198 THE FIRST AMERICAN COLLEGE FOUNDED. and I now return to those learned and polite men my sincere thanks for the pains they have taken in the thorough revision of my proofsheets, all of which passed through their hands. Especially am I grateful for their correction of the mistakes I made by following the best previous authorities, as well as for furnishing the latest information concerning the institutions of which they are the vigilant watchmen. Harvard College.-The first institution of classical learning established in America was HARVARD COLLEGE, at the village of Newtown, in Massachusetts. It has, during the lapse of nearly two centuries and a half, grown into so noble an institution, and has poured such beneficent streams of light over the continent, that it is deserving of far more space than we can accord to its history. The enlightened founders of the New England colonies, were men of learning and culture. They comprehended the office of education in its relation to the well-being of the State, and from the 28th day of October, 1636, only eight years after the first landing of the Massachusetts Bay colonists under John Endicot, the General Court at Boston voted four hundred pounds towards a college which should secure the education of young men in the higher departments of learning. Two years later, the name Newtown was changed to Cambridge, in gratitude to the English University, where some of the founders of the young American school had been educated. The first considerable bequest was from John Harvard, a learned English clergyman, who had reached the colony only the previous year. Before the institution was two years old, it had received from this beneficent source, a sum of money about as great as the public appropriation. Three hundred and twenty volumes, chiefly theological, classical, and philosophical, constituted the nucleus of what was to become, if not the largest, one of the most valuable libraries in North America. Mr. Duyckinck tells us how contributions flowed in. The magistrates subscribed liberally; and a noble exhibition of the temper of the times was witnessed in the number of small gifts and legacies, of pieces of family plate, and, in one instance, of the bequest of a number of sheep. With such precious stones were the foundations of Harvard laid. The time, place, and manner need no eulogy; they speak for themselves.' From that day to this a steady stream of gifts has been flowing from all quarters; the latest, and by no means the least, being from the illustrious and beloved statesman over whose ashes the tears of a stricken nation nave so recently fallen. 'I bequeath,' said Charles Sumner, in his last will, 'to the library of Harvard College, my books and autographs, whether in Washington or Boston, with the understanding that duplicates of works already belonging to the College library may be sold or exchanged for its benefit.' He also left a trust for an annual prize for the best dissertation by any student of the college, or any of its schools, undergraduate or graduate, on universal peace, and the methods by which war may be permanently sus EARLY HISTORY OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 199 pended. Also a large permanent fund, the income of which is to be spent in purchasing books. The early colonists set a printing-press to work as their indispensable and well-trusted ally. The first in the colony was set up in the president's house when the school was only thirty-six months old. The first publication was the Freeman's Oath; the next an Almanac, and the third The Bay Psalm Book, which was prepared by the Rev. Henry Dunster, an excellent oriental scholar.' He was succeeded by Charles Chauncy, who held the office till his death in 1672. His old age was distinguished by great vigor of mind and body, fairly earned by hard work and self-denial. His first published sermon was on 'The Advantages of Schools and a Faithful Ministry.' In tracing the line of worthies from Dunster, the first, to the vigorous Eliot, the latest of the Harvard presidents, we feel as though we were walking through some long-drawn cathedral aisle, on either side of which lie the sculptured eulogies of the great departed." When Increase Mather,—one of the mighty names of Old New England,—— was sent to England to maintain the rights of the colonists with James II., and William and Mary, he made the acquaintance of Thomas Hollis, a merchant of London, whom he interested so deeply in the cause, that he afterwards became a distinguished benefactor of Harvard. He founded two professorships, sent a set of Hebrew and Greek types for printing, with liberal sums of money, books, and philosophical apparatus. These bequests continued. through his descendants, who displayed the same liberality. The third Thomas Hollis, after three donations during his lifetime, left in his will five hundred pounds sterling, whose income is appropriated for the purchase of books. One of the few early good pictures painted in America, is the full-length portrait of the first named Hollis by Copley, which hangs in the Memorial Hall. These Hollises were all men of culture and broad spirit. They loved liberty, and helped it on where it was growing in England, and in America where it was being planted. The last-named of the family was instrumental in publishing the early political essays of Mayhew, Otis, and John Adams, those authors of what we may call the First Series of Liberty Books for Beginners,' ever printed. They were thoroughly thumbed by such scholars as Chatham, Burke, Fox, Pitt, Choiseul, Lafayette; and afterwards by the champions of liberty throughout the world. On a bitter cold night in the winter of 1764, Harvard suffered her first disaster in the loss of her library by fire. The old Harvard Hall was destroyed, 'I do this in the hope of drawing the attention of students to the practicability of organizing peace among nations, which I sincerely believe may be done. I can not doubt that some modes of decision which now prevail between individuals, between towns, and between smaller communities may be extended to nations.LESTER'S Life and Public Services of Charles Sumner, p. 588. To complete the colony in church and common wealth work, Jesse Glover, a worthy minister, 'able in estate,' and of a liberal spirit, in that same year embarked for Boston with fonts of letters for printing, and printer. He died on the passage; but in 1639, Stephen Daye, the printer, printed the Freeman's For a full History of Harvard College the reader is referred to Quincy's History of Harvard University. 200 GREAT MEN SENT OUT FROM HARVARD. with some six thousand volumes, including the Oriental library bequeathed by Dr. Lightfoot, and the Greek and Roman classics presented by Berkeley. Scholars have for ages read with grief of the destruction of the great Alexandrian library, and vast the loss may have been. There was, however, and always will be, a spice of comfort in the thought that with some grains of wheat, away went, in a magnificent bonfire, the folly and rubbish of a hundred generations. Probably there was very little rubbish consumed that night when the village of Cambridge was lit up by this cruel conflagration. Such nien as Lightfoot, Berkeley, and the other donors of literature, did not deal very much in rubbish. But the phoenix soon rose, new plumed, from its ashes. Literary treasures poured in from the friends of learning, and the library was soon richer than ever. From this time the prosperity of Harvard College has been uninterrupted. It was the earliest, and has been the most richly endowed of all the institutions of learning in America. Its history is the history of the progress of American literature. It has educated more teachers who became founders of other schools; it has turned out a greater number of eminent men in every department of classical and scientific achievement; it has held steadily a higher standard of scholarship and literary attainment; its scroll of graduates not only far exceeds in number, but in brilliancy, those of any other American institution. The mere enumeration of the list of great men that have been educated at Harvard, and their contributions to the intellectual wealth of the world, were a hopeless task, even if I could devote to it many of these broad pages. Steadily from this fountain had the invigorating stream been flowing for two centuries before we reach such names as Quincy, Everett, Sparks, Walker, Hill, and Elliot among its presidents; or the Wares, the Woods, Channing, Buckminster, Norton, Palfrey, Noyes, and Francis, in sacred literature; or Felton, Ticknor, Follen, Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, or Winthrop; Webber, Bowditch, Farrar, Peck, Cogswell, Harris, and Wyman in mathematics, natural history and philosophy; or Isaac Parker Parsons, Stearns, Story, Ashmun, Greenleaf, William Kent, and Joel Parker in jurisprudence.' Harvard has some fine edifices. Gore Hall, the library building, was completed in 1841, and named in honor of Christopher Gore, the statesman, who left the college $100,000. The picture gallery embraces few but works. of merit; among our earlier painters the productions of Smibert, Copley, Stuart, and Trumbull; and of the later, Newton, Frothingham, and the more modern painters. But by far the most imposing and splendid of its structures has only just been completed-Memorial Hall, which in beauty of design, the appropriateness of its objects, and the tenderness and patriotism of sentiment which reared it, all combined, render it the finest structure that has yet gone up by private munificence in our land. 1 Mr. Joseph Dabney published in the Am. Quar. Register, xiv. 377, a list of one hundred and eighty-nine graduates of Harvard, chiefly clergymen, who, up to 1842, had reached or passed the age of eighty-four. Four graduates of Harvard were centenarians. Dr. Farmer, in the same work (x. 39), published a series of Ecclesiastical Statistics, including the Ages of 840 deceased ministers of the Gospel, who were graduated a. Harvard College, from 1642 to 1826. Of these 342 died at seventy and upwards. There were 17 at ninety and upwards. WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE. 201 William and Mary College comes next in order of time. We have already spoken of the first effort at education in Virginia. In 1619 Sir Edmund Sandys received from some unknown benefactor five hundred pounds, to be applied by the Virginia Company to the education of Indian boys in the English language and the Christian religion. Other sums were given. The king favored the design, and at his recommendation the English bishops collected fifteen hundred pounds for the purpose. The Company appropriated ten thousand acres of land to aid it at Henrico. Tenants at halves were placed on the soil, and the Rev. Mr. Copeland acted as president. Mr. Thorpe, too, went out in 1621, and everything was promising fair for this first attempt at knowledge in our own land. But the officers and tenants, and even the students themselves, were slain in the great massacre of 1622, and the whole enterprise whelmed in ruin. In 1660-61, the General Assembly of the Colony of Virginia, took active steps towards again founding a college, by appropriating money, ordering and legalizing subscriptions, and directing land to be purchased, and buildings erected. An act was passed at its Session of 1660-61, and renewed the following Session, for the execution of this project. But little is known of the result of this attempt. Doubtless it had some success, and was the true germ of the College of William and Mary. That so little is known of it may be attributed, partly, to the troubles in the colony culminating in Bacon's Rebellion, and partly, to Sir William Berkeley's arbitrary rule. The prospect for the future, also, was dark enough for a long time; for, as late as 1671, in his 'Answers to Questions put by the Lords of Plantations,' Governor Sir William Berkeley 'thanks God that there are no free schools nor printing in the colony, and hopes there will not be these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects, into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!' That prayer came pretty near being answered; for 150 years later, a Virginia member of Congress thanked God that his district was without a newspaper. In 1693, however, through the agency of Rev. James Blair, a learned Scotch preacher, who was persuaded by the Bishop of London to emigrate to Virginia towards the close of the reign of Charles II., and by the assistance of Nicholson, Lieutenant-Governor of the colony, a charter was obtained from the government of England, and the new college took its name from the royal grantors, who appropriated money, lands, and a revenue duty on tobacco for its support. Buildings were erected, and Blair became president. A thousand pounds were granted to the college, and already in 1691, from the estate of Robert Boyle, the philosopher, an income was secured to the college on condition of supporting one Indian scholar for every fourteen pounds received. A not very successful effort to carry out the will of the donor was made for many years. In 1728 Col. Wm. Byrd laments the 'bad success Mr. boyle's charity has hitherto had towards converting any of these poor heathens to Christianity. Many children of our neighboring Indians 202 ITS STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS. have been brought up in the college of William and Mary. They have been taught to read and write, and have been carefully instructed in the principles of the Christian religion till they came to be men, yet after they returned home, instead of civilizing and converting the rest, they have immediately relapsed into infidelity and barbarism themselves.' Mr. Duyckinck adds: "The old story of the fading race, and pretty much the same, whether related by South American Jesuits, Virginia cavaliers, or New England zealots.' Philip Freneau has pointed the moral in his poem of the Indian Student who laid his Virgil by to wander with his dearer bow.' 'Though little good may have been done directly to the Indians, the scheme may have brought to them incidental benefits. The instruction of the Indian was the romance of educational effort, and acted in enlisting benefactors much as favorite but impracticable foreign missions have done at a later day. It was a plan of kindred character with those in Virginia which first engaged the benevolent Berkeley in his eminent services to the American colleges. One of these institutions, Dartmouth, grew out of such a foundation.' On the breaking out of the Revolution one-half of the students, among whom was James Monroe, entered the army. "The French troops occupied the college buildings, or a part of them. After the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and while they had possession, the president's house was burned. The French Government promptly paid for rebuilding it. The college building was occupied as a hospital at the same time, and much damaged and broken up; but the United States Government has never made any remuneration.' 'As the second oldest collegiate institution in the United States, William and Mary College has been well claimed by President Ewell to hold the same rank to the South, as an educator of our eminent national men, that Harvard and Yale do to the North. It instructed Peyton Randolph, President of the first Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson, author of the immortal Declaration of Independence, and four more of its signers-Benjamin Harrison, Carter Braxton, Thomas Nelson, and George Wythe. Among others of its alumni were James Monroe, John Tyler, Chief Justice Marshall, Judge Bushrod Washington, John Randolph of Roanoke, Winfield Scott, John J. Crittenden, and William C. Rives. It gave George Washington his commission as surveyor, and made him its chancellor for the last ten years of his life.' It has had to buffet with repeated vicissitudes of fortune. Pr to the Revolution, it was the richest college in America; but that trouble cut off its best endowments. On the night of the 8th of February, 1859, when the alumni were on the eve of celebrating its 166th anniversary, its building was destroyed by an accidental fire, with its library of rare books and manuscripts, and most of its interesting antiquities. A new edifice rose to its completion within a year, and was promptly refurnished by ample donations, so that at Three years later, while the start a library was mustered of 6,000 volumes. General McClellan's army held the peninsula, during his advance on Richmond, the new building was wantonly fired by drunken stragglers, and was |