THOMAS JEFFERSON INTRODUCTION. "An institution," said Emerson, "is the leugthened shadow of one man." The truth of this epigrammatic saying is richly illustrated in the history of church, state, and society. Conspicuous examples occur in the founding of towns, cities, schools, colleges, and universities. There are many noble institutions which, if we look backward, seem to cast the lengthening shadows of individual influence across the valleys of history; but, if we look forward, such institutions are seen to be the advancing and growing light of the world. It is not enough to consider the founders of human institutions as standing apart and alone. Men should be viewed historically in their relation to society. Institutions are rarely the product of one man's original ideas. Suggestions have usually been taken from other men and other institutions. There is a subtle genealogy in human creations which is as complex as the relations of man to society and to past generations. Just as every individual human life is a long train of lives, carrying the hereditary forces of family and race-a ghostly train of progenitors, with their good or evil tendencies-so every human institution is the historical resultant of many individual forces, which the will-power of one man or one set of men has brought into effective combination at some opportune time. JEFFERSON'S ALMA MATER. Thomas Jefferson is justly called the "Father of the University of Virginia." That institution is clearly the lengthened shadow of one man. But William and Mary College was the alma mater of Thomas Jefferson. There at Williamsburg, in intimate association with a Scotch professor of mathematics and philosophy, with a scholarly lawyer, and with the Governor of the colony, Thomas Jefferson, of Albemarle, the son of a Virginia planter, received his first bent toward science and higher education, toward law and politics, the fields in which he afterward excelled. Jefferson's first idea of a university for Virginia is inseparably connected with his proposed transformation of William and Mary College, of which, as Governor of the State, he became, ex officio, a visitor in 1779. The writer has already explained in his sketch of William and Mary College why that ancient ecclesiastical institution, the oldest of all colleges in the South, and, next to Harvard, the oldest in the country, failed to become a State university. The present monograph will show how an educational germ, springing from William and Mary College, invigorated by fresh ideas from beyond the sea, and transplanted to a more favorable environment, developed into larger life through the fostering care of Thomas Jefferson, supported by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Institutions like that royal old college at Williamsburg1 never really die. They bring forth fruit in old age. Their strength is renewed, like the eagle's. They transmit their life to others in ways no less remarkable than are the processes of nature. HISTORY OF WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE CONTINUED. This study of the early history of the University of Virginia was begun as a natural continuation of the history of William and Mary College, but it has led to a much wider view of the subject than was originally intended. The monograph now embraces a survey, not only of Jefferson's educational work, but of the history of higher education throughout the State. In the latter part of his work, the author has received efficient co-operation from the representatives of the various Virginia colleges and universities. While under special obligations to professors and college presidents, whose names are mentioned in their proper connection, very particular thanks are due to the chairman of the faculty of the University of Virginia, Col. Charles S. Venable, to the distinguished head of the law school of that institution, Professor John B. Minor, and to Professor B. L. Gildersleeve, of the Johns Hopkins University, for the kind assistance and material information afforded the present writer. JEFFERSON'S ORIGINAL DRAWINGS FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. Grateful acknowledgments are made to Miss Sarah N. Randolph, of Baltimore, for placing at the service of the writer the original drawings, plans, and estimates for the University of Virginia, prepared by her great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson, whose correspondence and papers were edited by her father, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. These unique illustrative materials, preserved as heirlooms by the Randolph family, throw a wonderful light upon the origin of the University. The observer realizes as never before how entirely and absolutely that institution was the historic product of one man's mind. Not only the University itself as an academic organization, but the very ground-plan and structure of its buildings, every material estimate and every architectural detail, are the work of Thomas Jefferson. The recent revival of William and Mary College by the Legislature of Virginia is a gratifying proof of popular interest in higher education and in the historical associations of that ancient institution. The college is to become a higher training school for the teachers of Virginia. The superintendent of public instruction, Dr. John L. Buchanan, has been appointed president, and the various chairs of instruction, including History and English, will soon be filled anew. The thousand and one matters which college presidents and boards of trustees usually leave to professional architects and skilled labor, were thought out and carefully specified on paper by the "Father of the University of Virginia." The student begins to appreciate the significance of the above phrase when he sees Jefferson's original survey of the ground for a campus or lawn, and his mathematical location of the buildings, with the minutest directions regarding every one. Cellars and foundation walls, windows, doors, roofs, chimneys, floors, partitions, stairs, the very bricks and timber requisite for every dormitory, were all estimated with nicest accuracy. "The covered way in front of the whole range of buildings is to be Tuscan, with columns of brick rough cast, their diameter 16 inches, but in front of the pavilion to be arches, in order to support the columns of the portico above more solidly." Not only did Jefferson draw plans and make estimates for every important feature of the University, but he trained his brick-makers, masons, and carpenters, and superintended every operation. He even designed tools and implements for his men, and taught them how to cover roofs with tin. One or two skilled workmen were imported from Italy to chisel the marble capitals of those classic columns which support the porticos of the pavilions in which the professors now live, but the chief work was done by home talent under Jefferson's watchful eye. A visitor pacing slowly through those monastic colonnades extending along two sides of the great quadrangle campus of the University of Virginia will receive a strange variety of impressions from the extraordinary architectural combinations which greet his wandering 17036-No. 2-2 eyes. The arcades themselves, from which open directly the singlechambered rooms of the students, remind one of cloistered walks in some ancient monastery. These student-rooms are like monkish cells. But what wonderful façades are those which front the professors' houses or pavilions! They reproduce classic styles of architecture. The shadows of remote antiquity are cast upon those beautiful grassy lawns which form the campus, or, shall we say, the campo santo, of the University of Virginia. From Jefferson's drawings we learn, what is now well-nigh forgotten, that these varying types of classical architecture were copied from well-known Roman buildings, pictured by Palladio in his great work on architecture. There in the theatre 1"The Architecture of A. Palladio, in four books, containing a short treatise of the five orders, and the most necessary observations concerning all sorts of buildings: as also the different construction of private and public houses, highways, bridges, marketplaces, xystes, and temples, with their plans, sections, and uprights, revised, designed, and published, by Giacomo Leoni, a Venetian, architect to His most Serene Highness, the late Elector Palatine; translated from the Italian original. The third edition corrected. With notes and remarks of Inigo Jones: now first taken from his original manuscript in Worcester College Library, Oxford. And also as an Appendix, containing the Antiquities of Rome, written by A. Palladio. And a Discourse of the Fires of the Ancients, never before translated. In two volumes. London, 1742." Palladio's service to architecture has recently been made the subject of an interesting article in the Nation, December 29, 1887, under the title "Palladio at Vicenza." There is also an interesting sketch of Palladio in the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. |