your pen how richly and extensively your mind is endowed with every accomplishment. Your plan is magnificent and I am satisfied you will fill up the outline with pre-eminent learning and the noblest doctrines and with the profoundest views of morals and government and all the various classes of national, political and social obligations and duties. Your professor's chair will be of itself (without the aid of Cranch and Gallison and Mason and Wheaton and Peters) a vehicle to conduct you to immortality.

A year later, Daniel Webster wrote to Story, Sept. 18, 1830:

You must allow me to repeat what I have said to you ore tenus, that I have felt great concern about you ever since I saw what degree of labor you were bestowing on this Law School. There is a limit to what the strongest can do. I pray you be persuaded to diminish your labors. I beg this of you out of the depths of my regard and affection. For all our sakes spare yourself.

Story, however, did not at all foresee the instant influx of students who would be attracted by his fame.

Immediately after the opening of the School, applications came from large numbers of persons in and about Boston asking on what terms they might attend Judge Story's lectures. And on September 29, 1829, the Corporation voted that the Law Faculty "be authorized to admit persons not members of the School, to attend the Law Lectures or any of them, upon the payment of such sum as the Faculty may see fit, not less in any case than $50."

Meanwhile the School had opened promptly on September 7, 1829, under Story's immediate supervision; and, a week before, wrote to President Quincy (1):

I have seen several of the law students and arranged their studies. But it is very probable that some will not arrive until after I have left Cambridge I wish notice to be given to any who may come that I shall be at Cambridge again on Monday next and shall be glad to meet all etc. law students at the Law Library Room in the Russell House on that day at eleven o'clock A. M.

In the meantime, it is very desirable to have a number of Blackstone's Commentaries purchased (as the Corporation proposed) for the use of the students, and either to be sold to the students if they wished, or delivered to them for use. It will be

(1) Harvard College Archives, Letters to the Treasurer, Vol. I.

indispensable that we should have some copies by Monday and also some copies of Kent's Commentaries, say a half dozen.

The Boston Daily Advertiser of September 12 thus reported the new birth of the School: "The exercises of this School commenced on Monday last under highly favorable circumstances. Eighteen young gentlemen were present. These with those expected from the School at Northampton will form a department worthy of the ancient university."

On October 20, less than two months after the opening of the School, Story, wrote to Simon Greenleaf (1): "We have at present twenty-seven law students at Cambridge, with a prospect of more. I perceive that there is a vast labor before me."

As the Corporation had never seen its way clear to providing more adequate quarters, the School still remained in the small rooms in the lower story of the building known as College House No. 2 or Russell House (2) and into one of these rooms Story moved the large law library which he had accumulated during his service on the Supreme Bench. (3)

(1) The American Jurist, Vol. VIII, (1829), in its account of the inauguration of the Dane and Royall Professors, states editorially:

"It will be gratifying to our readers to learn that the course of instruction under Professors Story and Ashmun has commenced, under the most favorable auspices. The number of students already entered amounts to 27."

(2) By a vote of the Corporation of Sept. 29, 1829, the President was "requested to procure for the use of the Law School the room now occupied by Mr. Dabney."

(3) The conditions of the day are illustrated in a letter written by Story to President Quincy, Nov. 14, 1829, in which he states that the lecture room in Russell House "is very cold and a Lehigh Grate would be a great advantage-also in the other room which contains my law library and to which the law students make constant resort." In response to this, Nov. 19, 1829, the Corporation authorized Quincy to "have such stoves erected if he sees fit"-a curious example of the extent to which the President was then burdened with petty details.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE ASHMUN PERIOD-1829-1833.

The steady growth and evident assured prosperity of the School gave infinite delight to both Professors during the first four critical years of the new experiment.

For the year 1828-29 the President's 4th Annual Report gives the number of students, December, 1829, as 27. Professor Ashmun's first Report of Oct. 18, 1830, shows the number then as 35, and states:

From the limited experience we have had, we think it probable the average number in future will not fall short of this.

We are very happy to state that the situation of the School, as regards the attention, capacity, and progress of the students, and their general conduct, so far as it falls without our observation, is highly satisfactory-that those who have left us to pursue their studies elsewhere, or enter into the profession, have appeared convinced of the advantages of a systematic legal education and of a public institution for that purpose.

The President's 5th Annual Report for 1829-30, gives the number of law students resident in the University as 31, and states that "the number of students during the past year has never fallen short of thirty, and during the last term has been 37." Then 'follows this stereotyped expression which appears with a slight amendment in every President's Report, until the 22nd Annual Report:

Their attendance upon the exercises has been hitherto wholly voluntary; and has been marked by a punctuality and degree of advancement highly satisfactory. The opportunity of pursuing the study of the profession at the School is considered a privilege, and the students themselves are understood to have been well satisfied with the arrangements.

For the year 1830-31, the President's 6th Annual Report gives the number during the year as 41 and the number then resident as