the Southern counterpart of Northern town meetings, as Southern court greens are the analogue of New England town commons.

Each section of country developed its own interests as best it could, and in perfect harmony with its own environment. Communal life at the North had its peculiar advantages, and bore its peculiar fruits in common schools, libraries, lyceums, etc. Rural life at the South was not without its charms, and it certainly produced its share of able men. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Edmund Randolph, John Marshall, and Henry Clay were rural types of good citizenship. The roll of William and Mary College affords remarkable evidence of what Virginia produced without town government or common schools. With them she might have produced something different; but the facts are sufficiently gratifying. Virginia remained what nature and history made her. Jef ferson could not establish towns and village schools in a sparsely-settled country, where population had no tendency to aggregate, but rather to scatter.1 By the constitution of 1850 Virginia instituted districts within her counties for electoral and other convenient purposes; but there was still no proper economic basis for towns or for district schools. The Civil War did not improve the situation. Nevertheless, immediately afterward, the reconstruction party sought a panacea for all evils by introducing the township system of New England, which was never really suited to the local needs of Virginia, and was less so than ever after the State had been a battle ground of the Republic for four years. It is needless to say that the institution of town government in a State where there was no adequate communal basis for the system was the height of folly and failed miserably. There was no raison d'être for town government. A Northern man has only to travel in almost any direction across Virginia to realize how absurd it was to decree town government throughout regions where there were then no towns. The scattered population understood and naturally preferred their own county system, which suited their actual rural condition.

"THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH."

There are, however, to-day along the line of Virginia railways, besides certain old boroughs, here and there indications of the gradual germination of a natural and healthful local life. With the increase of railroad stations, mills, and of settlements at cross roads; with schoolhouses, churches, court-houses, and stores; with the break-up of great plantations and the multiplication of small farms, there will come a gradual increase of population and more and more of these local aggregations of society, which by and by will demand local government in smaller units than the county or the district. The more flourishing and 1 On the disadvantages of town government for Virginia, see Correspondence of Jefferson and Cabell, pp. 18-19, note, and Tucker's Life of Jefferson, II, 352-355.

progressive localities will become incorporated as towns or villages, 'and tax themselves for schools and public improvements. in all prob ability a compromise between county and town government will prove itself best adapted to the local wants of the South, as already has proved the case in the States northwest of the Ohio. Indeed, the model system of local government is this very compromise system, as developed by the blending of town and county types, notably in the State of Illinois.

CHAPTER III

WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE-EUROPEAN INFLUENCES.

SCHOLASTIC CURRICULUM.

Interesting evidence upon Jefferson's original idea of promoting higher education in Virginia is to be found in a bill for amending the constitution of William and Mary College, proposed by the committee appointed in 1776 for the revision of the laws. Jefferson was a member of this committee, and his hand is clearly to be traced in the provisions of the bill. After reviewing the history of the college, Jefferson describes the fac ulty as consisting of "one school of sacred theology, with two professorships therein, to wit, one for teaching the Hebrew tongue and expounding the Holy Scriptures; and the other for explaining the commonplaces of divinity and the controversies with heretics; one other school for philosophy, with two professorships therein, to wit, one for the study of rhetoric, logic, and ethics, and the other of physics, metaphysics, and mathematics; one other school for teaching the Latin and Greek tongues; and one other for teaching Indian boys reading, writing, vulgar arithmetic, the catechism, and the principles of the Christian relig ion." This is the clearest and fullest statement which the writer has thus far discovered of the actual curriculum at William and Mary College under the colonial régime. This fresh information will supplement what the writer has elsewhere said respecting the course of study pursued at Williamsburg in early days. In general, as was surmised, the course resembles that given at Harvard College in the seventeenth century.

JEFFERSON'S PROPOSED CHANGES.

Jefferson's propositions for the modification of this ancient scholastic curriculum represent the first current of modern ideas, which began in 1779, at Williamsburg, to flow into American academic life. In place of the president and six professors, Jefferson proposed that there should be eight professors, one of whom should be appointed president, with an additional salary of £100 a year. The eight professorships were to be as 1 Sundry Documents on the Subject of a System of Public Education for the State of Virginia, pp. 55, 56. Richmond, 1817.

2 William and Mary College; Circular of Information, 1887, No. 1, p. 20.

follows: (1) Moral philosophy, the laws of nature and of nations, and the fine arts; (2) law and police, including economics, politics, and commerce; (3) history, civil and ecclesiastical; (4) mathematics; (5) anatomy and medicine; (6) natural philosophy and natural history; (7) ancient languages, including Oriental (Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac) and Northern tongues (Meso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Old Icelandic); (8) modern languages. Very characteristic of Jefferson is the passage in the above bill respecting the Indians, a passage which is further explained in the Notes on Virginia (Query XV). Instead of the Indian school called "The Brasserton," Jefferson proposed that the faculty should appoint a missionary, who should visit the Indian tribes and "investigate their laws, customs, religions, traditions, and more particularly their languages, constructing grammars thereof, as well as may be, and copious vocabularies." When the missionary had accomplished these pious ob. jects in one tribe, "he might pass on to another." The materials which he collected were to be deposited in the college library at Williamsburg. One can almost fancy that Jefferson had in mind an ethnological bureau, foreshadowing that developed in Washington in these latter days by Major Powell.

INTRODUCTION OF MODERN STUDIES.

Although this bill was not passed by the Legislature. nevertheless its provisions were, to a considerable extent, actually realized by Jefferson in 1779 through the board of visitors. He says in his Notes on Virginia (Query XV) that the visitors excluded the two schools of divinity (which included the study of Hebrew); and also the school of Latin and Greek, chiefly because it was a mere preparatory school, which "filled the college with children." Jefferson was warmly devoted to the classics, and, in his original bill, provided both for them and for Oriental languages; but it was found difficult to increase at once the chartered number of professorships, and Jefferson was accordingly compelled to change the subjects of instruction to matters of more immediate impor tance to Virginia and the political training of her sons and citizens. Accordingly the following professorships were provided for: (1) Law and police (the science of administration); (2) anatomy and medicine; (3) physics and mathematics; (4) moral philosophy, with the law of nature and nations, and the fine arts; (5) modern languages; (6) the Indian school. Jefferson did not despair of increasing ultimately the original number of professorships by legislative enactment and of adding other branches of science. Here is one of his most striking sugges tions: "To the professorships usually established in the universities of Europe it would seem proper to add one for the ancient languages and literatures of the north, on account of their connection with our own language, laws, customs, and history." The modern idea of Germanic. institutional and linguistic studies is here clearly foreshadowed. Indeed, Jefferson was the very first advocate of the study of Anglo-Saxon

Sundry Documents, p. 60.

in this country. The subject was early introduced at the University of Virginia, and Jefferson published a book upon Anglo-Saxon, which was reprinted in 1851.

ROCHEFOUCAULD ON WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.'

In the travels of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt through the United States in the years 1795-97 there may be found an interesting account of Williamsburg and its famous old college, which had then fallen into decay, although it was afterwards in a measure restored. He says the income, which before the Revolution was from $17,000 to $18,000 per annum, was then reduced to $3,500. The colonial duties on tobacco had fallen to nothing, and the principal resources of the college were the rent on 20,000 acres of land, let out on long leases, and "all in a state of cultivation." A small duty on land surveys, which were regulated by the college, eked out its slender income, which "the Legislature does not seem inclined to augment."

Rochefoucauld describes the course of study as consisting of mathematics, natural and moral philosophy, natural and civil law, with the modern languages. He is surprised to find the students not living in dormitories, "those vast buildings destined for their reception." He says the students "are dispersed through the different boarding-houses in the town, at a distance from all inspection." The duke is still more surprised to find Bishop Madison, the president, and the professors defending this system, and asserting that "it has been proved by experience that good order, peace, and even the success of their studies are more effectually promoted by this separation of the students than by their being united together within the same walls." The duke is inclined to think that the faculty, in pursuing this policy, pay greater regard to their own ease than to the welfare of the young men intrusted to their charge.

The French traveller notes that the students pay a fee of $14 to each professor whose course of lessons they follow. Board and lodging then cost from $100 to $120. The entire expense of a year at William and Mary College would amount to about $170. Besides his fees from students, each professor received an annual salary of $400. The president, who was also professor of natural and moral philosophy, received $200 in addition. The interual administration of the college is described as in the hands of the professors, under the general supervision of a board of eighteen visitors chosen throughout the State. The condition of the college building seemed to the duke "very indifferent." The institution was too poor to indulge in repairs, unless aided by an ap propriation from the Legislature. "It possesses a library tolerably well furnished with classical books; it consists almost entirely of old books, except two hundred volumes of the finest and best French productions 1 Travels of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Lian court through the United States in 1795-97. Second edition, III, 47-56. London, 1800.