Quesnay's brilliant project attracted brief admiration and then sank into oblivion. FATE OF THE RICHMOND ACADEMY. The building which he founded in Richmond was, however, completed. It served a purpose which entitles it to a monumental place in Quesnay's French Academy was early converted into a theatre, the first institution of the kind Richmond ever had. Dramatic art found its first American recognition at Williamsburg and Annapolis; but Richmond early became one of its favorite seats. The "Old Academy," in Theatre Square, was destroyed by fire; but a new theatre was erected in the rear of the old. This new building was also burned. Samuel Mordecai, a contemporary observer, says this theatre was "the scene of the most horrid disaster that ever overwhelmed our city, when seventy-two persons perished in the flames on the fatal 26th of December, 1811, where the Monumental Church now stands, and its portico covers the tomb and the ashes of most of the victims." This terrible holocaust and the memorial structure, piously erected upon the spot, will doubtless serve to remind the reader of the historic site of Quesnay's academy, in the beautiful city of Richmond, which is set upon hills. Quesnay's curious and interesting Mémoire concernant l'Académie des Sciences et Beaux Arts des Etats-Unis d'Amérique, établie á Richemond, from which the above sketch is chiefly drawn, was first mentioned to the present writer by Mr. George L. Burr, instructor of history in Cornell University. Voyaging through the Thousand Islands, up that ancient river route by which the teachers and traders of France first penetrated Canada, we fell to talking of William and Mary College and of the educational history of Virginia, upon which the writer was then engaged. Mr. Burr, who had with him some of the proofs of the catalogue of the Andrew D. White Historical Library, now belonging to Cornell University, suddenly called to mind in that collection a French tract upon the Academy of Richmond. The writer's curiosity was immediately aroused, and he begged to have the tract forwarded to Baltimore for examination. A careful reading of Quesnay's Memoir proved conclusively that a current of French influence was beginning in the last quarter of the eighteenth century to penetrate Virginia. Representing science and culture rather than religious or economic zeal, this Virginia current was different from the original French influence which crept into Canada by way of the St. Lawrence; and yet it is very interesting to note what a practical direction French science took in relation to the discovery of our natural resources. Not without significance was Quesnay's casual suggestion of the propriety of establishing "une Chapelle pour les Catholiques Romains épars en Virginie." Samuel Mordecai, the Richmond antiquary, who must have seen in his youth the "Old Academy," had access to Quesnay's Memoirs in preparing his chapter on Rich mond theatres. He says of the tract: "The writer is indebted to a gentleman of literary taste and research for the use of an exceedingly rare little volume (in French), entitled Memoir and Prospectus concerning the Academy of Fine Arts of the United States of America, Established at Richmond, the Capital of Virginia, by the Chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire, Founder and President." More than a generation has passed away since Mordecai thus expressed his obligation to a gentleman of literary taste and research. The present writer can not better thank President Andrew D. White for the use of his copy than by repeating the words of the Richmond antiquary. Recent inquiry has developed the fact that Mr. Charles Poindexter, the State librarian of Virginia, whom the writer met with Mr. Burr among the American librarians upon the river St. Lawrence, presented a copy of Quesnay's tract some years ago to the State library in Richmond, and also the fact that, within a year or two, a copy of the same rare little book was bought for a private library in Baltimore at an auction sale in the capital of Virginia. the history of Virginia architecture. It was the place of assembly for the Virginia convention which, in 1788, ratified the Constitution of the United States. There, in the building designed to be the Academy of the United States of America, the statesmen of Virginia met, day after day, to discuss the greatest question which was ever agitated by any American academic or deliberative body since the Declaration of Independence. It was the question of Federal union. It was decided after long and earnest debate, in which such men as James Madison, John Marshall, James Monroe, George Wythe, Edmund Randolph, George Mason, Pendleton, Nicholas, Grayson, Innis, Lee, and Patrick Henry took their respective parts. It was, after all, a nobler national academy than that which the Chevalier Quesnay had conceived, nobler be cause it was American and not French. However admirable French science and the fine arts may have appeared to the Virginians at that time, it must be acknowledged that it was far better for their Commonwealth that the introduction of these excellent gifts should have been deferred until a later period, when Jefferson was able to give Virginia the ripened fruit of a long life of observation, inquiry, and reflection in that noble university which bears Virginia's name. CHAPTER II. JEFFERSON ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND COMMON SCHOOLS. POPULAR EDUCATION AND SELF-GOVERNMENT. Jefferson's ideas of university education in Virginia were closely connected with thoughts of instituting local self-government for the sup port of common schools. As early as 1779 he introduced into the General Assembly, among other useful measures, a bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge. The means proposed to accomplish this desir able end was the annual election in every county of three so-called aldermen, who should proceed to divide their respective counties into hundreds. This old English territorial division, which originated in the distribution of land to military groups comprising one hundred settlers, of whom ten families constituted a tithing, was now suggested by Jefferson as a suitable territorial basis for school districts. Jefferson's bill provided that the electors within every hundred should be called together to "choose the most convenient place within their hundred for building a school-house." Since the days of the Germanic folk-mote of armed warriors there has been no better object for primary assemblies of the people. In ancient days freemen assembled in mass meeting to elect chieftains for tribal forays. The noisy clash of arms and the talk of war accompanied these local elections. In times of peace the distribution of land for tillage and rules for the herding of cattle and swine occupied village attention. In modern days higher interests have developed in our agrarian communities. The local organization and support of churches, the maintenance of common schools, roads, and bridges, and, more recently, ideas of village improvement,2 have come to the front in the local councils of American freemen. That Jefferson was not altogether unconscious of the historic significance of his proposed "hundreds" is clear from a letter to a writer on the English Constitution, Major John Cartwright, written June 5, 1824, when the project of subdividing the counties into wards was again under consideration. Jefferson said the hundreds should be "about six miles square, and would answer to the hundreds of your Saxon Alfred." 2 Village improvement associations now flourish from Maine to Georgia. Among the earliest were those in Berkshire County, Mass., notably the Laurel Hill Association, at Stockbridge, Mass., which is well described by N. H. Egleston, in his Villages and Village Life. IDEA OF HISTORICAL READING IN COMMON SCHOOLS. Jefferson's original bill in 1779 provided not only for the popular foundation of common schools, but for the free training of all free children, male and female, for three years in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The proposed admission of girls was a step in advance of the times, for not until the year 17891 did Boston allow the female sex to attend her public schools. Most remarkable, too, was Jefferson's idea, that reading in the common schools should be made the vehicle of historical instruction. The bill enjoins that "the books which shall be used therein for instructing the children to read shall be such as will at the same time make them acquainted with Grecian, Roman, English, and American history." Jefferson elsewhere maintains that, in the common schools, where most children receive "their whole education," it should be "chiefly historical." This was very advanced ground for an eighteenth century educator; indeed, the nineteenth century is likely to pass away before all American teachers reach any such rational standpoint. Jefferson regarded language simply as an instrument for attaining knowledge; and, in his opinion, a knowledge of what men have actually done in this world is a most important educational and moral force. Jefferson wished to have children's minds stored with useful historical facts. He said, "history, by apprising them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them to act as judges of the actions and designs of men." Such an historical idea of popular education, if introduced, not by wretched manuals, but by happily illustrated, well-selected historical reading-books, in the hands of intelligent, enthusiastic teachers, capable of telling now and then a good tale not in the book, would revolutionize common-school education in America. The idea of making reading the avenue to intelligence has already begun to dawn in our modern text-books, but it was suggested more than a century ago by Thomas Jefferson. The idea is, however, capable of a special and most useful application to the teaching of history. The writer has seen tried with great success the experiment of reading history to children in a Baltimore kindergarten, and he has great faith in that method for all grades of education. Jefferson proposed that a "general plan of reading and instruction" should be recommended by the College of William and Mary, and introduced by a county superintendent or county "overseer" of education in the local hundreds. LATIN GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. Above the common schools, according to Jefferson's original plan, there were to be grammar or classical schools, where Latin, Greek, English, geography, and higher arithmetic should be taught. The counties. were to co-operate in local groups, from three to five or more in each group, for the institution of a joint grammar school or classical acad 1 Boston School Report, 1866, p. 28. emy in a convenient location, which was to be determined by the county overseers of the common schools, who were to appoint a visitor of the grammar school from each county. The board of visitors had power to choose their own rector, to employ masters and ushers, to fix tuition, etc. The College of William and Mary, again, was to have general control of this plan of superior instruction. Thus the classical academies, middle schools, or colleges, as Jefferson afterwards termed them, would centre in the higher education, as did the common schools. CONNECTION OF POPULAR AND HIGHER EDUCATION. Jefferson proposed to connect the three great branches of education, the primary, the secondary, and the higher. As stated in the bill of 1779, and as further explained in Jefferson's Notes on Virginia (Query XIV), the overseers of schools in the hundreds were to select annually "the best and most promising genius" whose parents were unable to afford him further education, and this "boy of best genius" was to be sent forward to the nearest grammar school, there to be educated gratis for one or two years. At an annual visitation one-third of the least promising of these "public foundationers" were to be dismissed after one year's instruction; the rest were to remain for a second year at public cost, and then all were to be dismissed or thrown on their own resources "save one only, the best in genius and disposition, who shall be at liberty to continue there four years longer on the public foundation, and shall thenceforward be deemed a senior." Thus, in the twenty or more Latin schools throughout the State, a score or more of the brightest boys would be discovered each year. After six years' public training one half of this picked number were to be dismissed for the supply of Latin school teachers, and the other half, of superior genius, were to proceed to William and Mary College for three years' specialization in such sciences as they might select. Of course other students than the "foundationers" could attend, at their own expense, either the grammar schools or the College of William and Mary. The above plan was suggested for the discovery and development of natu ral talent among the sons of the people. By an ingenious system of natural selection and by the survival of the fittest, Jefferson hoped to secure for the service of the State the choicest products of democracy. By connecting the common schools with the academies and university, the very highest education was to be brought within the reach of the poorest boy in Virginia, if deserving of such rare educational privileges.1 1 Jefferson remained to the end of his life an earnest advocate of the idea of making the higher education accessible to the higher talent which is always latent in the common people. Writing to his friend Mann Page, August 30, 1795, Jefferson said: "I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius, and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence." 17036-No. 2-3 |