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and his family friends,-two of the most serviceable of all American gifts. Leicester Academy was a kindred establishment, begun in 1784; New Ipswich dates from 1789. We cannot dwell upon these facts; their influence has been well set forth by Taylor, Cleveland, Washburn, Bacon, Barnard, and especially by Charles Hammond in his historical sketch of New England academies, where an admirable defence is given of the principles which have governed their maintenance. In due time the academy became a part of the legal school system of Massachusetts, it spread through New England; it extended to New York. Feeble enterprises, joint-stock companies, inadequate funds, brought the system into ill repute; and when the revival of public schools took place, between 1830 and 1850, high schools, based on the carliest notion of grammar schools, maintained at public expense, superseded, in many places, the academies maintained by endowment and tuition fees. It was one of the watchwords in Connecticut, that "our public schools must be cheap enough for the poorest; good enough for the best." Yet the strong-endowed schools, like those just named, and like others at Munson, Easthampton, Groton, and elsewhere, never lost their place in public esteem. A noteworthy return to the academy principle (modified by the free-school idea) was seen in the establishment of a free academy at Norwich, in 1856. The story of this undertaking, as told by its promoter, Rev. John P. Gulliver, is a very good illustration of the vibrations of opinion, in an intelligent New England town, between the endowed school, the private school, the public high school, and the academy. Private seminaries, both for day-scholars and boarders, have, to a considerable extent, supplemented the lack of good public high schools and academies. Within the last twenty years, especially in cities and large towns, the public high school, both for girls and boys, has become the favorite method of securing secondary instruction. In the Western States this is not merely the favorite, it is almost the only prevalent plan. Its influence upon classical education has not generally been favorable (though there are noteworthy exceptions to this remark), and consequently, in many of the Western colleges, preparatory departments are found to be indispensable, while

in many of the Eastern States the promoters of college education are earnest and frequent in the advocacy of better means and greater facilities for passing beyond the clementary schools into the colleges. Dr. Harris of St. Louis has published a paper, in which he discusses the failure to connect the lower with the advanced seminaries.

Passing now to the subject of superior education, we find at the commencement of the Revolution that there were nine colleges established in eight of the thirteen colonies. Three of them were instituted prior to the seventeenth century, and for nearly fifty years the trio stood alone; six were founded between 1746 and 1776. The origin of Harvard in 1638 is almost coeval with that of Massachusetts; that of Yale goes back to the early days of the New Haven Colony, though its foundation dates from 1700; William and Mary was begun in 1693. New Jersey was first to follow the example of Massachusetts, Virginia, and Connecticut, in the establishment of Nassau Hall at Princeton, and was the first of the colonies to duplicate a college, which was done by the foundation of Queens now Rutgers College in New Brunswick; New York was the second to act, by the foundation of Kings now Columbia College; then came Pennsylvania, with the University at Philadelphia, the colonial metropolis; Rhode Island was next, with its college at Providence; and New Hampshire was not far behind in the enlargement of Wheelock's Indian charity school, and the foundation of Dartmouth College. Some future poet or mythologist may personify these as the nine colonial muses.

These institutions were colleges of an English parentage and model, not Scotch nor Continental universities. They were schools of rectorial and tutorial supervision, not of free professional instruction. They were disciplinary in their aim, and had more regard for the general culture of large numbers than for the advanced and special instruction of the chosen few. They were also, to a considerable extent, ecclesiastical foundations, finding the churches and ministers their constant and sometimes their only efficient supporters. Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth were controlled by Congregationalists; Princeton was founded by the Presbyterians, and New Brunswick by the Dutch Reformed; William and Mary was emphatically a child

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of the Church of England, and Kings or Columbia College was chiefly but not exclusively governed by the Episcopalians; while Rhode Island College (now Brown University) was under the patronage of Baptists. These seminaries were also of religious aims. Usually the education of ministers was avowed as one of their chief objects. Sometimes, in the earlier days, the christianization of the Indians was distinctly kept in mind (though with the most meagre results) as it was in the romantic project of Berkeley for his college in the Bermudas. Religious and theological instruction was deemed an essential part of the education of every one, but not in an exclusive or narrow sense. The colonists believed in the Scriptures, and insisted upon orthodoxy in their principal teachers; but they favored liberal culture, - the study of languages, philosophy, physics, mathematics, and without the slightest hesitation encouraged, as far as their slender means would allow, every branch of learning.

But there was a civil as well as an ecclesiastical element in most of these foundations. Harvard and Yale were chartered and to some extent controlled by the colonial governments of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and were for a long time nurtured by appropriations from the public chest, as Michigan, California, and other western universities are now. The declarations of the original supporters of these colleges indicate a desire to train up young men for the service of the State, not less distinctly and emphatically than the desire to provide an educated ministry. Individual aid was also expected and invited, and the names of Harvard and Yale perpetuate the remembrance of such generous gifts.

Hence, these nine colleges were nurseries of virtue, intelligence, liberality, and patriotism, as well as of learning; so that when the Revolution began, scores of the most enlightened leaders, both in the council and upon the field, were found among their graduates. The influences of academic culture may be distinctly traced in the formation of the Constitution of the United States, and in the political writings of Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and many other leading statesmen of the period. A careful student of American politics has remarked that nothing more strikingly indicates the influ

ence of the education given at Cambridge "than the masterly manner in which difficult problems of law and government were handled by those who had received their instruction only from that source.

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Soon after the Revolution was over, new colleges were projected. Between the close of the war and 1800, seventeen such institutions were organized, three in Maryland (St. John's, Washington, and Frederick); one in Massachusetts (Williams); one in New York (Union); one in Pennsylvania, at Carlisle; two in South Carolina, at Charleston and Winsborough; two in Virginia (Hampden Sidney and Lexington); and one in the District of Columbia, at Georgetown. Four of the Southern States, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, instituted universities, which bore in each case the name of the State. These made a total of twenty-six colleges, kindred in organization and plans, imperfectly endowed, abounding in aspirations, sustained by sacrifices, restricted in scope, all under way in the year 1800. Instead of maintaining one strong institution in each State, and giving up the points of difference (usually ecclesiastical or theological tenets which had not the slightest bearing upon classical or mathematical or scientific culture), the friends of higher education entered upon a rivalry which, in some States, was fatal, and in some injurious, to the cause they advocated.

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The colonial mode of growth has been perpetuated from those days until now. In 1875 the Commissioner of Education reported the names of 374 institutions, mostly called universities and colleges, which are legally entitled to confer academic degrees, besides independent schools of law, medicine, and theology, of which there are 106, and colleges for women, of which there are 65; so that there are known and recorded 545 degree-giving institutions within the United States. Most of these colleges are inadequately endowed, and consequently the instruction which many of them offer is of a very secondary character. A very large part of them represent some sectarian or denominational opinion; some of them have little more than a name, a charter, and a bias. The city of Nashville is reported to have four colleges; the State of Oregon, seven; Kansas, eight; California, eleven, besides a

State university; Iowa, eighteen; Ohio, thirty-six, including the Toledo University of Arts and Trades. Thus we see that to-day, the three colleges of 1700, the nine colleges of 1776, the twenty-six colleges of 1800, have multiplied far beyond all expectation, and every year new candidates seck admission to the lists.

In reviewing these figures of 1875, it is well to dwell upon the characteristics of the earliest American colleges, because institutions, as well as individuals, exhibit hereditary tendencies; and in reviewing the history of the century it is easy to see how the colonial notions of college organization have affected advantageously and disadvantageously the higher education of the country, even down to our own time. The graduates of the older colleges have migrated to the Western States, and have transplanted with them the college germs. Illinois bears witness to the zeal of its college band; California owes much to a New England scholar, Henry Durant, who went there, as he said, "with college on the brain," and lived till he became the head of a State university; Oregon has its kindred pioneer; and every Western State can bear witness to the zeal for learning which has been manifested within its borders by enthusiastic teachers from the East. The Western College Society can show a record of generous offerings in money, and of still more generous offerings in intellect and exertion, expended during the last half-century in building up Western colleges upon the colonial model. These institutions have contributed largely to the material and social prosperity of the newer States, and have made it possible to build up the common-school system, and to provide in cities and large towns, churches, libraries, high schools, newspapers, and other means of social enlightenment.

If these numerous colleges had been called academies, or high schools, or collegiate seminaries, or gymnasia, everybody at home and abroad would have applauded their organization, and would have regarded their maintenance as one of the glories of the Republic; but because they are called by the same name as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and other rich and well-manned colleges, they appear to disadvantage by comparison, and it is not uncommon to hear them spoken of

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