out of a $45,000 reservation from the income of the literary fund, to be paid over to local school commissioners of counties, cities, and towns,' in proportion to the free white population. To this local State aid was to be added the income of all property held by the overseers of the poor and derived from the sale or forfeiture of glebe lauds. Such was the wretched provision for primary education as a local charity, dependent upon State aid and parish spoils. The House of Delegates had apparently no conception of the importance of establishing common schools and of supporting them by local taxation. The provision amounted to a State and parish bounty upon poverty.

Upon this well-meant but inadequate popular legislation the Senate had the sovereign good sense to tack a $15,000 annual appropriation for a university, wherein all the branches of useful science were to be taught. The site of the institution was to be determined by a board of commissioners, one from each senatorial district, to be appointed by the Governor of the State. The board was to meet at the tavern in Rockfish Gap, in the Blue Ridge, in August, 1818, and determine the following matters: (1) The site of the university; (2) a plan for its construction; (3) the branches of learning to be taught; (4) the number and description of the professorships; (5) general legislative provisions for organizing and governing the institution. This amendment passed the House of Delegates on the 21st of February, 1818. It was the entering wedge for the Jeffersonian idea, and it was driven in by Joseph C. Cabell, when the commissioners were appointed. He wrote to Jefferson: "We have fifteen districts on this side of the ridge, and I think we are safe in the hands of the executive." Mr. Preston was at this time the Governor of Virginia, and was in thorough sympathy with the university project. Cabell suggested to Jefferson that "our policy will be to invest all our funds in buildings, and get them as far advanced by August as possible." The founder of Central College needed no spurring in this direction. It had been his policy from the beginning to get his institution well under way and then make the Legislature adopt it.

The results of this policy, while not the best, were better than nothing. Niles's Register for December 17, 1825, says of Virginia: "By returns from 98 counties and towns, received between the 30th of September, 1824, and 30th of September, 1825, it appears that 10,226 indigent children have been sent to school in those counties within the year."

CHAPTER VI.

THE UNIVERSITY COMMISSION AND JEFFERSON'S REPORT.

MEETING OF THE COMMISSIONERS AT ROCKFISH GAP.

Professor Schele de Vere, of the University of Virginia, in a graphic article entitled "Jefferson's Pet," published originally in Harper's Magazine in May, 1872, and now forming the historical introduction to the Semi-Centennial Catalogue of the Students of the University, has given us a picturesque description of the scene of that famous meeting of the commissioners at Rockfish Gap, where the fate of the higher education in Virginia was hung in the balance.

"High up in the Blue Ridge," he says, "at an elevation from which the eye takes in at a single glance a variety of scenes unequalled on this continent for beauty and loveliness, a little river rises in a dark gorge, to fall gently from terrace to terrace, and after a brief and rapid course, abounding with falls and cascades of infinite attractiveness, to pour its waters into the James River. As the mountains here sink to a lower level, and thus afford one of the passes through which in older days immigrants passed from what is called the Piedmont region of the State to the great Valley of Virginia, the place has received the idiomatic name of Rockfish Gap. Here, at a modest country inn, unpretending in appearance, but offering an abundant and well-served table, far from the turmoil of cities and the excitement of politics, met a party of men remarkable for their ability and virtue amidst a people which had already given four Presidents to the Union, and was well known to possess as much private as public worth. In the low-ceiled, whitewashed room, the whole furniture of which consisted of a dining-room table and rude 'split-bottom' chairs of home make, sat the President of the United States, Mr. Monroe, and two of his predecessors, Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson, besides a number of judges and eminent states. men. Yet,' says one of Mr. Jefferson's biographers, it was remarked by the lookers-on that Mr. Jefferson was the principal object of regard both to the members and spectators; that he seemed to be the chief mover of the body-the soul that animated it; and some who were present, struck by these manifestations of deference, conceived a more exalted

idea of him on this simple and unpretending occasion than they had ever previously entertained.""

PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMISSIONERS.

The proceedings and report of the commissioners are printed in full in the Analectic Magazine, Volume XIII, published in Philadelphia, 1819, a magazine to which Dr. Cooper was a contributor. It appears that Jefferson was unanimously elected president of the board. After some discussion, a committee of six, with Mr. Jefferson as chairman, was appointed to report on all the duties assigned to the commission by the Legislature, except that relating to the site. This subject was considered by the entire board. Three places were proposed, Lexington, Staunton, and Central College. All three were acknowledged to be in healthful and fertile districts, but Jefferson is reputed to have made a point in favor of his neighborhood by exhibiting "an imposing list of octogenarians." The question, however, turned mainly upon the relative degree of centrality. And here Jefferson had made his position impreg nable. He showed the board by diagrams that Central College was well named, for it was not only geographically more central than any other college in Virginia, but it was actually nearest the centre of white population.

These calculations were afterward published by Cabell in the Richmond Enquirer, December 17, 1818. There was then some bantering criticism of Jefferson's method of drawing his two transverse lines in such a way that they intersected at Charlottesville. The point of departure for his westerly line was the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, which is much nearer the southern than the northern boundary of Virginia; but Jefferson defended that point by saying, "the greatest part of what is north is water." He did not draw his line due west, because the northern boundary of Virginia tended north of northwest. He discreetly balanced his geography and followed the line of "equal division of the population." Nor did he draw a north and south line of intersection. He found the Blue Ridge a natural line of cross division, and he sought a parallel course to that for his line of equal division of population. Jefferson's ingenious method of calculation is explained in a letter to Cabell, January 1, 1819, in which he took the bold ground, "Run your lines in what direction you please, they will pass close to Charlottesville." Jefferson had no trouble in convincing the commissioners at Rockfish Gap, and, indeed, he was altogether fair in his general estimate of the geographical situation. A vote was taken, resulting in sixteen for Central College, three for Lexington,' and two for Staun

Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, was at this juncture of affairs in the Legislature a more dangerous rival to Central College than was old William and Mary College, which came into politics a little later, and attempted to advance on Richmond, as elsewhere described in the author's monograph on that venerable college. Washington College had developed from Liberty Hall

ton. Jefferson's committee was instructed to include this expression of opinion in the report, which was made on the 3d of August, and, after sundry amendments, unanimously adopted. The next day two copies were signed by all the members present and were transmitted, one to the Speaker of the Senate and the other to the Speaker of the House. This report was probably prepared by Jefferson before he came to the meeting at Rockfish Gap, for it is an elaborate production, indicating careful thought. In the words of introductory comment in the Analectic Review, the report contains many novel suggestions worthy the attention of our seminaries of learning already established." A special consideration of some of Jefferson's views will not be out of place in this study of his influence upon education in Virginia.

JEFFERSON ON THE OBJECTS OF PRIMARY EDUCATION.

Jefferson defined the objects of primary education as follows: "(1) To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;

"(2) To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing;

"(3) To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;

"(4) To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;

"(5) To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment; "(6) And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed."

For thus instructing the mass of citizens in their rights, interests, and duties, Jefferson maintained that primary schools, whether private Academy, founded in the year 1792. It had been endowed by George Washington with one hundred shares in the funds of the James River Company, his stock in the Potomac Company having been reserved for the foundation of a national university in Washington City, as described in the Johns Hopkins University Studies, third series, No. 1, pp. 93-5. The trustees of Washington College offered all of their funds, apparatus, books, grounds, etc., together with a subscription of nearly $18,000 by the people of Lexington and vicinity, and a deed of real estate amounting to over 3,350 acres, with all his personal property and fifty-seven slaves, promised by John Robinson, to the directors of the literary fund, provided the university should be established in Lexington or vicinity. Mr. Robinson's proposed deed and gift were, however, subject "to the payment of his debts and fulfilment of his contracts," as Jefferson discreetly reminded the Legislature. Over against the Lexington offer, which was altogether generous, Central College placed its $41,248 in subscriptions, and $3,280 proceeds from the parish glebes; its grounds embracing 47 acres, "whereon the buildings of the college are begun, one pavilion and its appendix of dormitories being already far advanced, and with one other pavilion, and equal annexation of dormitories, being expected to be completed during the present season;" and "another parcel of 153 acres near the former, and including a considerable eminence very favorable for the erection of a future observatory." This latter Jeffersonian idea has been realized since the War, by private philanthropy.

or public, should teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, the elements of mensuration, and the outlines of geography and history. These sug gestions were skilfully inserted into the report, in order to remind the Legislature that something remained to be done for the people of Virginia besides providing for the education of poor children.

OBJECTS OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Jefferson then proceeded to define the objects of the higher branches of education, and it is safe to say that the relation of universities to good citizenship and to the practical interests of American life has never been better formulated by any professional educator, much less have these objects been concretely realized by any institution of learning. American colleges and universities will need to advance a long way before they reach the Jeffersonian ideal. He classifies the objects of the higher education as follows:

"(1) To form the statesmen, legislators, and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend;

"(2) To expound the principles and structure of government, the laws which regulate the intercourse of nations, those formed municipally for our own government, and a sound spirit of legislation, which, banishing all unnecessary restraint on individual action, shall leave us free to do whatever does not violate the equal rights of another;

"(3) To harmonize and promote the interests of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, and by well-informed views of political economy to give a free scope to the public industry;

"(4) To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instil into them the precepts of virtue and order;

(5) To enlighten them with mathematical and physical sciences, which advance the arts, and administer to the health, the subsistence, and comforts of human life;

"(6) And, generally, to form them to habits of reflection and correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to others, and of happiness within themselves."

RELATION OF THE STATE TO SCIENCE.

There is so much doubt in the mind of the average American citizen as to the duty of government to foster science and education of the highest sort, that it is worth while to call attention to the views of Jef ferson upon this point. If the father of American democracy could entertain such views as these, the sons of the people need have no fears that the functions of the state are abused when directed toward the maintenance of a university or the advancement of science. Jefferson said, in his report to the Virginia Legislature:

"Some good men, and even of respectable information, consider the learned sciences as useless acquirements; some think that they do not better the condition of man; and others that education, like private and individual concerns, should be left to private individual effort; not