unalterable resolve to appropriate the pecuniary profits to the 92 AMERICAN COLLEGES. education of poor students in the seminary," but, unfortunately for the poor students, " The Cabinet " died in less than a year after its birth. It was fol- lowed by " The Athenaeum," " The Palladium," " The Students' Companion," " The Gridiron," and other papers which, failing each in turn to receive the liter ary and pecuniary support of the students, seldom lived for more than a twelvemonth. But in 1839 was established " The Yale Literary Magazine," which is the oldest living, as it is generally recognized to be among the best, of college journals. It was and is issued monthly during the college year, and each number consists of about forty pages of the usual magazine size. Its table of contents is made up of essays chiefly upon literary and educational topics, of paragraphs called " Notabilia," and of brief notes upon Yale and its affairs, styled " Memorabilia Yalen- sia." This latter admirable department was established by Mr. D. C. Oilman — now president of the Johns Hopkins University — during his editorship. It is a daily bulletin, published monthly, of doings at Yale, written in a terse and graphic style, and is one of the most interesting features of an interesting college journal. Its five editors are usually considered the best literary men of the Senior class, and an election to the " Lit. Board " is justly esteemed one of the high- est honors of Yale life. In the course of its forty-four JOURNALISM. 93 years, not a few of those who have won distinction by literary and educational work have served an appren- ticeship on the " Lit." Secretary Evarts was one of the founders of the magazine, and Donald G. Mitchell, of Yale's class of 1841, Doctor J. P. Thompson, of 1838, Senator O. S. Ferry, of 1844, President A. D. White, of 1853, and several others not less distin- guished have been among its editors. It is still an important factor in Yale life, and together with a similar journal published by the Princeton students, is usually regarded as of the best of college publica- tions of its type. At the present time Yale has, besides its " Liter- ary Magazine," two fortnightly papers, the " Courant" and the " Record," and the daily " News." Edited by boards selected from and in part by the students, they are devoted to the discussion of college affairs and to the communication to graduates and the public of Yale news. Although Harvard's papers have been less numer- ous than Yale's, they indicate (considered as a whole) greater literary ability and have had greater influence on college opinion. The first, the " Harvard Lyceum," appeared in 18 10, with Edward Everett among its eight editors. It was a semi-monthly literary maga- zine, but had, Mr. Everett remarks in his "Autobiogra- phy," no permanent literary value. Dying a natural death before the close of the year, it was succeeded 94 AMERICAN COLLEGES. in 1827 by the " Harvard Register," a monthly journal of both a serious and a humorous character. Among its editors were the late President Felton, George S. Hillard, who wrote over the name of Sylvanus Dash- wood, and Robert C. Winthrop, whose pseudonym was Blank Etcetera, Sr. But, like its predecessor, the financial and literary remissness of the students digged for it an early grave. In 1830 appeared the " Collegian," whose brief career is made historical by the contributions of Oliver Wendell Holmes, then a stu- dent in the Harvard Law School. Young Holmes wrote for it about a score of poems ; and in the " Col- legian " appeared " The Spectre Pig," " The Dorches- ter Giant," " The Height of the Ridiculous," and other papers which have not been included in the standard editions of his works. The " Collegian " was, after a short life, buried with its fathers, and " Harvardiana," on which the founder of the " Atlantic," and the editor of the " North American Review " first employed his editorial pen, reigned in its stead. But Mr. Lowell's wit and wisdom were not sufficient for lengthening the " Collegian's " life beyond four years. About fifteen years after its decease, appeared, in 1854, the " Harvard Magazine." It lived with varying fortunes for a decade, and numbered among its editors several who have won distinction by subsequent literary work. Frank B. Sanborn and Phillips Brooks were two of JOURNALISM. 95 the three members of its first board. But in 1864 its publication ceased ; and in May, 1866, the first number of the " Harvard Advocate " appeared as a fortnight- ly. For more than seventeen years the literary taste manifested in the " Advocate's " editorial management, the brightness of its sketches, and the intrinsic merit and wit of its poetry have given it a pre-eminent place among college journals. In 1873 a rival appeared in the " Magenta," since changed, with the name of the college color, to the " Crimson ; " and these two papers are now pursuing in generous rivalry a most successful course of college journalism. Although few colleges have been as prolific in newspaper children as Yale and Harvard, yet the history of journalism at these two colleges represents in general its history at Princeton, Williams, Brown University, and the older colleges. But within the last decade the number of college journals has greatly increased. At the present time, it is estimated that at least two hundred papers and magazines, devoted to college interests and conducted by college students, are published. The usual pattern of the college jour- nal is a sheet of twelve pages, of the size of the "Nation," well printed on tinted paper, and published either fortnightly or monthly. It has a board of six or ten editors, elected either by the preceding board or by the students, or by both, and its literary support is 96 AMERICAN COLLEGES. derived from the members of the college as well as from the editorial pen. Its subscribers number about five hundred, and are usually equally divided between the college students and the graduates. Perhaps a few journals print a thousand copies, but so large a subscription list is rare ; and two hundred and fifty copies is as low a limit as is commonly reached. The usual price of a fortnightly is $2.00 for the college year, and from the proceeds of its subscriptions and its advertisements it usually suc- ceeds in meeting the expenses of publication. But a college journal seldom is, as it is seldom intended to be, a source of pecuniary income. There are, however, certain peculiar developments in the history of college publications which deserve notice. One of these developments is the " Univer- sity Quarterly." The " University Quarterly " was un- doubtedly the most important venture, both in its intrinsic importance and in the high anticipations it awakened, ever undertaken in college journalism. It was a quarterly of two hundred pages started at New Haven in i860 by Joseph Cook and other Yale men, and was intended "to enlist," says the author of *' Four Years at Yale," " the active talent of young men in American, and so far as possible in foreign, universities in the discussion of questions and the communications of intelligence of common interest to JOURNALISM. 97 Students." Made up of " news, local sketches, refor- matory thought and literary essays from all the prin- cipal seats of classical and professional learning," its chief purpose wa§ to unite " the sympathies of academ- ical,' collegiate and professional students throughout the world." Its management was vested in editors and correspondents chosen from the students of different colleges, and the board at New Haven, the place of publication, served as a sort of managing editor. At one time no less than thirty-three colleges and professional schools were represented by the " Quarterly," among which were,of the foreign universi- ties, those of Berlin, Halle, Heidelberg and Cambridge. But the difficulty of controlling so large and hetero- geneous a body of editors, and the breaking out of the war absorbing every bit of undergraduate enthusiasm, necessitated the " Quarterly's " suspension. The last of its eight numbers appeared in October, 1861. But in its brief career it was of much value in uniting the sympathies of different colleges and in communi- cating intelligence regarding the higher education in this and foreign countries. The interest taken in, and the amount of work done for, the journal by dif- ferent colleges was most diverse. Yale was undoubt- edly the most enthusiastic in its support, and about one-third of the literary matter was contributed by Yale men. Amherst also manifested much interest 7 98 ' AMERICAN COLLEGES. in the " Quarterly," and of her students Francis A. Walker was a faithful contributor. Harvard gave comparatively little aid, but Mr. Garrison, now of the " Nation," was an efficient representative of the Cam- bridge college. The average edition of the " Quarterly" consisted of about fourteen hundred copies ; and it appears that its pecuniary affairs were wound up with- out loss to its conductors — a somewhat rare circum- stance in the death of a college journal. Another departure from the usual type of the college journal ts represented in the '* Harvard Lam- poon." The " Lampoon," is a college "Punch," issued fortnightly, of a dozen pages of letter-press and as many cartoons setting forth humorous scenes chiefly in college and social life. At its appearance in the spring of 1876, its pen and pencil were confined to the college, but at the opening of the academic year of 1877-78, it enlarged its sphere; and for a year its purpose was " to reproduce to the life the * quips and cranks and wanton wiles' of the free-born American citizen as well as those of the typical stu- dent, so that wretches who never heard of Harvard will be able to smile at his jests and weep over his pathos. Whenever in future any question of such general concern as the natural depravity of the Spitz dog or the sanitary efficacy of azure glass is endanger- ing the relations of parents and children throughout JOURNALISM. 99 the land ; if the mayor of Boston becomes desirous of having the horse-cars as well the ferries free ; or the ladies of Washington seek to restrain Mehemet Ali Pacha from drinking ice-water when he accepts the hospitalities of the nation, — Lampy will have his little say on the subject, and his pen and pencil will not be idle." The success that attended " Lampy's " efEort, in view of the usual fate of American humor- ous journals, is good evidence of the excellence of its work. Many of its bon mots and verses have been exceedingly clever, and some of its cartoons are worthy of Du Maurier. It has been, as a whole, remarkably free from every feature open to objection in point of moral taste ; and by the general, as well as the college, press it has been constantly received with much favor. The purposes which the college paper accom- plishes in American college life are numerous and important. It is, in the first place, a mirror of under- graduate sentiment, and is either scholarly or vulgar, frivolous or dignified, as are the students who edit and publish it. A father, therefore, debating where to educate his son, would get a clearer idea of the type of moral and intellectual character which a college forms in her students from a year's file of their fort- nightly paper than from her annual catalogue or the private letters of her professors. To the college lOO AMERICAN COLLEGES. officers, also, it is an indicator of the pulse of college opinion. The discussion of all questions regarding the varied interests of the college — the dissatisfaction with Professor A 's method of conducting recita- tions, or with the librarian's new code, or with the advance in the annual price of college rooms — is sure to voice itself in the college paper. Indeed the spirit of rebellion among college men often flows out into ink, when, if they had no paper in which to relate their grievances, it would — as it now too often does — manifest itself in boyish mobs and " gunpowder plots." The college journal is, indeed, as a distinguished pro- fessor recently said of the paper of his college, " the outstanding member of the college faculty." But the paper reflects the moral and intellectual condition of its college, not only for the officers and patrons of its own college, but also for the members of other colleges. The Harvard papers, for instance, represent Harvard life to other colleges, just as American newspapers represent American life to Europeans. Each paper has a list of some fifty or sixty " exchanges," which, after being examined by the " exchange editor," are usually placed in the pub- lic reading-room for the use of the students. It is also the custom, to a considerable and a growing extent, for the best journals to devote at least a page to news from other colleges. These items of news JOURNALISM, lOi are usually culled from the " exchanges," but in some cases they are directly furnished by correspondents engaged for the purpose. The influence of college papers in thus promoting inter-collegiate friendship, and in exhibiting the methods of instruction and government, is of great service to the cause of higher education. Another important purpose which the college journal fulfils is in informing the graduate of the changes through which his alma mater passes ; it is a fortnightly letter from his college home. Its alumni column notes the chief events in tl.\e lives of all grad- uates ; and the whole paper helps to keep his college memories green. About half of the list of subscribers to many of the journals is made up of the names of graduates, and graduates not infrequently contrib- ute articles, especially upon athletic topics. The college paper also serves as an admirable training school for professional journalists. Quick- ness of thought and of action, coolness of judgment and of purpose, and impartiality which Mr. Hudson, in his History of Journalism, suggests as the essentials of a good journalist, receive excellent discipline on the college editorial board. The college journal is the best school of journalism, outside of its own curricu- lum, which the college affords. The merit of their editorial work in college has won for not a few stu- 1 02 A ME RICA N COLLEGES. dents, on their graduation, a position on the staff of a New York or Boston paper. The character of much of the writing in the best college papers is most praiseworthy. The topics are usually of immediate interest to the college world, and are treated with directness, perspicuity and consider- able energy of style. Written, as many of the articles are, under the pressure of college work, they indicate a clearness of thought and a facility of execution worthy, in certain cases, of experienced journalists. But in the college magazines, which are published quarterly or monthly, these excellences are not as marked as in the fortnightly or weekly journal. The subjects of the leading articles in the magazines sel- dom possess immediate interest, and the style is often labored and oratorical. In topic and treatment they are not dissimilar to the forensics and theses which a senior writes for his professor of rhetoric. But the editorial paragraphs in the quarterlies are clear, pointed and interesting. The wit and humor, also, that abound in the col- lege journals are of a most commendable and genuine character. College life, it is needless to say, is fer- tile, in comparison with business or professional life, . in the ludicrous ; and many of the witticisms that ap- pear in the college papers are reports of the table- talk of an eating club, or of the happy retorts of a JOURNALISM, 103 professor to a jesting student. Not a few humorous verses, also, bright and rolHcking, have come from college pens. One of the earliest, as well as one of the best, parodies ever published in this country ap- peared in the " Harvard Lyceum," in the first years of college journalism. Joel Barlow's "Columbiad" was the object of its pleasantry ; and, written by Ed- ward Everett in 18 10, it has both a literary and an historic interest. The following extract describes *^ the vexations of a person who finds in the midst of a dance, that his hose are swinging from their moor- ings : " " And while he dances in vivacious glee He feels his stockings loosening from his knee ; The slippery silk in mind-benumbing rounds Descends in folds at all his nimble bounds. ***♦*» Thy partner wonders at the change. No more She sees thee bound elastic from the floor ; No more she sees thine easy graceful air: — Each step is measured with exactest care." Of the many bright verses that have of late years appeared in the college papers, the following from the " Harvard Advocate" of May, 1870, are pre-eminent. They were written by Mr. Charles A. Prince of Bos- ton, when a Harvard student, and are addressed " To Pupils in Elocution : " I04 AMERICAN COLLEGES. " The human lungs reverberate sometimes with great velocity When windy individuals indulge in much verbosity, They have to twirl the glottis sixty thousand times a minute, And push and punch the diaphragm as though the deuce were in it. CHORUS. The pharynx now goes up ; The larynx with a slam, Ejects a note From out the throat, Pushed by the diaphragm." But, although the humorous side of college life is thus developed in the best of the papers, their moral character and influence are excellent. They are re- markably free from vulgarity. Slang, though not in- frequent in college conversation, seldom creeps into their columns. Their hatred of every species of sham and deceit is most marked. Their love for what- ever they regard as their own honor or that of their college is genuine ; and the respect they constantly, as a class, manifest for religion is a fit model for the imitation of certain daily journals. The college paper is, therefore, in respect to moral character, usually rather above than below the level of college sentiment, and its moral influence, therefore, is elevating. But to these excellent purposes and characteris- tics of the college paper are joined two evils which must be weighed in forming any just estimate of its JOURNALISM. 105 worth and usefulness. The first evil is that the stu- dent's editorial duties are liable to exhaust his ener- gies, and thus to unfit him for his regular college work. Every college intends to provide her men with sufficient work to monopolize their time and strength ; if, therefore, the paper absorbs much of the student-editor's attention, he is compelled to neglect his Greek and mathematics. The evil of this course is obvious. It is the wellnigh universal experience that the continued neglect of the regular - college studies for the sake of the college paper is seldom helpful, and is often disastrous, to scholarship and intellect- ual discipline. A college editorship is an excellent avocation, but a very bad vocation. The other danger to which the young editor is ex- posed is that of forming a faulty style. The rapid writing which he is sometimes compelled to do culti- vates superficiality of thought, and the necessity under which he often labors, of " filling up space," fosters bombast, slovenliness, and looseness of expres- sion. He is frequently placed in emergencies most opposed to the cultivation of that patient and painstak- ing habit of composition which it is the especial duty of a young writer to cherish. But neither this evil nor that of a neglect of college work is necessarily in- herent in college journalism; a wise discretion can avoid them. I06 AMERICAN COLLEGES. The college paper is essentially an American pro- duction. The German universities have no publica- tion of the sort, and the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge have no journal that precisely corre- sponds to the American college paper. The *' Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates' Journal " is devoted to the interests of the Oxford and Cambridge stu- dents, containing sketches of sermons preached in their pulpits, and reports of their scholastic and athletic affairs ; but it is both edited and published by those not connected with the universities. A few papers are, however, issued by the English students. Their sphere is usually more restricted to the institu- tion whose name they bear than are the American college journals ; but in other respects they are not dissimilar. It remains to note the latest development in American college journalism. It is the daily paper. The first in the order of establishment was the Yale " News," now in its fifth volume ; the second the Harvard " Echo," a paper which has lately been absorbed in the " Herald." The college daily paper is emphatically a news paper. Its comments on the news of its college are usually brief, but its presen- tation of the news is full and fresh. FELLOWSHIPS. 107 CHAPTER VIII. FELLOWSHIPS. College fellowships, or post-graduate scholar- ships, are primarily institutions of Oxford and Cam- bridge. The twenty colleges of which Oxford uni- versity is composed possess three hundred scholarships and nearly an equal number of fellowships. The purposes which a fellowship is designed to accom- plish, are chiefly four : it is a reward for high scholar- ship.; it serves as a ladder for the indigent student to rise by ; it is a recompense for the instruction which the fellow is required to give ; and the holders of fel- lowships form the governing board of the college. The scholars and fellows are elected, after a competi- tive examination, by the officers of the college, and retain their foundation for various lengths of time. An Oxford fellowship can, with few exceptions, be held for life ; but marriage, ecclesiastical preferment or accession to property of a certain amount usually I08 AMERICAN COLLEGES. compels him to surrender his foundation. At Cam- bridge, however, certain fellowships are held for a limited number of years, as those in Trinity College for ten, and those in Queen's for seven. An Oxford scholarship, too, can seldom be retained for more than five years. The annual income of an Oxford scholarship varies from £,6q to £,\2^ ; but the average is about ;£ioo. The annual income of an Oxford fellowship is, however, seldom less than ;£200 and seldom more than ;£300. With an annual income of ;£25o,ooo (more than double the income of Harvard university in all its departments),Oxford University expends each year ;£ 3 5,000 in scholarships, and ;£90,ooo, in fellow- ships. The conditions under which the fellow enjoys his annuity are usually very few and liberal. He is at liberty to pursue almost any line of intellectual labor. In many cases his position is a mere sinecure, and involves no actual work. In other cases it is, and in all cases may be, most effectually used for the ad- vancement of the higher learning ; but too often the holder of a life fellowship at Oxford or Cambridge is a mere annuitant, and his attainments are of little service either to the university from which he annu- ally receives a thousand dollars, or to English scholar- ship and culture. . FELLOWSHIPS. 109 Unlike Oxford and Cambridge, the German uni- versities have no system of fellowships. Each univer- sity is, however, possessed of a certain number of " exhibitions," ranging in value from sixty to three hundred dollars, for the benefit of needy students. Each needy student also avails himself of the two public lectures a week, which a professor is required to give, and is, in many cases, allowed to attend all the lectures without payment of fees. But to the student who has taken his degree and is still pursuing his studies, the German university has neither fellow- ship nor scholarship to offer. The pecuniary privileges which the American college offers its students for post-graduate study are, in comparison with those provided by the English universities, very meager. Of our three hundred colleges, Yale, Princeton, Harvard and the Johns Hopkins University are the principal ones that offer fellowships for the prosecution of advanced learning. Yale has seven fellowships, or scholarships, the an- nual value of which ranges from forty-six to (at least) six hundred dollars. Two are of the larger amount. One fellowship is tenable for five years, but the others for not more than three. High scholarship and good character are the general conditions for ob- taining these honors ; and the prosecution of a non- I lo AMERICAN COLLEGES. professional course of study, as science, literature or philology, in New Haven, under the direction of the college faculty, is the general condition for retaining them. Princeton, which claims to be '' taking the lead in encouraging advanced learning by means of fellow- ships," now has six, with expectations of an early increase in their number and income. They are awarded by competition, which is open to any mem- ber of the graduating class, and are held for a single year. The fellow pursues his studies in either phi- losophy, science, mathematics, classics, history or modern languages, according as his fellowship is de- signed. The annual income of three of these founda- tions is six hundred dollars each, and of three, one-half this amount. During the last eleven years, fellows have been pursuing advanced studies in philosophy, philology, and science, both at Princeton and at the English and German universities. The introduction of the fellowship system at Princeton is due in the main to the efforts of its president, Dr. McCosh. It is substantially the same system which he drew up in 1 860-61 for the Scottish universities. " I have," he writes me recently, " only made a beginning, but a good beginning. We are really producing scholars." Harvard, has eight fellowships, but of some- what larger value than those of her sister col- FELLOWSHIPS. Ill leges. Four have an annual income of about six hundred dollars and four of at least eight hundred dollars each. The latter are " travehng fellowships," and the holder, seldom remaining in this country, usu- ally spends the alloted period of three years in some German university. One of these fellowships, it is worthy of note, was founded in 1871 by George Ban- croft. A little more than sixty years ago, Edward Everett suggested to President Kirkland that " it would be well to send some young graduate of Harvard to study for a while at some German university." The choice of the president fell upon young Ban- croft, who, then in his eighteenth year, proceeded at once to Gottingen. It is interesting to note that the founder of what is doubtless the most valuable fellow- ship in any of our colleges was the first Ameri- can who studied in a German university under the patronage of an American college. The election to a fellowship at Harvard, as at every American college, is a fitting crown to a successful college course ; and only that graduate of the college or professional school is elected to the honor whose scholarly attainments are conclusive proof of special aptitude for research in one of the branches of higher learning. The fellow, before his election by the academic faculty, suggests the department in which he wishes to study, and it usually proves to be that 1 12 AMERICAN COLLEGES. in which by his college work he has become profit cient. At the present time Harvard has fellows resi- dent both in Cambridge and in Germany engaged in the study of history, zoology, mathematics, the modern languages, and other departments of advanced knowl- edge. It is, however, the new university at Baltimore which offers the most generous encouragement for the pursuit of the higher learning. The Johns Hopkins University, with an endowment of three and a half millions, provides twenty fellowships, each of an an- nual value of five hundred dollars. They are be- stowed upon " advanced scholars from any place " for excellence in one of the ten departments of philology, literature, history, ethics and metaphysics, political science, mathematics, engineering, physics, chemistry, and natural history. The object of the foundation is, in the words of the trustees, " to give to scholars of promise the opportunity to prosecute further studies, under favorable circumstances, and likewise to open a career for those who propose to follow the pursuit of literature or science." The chief condition of the assignment, besides a liberal education and an upright character, is a "decided proclivity towards a special line of study." With these designs and condi- tions, the popularity of the scheme proved to be so great that at the first assignme/it in 1876 there were FELLOWSHIPS. II3 one hundred and fifty-two applicants, representing for- ty-six different colleges. From this large number twenty were selected as fellows, who at once began to prosecute special studies under the immediate patron- age of the university. The fellowships are, as at present constituted, renewable to the same holder for successive years, and his progress is tested from time to time by the writing of a thesis, delivery of a lec- ture, or by some similar method. Its fellowship system has, like the university, been established for only seven years, and its results are necessarily somewhat uncer- tain. But President Oilman writes, " the scheme is working admirably, and if I could tell you just what each one of the holders of fellowships is doing it would, I think, establish the wisdom of our founda- tions." The purposes which the fellowship system, as it is now being established in American colleges, is in- tended to serve, are the advancement of scholarship and the promotion of original thought and investiga- tion. A fellowship in an American college is not, as often it is in the English universities, a sinecure. It is not simply the reward for success in passing a series of examinations. It is not merely the ladder by which the student is to climb to distinction. But it is a privilege by the fit use of which he can advance the higher learning and enlarge the boundaries of, 8 1 14 AMERICAN COLLEGES. human knowledge. The fellowship allows the young graduate, possessing genius for a certain line of inves- tigation but not possessing the pecuniary means for his support, to pursue studies, the result of which shall honor not only him but also scholarship. It permits the penniless student, interested in philoso- phy, to pursue his philosophy, and the student of science to continue his chemical or zoological investi- gations. Without its aid the one would be obliged, for example, to devote his powers to professional studies for the ministry, and the other to medicine, professions for which each feels he is by nature unfit. The fellowship system, therefore, in American col- leges is the most direct aid to the higher scholarship and to culture. Although the system of fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge has not advanced English learning as it might and ought, yet the results it has achieved are of incalculable worth. The large majority of English scholars of distinction have for a longer or a shorter period pursued their studies with the assistance which a fellowship provided. Max Miiller and Jowett, Rawlinson and Stubbs, Milman and Bryce, Mansel and the Newmans are among the hundreds of English scholars hardly less distinguished than they who have held, or still hold, fellowships at Oxford. Re- sults of equal and even greater excellence would FELLO WSHIPS, 1 1 5 follow the general introduction of the system of fel lowships into American colleges. For American wealth to establish fellowships in American colleges every inducement is presented. The founding of a new college at the west with a slender endowment may render but slight aid to higher education, but the establishment of fellowships at Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Princeton, Oberlin, or any well organized college, must greatly advance it. Hen- ry IV., Edward VI., Queen Mary, Elizabeth, and Charles I. established fellowships at Oxford. If only American wealth would follow such precedents, American scholarship might in the course of a gen- eration surpass English, and in the course of two generations, compete with German, scholarship. In the foundation and administration of fellow- ships in our colleges, however, the strict observance of certain rules is necessary to the attainment of their highest usefulness. It is the failure to observe the first two of the three following suggestions that has brought the English fellowship system into con- siderable disrepute among certain classes of English society. I. The fellowship should not be bestowed merely as a reward for high scholarship, but principally as the means for prosecuting original research in a compara- tively new department of study. Il6 AMERICAN COLLEGES, 2. It should seldom be held for more than three, or, at most, for more than four years. The progress which the fellow makes in this length of time enables him, with but little outlay of time or strength, to give instruction sufficient to provide for his pecuniary needs. The fellowship in such a case should at once be reassigned. 3. If the fellow resides in Germany, as he usually will, he should be made a sort of corresponding mem- ber of his college faculty. The information which he could transmit regarding the educational move- ments occurring in the German gymnasia and univer- sities would prove of much service to American col- leges and American scholarship. CHOICE OF A COLLEGE. 117 CHAPTER IX. CHOICE OF A COLLEGE. The most important question concerning his education which the student decides before entering upon a collegiate course of study relates to the choice of a college. This question he decides sometimes in accordance with the preferences of friends, frequently from caprice, and often by the trivial reasons of the nearness of a college to his home or of the personal friendship of one of its professors. There are, how- ever, several principles of absolute worth which the student, selecting a college, may use as the tests of the excellence of a college. The first of these principles is the quality of the instruction which a college offers. That college whose instruction is the most thorough and critical, the most advanced in respect to the extent of the subjects studied, that makes the severest demands upon the student's mental strength and that arouses his 1 18 AMERICAN COLLEGES. scholarly enthusiasm to the highest point is, so far forth, the best college. Such instruction attains most effectively the chief purpose of any scheme of educa- tion — the discipline of the mind. The second principle is the amount of the instruc- tion. If a college has a prescribed course, without optional studies, the amount of the instruction which it provides cannot influence the choice of the student, for this amount seldom varies from fifteen hours of recitations a week to each class. But if a college has an elective system the quantity of its instruction may seriously influence his choice. For the elective system greatly increases the number and extent of the studies which he may pursue. To the student, therefore, who wishes to take up a course of study most directly preparatory for a certain profession, or who is conscious of possessing an aptitude for certain departments of study, the amount of the instruction forms a most important element of choice. The stu- dent, moreover, who on entering college is uncon- scious of possessing a particular fitness for a special line of intellectual work, will probably awaken by the close of his second year to the consciousness of this possession. To the large majority, therefore, of all men who are selecting a college, the amount of the instruction afforded, forms an important principle of choice. CHOICE OF A COLLEGE. \ 19 A third principle is represented by the moral and religious influence of a college. The peril of the col- legian is not that he will fail to have sufficient tempta- tions to resist to form a strong character, but that a torrent of them will sweep him into moral ruin. That college, therefore, of the purest moral and noblest religious atmosphere should, ceteris paribus, be se- lected. Another principle is indicated in the expense of a college course. With the wealthy student this consideration has but little weight ; but with the poor it is frequently the most important factor in his choice. To him the question appeals in two ways : he may select a college at which the expenses are small, but which affords no pecuniary aid ; or a col- lege the cost of whose education is relatively great, but which by its scholarships and beneficiary funds makes his expenses as small (or smaller) as at the former college. The decision between these two methods will, of course, be determined by other con- siderations than the pecuniary. The four principles of the quality and the amount of the instruction, of the moral and religious influence, and of the expenses of a college, the student, in his selection, should apply with critical exactness, and in accordance with the result of the application should generally make his choice. Yet there are other con- 120 AMERICAN COLLEGES. siderations which do and ought to weigh in his de cision. Among these principles of minor importance are the reputation of a college, its location in respect to health, natural scenery and general society, the num- ber of its students, and the advantages it affords by means of fellowships for post-graduate study. The alumnus of an old and well-reputed college has a presumption in favor of the excellence of his educa- tion which the graduate of a new and unknown col- lege cannot enjoy. This presumption holds good till actual trial proves (as it ofttimes will prove) that the training of the latter graduate is superior to that of the former. The hygienic influences of the location of the vast majority of the colleges is excellent ; and the only elements of choice to be compared are the advantages and disadvantages of a residence of four years near the ocean or in the interior. But the natural scenery encircling the colleges is most diverse in beauty and picturesqueness. That surrounding the country colleges is of course more varied and sublime than that which can be enjoyed near or in the city. But in respect to society the opposite condition pre- vails. The society open to the student of the city col- leges is, as a rule, far superior to that afforded in country-college towns ; and the advantage of larger libraries, of art galleries, of music and the drama are CHOICE OF A COLLEGE. 121 Open to the city, but denied to the country, student. The size of a college should also qualify to some extent the choice. A college of several hundred students offers the most favorable opportunities for re- moving eccentricities of mental habit and of manners, and for obtaining the highest and most liberal point of view for judging all questions presented for consid- eration. It permits the student, as Bacon suggests in respect to travel, to " suck the experiences of many," which is impossible in a small college. Yet, as a class, the moral and religious condition of the small colleges is superior to that of the large. The society system and the system of athletic sports of a col- lege attract and repel students according to their proclivities ; and the advantages as well as the disad- vantages of each have been considered in preceding chapters. The system of fellowships, however, though introduced into only a few colleges and into them to a very meager extent, should attract students. The opportunities they offer for advanced study both do and ought to draw the ablest men. By the application of these principles, especially of the four first named, the student can select his college with a high degree of certainty that his choice will prove satisfactory. As he applies these tests he will find that the quality of the instruction in the eastern colleges is better, as a whole, than in the 122 AMERICAN COLLEGES, western ; and that of the former class the instruction offered by Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Williams, Am- herst, Dartmouth and Brown University is of pre- eminent excellence, and that, of the western colleges, the University of Michigan surpasses the vast ma- jority of her sisters in the worth of her teaching. Regarding the amount of the instruction greater cer- tainty may be attained than respecting its quality. Harvard offers more than twice as much instruction as any other college ; but other prominent institu- tions present amounts very similar to each other for the choice of the student. The moral and relig- ious character of the college he will find exceedingly high at many of the western colleges, particularly of those which were founded and are fostered under direct Christian influences. In the east, the moral and re- ligious tone of Amherst and Williams is recognized as eminently pure. The question of expenses can be decided with a considerable degree of exactness. The cost of a diploma at a small college of the west is the least, and of one at Harvard, Yale, and Colum- bia the most. But to a poor man of brains Harvard may be the cheapest college, as its scholarship -and other funds may pay his entire expenses. But to a poor man without brains Harvard is not, as its president is reported to have said at its commencement dinner in 1878, to be recommended. CHOICE OF A COLLEGE, 123 The other principles of choice may also be applied with a considerable degree of precision. Touching the reputation of a college it is generally granted that the name of the University of Michigan, and of Oberlin stands as high as that of any college west of the AUe- ghanies ; and that Harvard and Yale occupy a similar position in the east. But the European reputation of the Cambridge college is the most extended. In regard to the attractiveness of natural scenery, it is usually conceded that the Berkshire Hills and the other beautiful scenery of western Massachusetts make Amherst and Williams facile principes. Con- cerning the opportunities presented for general society, for the use of libraries, galleries of art and other means of asthetic enjoyment, the several colleges in the city of New York, Harvard and Yale present exceptional advantages. Respecting secret societies, it is probable the system plays as important a part in Yale, and as unimportant a one in Oberlin, Princeton and Harvard, as elsewhere. In regard to base ball and boating, Columbia, Cornell, Yale, and Harvard pay as much, if not greater, attention to the sports as ether colleges ; but for the care bestowed upon regular physical exercise in the gymnasium, Amherst is pre-eminent. In respect to fellowships the induce- ments presented for the choice of Harvard are the most attractive, as the Johns Hopkins University 124 AMERICAN COLLEGES, bestows its foundations upon other than its own graduates. But those offered by Princeton, Yale, and a few other colleges, are of considerable weight. These are the general results at which, it is be- lieved, the student, who is choosing his college, will arrive by the application of the several principles here outlined. The consequent arguments for and against his selection of an individual college he must weigh and balance against each other. Whatever his conclusion may be, he can with a high degree of assurance congratulate himself that, on his gradua- tion, he will believe his choice was precisely right, and that his alma mater has proved to be the college best fitted to his needs. RANK IN COLLEGE, ETC. 125 CHAPTER X. RANK IN COLLEGE A TEST OF FUTURE DISTINCTION. That men of high scholarship in college seldom win distinction in professional life is a very prevalent opinion. To be a first scholar is, to many minds, equivalent to passing, after five years of midnight study, into the oblivion of a country parsonage. That " valedictorians are never heard of after leaving col- lege" is the sop which the friends of every dullard are wont to fling to his disappointed ambition on his commencement day. But, however widely this opin- ion may prevail, an examination of the records of scholarship in our colleges, and an inquiry into the college rank of those who have gained distinction in after life, indicate its groundlessness. The large majority of graduates who have become distinguished by the work of their life were, in col- lege, scholars of the highest rank. It is seldom that a scholar of low rank has succeeded in attaining great 126 AMERICA IV COLLEGES. eminence before the world. Of the graduates of Har- vard, during the first half of this century, who have gained renown, at least four-fifths ranked in the first quarter of the class to which each belonged, and two- fifths of this number ranked in the first sixth or the first eighth of the class. Indeed, the first ten schol- ars in a class of fifty or sixty, the usual size of Har- vard's classes in the first half of this century, have usually furnished more men of distinction than the remaining forty or fifty of a class. At Yale, nine- tenths of all the distinguished graduates, between 1819 and 1850, were either first, or among the first scholars of the class to which they belonged. Al- though the lists of those who received honors previous to 1 8 19 are not sufficiently accurate to allow a conclu- sion, yet during the thirty-one years for which data has been kindly furnished me by the secretary of the col- lege, a student who ranked low in college has seldom succeeded in attaining a high position in his profession. The twenty-five most distinguished men who gradu- ated at Amherst, between 1822, its first commence- ment, and 1850 were, with one or two notable excep- tions, excellent scholars. Not far from one-half of this number became professors, and the foundation of their success as teachers they laid in the hard work of four years of studentship. Although the statistics of scholarship at Dartmouth are not as full as at RANK IN COLLEGE, ETC. 127 either Harvard, Yale or Amherst, since during nearly forty years of this century positions were determined by lot, yet, so far as can be ascertained, those who compose the long list of her honored roll were schol- ars of exceedingly high rank. " Nearly all of them," the librarian of the college writes me, " so far as I can learn, gave promise of the future while in college." The statistics of scholarship at Bowdoin, from the graduation of its first class in 1806 to 1850, indicate the same conclusion. The most distinguished of its graduates have been, as a rule, among its most dis- tinguished scholars. The earliest won honors of those whose tastes are scholarly, and whose lives are occupied with scholarly pursuits, have usually been the college honors of high scholarship. Their college course has, in many instan- ces, proved to be a microcosm of their whole life. Lines of study started in college have ended only with their life ; and their success as students has foreshadowed their success as professors. Ex-President Woolsey, president of Yale College for a quarter of a century, and the whole of whose long life has been celebrated for its scholarly attainments, received the highest honors at Yale in 1820. President Eliot of Harvard was one of the first scholars of his class of 1853, and the scientific eminence to which he has since attained is foreshadowed in the subject of his commencement 128 AMERICAN COLLEGES, oration, "The last Hours of Copernicus." Presi- dent Porter was the third scholar of the class of 1831 in the college which he has served for more than thirty years, as either professor or president. The president of Amherst was one of the first scholars of its class of 1853; and college tradition still tells of the rivalry that existed between Seelye and a class- mate for the first position in metaphysics. The late President Smith, of Dartmouth, under whose care the ancient New Hampshire college was greatly prospered, was the third scholar of the class of 1830 ; and President Bartlett, recently inaugurated, was one of the first scholars of the class of 1836. Dr. Barn- ard, president of Columbia College, whose scientific renown is world-wide, received the second honors at Yale in 1828; and in the second year after his graduation his scholastic attainments were recognized in his election to a tutorship. Dr. James Walker, professor of philosophy at Harvard from 1839 to 1853,. and president of the college from 1853 to i860, was a leading scholar of the class of 18 14; and his successor. President Felton, attained high distinction, before his graduation in 1827, for his classical attain- ments. Ex-President Hill, also, was the second scholar of the class of 1843. Professor Bowen, the head of the philosophical department at Harvard, and a writer of recognized abiUty upon philosophical RANK IN COLLEGE, ETC, 129 and political topics, was the first scholar of the class of 1833 ; Professor Lovering, the head of the scientific department, the fourth scholar ; and Professor Torrey, the head of the department of history, was also a high scholar in the same class. Professor Benjamin Peirce, of Harvard's most distinguished class of 1829, was as conspicuous for his mathematical attainment among his college associates, as he was among all contemporaneous scholars. The formation of the reputation which Professor Cooke enjoys in the scientific world was laid in his college course, and is foreshadowed in the subject of his commencement dissertation, " The alleged Irreligious Tendency of Scientific Studies." His colleague, Professor Child, the authority in early English on this side the ocean, was the most eminent scholar of the scholarly class of 1846 ; and Professor Goodwin, who is known by his grammatical works, even more favorably in Ger- many than in this country, was the salutatorian of Har- vard's class of 1850. The mathematical honors which Professor Loomis has constantly received since his graduation at Yale in 1830, he began to win in college, where his rank was third ; and his colleague. Professor Dana, occupied the fourth position in the class of 1833. To Dr. Leonard Bacon was assigned the same position in the class of 1820. The honor of attaining the high- est rank ever given at Yale College belongs, it is said, 9 I30 AMERICAN COLLEGES. to a member of the class of 1868, who is now a pro- fessor in the college. His average was, with 4 as the maximum, 3.71. At Amherst this honor belongs, for the period under review, to the late Professor H. B. Hackett, whose contributions to sacred literature place him among the most eminent of biblical scholars. His percentage for the whole course was ninety -seven and one-half ; and the class of 1-830 honored him with its valedictory. The salutatorian of the class was the present professor of Greek at Amherst, W. S. Tyler, whose rank fell only one-half of one per cent below that of his successful rival. Professor C. A. Young, one of the most distinguished of our astronomers, was the first scholar in Dartmouth's class of 1853. The venerable Professor Stowe was a high scholar at Bow- doin in 1824, as was Professor Samuel Harris in 1833 ; and Professor Ezra Abbott, now of Cambridge, was among the first scholars in Bowdoin's class of 1840, and excelled his college peers in his knowledge of Greek, as he does still all American scholars in his knowledge of the Greek of the New Testament. These names may serve as representatives of scores of other equally distinguished scholars whose college honors were the foundation of more con- spicuous, but not more hardly won, distinction in after life. It is, indeed, difficult to find an eminent RANK IN COLLEGE, ETC. 131 professor in any American college or school who was not in his student days an eminent scholar. Not only those, however, who have gained distinc- tion in scholastic and pedagogic pursuits, but also those who have attained eminence in literature, have been scholars in college of high rank. The most celebrated of our historians, essayists, poets, have, as a rule, been distinguished in college for excellent scholarship. George Bancroft was a high scholar in Harvard's class of 18 1 7, and was particularly distinguished for his attainments in the Platonic philosophy. His commencement part was an oration with the charac- teristic subject, " On the Dignity and Utility of the Philosophy of the Human Mind." He was also hon- ored with the class-day poetship of his class, which does not, however, indicate in itself high scholarship. Among the high scholars of the class of 18 14 was William Hickling Prescott, who delivered, as his com- mencement part, a Latin poem, " Ad Spem ; " and of the next class of 181 5, the historian of New England, Dr. Palfrey, was a distinguished member. The politi- co-philosophical character of his mind, which is mani- fested on every page of his incomparable history, is early indicated in the subject of his graduation ora- tion, " On Republican Institutions as Affecting Pri- vate Character." Like Mr. Bancroft, Dr. Palfrey was the class-day poet of his class. Though John Loth r op 132 AMERICAN COLLEGES. Motley's college rank was not so high as Dr. Palfrey's, yet its excellence indicated, to a certain degree, his future eminence ; and his literary tastes are mani- fested in the subject of his commencement part, " The Influence of a Multiplication of Books upon Litera- ture." The cultured scholarship of Edward Everett, excellent in every department of college study, gave him the first place in the class of 1811 ; and his com- mencement oration, " On Literary Evils," and his oration for the second degree, " On the Restoration of Greece," forecast the literary and classical charac- ter of the work of his entire life. Though Ralph Waldo Emerson was by -no means among the highest scholars of his class, yet his rank was most honorable. The infinities of the transcendental philosophy, how- ever, were not accommodated to Harvard's narrow curriculum of sixty years ago. His commencement part was a " conference " with two classmates, " On the Character of John Knox, William Penn, and John Wesley." Mr. Emerson was also the class-day poet of his class of 1821. Our great romancer, also did not succeed in obtaining- a first-rate rank at Bbwdoin, as idid his class-mate, Longfellow. Hawthorne wrote, in his college days. Professor Packard, who was one of our instructors, informs me, " Fine Latin and English," but no commencement part was assigned him, " per- haps, because he requested not to have one." Mr. RANK IN COLLEGE, ETC. 133 George Ripley was distinguished at Harvard for his scholarship in the class of 1823, and delivered an ora- tion for his second degree on " The Claims of the Age on the Young Men of America," — claims which he has for the last fifty years done so much to fulfill. Mr. Longfellow was a high scholar in Bowdoin's most celebrated class of 1825 — the class of John S. C. Abbott, George B. Cheever, as well as of Hawthorne; and some of the most graceful of his graceful verses were written before his graduation. That long list of poems, dedicated to Harvard's class of 1829, with which, at their annual meetings, Oliver Wendell Holmes has delighted his class-mates, began on his class, and commencement, day. Doctor Holmes served as poet on both these occasions, and was as well an excellent scholar of the famous class. Though the course of William CuUen Bryant at Williams College was limited to two years, yet in them he gained dis- tinction for his attainments in the languages and in literature. James Russell Lowell, however, though the poet at Harvard in 1838, was not a high scholar, and received no part at commencement. The college curriculum of forty years ago was not the nurse of those qualities which make the commemoration ode immortal, and give his essays in literary criticism a pre-eminence which no other writing of the same character has yet attained in this generation. 134 AMERICAN COLLEGES, Although the college rank of distinguished clergy- men has not been, as a whole, as high as that of dis- tinguished scholars and writers, yet, in most cases, it has been conspicuous for its excellence. Phillips Brooks was a high scholar of Harvard's class of 1855, and delivered as his commencement part a very char- acteristic dissertation on "Rabaut, the Huguenot Preacher." O. B. Frothingham was the salutatorian of the class of 1843 at Harvard, and was especially distinguished in Latin, Greek, and rhetoric. Dr. R. S. Storrs attained high scholarship in the class of 1839 ^t Amherst ; and its valedictory was delivered by Dr. Huntington, who is now bishop of the diocese of Central New York. Dr. Budington of Brooklyn, received the third honor at Yale in 1834; and Dr. Bellows and Dr. Samuel Osgood attained high rank in Harvard's class of 1832. Dr. Osgood was also the orator of the class. As the theological and ministe- rial methods of Henry Ward Beecher are exceptional to the methods of mt)st clergymen, so his scholarship at Amherst was unlike the high rank to which most students, who are now distinguished ministers, at- tained. Mr. Beecher is undoubtedly the most distin- guished graduate of Amherst College ; but his col- lege rank is the lowest of any one who has become at all celebrated. His percentage for the whole course was fifty-eight. It is evident, however, that 135 those qualities of mind and heart which have made Mr. Beecher so prominent for a quarter of a century could find little opportunity for either employment or culture in the course of study of a small and new col- lege forty-three years ago. But his brother Edward, distinguished more by his books than by his sermons, received the highest honors at Yale in 1822. The great lawyers, too, in whom our country has been more rich than in the members of any other profession,^have won distinction in college for high scholarship. Rufus Choate, it is said, is one of the three men who, in the course of a hundred years, have graduated at Dartmouth with a perfect mark. The late Benjamin Robbins Curtis stood among the first scholars of Harvard's class of 1829 ; and in his com- mencement oration, " The Character of Lord Bacon," his judicial mind was afforded a worthy opportunity for weighing evidence. He was also honored with the oratorship of his class. Richard H. Dana, jr., was one of the high ranking scholars of the class of 1837 ; as was also Charles Devens, a distinguished member of the Supreme Bench of Massachusetts, of 1838. Mr. Evarts, too, was one of the highest scholars of Yale's class of 1 837. Nearly all those, in fact, who have used distinction gained at the bar as a stepping-stone to high political distinction, have been scholars in colleges of excellent standing. The two college-bred 1 36 AMERICAN COLLEGES. men of the " great American triumvirate " gained very high rank as students. Webster was one of the finest scholars in his class of 1801 at Dartmouth, probably- ranking second ; and Calhoun of Yale's class of 1804 attained the highest distinction. President Dwight's opinion regarding his ability is indicated in the remark attributed to him, "That young man has talent enough to be president of the United States." Salmon P. Chase was a high scholar in Dartmouth's class of 1826 ; as was also Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar of Harvard's class of 1835. His brother, George F. Hoar, attained an honorable rank in that class of dis- tinguished scholars, that of 1846. Caleb Cushing, too, who was distinguished for his scholarship as weM as for his diplomatic and juristic attainments, was the salutatorian of Harvard's class of 18 14. Among the eminent scholars of the class of 1828 were George S. Hillard and Robert C. Winthrop who forecasting his long career of public service, delivered as his com- mencement part an oration on " Public Station." Charles Sumner was distinguished in college for his knowledge of history and of literature, ancient and modern, of which he was . then, as during his whole life, a diligent student. His commencement part was a "conference" with three class-mates on "The Ro- man Ceremonies, the System of the Druids, the Re- ligion of the Hindoos, and the Superstition of the 137 American Indians." The only graduate of Bowdoin who has served as president of the United States is Franklin Pierce. He was one of the leading scholars of its class of 1824. William Pitt Fessenden, likewise, though very young when he received his first degree in 1823, indicated by his scholarship the eminence to which he afterward attained ; and George P. Marsh, a scholar as well as a statesman, was conspicuous for his scholarship at Dartmouth in 1820. From this examination of the records of scholar- ship in our colleges, and of the college rank of those who have become distinguished, the conclusion is in- evitable that the vast majority of the scholars, the writers, the clergymen, the lawyers, and the states- men who have gained distinction by the work of their life, have first won distinction in the college recita- tion and lecture room. This conclusion is substan- tially identical with that of Macaulay, which he ar- rived at by a similar examination of the records of scholarship at the university of Cambridge, and of Oxford : " It seems to me that there never was a fact proved by a larger mass of evidence, or a more unvaried experience than this : that men who distinguish themselves in their youth above their contemporaries almost always keep, to the end of their lives, the start which they have gained. This experience is so vast that I should as soon expect to hear any one question it as to hear it denied that arsenic is poison, or that brandy is in- 138 AMERICAN COLLEGES. toxicating. Take down, in any library, the Cambridge calen" dar. There you have the list of honors for a hundred years. Look at the list of wranglers and of junior optimes, and I will venture to say, that for one man who has in afterlife distin- guished himself among the junior optimes, you will find twenty among the wranglers. Take the Oxford calendar, and compare the list of first-class men with an equal number of men in the third class. Is not our history full of instances which prove this fact ? Look at the Church or the Bar. Look at Parlia- ment from the time that parliamentary government began in this country, — from the days of Montague and St. John to those of Canning and Peel. Look to India. The ablest man who ever governed India was Warren Hastings ; and was he not in the first rank a Westminster ? The ablest civil servant I ever knew in Ind.ia was Sir Charles Metcalfe ; and was he not of the first standing at Eton ? The most eminent member of the aristocracy who ever governed India was Lord Wellesley. What was his Eton reputation ? What was his Oxford repu- tation ? * * * The general rule is, beyond all doubt, that the men who were first in the competition of the schools have been first in the competition of the world." (Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, ii., 289, 290, 291). But if Macaulay had been speaking twenty-five years later he would have added another yet more dis- tinguished name to the list of those whose distinction in school has been the forerunner of distinction in life. William E. Gladstone, after a most brilliant career at Eton, entered Christ's Church, Oxford, and graduated in 1831 with a "double first-class," the highest honor, and one seldom won ; but which was RANK IN COLLEGE, ETC, 139 twenty-three years before won by Gladstone's politi- cal father, Sir Robert Peel. Indeed, six of the seven members of a recent English Cabinet who sat in the House of Commons, who were educated at the uni- versities, were either ** first-class," or "double-first class " men. It is not difficult to discover the cause of the con- dition by which those who are first in the struggle for college honors are first in the struggle for the honors of the world. These causes exist in the phys- ical, moral, and mental characteristics of the student, and in the beneficial results which flow from four years of hard mental labor. Good health is essential to the winning of success in both college and the world. The mens smia cannot be for a long time energetic and efficient unless placed in sano corpore. The suc- cessful student, like the successful writer, minister or lawyer, must in the first place be a good animal. Good morals likewise are a sine qua non of distinction in college and in after life. For, as renown is usually won only by continued hard work, and as the power to endure this strain of hard work is always weakened, if not destroyed by evil indulgence, few men of evil habits succeed in gaining distinction. The men of the highest intellectual distinction in this country and in England have been, at least in their student-days, men of pure moral character. College students, 140 AMERICAN COLLEGES. therefore, of evil habits are seldom first-rate scholars, and, unless shaking off these habits, seldom win dis- tinction in the work of their lives. Those qualities of mind, moreover, which serve to make great schol- ars serve also to make great men. The highest rank in college is seldom attained by a man of genius. A man of genius is, and can be, distinguished only usu- ally in one direction ; and, therefore, if in college he is 2i facile princeps in mathematics or philosophy, it is probable he is a dullard in Greek or physics. His place, therefore, on the scale of scholarship is seldom high. To this cause may, perhaps, be attributed the com- paratively low college rank of Ralph Waldo Emerson and of Hawthorne. As a rule, the highest scholars of any college class are men of excellent, though not of brilliant, ability. They have " good minds," talent ; but their only claim to genius is the power of study- ing ten or twelve hours each day. They preach and practice the gospel according to Carlyle — " the gospel of work." But this is the usual type of the mental ability of those who attain the highest distinction in any department of thought or study. The noblest reputations which have ever been gained in this coun- try or in England, in either scholarship, literature, ministry, law, medicine, or statesmanship, have usu- ally sprung rather from earnest and continued study than from natural brilliancy. The identical causes, RANK IN COLLEGE, ETC. 141 therefore, of good health, good morals and a good mind, lead to success in college and in the world. To the highest scholarship, moreover belong that mental discipline and those stores of acquired knowl- edge which are the foundation-stones of the temple of distinction. This mental discipline the highest schol- ar obtains in the greatest degree, and these stores of knowledge he acquires in the fullest measure. His preparation, therefore, for his professional work is superior to that of his class-mate of lower rank, whose mind is neither disciplined by so constant thinking, nor stored with knowledge so extended or profound. The start which he has gained in the beginning of the race, it is probable he will keep to its end. The stu- dent, indeed, who fails to receive in college the knowl- edge and the discipline of the highest scholarship, is usually obliged to supply the consequent deficiency by additional study before he can indulge the rational hope of distinguished success in his profession. The late Jeffries Wyman, our great professor of compara- tive anatomy, acknowledged this truth in regard to his own mental development. He received no com- mencement part in his class of 1833 at Harvard. But in the four years intervening between his gradua- tion and taking the degree of M.D. in 1837, an oppor- tunity was allowed for remedying the defects of his college education. Thus he fully prepared himself 142 AMERICAN COLLEGES. to win the highest scientific honors. The conclusion is therefore evident that the causes which tend to make men first in the rivalry of college, tend also to make them first in the struggle for the honors of pro- fessional life. The reason of the prevalent error that first schol- ars usually fail in winning distinction after their grad- uation arises from making this induction from a too narrow basis of facts. The lack of that professional eminence which has failed to crown the life-work of certain valedictorians of the highest rank is undoubt- edly the principal cause of the error. It must, indeed, he granted that there are a few considerations which in- dicate that upon the heads of valedictorians should rest the blame of the prevalence of this error. For a high scholar, in order to be first, often yields to the tempta- tion of working for " marks " in a way that is disas- trous to the genuine culture of his intellectual power. In the competition of the world, therefore, he may fall behind his rival of the third or fourth rank, whose eye was set upon a higher prize than the rank list. A few valedictorians are, moreover, fond of flattering themselves that, since they have reaped the highest collegiate honors, their life cannot be ^without noble result even if producing no other fruit. This assur- ance is liable to result in a mental apathy which ren- ders high attainments impossible. WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT. 143 CHAPTER XI. WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT. The State universities, of which there are not less *than seventeen in this country, are established and supported by the governments of the Common- wealths in which they are situated. They are an integral part of the educational system of each State. Their buildings are public property, and the main portion of their funds is drawn from the public chest. But the funds and property of other colleges and universities are derived principally from the gift and bequest of individuals. The history of the financial beginnings of the older colleges is commonplace; the history of one is, in broad outlines, the history of all. It is a his- tory of penury, of endeavors for an endowment, and of constant needs far outrunning the means of sup- ply. That this was the condition of all the older 144 AMERICAN COLLEGES, American colleges, excepting William and Mary, which down to the Revolutionary War was the best endowed of all institutions of learning, is well known ; but it is not so generally recognized that the colleges founded in the present century have, with a few remarkable exceptions, passed through the same struggle for an ample endowment. Williams College received as its original fund about fourteen thousand dollars, one quarter of which was derived from the proceeds of a lottery, and the prin- cipal part of the remainderirom the estate of Colonel Ephraim Williams. Bowdoin's endowment consisted mainly of several townships of land lying in Maine, and of gifts of James Bowdoin in both land and money. Amherst at the time of its establishment rejoiced in the possession of fifty thousand dollars, raised by small contributions, and in the generosity of other friends who gave, to a large extent, the ma- terials and the labor which erected its first building. The struggle of Wesleyan University for a foothold was long and hard. Contributions for its endow- ment were, as President Fisk said, " as meagre as the leakage of a miser's purse." Oberlin began in the purchase of a tract of land three miles square at a dollar and fifty cents an acre by its missionary founders, Shipherd and Stewart. Kenyon was, like Oberlin, hewn out of the wilderness by Bishop Chase, WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT, 145 supported by five thousand guineas from England. The large majority of the better colleges of the West, founded between 1840 and 1880, have been obliged to contend, year after year, against the most com- mon and pressing wants. Their students have been few, and these few as poor in purse as the college. The salaries of their professors have too frequently been the merest pittance. Their funds have run so low that bankruptcy has frequently stared them in the face. They have been aided by donations from the churches of the religious denominations which they represent. Their presidents have besieged the liberal and wealthy men of the East for gifts or be- quests. Many of them are now firmly established ; but some others, not a few, cannot yet see the dawn of their financial prosperity. Within the last score of years donations to the colleges have been most numerous and munificent. It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that since i860 the colleges have received amounts fully equal to their entire valuation in that year. In 1847, when Abbott Lawrence gave fifty thousand dollars to Harvard, it was said to be " the largest amount ever given at one time during the lifetime of the donor to any public institution in this country." Several colleges and universities have within this period been founded with endowments sufficient from their very begin- 146 AMERICAN COLLEGES, ning to make them independent of the whim of leg- islatures or of the income of tuition fees. Cornell University received by a Congressional land-grant nearly a million acres, besides five hundred thousand dollars from Ezra Cornell, whose name it perpetu- ates. Vassar also began with a gift of more than four hundred thousand dollars from Matthew Vassar. Smith received before its doors were open about half a million from Sophia Smith. Wellesley was at the outset well endowed by Henry F. Durant. The Johns Hopkins University possessed, before it had enrolled a single student, not less than three millions of dollars. The older colleges have added vastly to their resources within these last two decades. Har- vard's property has tripled in value ; Yale's in the various departments has increased by not less than a million and a half ; Princeton's by more than a mill- ion, and Dartmouth's by a large amount. During President Stearns' administration Of twenty-two years, Amherst received more than eight hundred thousand dollars. If, as the Commissioner of Education has stated, over fifty millions of dollars have been given to the educational institutions of the United States, more than thirty millions were given to the colleges in the eighth decade of the present century. The amounts given in each of the years cire as follows : WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT. 147 1871 $8,435,990* 1872. 6,282,461 1873 8,238, 141 1874 • 1,845,354 1875 2,703,650 1876 2,743,248 1877 1.273,991 1878 1,389.633 1879 3.878,648 1880 2,666,571 These sums were contributed in amounts running from a few dollars to hundreds of thousands, and in a few instances to millions. Among the most mu- nificent of the benefactors, in addition to several already named, are George Peabody, Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, of Maiden, Mass. ; Ario Pardee, of Hazle- ton. Pa. ; John C. Green, of New York ; Henry W. Sage, of Brooklyn ; Samuel Williston, of Easthamp- ton, Mass. ; Joseph E. Sheffield ; Amasa Stone, of Ohio ; Nathan Matthews and Nathaniel Thayer, of Boston, and Alexander Agassiz, of Cambridge. The roll might be lengthened to indefinite limits, but these names represent the larger gifts. The gifts of the younger Agassiz in carrying on the Museum which his father founded already exceed three hun- * All Educational Purposes. 148 AMERICAN COLLEGES, dred thousand dollars. Nathan Matthews and Nathaniel Thayer have each given more than a quarter of a million to Harvard University. Amasa Stone gave five hundred thousand dollars to the institution bearing the name of Western Reserve College, and now bearing that of Adelbert Univer- sity. Samuel Williston gave one hundred and fifty thousand to Amherst College, and richly endowed the seminary at Easthampton which bears his name. Joseph E. Sheffield gave to the Scientific School of Yale College nearly four hundred thousand dollars. The gifts of Henry W. Sage and Ezra Cornell to the university at Ithaca, N. Y., aggregate more than a million. To Princeton, John C. Green gave seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and to Lafayette Ario Pardee has, since 1864, given at different intervals more than half a million. The largest single bequest ever made, at least in this country, if not in any country, to an educational in- stitution is the three millions (or more) which Johns Hopkins, a Baltimore merchant, gave to found a university which transmits his name. George Peabody gave about eight millions to be- nevolent objects, of which about one quarter forms the " Southern Educational Fund." To Yale and Harvard he gave each one hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars ; to Washington College, Virginia, sixty WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT. 149 thousand ; to Kenyon, Ohio, twenty-five thousand ; and to various scientific institutions about a mill- ion and a half, two-thirds of which endowed the Institute at Baltimore. In respect to the geographical distribution of these benefactions it is evident that wherever the greatest wealth is combined with the highest degree of intel- ligence they are the largest. If the people of the State are wealthy, but are not of a high order of intelligence, they will not give generously to the endowment of colleges. If they are highly intelli- gent, but poor in purse, as the people of Maine, for instance, they cannot give. If they are lacking in both intelligence and wealth, as they are in too many of the Southern States, they also cannot give. But wherever they are both wealthy and intelligent, as in New York and Massachusetts, the benevolences are the most liberal. From the Eastern States, in which the highest degrees of wealth and education are combined, a large proportion of the gifts which are received in the West and South are derived. These general statements are illustrated in the fol- lowing table, which represents the gifts made to the collegiate institutions of the different States: — ISO AMERICAN COLLEGES, GIFTS TO COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. 1879. 1880. Alabama... $600 Arkansas California Colorado 8,068 $87,000 Connecticut 150,000 5,000 Delaware * 478,000 Florida Georgia 7i5oo 3,617 Illinois 114,000 67,909 Indiana 3, 100 31,338 Iowa 40,650 64,650 Kansas 5, 500 10,500 Kentucky 18,808 Louisiana 25,925 310 Maine 19,600 90,250 Maryland 11,000 Massachusetts 424,984 293,632 Michigan 15, 578 36,967 Minnesota ^ 5.589 39,647 Mississippi 500 Missouri 19,853 104,820 Nebraska 15,000 4,800 New Hampshire 70,000 New Jersey 165,000 138,500 New York 112,732 510,144 North Carolina 24,580 14,517, Ohio 104,202 141,895 Oregon 17,200 8,500 Pennsylvania 2,095,350 194,750 Carried forward $3,387, S" $2,415,554 1879. 1880. 13,387,511 12,415,554 Si.ooo 38,000 9,100 2,175 141,162 86,350 185,625 8,150 15,000 30.854 3,000 70 87,200 82,965 2,453 50 WEAL TH AND ENDO WMENT. \ 5 1 1879. Brought forward $3,387,511 Rhode Island South CaroUna Tennessee Texas Vermont Virginia » . . West Virginia Wisconsin District of Columbia New Mexico Utah Washington Total $3,878,648 $2,666,571 About one-third of these amounts was given to the colleges in New England, and somewhat more than, one-half to the colleges of the seaboard States. In New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and Colorado, the largest gifts fell. Of the usefulness of gifts and bequests made to colleges there is no question. So long as the colleges are designed to promote learning, to ennoble char- acter, and to foster righteousness, so long will the endowment of them prove beneficent. Even if the State should establish, as has been done in several Commonwealths, a university for the training of its youth, and allow them to resort thither with the same freedom as to its other public schools, it is 152 AMERICAN COLLEGES, clear that in other Commonwealths the best colleges are, and for generations Will be, those endowed by individual citizens. It is also clear that a college cannot meet its barest expenses from its natural source of income — the tuition fees. Even Harvard, with a fee double or triple that of most colleges, spent in a recent year twenty thousand dollars more than it received from students ; and this cost was ex- clusive of the expense of the library and of the gen- eral administration. Endowment is essential to the continued existence of a college. The important question, in which part of the United States is the need of educational endow- ments most pressing, is not easily answered. Presi- dent Magoun, of Iowa College, affirms "that the next fifteen milHons of dollars for higher institutions of learning should come West." In 1871, before assuming the presidency of Dartmouth College, Professor Bartlett asserted that there " was afar more vital need elsewhere " than on the Atlantic coast for the fifteen millions of dollars which up to that year had been given to the Atlantic colleges. But Presi- dent Eliot constantly declares that, in relation to its financial demands. Harvard must be regarded as a poor, and not as she is usually considered a rich, college. At the beginning of the last decade the benefactions to Western colleges amounted to one- WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT. 153 eighth of those to Eastern. Up to the year 1871 the largest individual donation made to a Western college was fifty thousand dollars, — a sum which was given by Mr. Carleton, of Boston, to found the institution in Minnesota which honors his name. One method of determining the place wherein lies the greatest need of additional endowment con- sists in comparing the amount of the funds which the colleges of a State possess with the population of that State: — p. ,. Proportion of Population, CnlWiat.^ Endowment Census 1880. p-^nllS!^* to Each (Earlier Report.) Endowment. p^^^^„ Alabama 1,262,344 $807,000 $ .63 Arkansas 802,564 61,000 .07 California 864,686 2,298,000 2.64 Colorado 194,649 130,000 .66 Connecticut 622,683 1,060,000 1. 54 Delaware 146,654 158,000 1.07 Georgia 1,538,983 1,115,000 .72 Illinois 3,078,636 4,686,000 1.52 Indiana 1,978,358 1,900,000 .96 Iowa 1,624,463 1,829,000 I. II Kansas 995,335 457,ooo .45 Kentucky 1,648,599 1,126,000 .68 Louisiana 940,263 448,000 .47 Maine 648,945 1,451,000 2.23 Maryland 935,139 3,408,000 3.63 Massachusetts 1,783,086 6,175,000 3.40 Michigan 1,634,096 1,646,000 I. GO Carried forward 128,745,000 154 AMERICAN COLLEGES, ^ , . Fnfir*> Proportion of Population, Colleeiate Endowment Census x88o. EndoXnt. %^^ Brought forward .... $28,745,000 Minnesota 780,807 804,000 $1.02-1 Mississippi 1,131,899 491,000 .43 Missouri 2,169,091 1,888,000 .87 Nebraska 452^432 241,000 .53 Nevada 62,265 .... New Hampshire 347.784 550,ooo i . 58 New Jersey 1,130,892 2,393,000 2. 11 New York 5,083,173 14,794,000 2.91 North Carolina 1,400,000 646,000 .45 Ohio.. 3,197,794 4,687,000 -1. 46 Oregon 174,767 463,000 2.59 Pennsylvania 4,282,738 8,940,650 2.08 Rhode Island 276,528 600,000 2.16 South Carolina 995,706 722,000 . 72 Tennessee 1,542,463 2,422,000 1.57 Texas 1,597,509 444,000 .27 Vermont 332,286 686,000 2.06 Virginia 1,512,203 1,950,000 1,28 West Virginia 618, 193 602,000 . 97 Wisconsin 1,315,386 1,650,000 1.25 District of Columbia 177,638 1,010,000 5 .68 Utah 143,907 Washington 75, 120 105,000 1.39 Total $74,943,000 $1 .49 These comparisons contain very interesting data. They show that the largest amount invested in col- leges, in relation to the number of inhabitants, is WEAL TH AND ENDO WMENT. 1 5 5 found in the District of Columbia ; that of any State the largest is found in Maryland, and the next to the largest in Massachusetts. Having less than three dol- lars and more than two for each inhabitant are, in their order. New York, California, Oregon, Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont ; having less than two and more than one, are New Hampshire, Tennessee, Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio, Washington, Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Delaware, Minnesota, and Michigan ; and having less than one, are West Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, Colorado, Alabama, Nebraska, Louisiana, Kansas, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tex- as, and Arkansas. A large proportion of the West- ern States have less than two and more than one dollar an inhabitant ; and a yet larger proportion of the Southern States have less than one. By comparing yet further the population of these States with the endowments of their colleges, some remarkable contrasts are made evident. New Jersey and Mississippi have the same population, yet the colleges of the former have fourfold the endowment of the Southern State. Virginia and Texas have near- ly the same population, yet the State in which Jeffer- son founded a university has nearly five times the college property which Texas has. The population of New York exceeds that of North Carolina nearly 156 AMERICAN COLLEGES. four times, but its college endowments exceed those of North Carolina more than twenty times. Mary- land, Louisiana, and Kansas have each a population between nine hundred thousand and a million, yet Maryland's college property is eight times in excess of that of either of the other two States. California has a population slightly larger than that of Arkan- sas, yet the endowments of its colleges are thirty- seven times larger. The ten New England and Middle States possess twenty-eight per cent, of the entire population, and forty-seven per cent, of the college property. The Western States have thirty- two per cent, of the population, and twenty-eight per cent, of the college property. The Southern States have thirty-six per cent, of the population, and twenty-one per cent, of the college property. Assuming, therefore, population as a basis, the great- est demand for additional endowments is in the South. The wealth and endowment of the English uni- versities shed light upon the financial standing of the American colleges. Previous to the appointment of the English Uni- versities Commission, ten years ago, the amount of the property and of the income of Oxford and of Cambridge was unknown to the public. Founded as early as the fifteenth, the fourteenth, and even the thirteenth century, the colleges were jealous of any WEAL TH AND ENDO WMENT, \ 57 interference in rights and privileges which time had rendered sacred. Endowed with property that was certainly large, they managed their lands and securi- ties and expended their income, responsible only to themselves. The Royal Commission, appointed on the 5th of January, 1872, and whose report was pub- lished in 1874, revealed for the first time in their long history the financial standing of the universities and of the associated colleges. It is worthy of mention, in passing, that this report has in England received much less attention than its authors had a right to ex- pect, and in this country it has been scarcely noticed, even by those interested in university questions. But even with the tables of this report, volumi- nous and exact as they indeed are, it is impossible to form a thoroughly satisfactory estimate of the value of the university and college property. The property is of various kinds, being classified by the commis- sioners under six heads — " lands," " house property," " tithe rent charges,'* *' other rent charges, such as fee farm rents and fixed charges," " stocks, shares, and other securities of a similar kind," and "other properties, such as fines and other profits from copy- holds of inheritance, minerals, timber, etc." Its money value it is, therefore, difficult to fix. The quantity of land, however, held by the universities and colleges is known with exactness. It comprises 158 AMERICAN COLLEGES, 319,718 acres, exclusive of "copyholds of inherit ance." Of this amount 7,683 acres belong to the Uni- versity of Oxford, and 184,764 acres to its colleges and halls ; 2,445 acres to the University of Cambridge, and 1 24,826 acres to its colleges. With the exception of a small quantity of woodland, the entire ajnount is leased. It is distributed throughout England and Wales, but the larger proportion is found in the southern counties. To Oxford University it yields an annual income of about ;f 12,000; to its colleges and halls, ;^ 17 1,000; to Cambridge University, ;^3,ioo, and to its colleges, ;^ 132,000. The worth of the property, however, of the insti- tutions can be more exactly judged by their incomes than by any approximation of its mere amount. During the last year for which the data can be ob- tained, the income from lands and other properties was as follows: — University of Oxford. University Cambridge. Colleges and Halls of Ox- ford. Colleges of Cambridge. Total. Lands £ J. d. 12,083 4 1,162 14 2 490 19 .7 872 6 9 12,939 6 9 1,494 16 2 £ *. d. 3,148 19 8 156 10 1,784 14 5 33316 6 7,648 9 844 19 2 £ *. d. 170.090 II ■;■% =6,833 6 3 34,152 15 8 4,092 14 10 24.242 7 loj^ 13.574 14 3 6,289 6 27.194 6 2 £ .. d 132.670 6 25,993 8 2 54,286 1 I 3.943 a 2 16,508 7 S 20.365 8 8J^ 1,764 9 10 £ s. d. 318,893 12 i% 54,145 18 7 90,714 10 9 9,242 3 61.338 11 0% 36,279 18 354 8,053 10 4 27,194 6 2 Tithe rent charges Other rent charges Stocks, shares, etc Other properties Special endowment .... Jj>;^ns Total 307.369 17 2 264,256 17 loj^ 614,587 7 65i WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT. 159 The universities and colleges have a second source of income. It embraces the various fees paid by students. The tuition fees at Oxford are ^21 a year, and at Cambridge ;^i8. With them, the charges for the rent of rooms and other small payments constitute the entire internal income. The following tables exhibit the total amount of both the internal and the external income ; under the ex- ternal income is included that derived from lands, securities and other property : — External Income. Internal Income. Total corpo- rate (external and internal) income- Income from Trust Funds. Tuition fees paid by •under- graduates. University of Oxford .... Colleges^ and Halls of Oxford £ *. d. 13,605 4 6 271,952 17 & s. d. i8,S4S 16 6 58,883 19 1 £ *. d. 32.151 I 330.83616 I £ s. d. 15^437 19 3 35.417 2 £ s. d. 30,761 3 4 Total 285,558 1 6 3,509 10 11 229,621 2% 77.429 »S 7 20,133 8 6 42,254 13 6 362,987 17 I 23,642 19 5 278,970 13 9.% 50,854 19 5 10,407 17 10 27,540 17 8 30,761 3 4 University of Cambridge Colleges of Cambridge. . 26,413 IS Total 233.130 " iK 62,388 2 302,613 13 1.% 37,948 IS 6 We now turn to consider the property and the in- come of American colleges. According to the last report of the United States Commissioner of Edu- cation, the value of the grounds, buildings and ap- paratus of three hundred and sixty-four colleges is $39>623,424, and the amount of productive funds l6o AMERICAN COLLEGES. $43,431,520. The income of these funds is $3,014,- 048, and the annual income derived from tuition fees $1,881,360. The total income drawn from these two sources approaches $5,000,000. The income of the universities and colleges of Oxford and of Cambridge aggregates $3,500,000. But while about two-fifths of the income of the American institutions are drawn from tuition fees, the English institutions depend upon the same source for only about one-tenth of their income. Thus the property held by these uni- versities and their thirty-six allied colleges furnishes a much larger proportion of their income than the lands and funds of American colleges provide for their sup- port. The comparison, however, of the income of several of the wealthier American colleges with the income of the colleges of Oxford and of Cambridge indicates that the American institutions possess the larger revenue. The University of California has an income of about $100,000 from invested funds ; its income from tuition fees is quite nothing. Univer- sity College, Oxford, has an income from external sources of $45,000, and of nearly $10,000 from tuition fees. Yale College receives about $80,000 a year from productive funds, and $100,000 from tuition fees ; but the five colleges of Balliol, Lincoln, Trinity, Pembroke, and Worcester have a total income not exceeding $200,000. Columbia College is reported WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT. i6l as possessing an income of $313,565, which exceeds by a few thousand the revenue of the wealthiest college — Christ Church. Eight colleges of Cam- bridge possess an annual income of about $600,000, a sum that is only $50,000 larger than the combined incomes of Columbia and of Harvard. The receipts in all the departments of Harvard University for the year 1879-80 were $600,000, and in the college $236,- 000. The former amount is double that received by any Oxford or Cambridge college. Yet, though the income of the richer American colleges is larger than the revenue of the English, many colleges on these shores are much poorer than the poorest of the English. Scores of institutions which afford students a respectable education, and whose graduates are numbered by hundreds, receive an income of less than $10,000 each year. They are to be found in nearly every State of the Union. The expenditures of the institutions of the two countries show as striking a difference in respect to- amount and character as their incomes exhibit. In the English, about one-third of the total revenue is con- sumed by the salaries of the Fellows, about one-tenth by the salaries of the heads of the colleges, and still another tenth by payments made to the " scholars and exhibitioners." The remainder, one-half of the entire amount, is devoted to no less than eighteen II l62 AMERICAN COLLEGES, different purposes. A portion forms an allowance to residents, a portion is Credited to the salaries of the university professors, a portion is allotted to the chapel, a portion goes to the library, and a portion is used in paying rates and taxes. In American colleges more than one-half the in- come is spent in the salaries of professors and in- structors. Few colleges make public reports of their financial standing, and it is therefore difficult to ob- tain the facts in reference to expenditures. The treasurer of Harvard, however, makes a full annual exhibit of his accounts. The total expenditures of Harvard College were, in 1879-80, $212,542.22, of which somewhat more than one-half — $133,991.87 — was devoted to the salaries of instructors; $24,- 025.27 was used in the payment of scholarships to undergraduates whose scholastic rank and pecuniary need entitled them to receive aid ; the remaining $54,000 — about one-fourth of the entire expenditure — was employed in uses quite as various as those to which one-half of the revenue of the English uni- versities IS devoted. Repairs on the college build- ings, apparatus for laboratories, services of janitors, fuel, printing, and other objects equally diverse, con- sumed the balance. The expenses for instruction are, relative to the entire expenditure, much greater in the American WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT, 163 college. This is due to the private nature of a large proportion of the instruction in the English univer- sities. The salaries of Oxford and of Cambridge professors vary as largely as the salaries of the pro- fessors in a hundred American colleges. The highest salary paid at either of the universities is that at- tached to the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divin- ity at Cambridge. Its amount is ;^ 1,854 17s. lod. The lowest salary appears to be that belonging to the Lord Almoner's Professorship of Arabic, which is £AfO I OS. At Oxford are only five professorships commanding more than ;^ 1,000, and at Cambridge only two. The fifty-one professors, readers and search- ers of Oxford receive on an average an annual salary of ;^488, and the thirty-seven of Cambridge ;^457. Although in the American college instructors of the same grade usually receive the same salary, in the different colleges salaries differ to nearly the extent found in the English universities. A full professor in Columbia College receives $7,500, in Harvard $4,500, and in most colleges, as Dartmouth, Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, amounts varying from $1,700 to $2,500. There are many colleges in the Western States whose professors are obliged to be content with a pittance of $1,000 a year. The cost of the education of each student is much greater at the English universities. Deducting from 1 64 AMERICAN COLLEGES, the entire annual expenditure of Oxford the amount paid the Fellows, the balance of about ;^25o,(X)0 is either directly or indirectly devoted to the education of about eighteen hundred students. The annual ex- penditure for each undergraduate is, therefore, about $700. At Cambridge the expenditure is about $100 less. Of the American colleges few, if any spend a larger amount than Harvard. The annual cost to it of each student does not exceed $300, and probably falls somewhat below. It is to be remembered, how- ever, that the number of students in the college department of Harvard is about equal to one-half of those in the entire university of either Oxford or Cambridge, and it is well known that the greater the number of students the less is the relative cost of instruction of each. By this review of the comparative financial show- ing of the two great English universities and of American colleges, it is made evident that the richer American institutions enjoy a larger income and make larger expenditures than the ordinary college of either Oxford or Cambridge. When one considers that the oldest college on these shores has not at- tained one-half the age of several of the English institutions, this comparative position becomes most creditable to the generosity and to the intelligence of the American people. WEALTH AND ENDOWMENT. 165 It IS also made clear that the newer institutions possess a great advantage in the freedom from the necessity of maintaining an elaborate establishment. College officers and servants, subscriptions and pen- sions, the management of estates and the augmenta- tion of benefices, consume a no small share of the income of the English universities. The Fellowship system demands one-third of their revenue. In America the larger proportion of all the income is devoted directly to the payment of services of in- struction. l66 AMERICAN COLLEGES, CHAPTER XII. A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. The project of a National University is not new. Its establishment has been recommended by several of the Presidents of the United States, and urged by able statesmen. It lay, in common with the whole cause of public education, near the heart of Washington. In letters addressed to Adams and to Hamilton the first President argued for its founda- tion. In his eighth annual message he proposed to the consideration of Congress the expediency of estab- lishing a National University and a Military Acade- my. So important did he regard the subject that in his last will he treats it at considerable length. " It has always been a source of serious regret with me," he writes, " to see the youth of these United States sent to foreign countries for the purpose of educa- tion, often before their minds were formed, or they A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 167 had imbibed any adequate ideas of the happiness of their own ; contracting too frequently not only habits of dissipation and extravagance, but principles un- friendly to republican government, and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind." For the removal of these evils, and for spreading " systematic ideas through all parts of this rising empire," and for doing away with '' local attachments and State prejudices," he sees no plan more feasible than the " establish- ment of a university in the central part of the United States." And in behalf of its establishment Wash- ington went so far as to bequeath fifty shares of the stock of the Potomac Company. The Govern- ment, however, failed to foster the project, and it was not, therefore, realized. Jefferson also (the founder of the University of Virginia) recommended to Congress, in his sixth an- nual message, the establishment of a National Uni- versity. Its endowment might be carved, he pointed out, from donations of the public lands, or from funds of the National Treasury, but not, in the latter case, however, without an amendment to the Constitution. He argues that "a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation." l68 AMERICAN COLLEGES, Madison and John Adams likewise strongly urged the foundation of the university. The advantages of the scheme Madison Numerates at considerable length : " By enlightening the opinions, by expand- ing the patriotism, and by assimilating the princi- ples, the sentiments, and the manners of those who resort to this temple of science, sectional sources of jealousy and prejudice would be diminished, the features of national character would be multiplied, and greater extent given to national harmony." Ad- vantages, it must be confessed, which are rather vague, and which Congress, under neither Madison nor Adams, attempted to realize. Not only, however, have these and other Presidents presented the claims of an American University, but many educators and associations of educators have also urged its foundation. A committee of the National Teachers* Association presented in 1870 a report that was both an argument and an appeal for the establishment of a National University. From time to time, both in political and in educational documents, it is asserted that the great need of American education is a university situated in a central part of the country, and supported by the Government. - Opposition to the foundation of such an institu- tion is not, in my opinion, to be based upon a want A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 169 of constitutional authority. That the Constitution confers upon Congress the right to provide for edu- cation is at the present time the opinion of the large majority of statesmen and jurists. If education is not embraced in the "general welfare of the United States " * it is difficult to know what that clause does include. From other sources than the Constitution, however, objections to the scheme may be drawn which deserve serious attention. The general argument by which the proposition for the establishment of a National University has been supported for the space of nearly a hundred years, and by statesmen of the most diverse degrees of culture, may be embraced in the remark that it is the duty of the American Government to provide for the education of its citizens. It is thought to be opposed to the spirit of republican institutions to refuse any educational advantage, however great be its cost or limited its application. As it is confess- edly the duty of the Government to provide for the training of its citizens in the elementary branches of knowledge, it is inferred that it is likewise its duty to train them in those higher branches which con- stitute what is commonly termed a Hberal education. The fallacy in this argument is easy of detection. ♦Constitution, Article I., Section 8. 170 AMERICAN COLLEGES, It is undoubtedly the duty of the Government to provide for elementary' education. Its existence is to a great degree conditioned by the intelligence with which its citizens administer its concerns. The United S^tes is founded on a book — that book is a text-book, and that text-book" is a common-school text-book. But does the permanency of the Gov- ernment hinge upon either the college, the university or the professional school ? Has its existence been imperiled by the lack of a National University? Would its continuance be more assured by the foun- dation of such an establishment ? But, it may be urged, though the mere existence of the Government is not dependent upon the edu- cational institutions of advanced standing, as it is de- pendent upon the common school, yet its prosperity would be enhanced by the equipment of a National University. Were there no other institution of as high a grade, the foundation of a National University would, without doubt, prove to be of untold worth. But already those interests which would be fostered by a National University are abundantly conserved by scores of universities and colleges. It is notori- ous that the United States has more colleges than the needs of the higher education warrant ; and it is equally true that several of them provide as thorough and as extended a training as a national institution A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 171 could offer. The education which many of these col- leges afford is, further, as free as the United States could hope to give. Harvard University distributes about $40,000 a year in various forms among needy students. It turns no worthy student away for lack of funds. Many other colleges possess endowments for the single purpose of giving an education to those who are unable to pay for it. In no less than seventeen States the State University is open to every resident. A National University could hardly hope to make education either more free or more valuable than it now is. Perhaps the strongest objection to the proposed scheme is found in the necessarily temporary char- acter of its methods and management. It could not be assured of permanency ; and of permanency all educational institutions especially need to be assured. A National University would be either directly or indirectly under the control of Congress. If it was endowed at its foundation by the gift of several millions of dollars it would, to a large degree, be freed from the interference of the Government in respect to the important element of income. But if not so endowed^ it would be compelled to beTan annual suppliant for an appropriation to discharge its annual expenses. Its professors, too, could not but feel that the tenure of their offices was not 1/2 AMERICAN COLLEGES. secure. Under the control of a legislative body, not one-half of whose members are liberally educated, the holders of professorships would be convinced that eminent success, neither in original researches nor in instruction, would prevent the demand for their resignation. That department in which the interests of the Government in education is at present most manifest, the Bureau of Education, has suffered disastrous changes, the like of which a National University would hardly be able to escape. EstabHshed as an independent department, it was afterward reduced to a branch of the Interior De- partment. The salary of the Commissioner, fixed at $4,000, was soon cut down to $3,000. The compen- sation of his assistants suffered a corresponding re- duction. A Government which permits so important a department to be impeded year after year for a lack of means — a Government which allows its na- tional library to be of little use in consequence of the mere accumulation of its riches — could hardly be asked to provide fully and punctually for the needs of a National University. There is, further, reason to fear that the founda- tion of a National University would, instead of in- creasing, as is claimed, diminish public interest in the higher education. In the older States, at least, this cause is committed directly to the people. They A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, 173 have, therefore, felt, and continue to feel, an interest in it, from which have sprung Yale, Harvard, and other colleges of a high standing. It is to this pub- lic regard that we owe the munificent foundations of Johns Hopkins, of George Peabody, of John C. Green, and of Ezra Cornell, But once let the Gov- ernment assume in part the charge of university- education and the regard of the people for it will diminish. The rich will not make gifts or devise bequests to an institution which the Government is obliged to support. Many objections to this movement are to be dis- covered in the nature and functions of government. To one or two I advert. The establishment and organization of a National University would increase the powers of the Gov- ernment. That this is the fact is clear. That this increase of powers is an evil is clear to one who ob- serves the present tendencies of our Government. These tendencies are all in the line of the augmenta- tion of the rights and duties of the Government. This augmentation is not only a result of a high de- gree of civilization, but it is also an effect of the continued existence of democratic institutions. The danger of our nation is not in being governed too little, but in being governed too much. Any move- ment, therefore, which would result in an increase 174 AMERICAN COLLEGES, in the power of the Government should be viewed with concern. As Mr. Mill has finely said : " There never was more necessity for surrounding individual independence of thought, speech and conduct with the most powerful defences, in order to maintain that originality of mind and individuality of character, which are the only source of any real progress, and of most of the qualities which make the human race much superior to any herd of animals. Hence it is no less important in a democratic than in any other government, that all tendency on the part of public authorities to stretch their interference, and assume a power of any sort which can easily be dispensed with, should be regarded with unremitting jealousy."* If it cannot be affirmed that the establishment of a National University is such an " interference," it is at least certain that its organization would constantly invite " public authorities to stretch their interfer- ence," and would render such interference probable. With an increase of the power of Government, the establishment of a National University would neces- sitate also an increase of the responsibilities and duties of Government. I f Congress could completely surrender the superintendency of the university to a board, the evil of the additional burden would not * Political Economy, Book V. , Chap. xi. , § 3. A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 175 be worth considering. But any surrender could not be complete. Congress would be constantly asked to examine questions relating to either its finances or its instruction. With all the topics which our legis- lative body is at present obliged to consider, there is no doubt that the question of the establishment and organization of a National University would not receive that attention which its grave importance demands. The principle of the division of labor is not applied by the legislative houses of either the State or the nation with that exactness which results in the performance of the largest amount of the most valuable work. Until those who are specially interested in the higher education can be assured that the Government is both willing and prepared to assume the responsibility of the care of a great National University, they must hesitate to lay an additional duty upon Congress, which is already over- burdened. In respect to the intervention of the Government in affairs which the people themselves can perform, the rule of laisser-fairc should be followed. The people know better than the Government what they want, and also know better how to supply their wants. As the keen observer from whom I have already quoted says : " The inferiority of government agency in any of the common operations of industry 1^6 AMERICAN COLLEGES, or commerce, is proved by the fact that it is hardly ever able to maintain itself in equal competition with individual agency, where the individuals possess the requisite degree of industrial enterprise, and can command the necessary assemblage of means. All the facilities which a government enjoys of access to information ; all the means which it possesses of re- munerating, and therefore of commanding, the best available talent in the market, are not an equivalent for the one great disadvantage of an inferior interest in the result." ^ The lack of interest on the part of the Government in education is even more marked. The history of the relation of the American Govern- ment to schools and colleges does not warrant the assumption that it would show that zeal for the prosperity of a National University which the alumni of scores of colleges are displaying for their respect- ive alma maters. In the, higher education our Gov- ernment, as at present constituted, cannot feel a deep and permanent interest. It should be intrusted, as it is now intrusted, to the people. The best universities in the world, the German, possess only a slight connection with the Govern- ment. Deficits in their annual accounts are met by appropriations from the State Treasury. But the * Ibid., § 5. A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, lyj relation, in other respects than the pecuniary, has at times been of injury to the universities. The Gov- ernment has not infrequently attempted to coerce them. The Prussian Government has often stood in direct conflict with the University of Berh'n. The university, however, has always won in the contest. But this, the largest, as well as each of the twenty universities, has gained its power and influence rather without than with the help of the Government. Governmental interference, whether successful or not successful, cannot but result in confusing the regular work of a university. It remains only to add that the relation of the Government of Germany to its universities furnishes, therefore, no argument for the establishment of a National University in the United States. 12 IjS AMERICAN COLLEGES. CHAPTER XIII. woman's education. That women should receive an education, that women should receive as broad and thorough an education as is possible, are propositions that no longer require discussion. The questions which, in the present state of public opinion, demand consid- eration relate to the peculiar kind of intellectual training which women should receive and to the conditions under which this training should be given. It is not proposed in this chapter to discuss either the general theory of women's education or to pre- sent a summary of the facts regarding the applica- tions of any theory. The purpose is to offer cer- tain considerations, derived chiefly from experience, relative to the education of young women, that tend to prove the wisdom of that method usually known WOMAN'S EDUCATION, 179 as co-education. And yet it is to be premised that co-education is not an end sought for its own sake. The ultimate aim is to give young women ad- vantages for intellectual culture as liberal as are af- forded to young men. Since the large proportion of the institutions which are most fully equipped for furnishing these advantages are now monopolized by the students of one sex, and since it is not pos- sible to establish institutions as fully equipped for the use of young women alone, it is urged that they should be received into institutions already existing. Co-education is simply the stairway leading to the opportunity for the noblest and highest culture. It should, therefore, be open to those who wish to use it. It is still further to be premised that the colleges for women of recent establishment, as Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, afford excellent opportunities for intellectual training. The courses of instruction which they provide are many and diverse. Their professors are learned, able, and not a few are also distinguished for scholarship and original research. But the fact that they are so thoroughly equipped for their work furnishes no conclusive argu- ment against opening other institutions, even more thoroughly equipped, to women as well as to men. l8o AMERICAN COLLEGES, The subject of co-education has now gathered about itself a large amount of what may be termed experience. The reasons for and against this system of training are no longer a priori only. The nearly fifty years in which this system has been practiced to a greater or less extent have resulted in an accu- mulation of facts that are of great value in deter- mining the expediency of this method of intel- lectual discipline. Regarding the worth of this system educators hold theories the most diverse. These theories are, of course, of use, in cases of the most abundant use ; but they are of comparatively small use in respect to those points of inquiry in which actual experience has proved either their nar- rowness or their superficiality. The system of co- education was introduced into the University of Michigan after a* period of thirty years, in which this justly famous institution had devoted itself to the training of young men exclusively. Before reaching the decision of opening its doors to young women it sought advice from the most distinguished educators. Several of the opinions thus evoked were of those who had made no trial of co-educa- tion, and these opinions were, with scarcely an ex- ception, antagonistic to the movement. Some said it would be " demoralizing " ; some feared it would result in a " corruption of manners and morals " ; WOMAN'S ED UCA TION, i g i v some argued that *' the delicacy of female character would be destroyed " ; some apprehended serious weakening of the health of female students. But the doors were opened ; the experiment was tried. For more than a decade the system has been pursued, and none of those evils that were prophesied has accrued as the result of co-educa- tion. A reason for co-education that might be urged in advance of any trial of the system, and yet one which practice has proved to be valid, is its economy of means and forces. Most colleges could double or treble the number of their students without a pro- portional increase in the number of their professors. A professor can lecture to a hundred as well as to fifty students. Libraries and laboratories, once estab- lished, can be used by a larger number without a correspondingly larger expense. It is this fact of economy to which President Eliot refers when, in expressing his opinion that young men and women from fifteen to twenty years of age are not " best educated in intimate association," he yet ac- knowledges that this " method may nevertheless be justifiable in a community which cannot afford any- thing better." Not seldom it is asserted that colleges educate their students away from and above the life which 1 82 AMERICAN COLLEGES. the majority will be obliged to follow. Without assuming the truth of the remark, it is yet clear that there is less peril of this result under the method of co-education. For students are thus kept citizens of a collegiate world which is more similar to the active world in which, after graduation, they will live. The testimony of President Fairchild, of Ober- lin College, upon this point, as upon all points regarding co-education, is of great worth. He writes : " It can hardly be doubted that young people educated under such conditions are kept in harmony with society at large, and are prepared to appreciate the responsibilities of life, and to enter upon its work. They will not lack sympathy with the popular feel- ing, or an apprehension of the common interests. They are naturally educated in relation with the work of life, and will not require a readjustment. This seems a matter of grave importance, and we can scarcely be mistaken as to the happy results attained. If we are not utterly deceived by our position, our students naturally and readily find their work in the world, because they have been trained in sympathy with the world." * The question of the health of women who pursue * Orton's Liberal Education of Women, p. 245. WOMAN'S EDUCATION. 183 a course of study on the same terms as men, is of extreme importance. The argument of Dr. Edward H. Clarke, in his " Sex in Education ; or^ A Fair Chance for the Girls^' would tend to show the inex- pediency of subjecting women to that method of intellectual training which men pursue. But testi- monies collected from many institutions in which the method has had a long and fair trial, form the strongest evidence for a contrary conclu- sion. In 1882, the President of Oberlin College writes as follows : *' Our impression has been, from a general obser- vation of the facts, that our young women endure the strain of a course of study as well as the young men ; i.e.^ where they have had the same or equal preparation. In the case of young women who come into the advanced literary and philosophical studies of the course, without the full discipline of previous classical study, there are indications of nervous anxiety at times, which is undesirable and unwhole- some. Hitherto, our arrangement of courses has brought young women into these advanced classes under this disadvantage. They have held their place in scholarship, but not always in health. My per- sonal opinion is that the apprehension of failure in the class-room takes a stronger hold upon young 1 84 AMERICAN COLLEGES. women than young men. The young women are in general very sensitive about falHng behind." ^ President Warren, of Boston University, says: " As regards instances of the physical condition of graduates during their college course, I have known many more to improve than I have to deteriorate ; and in reply to your question whether there is a marked difference noted in the effect of study upon the minds and bodies of female students, I reply, there is no difference." f President Angell, of Michigan University, bears the following explicit and comprehensive testimony : "Women have been here since 1870, and have done every kind of work successfully and without injury to character or health." :j: Professor Lee, of St. Lawrence University, New York, writes in 1882 : '' Our college has been in operation for seventeen years. The proportion of male and female students has been about as two to one, that is, one-third ladies. " Their mental and physical condition when they entered was about the same as other young ladies of the same age and social position, though probably in most cases a little better. Their health had gen- * Education, Vol. III., No. 5, p. 506. f Ibid., p. 507. \ Ibid., p. 509. IVOMAN'S ED UCA TION. \ 85 erally been good, and their mental training not very systematic or extensive. On entering college they are put down to hard and systematic work, and kept so all through the four years' course. " Their health has generally improved during their college course. There have been exceptions, but these have been few. Systematic study has tended to improve their health. We have had but one death among the lady students while they were con- nected with the college, and very little sickness. At the close of their college course they have appeared healthy and robust, and have entered upon their work of teaching or other occupations requiring mental exertion, with every prospect of holding out well ; also, as to scholarship and in the higher branches — as Latin, Greek, political economy, the calculus, mental and moral philosophy — have ranked as high as the gentlemen, and in some cases higher. " I cannot say that there is any great difference in the effect of study and exercise upon the male and female students. Neither seem to be injured at all by continuous study. Both are made stronger in body and mind. I may also add that the mental occupations upon which our graduates enter after leaving our college tend to increase the strength and activity of body and mind of the lady students." "^ * Ibid., p. 508. 1 86 AMERICAN COLLEGES, President Bascom, of the University of Wisconsin, after making a thorough study of thfs question, thus writes in a recent report : "Though my conviction has been, previous to this report, that the health of the young women, as a whole, was better than that of the young men, and that there were striking instances of graduation with robust strength, I am striving to test this opinion by facts, so far with the following results. All excuses for ill-health are given by me. The exact number of students in our collegiate and dependent courses is 357. Of this number 93 are young women — a trifle more than one-quarter. During the past eight weeks, the most trying weeks in the year for stu- dents, there have been 155 days of absence from ill- health on the part of young men, and 18 on the part of young women. The young women should have lost, according to their numbers, 54 days, or three times as many as they have actually lost. The stu- dents were not aware that any such registration was being made. It may be felt that the young men are less conscientious in pleading ill-health than the young women, and this is doubtless true ; but I sharply question a young man, and rarely ask any questions of a young woman. I explain the facts in this way. The young men are not accustomed to confinement, and though sun-browned and appar- WOMAN'S ED UCA TION. j 87 ently robust, they do not endure the violent transi- tion as well as women. Study is more congenial to the habits of young women, and the visiting com- mittee are certainly mistaken in supposing that they have to work harder in accomplishing their tasks. The reverse is true. In addition to the above bill of ill-health against the young men, a corresponding large number of them have been compelled, from the same cause, to leave the University altogether. " A second showing of the registration, which I had not contemplated, but one very interesting, is this : the absences of the young women are almost exclusively in the lower classes. Of the eighteen, two are in the Sub-Freshman, fourteen in the Fresh- man, one in the Sophomore, one in the Junior, and none in the Senior. The absences of the young men are evenly distributed, on the other hand, through the entire course. The young women do not, then," seem to deteriorate with us in health, but quite the opposite. I do not belong to the number of those who set lightly by health — I would not sacrifice any measure of it for scholarship ; but it has long seemed to me plain that a young woman who withdraws herself from society and gives herself judiciously to a college course, is far better circumstanced in refer- ence to health than the great majority of her sex." * * Ibid., quoted, pp. 509, 10. 1 88 AMERICAN COLLEGES, These testimonies might be multiplied, but suf- ficient have been adduced to prove that women entering college as well fitted as men, pursuing stud- ies under conditions as favorable to the preserva- tion of health as those under which men are placed, graduate with constitutions as vigorous as those of the men. Indeed, the evidence indicates that the physical vigor of women constantly increases throughout the college course. The scholarship of the women, moreover, is excel- lent. They maintain at least as high a rank as their brother students. The fear that their admission would lower the scholastic standards has proved to be utterly without foundation. In the public schools it is generally acknowledged that girls are better scholars than boys. The same relative standing continues in the college. It is, however, to be said that the natural ability of the young women is prob- ably higher than that of the young men, for only the women of superior intellectual natures seek a collegiate training, and young men of all grades of ability go or are driven to college. In reference to this question of scholarship. President White, of Cornell University, wrote at a time when, under the proposal of opening this university to women, he was studying the system of co-education in other colleges : WOMAN'S EDUCATION. 189 " If it be said that the presence of women will tend to lower the standard of scholarship, or at all events to keep the Faculty from steadily raising it, it may be answered at once, that all the facts ob- served are in opposition to this view. The letters received by the Committee, and their own recent observations in class-rooms, show beyond a doubt that the young women are at least equals of the young men in collegiate studies. As already stated, the best Greek scholar among the thirteen hundred students of the University of Michigan, a few years since ; the best mathematical scholar in one of the largest classes of that institution to-day, and several among the highest in natural science, and in the general courses of study, are young women. " It has been argued that the want of accuracy and point, the ' sloppiness ' of much of the scholar- ship in some of the newer colleges, is due to the admission of women. The facts observed by the Committee seem to prove that this argument is based on the mistake of concomitancy for cause. If 'sloppiness* and want of point are inadmissible anywhere, it is in translation from the more vigorous and concise ancient and modern authors. Now, the most concise and vigorous rendering from the most concise and vigorous of all — Tacitus himself — was given by a young lady at Oberlin College. Nor did 190 AMERICAN COLLEGES. the Committee notice any better work in the most difficult of the great modern languages than that of some young women at Antioch College." "^ The long and varied experience of the President of Oberlin College is in the line of President White's observation. Dr. Fairchild remarks : " We find no difference in ability to maintain themselves [women students] in the recitation-room. Under the circumstances, I shall be excused for re- ferring to my own individual experience, which has been somewhat varied. The first eight years of my work as a teacher was in the department of the Ancient Languages — Latin, Greek, and Hebrew ; the next eleven in mathematics, abstract and applied ; the last eight, in Philosophical and Ethical studies. In all these studies my classes have included young women as well as young men, and I have never ob- served any difference between them in performance in the recitation. The strong and the weak scholars are equally distributed between the sexes. " In this statement I do not imply that I see no difference between the normal male and female mind as to taste for particular studies. I have no doubt of the existence of such differences ; but they^do not appear in the ability as pupils to comprehend and * Orton's Liberal Education of Women, p. 223. WOMAN'S ED UCA TION, 191 express the truth. A few days since, on a visit to the University of Michigan, I attended a recitation in Thucydides. So far as could be judged from a single exercise, in which there were many excellent performances, the daughter of the Professor of Greek, the only young lady under the wing of the Univer- sity, led the class. But it did not strike me as an anomaly ; I had often seen such things." * President Edward Orton, of Antioch, bears similar testimony : "As to the intellectual result of co-education, I have seen nothing to warrant the belief that the general average of scholarship is lowered by it. Young women, as we find them, have not the same powers of endurance, in severe and protracted study, that young men have ; but, on the other hand, they do much of their work with greater facility. In the Languages, in Rhetoric and Belles-lettres, for in- stance, they are apter pupils than their brothers. Perhaps we do not find them as strong or original mathematicians as young men, but still it must be said that if the two most successful scholars of the last seven years, with us, were to be named in this department, both sexes would be represented. They recite what they know better, on the average, than * Ibid., pp. 245, 6. 192 AMERICAN COLLEGES, young men. The sexes seem to take different results from the same course. The philosophic phases of a subject always seem to me to take deeper hold of young men. They have * Darwinism,' for instance, harder. It seems to me that a more symmetrical view is obtained when a subject has been brought under both points of vision." * A member of the St. Lawrence University, of New York, writes in reference to the women stu- dents, that '* their average proficiency in all studies is quite as high as that of the young men ; " f and President Magoun, of Iowa College, has Hkewise affirmed : '' It has not been found that young ladies, equally prepared, were at all behind young men in the more difficult college studies — mathematics, lan- guages, science, or philosophy." :j: The evidence is, therefore, abundant and explicit that the scholarship of the women is as high as the scholarship of the men in -the colleges which admit both sexes. But intellectual training is of small worth in com- parison with moral culture. What, then, are the results of co-education in the domain of personal character? Have immoralities prevailed? Has * Ibid., pp. 270, I. f Old and Neiu, Vol. IV., p. 129. X Ibid., p. 760. WOMAN'S EDUCATION. 193 woman become mannish? Has the peach been made to lose its bloom ? Have the reserve, the delicacy, the tenderness — qualities that are the special adorn- ment of womanhood — been sacrificed or even im- paired ? The testimony is unanimous in the nega- tive. President White, in the paper from which an extract has already been made, writes : " That there may be some danger to certain classes of women shallow in character and weak in mind is not unlikely, but of all women, these are the least likely to involve themselves in the labor of prepara- tion for the university or of going on with its courses of study. As to the good effect on the women who have actually entered the colleges, the testimony is ample. The Committee in its visits found no op- posing statement either from college officers, stu- dents of either sex, or citizens of university towns, and all their observations failed to detect any symp- toms of any loss of the distinctive womanly qualities so highly prized. Nor have they found that those who have been thus educated have shown any lack of these qualities in after life. On the contrary, it would be hard to find a body of women combining these qualities more nobly than the matrons of this State and surrounding States, who have graduated at the Academies and Normal Schools. These quali- ties they have, by the agreement of all observers, in 13 194 AMERICAN COLLEGES. a very much higher degree than the women of coun- tries where a semi-conventual system of education is adopted." * Six years after Cornell University was opened to women, it was affirmed, it is worthy of note, by one of its members, that " the whole tone of the Univer- sity has greatly improved." f The testimony of President Fairchild is no less explicit : " You would know whether the result with us has been a large accession to the numbers of coarse, * strong-minded * women, in the offensive sense of the word ; and I say, without hesitation, that I do not know of a single instance of such a product as the result of our system of education. -^ * * " To show that our system of education does not bewilder woman with a vain ambition, or tend to turn her aside from the work which God has im- pressed upon her entire constitution, I may state that of the eighty-four ladies that have taken the college course, twenty-seven only are unmarried. Of these twenty-seven, four died early, and of the remaining twenty-three, twenty are graduates of less than six years' standing. The statistics of the grad- * Orton's Liberal Education of Women, pp. 219, 20. \ Report of the Mass. Society for the University Education of Women, 18S0, p. 18. WOMAN'S ED UCA TION. 195 uates of the Ladies* Course would give essentially the same result." "^ Similar sentiments have been expressed by Horace Mann and Mrs. Mann regarding the college of which he was the first president. President Canfield, of the University of Kansas, writes that there have passed " sixteen years of radical co-education with- out even a whisper of scandal." f The President of Butler University, Indiana, says : " Let me assure you that a better set of students than ours it would be difficult to find. On no occa- sion whatever has discipline been made necessary by the association of the sexes. Our students are gentle and modest on the one hand, polite and gallant on the other ; while on both they are attentive, indus- trious, and obedient. ' % Many testimonies of a general character in favor of the system of co-education might be presented. They refer, in fact, to points already discussed. The President of the University of Michigan says : " Women graduates are doing their full part in win- ning a reputation for Michigan University, and are * Orton's Liberal Education of Women, pp. 249, 50. f The Nation. No. 932, p. 401. X Report of the Mass. Society for the University Education of Women, 1880, p. 20. 196 AMERICAN COLLEGES. justifying the wisdom of the Regents who opened to them the opportunities for a thorough classical training." "^ The President of the University of Wisconsin also writes : "After an experience of ten years in large college- classes, I am more than convinced of the suitable- ness of co-education ; I believe it to be pre-eminently the fitting method of training our youth. I can only briefly indicate my reasons. " The fears so often expressed in reference to its effects on manners, on health, on the standard of scholarship,* on the type of female character, have not been found by me to be true, but quite the re- verse of the truth. On the other hand, this method gives a vigor, insight, and scope to higher education not attainable under the narrower conditions of sex- ual division. It is impossible to secure breadth with- out breadth. " Both men and women should encounter the conditions of life in regular sequence as they arise. A period of seclusion is no preparation for new, closer, and more responsible contact. It is very piti- ful that some doctrinaire should have the power to * Report of the Mass. Society for the University Education of Women, 1880, p. 18. WOMAN'S EDUCATION. 197 prepare for women a private regimen that excludes a portion of the most weighty conditions and in- fluences of that life which we have actually to en- counter. "While much maybe said in behalf of one, two, or three colleges recently provided for women, most of the instruction furnished for them is, and will re- main, greatly inferior to that offered to young men. Even the best of this instruction is inferior in the scope of its influence to that furnished in our older institutions, which have behind them the gathered force of our national life. It is uneconomical in theory, and impossible in practice, to provide a sec- ond series of colleges equal in extension and educa- tional force to those already in existence. " Seclusion in the education of women means weak- ness, and weakness means continued subjection to a faulty conventional sentiment ; seclusion means in- feriority, and this inferiority is not to be measured by the distance between the best institutions open respectively to young men and young women, but by the distance from centre to centre, the difference of the average work in the two directions." "* The President of Boston University affirms the satisfactory character of the results of co-education in * The Critic, No. 66, pp. 154, 55. 198 AMERICAN COLLEGES, the institution which he serves. When the present President of Columbia College was the chief execu- tive ofificer of the University of Alabama, at Tusca- loosa, it was his custom to invite the attendance on his lectures of young women from a neighboring female seminary. The effect of this association upon the manners of the young men was most advan- tageous; and the results were so satisfactory that the example was followed by other officers of the University. The results of the system generally known as the " Harvard Annex," so far as they have any bearing upon this question, are in favor of co-education. This system is simply, that the professors of the University are teaching private classes of young women in the college studies. In speaking of this system. Professor A. P. Peabody has said : " I can see no reason why young men and young women may not study and recite together as well as talk, sing, and dance together. The reason usually given why they should not is purely a relic of some tradition, the reason for which has been entirely lost to the memory of man. When we think that they are to be together in the building, the most inno- cent and fitting of all associations would seem to be an association in the very highest pursuits, next to their eternal well-being, in which they can be en- IVO^^AN'S ED UCA TION. 199 gaged. There is no reason why association in this matter should be postponed." Although Columbia College, despite the recom- mendations of its president, refuses to admit women to its classes, it has yet provided an arrangement which offers even more advantages than the ''Har- vard Annex." The officers of the college examine women for entrance to a four-year course of study, prescribe this course, which for the first two years is obligatory, and for the second two elective, examine students, and at the close grant a certificate, which stands in the place of a degree. This system is in- augurated in the college year of 1883-84. Neither its precise details nor, much less, its results are at present known. But the fact indicates at least prog- ress in the provision for the higher education of women, and in the views of many it shows an ad- vance toward the introducton of co-education into this most conservative institution. The scope of this work fails to permit extended reference to the education of European women. England has four universities of ancient establish- ment : Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Durham. Professors at Oxford have admitted women to their lectures, and Somerville College and Lady Margaret Hall have recently been opened for the special use of female students. Cambridge admits women to 200 AMERICAN COLLEGES, its Honor examinations, and its professors instruct the students of Girton College and Newnham Hall. London University admits women to degrees and to honors on the same terms as men ; and Durham University grants to them degrees in arts. From the seventh to the fifteenth century,* Eng- lish women received precisely the same education as English men. It was not till the convent schools were swept away in the sixteenth century that they were denied those educational facilities which the last quarter of the nineteenth century is restoring. APPENDIX. The statistics contained in the following Tables have been in the main obtained from the returns made to the U. S. Commissioner of Education for the year iSSo-Si. PVom the five or six hundred insti- tutions bearing the name of college, the difficulty in selecting those whose merits entitle them to be so ranked has been very great, and it cannot be hoped that perfect justice has been done. Mr. Eaton's ar- rangement has been in general followed. Those institutions, how- ever, returning no students in the collegiate departments have been omitted. The list as it now stands embraces 312 colleges, four-fifths of which have connected with them preparatory departments. Of this number 171 admit both sexeson equal terms, 133 admit 3nly men, and 5 women only. The whole number of students is 29,101, one- sixth of whom, as nearly as can be estimated, are women. As regards States, they are' distributed as follows : — States. 4 Students. States. 4 Students. Alabama 3 4 9 2 3 4 6 It 'I 14 4 1 I 3 306 216 723 55 951 154 sS 1702 1228 104s 217 1 120 73 2344 1071 170 Mississippi 4 13 2 I 4 24 J 4 27 I 6 18 6 3 9 284 1799 105 California 1 Nebraska .... Colorado . . :New Hampshire District Columbia Delaware iNew York 1 North Carolina lOhio 2827 823 «524 319 2370 247 372 Illinois. Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina Tennessee Iowa Kentucky Louisiana Texas Maine 652 Maryland Virginia Massachusetts W. Virginia Wisconsin Minnesota Total 312 29101 201 202 APPENDIX. Sixteen religious denominations are represented in their manage- ment, among which they are divided as follows : Religious Denomi- nations. Non-Sectarian Methodist Baptist Roman Catholic Presbyterian Congregationalist. . No. Religious Denomi- nations. Lutheran Christian Episcopal United Brethren Reformed Friends No. Religious Denomi- nations. ♦ Universalist S. D. Advent Evangelical Reformed German New Church No. Of the colleges now in existence, two date their foundation to the seventeenth century, and twenty-two to the eighteenth. The remain- ing two hundred and eighty-eight have been founded since the year 1800. The subjoined table gives the number of charters granted in each decade of the present century. 180I-I8IO 1811-1820 1821-1830 I 831-1840 1841-1850 1851-1860 1861-1870 1871-1877 3 7 12 25 3T 71 75 39 Name. Location Religious Denomina- tions. ^1 C/5 Greensboro, Ala. . Marion, Ala. ... Tuscaloosa, Ala.. Batesville, Ark... Boonsboro, Ark. . Judsonia, Ark Little Rock, Ark. Benicia, Cal 1856 '^& 1872 1852 1871 1850 1868 M. E. So. Baptist. Non-Sect. Presb. Cumb. P. Baptist. Non-Sect. RE. 4 5 12 3 i 8 5 62 104 140 50 Howard College ♦University of Alabama . . . 1200 5000 500 200 460 200 2500 *Cane Hiil College *Judson University *St John's Col. of Arkansas. tMissionary College of St. Augustine * Admits both sexes. t Admits men only. % Admits women only. APPENDIX. 203 oji Religious ^el^^l Name. Location. ^S Denomina- iNo. each No. ude 06 tions. 0^ H en >.s ♦Pierce Christian Colleg^e... Co.lege City. Cal. 1874 Christian. 6 77 ♦University of California... Oakliid, Cal i868 Non-Sect. Z^ 145 15750 +St. Mary's College San Francisco, Cal 1872 R. C. 20 120 1500 +Santa Clara College ♦University of the Pacific. Santa Clara, Cal . iBss R. C. 10 2SO ICXXX3 Santa Clara, Cal. i8s3 M. E. 13 7'> ♦Pacific Methodist College. . Santa Rosa, Cal,. 1862 M. E. So. ,S 7.3 200 ♦California College Vaccaville, Cal... 1870 Baptist. 6 .W 2500 ♦Hesperian College Woodland, Cal... 1862 Christian. 6 09 375 ♦Colorado College Colorado Springs, Colo.....*. iSyi Non-Sect. 8 39 1000 University of Colorado Boulder, Colo.... iRts Non Sect. I 16 ,823 i8^i P. E 18275 31370 ♦Wesleyan University tYale College Middleto^n, Conn. M. E. It) l6:» N. Haven, Conn.. Newark, Del.... 1701 Non-Sect. 41 687 08000 ♦Delaware College t86o Non-Sect. S 59 6500 ♦University of Georgia .... ♦Atlanta University Athens, Ga 178s Non-Sect. Q 8:t 16000 Atlanta, Ga 1867 Non-Sect. 12 26 5000 ♦Gainesville Male and Fe- male College . . . Gainesville, Ga . 1877 18^7 Non-Sect. 7 6 s 6000 tMercer University Macon, Ga Baptist. ■fPio Nono College Macon, Ga ,876 i8t,6 R. t. A. 4.5 141 IIOO tEmory College ♦Hedding College Oxford, Ga Meth. 8 3000 Abingdon, 111 1853 M. E. q 60 1000 ♦Illinois Wesleyan Univer- sity Bloomington, 111. Carlinville, 111.... Carthage, 111 Chicago, 111 1850 Meth. 8 84 2000 ♦Blackburn University i8s7 Presb. 7 6j 3000 ♦Carthage College tSt. Ignatius College 1870 Luth. 6 83 2500 1870 R.C. 7 .38 12000 ♦University of Chicago Chicago, 111 i8s7 Baptist. II 74 6000 ♦Northwestern University.. Evanston, 111 i8si M. E. 10 18.3 20000 ♦Ewing College Ewing, 111 Galesburg, 111.... Galesburg, III . . . 1874 1837 i8sq Non-Sect. Non-Sect. Univer'list. 6 I 32 loS 22 25 ♦Knox College ♦Lombard University 3850 ♦Irvington College Irvington, 111 ... Jacksonville, 111.. Lake Forest, 111. LeDanon, III 7863 Presb-Cong 6 41 tlllinois College 1835 Non-Sect. Presb. 9 78 7.'> 8000 ♦Lake Forest University. . 4500 ♦McKendree College 1814 M. E. 8 128 6000 ♦Lmcoln University Lincoln, 111 i86s Cumb. P. II 199 16000 tEvangelisch-Lutherisches Collegium Mendota, 111 187s Luth. 6 26 300 ♦Monmouth College Monmouth, 111.... i8s7 U. Presb. 8 IS2 2000 ♦Northwestern College Naperville.in ... i86s Evang. 6 73 +Augustana College Rock Island, III.. 186s Luth. 6 63 6460 tSt. Joseph's College Teutopolis, 111. R.C. 6 28 ♦Shurtlefj College Upper Alton, III. 1835 Baptist. 5 48 5437 ♦ Admits both sexes. t Admits men only. X Admits women only. 204 APPENDIX. Name. ♦Westfield College *Wheaton College ♦Bedford College ♦Indiana University t Wabash College *Fort Wayne College ♦Franklin College ♦Indiana Asbury University tHanover College ♦Harts ville University ♦Butler University ♦Smithson College ♦Union Christian College . . ♦Moore's Hill College tUniversity of Notre Dame Du Lac ♦Earlham College ♦Ridgeville College 1-St. Meinrad's College ♦Amity College tNorwegian Luther College ♦University of Des Moines. ♦Parson's College ♦Upper Iowa University. . . ♦Iowa College tGriswold College ♦Simpson Centenary Col- lege ♦Iowa State University ♦German College ♦Iowa Wesleyan University ♦Cornell College ♦Oskaloosa College ♦Penn Colleg-e ♦Central University of Iowa ♦Tabor College ♦Western College tSt, Benedict's College ♦Baker University ♦Highland University ♦University of Kansas ♦Lane University Location. Westfield, 111 Wheaton, 111 Bedford, Ind Bloomington, Ind Cra wf ordsviUe, Ind Fort Wayne, Ind. Franklin, Ind . . . Greencastle, Ind. Hanover, Ind . . Hartsville, Ind . . Irvington, Ind... Logansport, Ind. Merom, Ind Moore's Hill, Ind Notre Dame, Ind. Richmond, Ind.. . Ridgeville, Ind .. St. Meinrad, Ind. College Springs, Iowa Decorah, Iowa. .. Des Moines, Iowa Fairfield, Iowa. . . Fayette, Iowa .. . Gnnnell, Iowa. . . Davenport, Iowa. Indianola, Iowa . . Iowa City, Iowa.. Mt. Pleasant, Iowa Mt. Pleasant, Iowa Mt. Vernon, Iowa Oskaloosa, Iowa Oskaloosa, Iowa. Pella, Iowa Tabor, Iowa Western College, Iowa Atchison, Kans.. Baldwin City, Kans. . Highland, Kans . Lawrence, Kans.. Lecompton, Kans Religious Denomina- tion.* 1865 U. Breth. i860 1 Cong. 1872 Christian. 1828! Non-Sect. 833!Presb. M. E. Baptist. M. E. Presb. U. Breth. Christian. Univers'list Christian. M. E. 1844 1837 '833 1851 1850 1871 1859 1854 1844 1859 1867 '853 1866 1875 1857 1847 1867 '857 1873 1855 r857 1856 1866 •853 1866 1856 1868 1857 1858 1864 1862 R. C. Friends. F. W. B. R. C. Non-Sect. Ev. Luth. Baptist. Presb. M. E. Cong. M. E. Non-Sect. M. E. Meth. M. E. Christian. Friends. Baptist. Cong. U. Breth. R. C. M. E. Presb. Non-Sect. U. Breth. ■oi "o c ^l gl H 33 5 14 .52 .S 63 10 i»3 IT 96 8 17 6 36 12 212 9 59 4 31 12 73 6 1,5 8 40 6 48 7 200 6 41 ,•> 44 9 65 i 12 88 4 1.3 6 57 4 47 16 82 7 13 8 53 17 218 3 23 II 99 9 91 7 26 5 34 7 40 8 72 5 41 7 25 4 19 ■^ 12 16 114 2 18 ♦ Admits both sexes. t Admits men only. X Admits women only. APPENDIX, 205 Name. Location. fit Religious Denomina- tion 52 ^21 oboe d-o :z;3^a H (« 7 23 17 «4 4 34 10 6 6 q6 10 «3 7 91 5 97 3 66 4 79 7 185 4 97 S 40 7 105 ID 57 13 3 IS 4 35 4 23 15 149 I 133 149 9 64 33 159 14 70 3 40 10 45 13 "5 1 51 10 78 25 3?9 14 186 18 107 56 886 26 202 12 63 40 243 12 227 > G ♦Washburn College.. tSt. Joseph's College. ♦Berea College tCecilian College .... tCentre College ♦Eminence College tKentucky Military Ins'tute iGeorgetown College Kentucky University Kentucky Wesleyan Uni- versity ♦Murray Male and Female Institute ] ♦Concord College tCentral University tBethel College... 1 tSt. Mary's College | ♦Louisiana State University tSt, Charles College. . . tCentenary College of Lou isiana ♦New Orleans University . tBowdoin College ♦Bates College ♦Colby University Top)eka, Kans Bardstown, Ky . . Berea, Kv Cecilian J unction, Ky Danville, Ky Eminence, Ky . . . Fanndale, Ky Georgetown. Ky. Lexington, Ky... Millersburg, Ky.. 1865 Cong. I824JR. C. 1865! Cong. 1867 R. C. 1819'Presb. 1856 Christian. 846 829 1858 i860 +St. John's College ... tjohns Hopkins University tLoyola College tWashington College +Rock Hill College tSt. Charles College tFrederick College ... ♦Western Maryland College tAmherst College tBoston College ♦Boston University College of Liberal Arts tHarvard College $Smith College .. tTufts College tWellesley College. tWilliams College. . Murray, Ky New Liberty, Ky, Richmond, Ky. .. Russellville, Ky.. St. Mary's, Ky. . Baton Rouge, La. Grand Coleau, La Jackson, La New Orleans, La. Brunswick, Me. . . Lewiston.Me Waterville, Me... Annapolis, Md.. . Baltimore, Md Baltimore, Md.. . Chestertown, Md. Ellicott City, Md. NearEllicott City, Md Frederick, Md... Westminster,Md. . Amherst, Mass. .. Boston, Mass.... Non-Sect. Baptist. M. E. So. Boston, Mass Cambridge, Mass. Northampton, Mass CollegeHill,Mass. Wellesley, Mass.. Will iamstown. Mass 1870 Non-Sect. i868|Baptist. i873|Presb. S. 1856 Baptist. T837 R. C. 1853 Non-Sect. 1852 R. C. 1825 1873 1794 1863 1820 17S4 1867 1853 1782 1865 1830 1763 1868 1825 1863 1869 1636 1870 1852 1875 M. E. So. M. E. Cong. F. W. B. Baptist. Non-Sect. Non-Sect. R. C. Non-Sect. R. C. R. C Non-Sect. M. Prot. M. E. Non-Sect. Non-Sect. Univers'list Non-Sect. 1793 Cong. 4000 3200 500 4376 1600 5000 8000 200 1500 loco 1000 12000 5C00 500 20000 16000 5000 9000 IIOOO 1350 5000 5300 3000 3000 36025 187300 i8coo 220C0 * Admits both sexes. t Admits men only. % Admits women only. 206 APPENDIX. Name. Location. •u Religrious Denomina- tion. ..2 ^i2 O (U c • .c ,° M o-o >5^.i ^R H (/) 19 91 11 61 II 140 33 521 14 IS 19 96 6 45 5 44 15 149 6 48 17 isq II 63 7 75 5 20 8 184 6 5 10 82 36 55S 5 8q 6 100 2 37 6 12 5 129 4 40 38 250 21 173 20 75 13 185 6 70 5 ^5 10 90 15 247 5 49 IS lOT 25 428 14 no 16 71 10 91 +College of the Holy Cross. *Adrian College ♦Albion College *University of Michigan. . . ♦Battle Creek College ♦Hillsdale College 1-Hope College ♦Kalamazoo College ♦Olivet College +Augsburg Seminary, Greek Department ♦University of Minnesota.. ♦Carleton College tMississippi College ♦Shaw University ♦University of Mississippi.. ♦Alcorn University ♦Christian University ♦University of the State of Missouri ♦Central College Westminster College ♦Lincoln College ♦Thayer. College tWilham Jewell College. .. ♦Baptist College ^Christian Brothers' Col- lege +St. Louis University ♦Washington University. .. ♦Drury College. ♦Central' Wesleyan College. ♦Doane College . . , ♦University of Nebraska. . . tDartmouth College 1St. Benedict's College ... tRutger's College + College of New Jersey •fSeton Hall College ♦Alfred University +St. Bonaventure's College. * Admits both sexes. Worcester, Mass. Adrian, Mich Albion, Mich Ann Arbor, Mich. Battle Creek, Mich Hillsdale, Mich.. Holland City, Mich Kal amazoo , M ich . Olivet, Mich Minneapolis, Minn Minneapolis, Minn. Northfield, Minn. Clinton, Miss Holly Springs, Miss Oxford, Miss Rodney, Miss Canton, Mo Columbia. Mo.... Fayette, Mo Fulton, Mo Greenwood, Mo.. Kidder, Mo Liberty, Mo Louisiana, Mo... St. Louis, Mo St. Louis, Mo St. Louis, Mo Springfield, Mo.. W^arrenton, Mo. . . Crete, Nebr Lincoln, Nebr Hanover, N H... Newark. N. J New Brunswick, N.J Princeton, N. J... S. Orange, N. J.. Alfred, N.Y Alleghany, N.Y.. 865 R. C. 8591 M. Prot. 86ijM. E. 836 Non-Sect. 874 S. D. Ad. 855 F. W. B. Ref. Dutch. Baptist. Co. and Pr, Ev. Luth. Non-Sect. 866 j Cong. 850^ Baptist. 87olMeth. 844 j Non-Sect. 871 Non-Sect. 853 Christian. :839 Non-Sect. [855 M. E. So. ;853 Pres. So. [870 Un. Pres. .863! Cong. [840' Baptist. :869 Baptist. :855 R- C. 1832 R. C. [853' Non-Sect. '873; Cong. [865; M. E. [872 Cong. [871 1 Non-Sect. [769I Non-Sect. R. C. [770' Reformed. 46Presb. .061 1 R. C. 857; S. D. Bap. 1875 R. C. t Admits men only. % Admits women only. APPENDIX, 207 Name. +St. Stephen's Collepfc . . . ;. itWells College tBrooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute +St. Francis College tCanisms College iSt. Joseph's College *St. Lawrence University.. tElmira Female College . . . tHamilton College +St. John's College . . tHobart College tMadison University ♦Cornell University tCollege of the City of N Y. tCoUege of St. Francis Xavier tColumbia College tManhattan College tUniversity of the City of New York JVassar College tUniversity oif Rochester. . . tUnion College *Syracuse University tUniversity of North Caro- lina, ♦Davidson College tNorth Carolina College. . . tTrinity College tWake Forest College tRutherford College ♦Wilson College *Ohio University ♦Baldwin University ♦German Wallace College.. tSt Xavier College ♦University of Cincinnati. . ♦Farmers' College of Ham- ilton County. ♦Ohio Wcsleyan University tKenyon College tDenison University ♦Hiram College Location. Annandale, N. Y. Aurora, N. Y Brooklyn, N. Y. . Brooklyn, N. Y.. Buffalo. N.Y Buffalo, N.Y Canton, N.Y Elmira, N. Y Chnton, N. Y ... Fordham. NY... Geneva. N. Y.... Hamilton, N.Y... Ithaca. N. Y New York New York . New York New York New York Po'keepsie, N. Y. Rochester, N. Y.. Schenectady, N.Y. Syracuse, N. Y.. . Chapel Hill, N.C. DavidsonCollege, N.C Mount Pleasant, N. C Trinity, N. C ... Wake Forest, N.C Happy Home,N.C Wilson, N. C Athens, Ohio Berea, Ohio Berea, Ohio , Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati, Ohio. College Hi]l,Ohio Delaware, Ohio.. Gambier, Ohio.. . Granville, Ohio.. Hiram, Ohio Religious Denomina- tion. [860 P. E. [868 Presb. 1854 1856 18.S.S t8i2 1846 1822 1846 186 s 1866 I86I 1754 1863 Non-Sect. R. C. R. C. R. C. Univers'list Presb. Presb. R C. P. E. Baptist. Non-Sect. Non-Sect. R C. Non-Sect. R. C. 18 ^o Non-Sect. 1861 1 Non-Sect. 1850' Baptist. 1 70 <5 Non-Sect. 1870 M. E. 1789 1837 i85g 18^2 1835 I87I 1872 1804 1856 1864 1842 1870 185.^ 1842 18.24 rS32 1867 Non-Sect. Presb. Luth. M. E. So. Baptist. Non-Sect. Non-Sect. Non-Sect. M. E. M. E. R C. Non-Sect. Non-Sect. M. E P. E. Baptist. Disciples. 5 37 12 32 13 11 85 ^5 194 10 22 7 40 12 7^ 160 25 9 49 60 II 9.? 47 120 IS 523 r8 14 15 1 !.■> no 30 9 217 i?8 >7 8 17.J 139 II 171 6 74 6 .■> 7 24 87 r8r II 9 2.}8 48 5 43 10 151 6 60 !.■; 58 10 104 10 IS 1 270 66 6 6.5 6 194 4) >» 6'k > c 2500 1500 3075 500 2ogo 8530 1000 12000 15000 IIOOO 41222 18200 18000 2198s 3692 14000 17080 20000 9000 7000 3000 "43 1800 7100 5000 1200 7800 2 too 5.50 12000 I460I3 15000 22000 10000 900 * Admits both sexes. t Admits men only t Admits women only. 208 APPENDIX. Name. ♦Western Reserve Coll. ^., tMarietta Collegfe *Mt. Union College ♦Muskingham College ♦Oberlin College *McCorkle College *One-Study University ♦Wittenberg College ♦Heidelberg College tUrbana University ♦Otterbein University ♦Geneva College ♦Willoughby College Wilmington College ♦University of Wooster ♦Wilberforce University . . . ♦Xenia College ♦Antioch College ♦University of Oregon ♦Pacific University and Tualatin Academy ♦Christian College ♦Philomath College tMuhlenberg College ♦Lebanon Valley College .. tDickinson College Lincoln University +Lafayette College tUrsinus College + Pennsylvania College ♦Thiel College. . tHavertord College ♦Monongahela College +Franklin and Marshall College +St Vincent's College ^University at Lewisburg.. ♦Allegheny College ♦Mercersburg College tPalatinate College ♦New Castle College ♦Westminster College Location. Hudson, Ohio ... Marietta, Ohio.. Mt. Union, Ohio. New Concord, Ohio Oberlin, Ohio ... Sago, Ohio . Scio, Ohio Springfield, Ohio, Tiffin, Ohio...... Urbana, Ohio. . .. West erville, Ohio W. Geneva, Ohio. Willoughby, Ohio Wilmingt'n, Ohio Wooster, Ohio... Xenia, Ohio Xenia, Ohio.. .. . Yellow Springs Ohio Eugene City Oreg., Forest Grove, Oreg Monmouth, Oreg. Philomath, Oreg. Allentown, Pa Annville, Pa Carlisle, Pa Chester County, Pa Easton, Pa Freeland, Pa Gettysburg, Pa . Greenville, Pa... Haverford, Pa... Jefferson, Pa Lancaster, Pa Near Latrobe, Pa. Lewisburg, Pa. . . iMeadville, Pa . . . i Mercersburg, Pa. Myerstown, Pa .. [New Castle, Pa.. New Wirgt'n,Pa. « eg Religious Denomina- tion. o u I ■•? \ Hi Non-Sect. Non- Sect. Non-Sect, Non Sect. Cong. P. (asso.) M E. Ev. Luth. Reformed. New C'h. U. Ereth. Ref Pres. Meth Friends. Presb. Af M.E. ME. 852 Non- Sect. 87^ Non-Sect. 854 865 Christian. 867 U. Breth. Luth U. Breth. M. E. Presb. Presb. Ref Get. Luth. Luth Friends. Baptist. 853 Reformed. 870 R. C. 84C Baptist. 817'M. E. 865 Reformed. 868 Reformed. 875 1 Non-Sect. 852 1 U. Presb. o c . o CO > c 7000 16509 5000 400 15000 150 800 8000 4000 5100 1200 490 1000 5700 4000 6000 500 5000 220 800 2200 1314 7974 19000 7925 3949 8550 200 3000 8000 10000 760 350 3000 ♦ Admits both sexes. t Admits men only. % Admits women only. 1 Removed to Cleveland under name of Adelbert College. APPENDIX. 209 Name. +La Salle College tSt. Joseph's College tUniversity of P'sylvania. . tWestern University of Pennsylvania +The Lehigh University. . . Location. Philadelphia, Pa. Philadelphia, Pa. Philadelphia, Pa. Pittsburg, Pa ... South Bethle- hem, Pa Swarthmore, Pa.. ♦Swarthmore College tAu?nistinian College of St. I Thomas of Villanova Villanova, Pa +Washington and Jefferson! College I Washington, Pa. . ♦Waynesburg College IWaynesburg, Pa. tBrown University [Providence, R. I. tCollege of Charleston j Charleston, S. C. tUniversity of South Caro-| Una ^ I Columbia, S. C... tErskme College Due West, S C Furman University iGreenville, S. C . tWoflE ord College Spartanburg,S C +Newberry College j Walhalla, S. C... . ♦East Tennessee Wesleyan University •Beech Grove College tSouth Western Presby terian University tHiwassee College ^.. Athens, Tenn. . Beech Grove, Tenn 'U Clarksville, Tenn. Hiwassee Coll'ge, Tenn.. ♦Greenville and Tusculum College Home, Tenn. +Southwestern Baptist Uni-j versity ! Jackson, Tenn... tCumberland University. ..'Lebanon. Tenn . ♦Bethel College McKenzie, Tenn ♦McKenzie College ! .McKenzie, Tenn ♦Manchester College Manchest'r.Tenn. ♦Maryville College .... . . [Maryville, Tenn. tChnstian Brothers' C0I-' lege Memphis, Tenn . ♦Mosheim Male and Fe- male Institute Mosheim, Tenn. tMossy Creek Baptist Col- Mossy Creek lege Tenn ♦Central Tennessee College Nashville, Tenn ♦Fisk University . . Nashville, Tenn. Religious Denomina- tion. 863 R. C. 852 R. C. 755 ! Non-Sect. 819 Non-Sect. I 86s P- E. 864: Friends. 848 R. C. 802 Presb. 850 Cumb. P. 764 Baptist. 785 Non-Sect. Non-Sect. Ass. R P. Baptist. M. E. So. Ev. Luth. M. E. Non-Sect. Presb. S. M. E. So. Non-Sect. 801 841 850 851 858 867 869 875 850 794 874 Baptist 842 1 Cumb. P. 847 Cumb. P. 871 1 Non-Sect. 856 Non-Sect. 842 Presb. R. C. Luth. Baptist. M. E. Non-Sect. •^i" ^yi u c o-a "^t J^R H V) 12 QI ir 166 16 139 10 97 II 75 16 129 II 122 8 M-J 6 117 '7 247 7 30 II 89 5 53 ■; T\ 9 «3 5 44 7 161 5 32 6 77 9 193 xo 22 7 187 5 38 4 1^2 6 63 2 27 4 37 12 60 3 23 4 40 18 ^ 24 i8cjo 4000 3500 3966 900 53000 7600 28000 1000 1700 2500 20x5 6000 1300 2500 47t 520 3000 2600 300 1525 2037 ♦ Admits both sexes. t Admits men only. % Admits women only. 1 Suspended, it is hoped only temporarily. 2IO APPENDIX, Name. tVanderbilt University.... tUniversity of the South. . . tTexas Military Institute.. tSt. Joseph's College tSouthwestern University.. tBaylor University ♦Salado College *Waco University ♦University of Vermont.... tMiddlebury College tNorwich University +Randolph Macon College.. tEmory and Henry Col- lege tHampden Sydney College. : tWashington and Lee Uni-| versity . . i Richmond College | tRoanoke College \ tUniversity of Virginia i tCollege of William and' Mary.^ | tBethany College I *West Virginia College. . Location. Nashville, Tenn. . Sewanee, Tenn... Austin, Tex Brownsville, Tex. Georgetown ,Tex. Independence, Tex Salado, Tex Waco, Tex Burlington, Vt... Middlebury, Vt... Northfield, Vt.... Ashland, Va Emory, Va Hampden Sid- ney, Va Lexington, Va... . Richmond, Va... Salem, Va . . . University of Vir- ginia, Va ♦West Virginia University. ♦Lawrence University. . . . tBeloit College ♦Galesville University. . . . ♦University of Wisconsin . *Milton Collegre +St. John's College •f Racine College ♦Ripon College tNorth western University., ■J-Georgetown College . tColumbian University ♦Howard University tNational Deaf Mute Col- lege Williamsburg, Va, Bethany, W. Va. Flemington, W. Va Morgantown, W. Va Appleton, Wis. .. jBeloit, Wis....... Galesville, Wis... Madison. Wis iMilton, Wis Prairie du Chien, I Wis Racine, Wis Ripon, Wis Watertown, Wis. Georgetown .D . C. iWashingt'n, D.C. I Washington, D,C. o o Religious ^ J5 : Denomina tion. QG 187^ M. E. So. 1857 P. E. ... Non-Sect. R C i875,M". E. So. 1845 Baptist. 1 859 Non-Sect. 1861 1 Baptist. 1791 Non-Sect. 1800 Cong. 1834T. E. i830|M. E. So. 1839 M. E. So. i783Presb. i782|Non Sect. 844 Baptist. 853 Luth. Non-Sect. 1819 1693 1840 1868 1867 ,847 1846 1854 1848 1867 1873 1852: P 1855" 1864 1815 1821 1867 |Washingt'n, D.C.|i864 Non-Sect. Christian. F. W. B. Non-Sect. M. E. Co. & Pr, M. E. Non-Sect. S. D. Bap. R. C. E. Co. & Pr. Luth. R C. Baptist. Non-Sect. Non-Sect. V-S2 ^t 27 6 94 5 4 9 62 11 87 9 64 8 u 32 340 9 44 12 80 6 S6 11 62 6 ^4 23 62 10 47 4 15 7 30 ♦ Admits both sexes. + Admits men only. \ Admits women only. 1 Suspended, it is hoped only temporarily. INDEX. Amherst, amoiint of instruction at, 23 ; distinguished graduates of, 130 ; expenses at, 30 ; gymnastics at, 88, 89, 90 ; instruction in classics, 6 ; history, 16 ; mathematics, 7 ; mod- em languages, 10 ; natural science, 12 ; philosophy, 14 ; rhetoric, 19 ; pecimiary aid at, 31, 32 ; religion at, 55, 59, 61, 62, 64, 67 ; require- ments for admission, 2, 3. Antioch College, co-education at, 191, 192. Athletics, 32, seg. Athletic Associations, 87, 88. Base-ball, 82, 83. Berea, religion at, 61. Beloit, expenses at, 36 ; instruction in philosophy at, 15 ; in history, 17 ; pecuniary aid at, 37. Boating, origin and progress of, 83, 84 ; compared with English, 85, 86; effect on health, 87 ; on scholarship, 87, 88 ; training for, 86, 87. Boston University, amount of instruc- tion at, 23 ; co-education, 184 ; ex- penses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 37- Bowdoin, amount of instruction at, 23 ; distinguished graduates of, 130; expenses at, 36 ; intemperance at, 41 ; pecuniary aid at, 38 ; religion at, 61, 62. Brown University, expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 38 ; religion at, 60, 61, 64. Butler University, co-education, 195. California University, amount of in- struction at, 23 ; expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 38. Cambridge, Eng., distinguished grad- uates of, 137 ; expenses at, 35 ; fel- lowships at, 108 ; wealth of, 158, seq. Choice of a College, 117, seq. Classics, study of, 5, 6. Co-education, 178, seg. Columbia, advantages offered for edu- cation of women, 199 ; boating at, 85 ; expenses at, 37 ; pecuniary aid at, 38. Cornell, amount of instruction at, 23 ; co-education at, 194 ; expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 38. Cricket, 81, 82. Dartmouth, amount of instruction at, 23 ; expenses at, 39 ; journalism at, 91 ; pecuniary aid at, 38 ; religion at, 55, 61, 62, 64, 67. 211 212 INDEX. Day of prayer for colleges, (>(>. Denominational colleges, 67, 145. Elective system, 20, 21, 22. Endowments, geographical distribu- tion of, 149, seq.-^ usefulness of, 151, seq.'^ of English Universities, 156, seq. Fellowships, 107, seq. Fine Arts, study of, 18. Foot-ball, 81, 82. German Universities, expenses at, 35. Gymnastics, 88 ; effect of, on health, 88, 89, 90. Hamilton, amount of instruction at, 23 ; expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 38 ; religion at, 64. Harvard, amount of instruction at, 23 ; " Annex," 198, 199 ; base-ball at, 83, 84 ; boating at, 82, 83 ; distin- guished graduates of, 130 ; ex- penses at, 27, 28 ; fellowships, 112 ; gymnastics, 88 ; instruction in classics at, 5 ; in fine arts, 18 ; in history, 16 ; in mathematics, 6 ; in modern languages, 8 ; in natural science, II ; in philosophy, 13; in rhetoric, 18 ; journalism at, 93, 94 ; pecuniary aid at, 29, 30 ; religion at, 55i 561 57» 61, 62, 64; require- ments for admission, 3 ; societies at, 73, 74- Haverford, expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 38. History, study of, 15, 16, 17. Illinois College, expenses at, 36 ; pecu- niary aid at, 38 ; religion at, 59. Instruction, expenses of, 162, seq. Intemperance in College, 40, seq. Iowa College, co-education at, 192 ; religion at, 58, 61, 65. Jefferson on a National University, 167, seq. Johns Hopkins, fellowships at, 112, 113 Journals, evils of, 105 ; number and size of, 90, 91 ; uses of, 105, 106. Kansas, University of, co-education at, 195- Lampoon, 98. Licentiousness, 43, 44. Madison on a National University, 163. Marietta, religion at, 61, 65. Mathematics, study of, 6, 7, 8. Michigan University, amount of in- struction at, 23; co-education at, 184, 195, 196 ; expenses at, 36 ; instruc- tion in history at, 17 ; in mathe- matics, 7; in modem languages, 10 ; in natural science, 12 ; in phi- losophy, 15 ; in rhetoric, 17 ; intem- perance at, 42 ; pecuniary aid at, 38 ; religion at, 60 ; requirements for admission, 3. Middlebury, amount of instruction at, 23; instruction in classics, 6; in history, 17 ; in mathematics, 7 ; in natural science, 12 ; in philosophy, 14 ; in rhetoric, 19 ; religion at, 61, 62, 67. Modem Languages, study of, 8, seq. Morality, 44, seq. ; promotion of, 48, seq. \ compared with English Uni- versities, 53, 54. Natural Science, study of, 11, seq. New York College, amount of instruc- tion at, 23. Northwestern University, amount of instruction at, 23 ; expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 38. Oberlin, amount of instruction at, 23; co- education at, 182, 183, 184, 190, 194, 195 ; expenses at, 36 ; instruction in history, 17; mathematics, 8; modem languages, 11 ; natural science, 13 ; philosophy, 15 ; rhetoric, 20 ; in- INDEX. 213 temperance at, 42 ; pecuniary aid at, 38 ; religion at, 59, 60, 65. Oxford University, distinguished grad- uates of, 137 ; expenses at, 35 ; fellowships at, 107 ; wealth of, 158, seq. Philosophy, study of, 13, seq. Poverty of Colleges, 143, 145. Princeton, amount of instruction at, 23 ; expenses at, 36 ; fellowships at, no ; pecuniary aid at, 38 ; relig- ion at, 55, 60, 61, 64. Religion in foundation of Colleges, 55, 56, 58, 59 ; in government and in- struction of, 56, 57, 58. Revivals in college, 64, seq. Rhetoric, study of, 18, seq. Ripon, religion at, 61, ^^5. Rowing Association, 84. St. Lawrence University, co-education at, 184, 185, 192. Smith College, expenses at, 35 ; religion at, 65. Societies, literary, advantages of, 70; defects of, 71 ; secret advantages of, 77 ; evils of, 78 ; expenses of, 76 ; religion, 63. Trinity, amount of instruction at, 23 ; expenses at, 37 ; p)ecuniary aid at, 38. Tufts, expenses at, 37 , pecuniary aid at, 38. Union, expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 39. University Quarterly, 96. University, a national, 166, seq. Universities, German, relation to the government, 176, seq. Vassar, amount of instruction at, 23 • expenses at, 34, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 39 ; religion at, 64, 65. Vermont University, amount of in- struction at, 23. Virginia University, amount of instruc- tion at , 23 ; expenses at, 36 ; pecu- niary aid at, 39. Washington on a National University, 166, seq. Wealth of colleges, 145, seq. Wesleyan, amount of instruction at, 23 ; expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 39 ; religion at, 61, 64. Western Reserve, religion at, 59. Williams, expenses at, 36 ; pecuniary aid at, 39 ; religion at, 61, 62, 64. Wisconsin, University of , co-education at, 186, 187, 196, 197. Women, education of, 178, seq. Yale, amount of instruction at, 23 ; baseball at, 82, 83 : boating at, 83, 84 ; distinguished graduates of, 129 ; fellowships at, 109 ; gymnastics at, 88 ; instruction in classics at, 5 ; in fine arts, 18 ; in history, 16 ; in mathematics, 7 ; in modern lan- guages, 9 ; in natural science, 12 ; in philosophy, 13 ; in rhetoric, 19 ; intemperance at, 40, 41 ; journalism at, 92, 93 ; pecuniary aid at, 39 ; religion at, 55, 64, 65, 67; secret societies at, 73. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. ,aVeb'52»^ WU13Z4 4 7 F£B 5 l^^r gCDaRCDEPt MAR 1 0-74 X 9 ^,Rflf6 Leccib. JUN17 138Z '^STACKS APR 29^3360 62llX^^ ou-t) J|\ti^ OB' LD 21-95m-ll,'50(2877Bl6)476 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY •.,^^-* »... --y^ -^ ^ '