in such an institution. In order to prepare what I had promised our trustees I have lately revised these several plans with attention; and I am struck with the diversity of arrangement observable in them, no two being alike. Yet I have no doubt that these several arrangements have been the subject of mature reflection by wise and learned men, who, contemplating local circumstances, have adapted them to the condition of the section of society for which they have been framed. I am strengthened in this conclusion by an examination of each separately, and a conviction that no one of them, if adopted without change, would be suited to the circumstances and pursuit of our country. The example they have set, then, is authority for us to select from their dif ferent institutions the materials which are good for us, and, with them, to erect a structure whose arrangement shall correspond with our own social condition, and shall admit of enlargement in proportion to the encouragement it may merit and receive."

GENERAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

After this sensible introduction, which contains a wholesome warning against mere imitation in educational establishments and a proper recognition of peculiar local conditions in every individual foundation, Jefferson proceeds to survey the general field of education and to mark out that particular portion to be occupied by the proposed institution in his immediate neighborhood. He considers the subject under three heads: elementary schools, general schools, and professional schools. Under the first head he observes that it is the duty of government to see that every citizen is educated according to his condition and pursuits in life. He divides the mass of citizens into the laboring and the learned classes, including under the former agricultural labor and handicrafts, and under the latter certain skilled labor and technical knowledge. Elementary schools will suffice for the laboring classes. Jefferson notes the fact that a plan was once proposed to the Legislature of Virginia to divide every county into hundreds or wards, five or six miles square, each ward to have its own schools, for the elementary education of the children in reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography. He expresses the hope that this project, once ineffectually attempted, may be resumed "in a more promising form." Passing to the second head, Jefferson remarks that pupils leaving the elementary schools will separate into two classes, for the pursuit of labor and science, respectively. Pupils des tined for the latter will go to college, where higher education is afforded by general schools and is specialized in professional schools. The learned class he divides into two sections: first, those destined for professional life; and second, the wealthy, who "may aspire to share in conducting the affairs of the nation, or live with usefulness and respect in the private ranks of life." Both the learned and the wealthy will require the higher education, but the former will need to specialize and pass from the general to professional schools.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES.

Jefferson then attempts to classify the branches of useful science, which ought to be taught in the general schools. He groups them under three departments: language, mathematics, and philosophy. In the first department he arranges languages and history, ancient and modern; grammar, belles-lettres, rhetoric, and oratory, and a school for the deaf, dumb, and blind. "History," he says, "is here associated with languages, not as a kindred subject, but on a principle of economy, because both may be attained by the same course of reading, if books are selected with that view." This thought, originally advanced by Jefferson as the basis of elementary education, became in the person of George Long, the classical historian, one of the ideal corner-stones of the University of Virginia. Under the head of mathematics Jefferson classified the following sciences: pure mathematics, physico-mathematics, physics chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology, anatomy, and the theory of medicine.

Under philosophy he grouped ideology, ethics, the law of nature and of nations, government, and political economy. By the term ideology Jefferson meant simply the science of the human understanding. He borrowed his novel term from a French writer, Count Destutt Tracy, member of the Senate and of the Institute of France, whose treatise on the Elements of Ideology was first published in France in the year 1801, and is reported by Jefferson to have been condemned by Napoleon as "the dark and metaphysical doctrine of Ideology, which, diving into first causes, founds on this basis a legislation of the people." This work, which the present generation would probably condemn on other grounds, made a profound impression upon Jefferson, who wished to establish democracy upon a philosophical basis.

PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS.

1

Let us observe what Jefferson said to Peter Carr concerning professional schools, the third and last topic of the discussion. To these schools would come those students who propose to make learning their profession, and who wish to pursue particular sciences with more minuteness and detail than is possible in the college proper, which would give simply a liberal education. "In these professional schools each science is to be taught in the highest degree it has yet attained." Here Jefferson discovers the real university idea, and at the same time the idea of specialization for a definite purpose. "To these professional schools will come," he says, "the lawyer to the school of law; the ecclesiastic to that of theology and ecclesiastical history; the physician to those of the practice of medicine, materia medica, pharmacy, and surgery; the military man to that of military and naval architecture and projectiles; the agricultor to that of rural economy; the gentleman, the architect, the pleasure gardener, painter, and musician, to the school of fine arts."

1 Jefferson's letter to Colonel Duane, April 4, 1813.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

Besides the university idea and the thought of these special schools, Jefferson, in his letter to Carr, clearly anticipated the modern idea of technical education. He proposed what he called a "school of technical philosophy," where certain of the higher branches should be taught in abridged form to meet practical wants. "To such a school," he said, "will come the mariner, carpenter, shipwright, pump-maker, clock-maker, mechanist, optician, metallurgist, founder, cutler, druggist, brewer, vintner, distiller, dyer, painter, bleacher, soap-maker, tanner, powder-maker, salt-maker, glass-maker, to learn as much as shall be necessary to pursue their art understandingly, of the sciences of geometry, mechanics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, hydrodynamics, navigation, astronomy, geography, optics, pneumatics, acoustics, physics, chemistry, natural history, botany, mineralogy, and pharmacy." In this school of technology Jefferson proposed to group the students in convenient classes for elementary and practical instruction by lectures, to be given in the evening, so as to afford an opportunity for labor in the day-time. Military exercises were to be required on certain days throughout the entire course for all grades of students. Thus the features of military schools, technological institutes, and modern agricultural colleges were associated with the higher education in a people's university, as conceived by Thomas Jefferson.

Of course Jefferson did not expect to realize all at once this educational scheme as proposed to Peter Carr. He urged as a practicable beginning the establishment of a general school or college, with four professorships, grouping, (1) language and history, belles-lettres, rhetoric, and oratory; (2) mathematics, physics, etc.; (3) chemistry and other natural sciences; (4) philosophy, which, in his view, included political science. He said these professorships "must be subdivided from time to time, as our means increase, until each professor shall have no more under his care than he can attend to with advantage to his pupils and ease to himself." With further increase of resources, professional schools were to be added. Such were the fundamental lines of thought which gave shape to the first project for a University of Virginia in Jefferson's own neighborhood. Like the preliminary drawings of a great artist, these bold outlines have a permanent interest to the student.

JEFFERSON'S APPEAL TO CABELL IN THE LEGISLATURE.

Peter Carr sent the letter which Jefferson had written him to a member of the Legislature, together with other documents prepared by Jefferson in the interest of the Albemarle Academy. That member appears to have held them back for some unaccountable reason. On the 5th of January, 1815, Jefferson wrote as follows to his energetic friend, Joseph C. Cabell: "Could the petition which the Albemarle Academy addressed

to our Legislature have succeeded at the late session, a little aid additional to the objects of that would have enabled us to have here immediately the best seminary of the United States. I do not know to whom P. Carr (president of the board of trustees) committed the petition and papers; but I have seen no trace of their having been offered. Thinking it possible you may not have seen them, I send for your perusal the copies I retained for my own use. They consist: (1) Of a letter to him, sketching, at the request of the trustees, a plan for the institution; (2) one to Judge Cooper, in answer to some observations he had favored me with, on the plan; (3) a copy of the petition of the trustees; (4) a copy of the act we wished from the Legislature. They are long, but as we always counted on you as the main pillar of their support, and we shall probably return to the charge at the next session, the trouble of reading them will come upon you, and as well now as then. The lottery allowed by the former act, the proceeds of our two glebes, and our dividend of the literary fund, with the reorganization of the institution, are what was asked for in that petition. In addition to this, if we could obtain a loan for four or five years only of $7,000 or $8,000, I think I have it now in my power to obtain three of the ablest characters in the world to fill the higher professorships of what in the plan is called the second or general grade of education; three such characters as are not in a single university of Europe; and for those of language and mathematics, a part of the same grade, able professors doubtless could also be readily obtained. With these characters I should not be afraid to say that the circle of the sciences composing that second or general grade would be more profoundly taught here than in any institution in the United States, and I might go farther."

It is very interesting to observe, in this same letter to Cabell, that Jefferson says he has lately received a letter from Jean Baptiste Say, who was contemplating a removal to America, "and to this neighborhood." Undoubtedly Jefferson had him in mind as "one of the three ablest characters in the world" for a professorship in the new institution. Virginia would indeed have had one of the most distinguished representatives of economics, if Jean Baptiste Say1 had been persuaded to come, as at one time seemed highly probable. Another of the three prospective members of the faculty was undoubtedly Thomas Cooper, who would at that time have represented chemistry, and natural science in general, better than any man of Jefferson's acquaintance in America. The third genius must have been a philosopher, for, according to the above letter, Jefferson had as yet no one in view for either language or mathematics. Possibly the "ideologist" was to be Count Destutt Tracy, for whose writings Jefferson was making vigorous propaganda at this very time. It was certainly correspondence with such men as these that made Jefferson so eager to develop

1 On Say's project of removing to "the neighborhood of Charlottesville, on which he has cast his eye," see Jefferson's letter to M. Correa de Serra, December 27, 1814. 17036-No. 2-5

a local academy into a larger institution, where genius could find free scope.

THE LITERARY FUND.

As early as 1810 the Legislature of Virginia had instituted the so-called literary fund. A bill, drawn up by James Barbour and presented by a committee of which Mr. Cabell was a member, was passed that year and appropriated "certain escheats, penalties, and forfeitures to the encouragement of learning." It is not at all improbable that the influence of Jefferson, through Cabell, was at the bottom of this enactment, although the credit of it was claimed by Governor Barbour in an address at a planters' convention in Richmond, in 1836.1 In the winter of 1815-16 Charles Fenton Mercer, chairman of the committee on finance, reported to the lower house a measure favoring the increase of the literary fund by the addition of the debt then due to Virginia by the Government of the United States for expenses incurred in the war of 1812. This report, which was adopted, is the origin of Mr. Mercer's rival claim to the honor of establishing the literary fund, which claim he advanced in an address on popular education, published in 1826. Undoubtedly both Governor Barbour and Mr. Mercer deserve individual credit for their part in laying what afterward became one of the most substantial economic foundations of the University of Virginia; but we must remember that the forces of legislation are always very complex, and that the secret springs of action are not always seen. Some light is thrown upon Mr. Mercer's report by the following extract from a letter to Jefferson, written by Cabell, January 24, 1816: "Since writing the enclosed letter I have conversed with Mr. Mercer, of the House of Delegates, to whom I had lent your letter to Mr. Carr, upon being informed by him that he had it in contemplation to endeavor to get a considerable part of the debt due from the General Government to the State of Virginia appropriated to the establishment of a grand scheme of education. He appears much pleased with your view of the subject, and as he proposes to make a report to the lower house, concurs with me in the propriety of availing the country of the light you have shed upon this great interest of the community. Would you object to the publication of your letter to Mr. Carr? Indeed, sir, I may take the liberty to have your letter printed before I can get your answer. I do not believe the General Assembly will make at this time so great an appropriation as the one proposed by Mr. Mercer; but I will do anything in my power to 1 Ruffin's Farmer's Register, III, 688, quoted in the Correspondence of Jefferson and Cabell, 50.

1

'Jefferson consented, February 2, 1816, to the publication of his letter, and it appeared in the Richmond Enquirer about that time. On the 21st of February, 1816, Cabell wrote to Jefferson: "You will have seen your letter to Mr. Carr in the Enquirer. It came out on the morning of the day that the resolution passed the House of Delegates appropriating the surplus [all over and above $600,000] of our United States debt to the literary fund, and, I have reasons to believe, had a considerable effect in promoting the passage of that resolution."