University of Virginia Library

V

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE UNIVERSITY
OF VIRGINIA.

I

NO stranger story of self-sacrifice and devotion
to a high ideal in the face of trials
which to a lesser genius might have appeared insurmountable,
and of disappointments which
to less courage must have proved fatal, has ever
been written than that which recounts the devotion
of the last twenty years of the life of
Thomas Jefferson to the establishment of a
great University.

Any proper account of the University of Virginia
must take into consideration the story of
its establishment and the history of its work,
since it realized the ideal of its great founder,
Thomas Jefferson.

After a life devoted largely to public service,
in which had been crowded almost as many

services of world-benefit as ever fell to one man's
lot, and in which he reaped as much of the reward
of high office and public appreciation as
almost any man has ever had, when Thomas
Jefferson had reached the highest point in the
continuous climb from which all the kingdoms
of the world and the needs of them fell within
his ken, he saw one great need of the American
People—Enlightenment—and addressed himself
to it.

His far-reaching mind recognized that what
was needed to carry through the plan which the
fathers had formed for the good of the Nation
was a comprehensive system of Education. He
had a vast and varied experience which extended
over this country and Europe, and he
was as familiar with the great classical institutions
of the Old World as he was with his alma
mater, William and Mary College.

His principle was: "True knowledge and
Freedom are indissolubly linked together."

It appeared to him quite clearly that what
the people stood most in need of was a system
of education that should cover the whole field of
human knowledge and embrace within the range
of its benefactions every class.

With a breadth of scope which ranged far beyond
that of most of his contemporaries, he

aimed to build ever for the spacious future which
he foresaw destined for his country. It was
this comprehensive sweep of intellect that made
him seize the opportunity to secure the vast territory
of Louisiana, which Napoleon, with a view
to raising a rival power to England in the Western
Hemisphere, offered him. Stickler for
strict adherence to the Constitution as he was,
when this supreme chance came, with all its
possibilities for the future, he did not hesitate to
seize it. That the Constitution contained no explicit
provision for such an emergency did not
stagger him. But he met the situation by asking
for an amendment approving and ratifying
his action. Thus it is, that we celebrated recently
the addition to our national domain of a
territory which not only contains a dozen States,
but gave this country control of the great West
and enabled this nation to realize Napoleon's
design and dominate this continent.

With this same spaciousness of design Jefferson
proceeded to build his Institution of The
Higher Learning. He would make it a University
in fact as well as in title. With a vision far
in advance of most of his friends, he contemplated
a "system of general instruction, which
would reach every description of our citizens
from the richest to the poorest," on which this

University should be founded. Such a system,
he declared in 1818, "as it was the earliest, so it
will be the latest of all the public concerns in
which I shall permit myself to take an interest."
His aim was to make his system broad enough
for all. Only two years before his university was
established he wrote his lieutenant, Joseph C.
Cabell, who ably seconded him in his efforts,
that were it necessary to give up either the primaries
or the universities he would abandon the
latter, "because it was better to have the whole
people respectably enlightened than to have a
few in a high state of science and the many in
ignorance."

As early as 1779 he introduced into the General
Assembly of the State of Virginia a bill for
the more gradual diffusion of knowledge; he
would bring the school-house within the reach
of every man's door. His bill provided not only
for the popular foundation of common schools,
but for the free training of all free children, male
and female, for three years in reading, writing,
and arithmetic. This proposed admission of
girls preceded by ten years, as Professor Herbert
A. Adams has pointed out, the admission of girls
to the common schools of Boston, thus placing
Jefferson as the pioneer in this field of female
education.

Next above the common school, according to
Jefferson's proposed plan, were to be the grammar
or classical schools—"free schools" in the
sense to which old Sir William Berkeley referred
when he hoped there would be "no free schools
in Virginia these three hundred years." Here
Latin, Greek, English, Geography, and higher
Mathematics were to be taught. Over all, according
to his first plan, the College of William
and Mary, his alma mater, was to have a general
control. Thus, the classical academies,
middle schools, or colleges, as Jefferson afterward
called them, would centre in the higher
education, as did the common schools.[1]

One of the motives which actuated him was,
undoubtedly, that he felt that the Virginian
theory of government was sounder than that
promulgated at the North. A reason which
influenced him was his objection to being what
he called "a beggar for the crumbs which fell
from the tables of the North." He offered as an
argument the fact that many young men from the

South went to Princeton, it having been reported
to him that one-half of the students of that institution
were Virginians. Education at that time,
even the higher education, was under the spell of
formalism. The principal colleges were subject
to some Church whose teachings influenced the
curriculum. It was Thomas Jefferson's idea to
do away with this subordination—to destroy this
cramping formalism and to emancipate the mind
from every form of Church domination. At that
time Princeton was a sectarian institution, as
William and Mary, while no longer one, was at
least under the influence of the Episcopal
Church. Jefferson, however, as he boldly declared,
had "sworn on the altar of the Most High
God hostility to every form of tyranny over the
human mind," and held that a great University
should belong to no Church and be dominated
by no sectarian Creed.

Undoubtedly, one of the basic principles on
which Jefferson proposed to establish his university
was the principle of enlightened freedom
—freedom of thought and freedom of action, as
far as might be consonant with the welfare of
the greatest number. And his love of freedom
extended to that higher form—the freedom of
the mind. It was his profound belief that if
this principle could be established as the foundation-stone

of his institution, that institution would
be a boon and a blessing to the entire country
and to all generations. With this steadily in
view, he undertook to found a university which
should avail itself of the experience of the Past,
and withal should not only subserve the ever-widening
influence of the Present, but should
lead in the development of the Future.

The first step would appear to have been the
founding of an academy in Virginia, modelled
on the French Academy, through the efforts of
a zealous young Frenchman, Quesney de Beaurepaire,
to whom the idea had been suggested by
John Page, of Rosewell, one of the scholarly Virginians.
It was this far-reaching scheme which
gave, at least, its character to the university, when
it had attained its full conception and completion
in Jefferson's mind; for the plan of the academy,
in part, was that of the later institution.[2]

But preceding this came the influence on the
youthful mind of Jefferson, while at William and
Mary, of his old Professor of Mathematics,

"the great Dr. Small." Mr. Adams, quoting
Emerson, that "an institution is the lengthened
shadow of one man," traces, step by step, the
painful way in which Jefferson toiled up the
laborious steep.

First came his own conception, and then came
its fertilizing through the French influence which
at one time brought him so much criticism, but
which proved so broadening in the end.

The plan, however, of linking his new university
to his old alma mater passed away as
Jefferson's idea expanded. William and Mary
College was by tradition closely associated with
an Established Church, and an Established
Church had become very unpopular in Virginia.
Indeed, the old Church had been disestablished
by churchmen, one of the leaders in the movement
being Jefferson himself. By the charter
of the old college a certain association with the
Episcopal Church still existed. And Jefferson did
not propose to have any such influence in his plan.

As early as 1794, Jefferson, working in the

direction of a great university, tried to get the
Virginia Legislature to make provision for the
transfer to Virginia of the faculty of the College
of Geneva, who had expressed their willingness
to come. It was, however, too large a scheme
for Virginia; and then he undertook to connect
Washington with the project of bringing over
the faculty of the Swiss College, a daring project
which Washington overthrew with a few sentences
packed with that common sense which
was his characteristic. He showed the disadvantage
of transplanting an entire faculty rather
than the best men from a number of institutions,
and the importance of creating an American
spirit for the American institution, rather than
of taking over a foreign spirit.

As a part of this general plan Jefferson, in 1783,
organized the Albemarle Academy in his own
county, and here at once his breadth manifested
itself in his efforts to secure the services of some
learned Scotchman as principal.

By the beginning of the new century Jefferson
had got well along with his outline for a
university and in his correspondence with Dr.
Joseph Priestly he disclosed it and begged the
assistance of that eminent and exiled scholar.[3]

The project for an academy in Albemarle
County, though the academy was chartered by
the Legislature in 1803, "remained on paper
only," as Mr. Adams shows, until after Mr.
Jefferson's election to the Board of Trustees,
March 23, 1814. Says Mr. Adams, "From
that election dates the beginning of the development
process of the Albemarle Academy into
the University of Virginia." It is related that
the trustees of this academy were in session discussing
the possibility of making it a reality
when Mr. Jefferson happened to ride by. He
was called in and consulted. On which he declared
that though they had not been able to
make an academy succeed they might establish
a college. And before he left the room he had
subscribed $1,000 to the plan, and under his
inspiring example $8,000 had been subscribed.
Thus, this academy was merged into Central

College, "in the very name of which," as Mr.
Adams suggests, "lurked the idea of the centralization
of the higher education." With this
small step Thomas Jefferson began the first
university in the country. It was this great development,
founded upon only an idea which,
according to Mr. Adams, proves the extraordinary
ability of Thomas Jefferson.

In 1806, Mr. Joseph C. Cabell, a cultured
young Virginian, returned from abroad, and
he and Jefferson met, In 1807 Jefferson wrote
him not to waste his energies in trying to patch
up a failing and decaying institution, but to
employ them in founding a new university
worthy of the first State in the Union. At his
instance the scholarly young Virginian entered
the Virginia Assembly, and from this time, as
Jefferson's able lieutenant, devoted his life to
building up the University of Virginia.

On the 14th of February, 1816, the efforts
of Jefferson and his lieutenant were crowned
with success to the extent of getting from the
Legislature an act to merge the Albemarle
Academy into Central College. Under this act
the Governor of the Commonwealth was to be
the patron, or president, with power to appoint
a board of six visitors to govern the institution,
and this is substantially the form of government

under which the university has existed to the
present time. The story runs that the spot
first selected by Jefferson for his institution was
owned by a man who was so hostile to him politically
that he refused to sell to him at any
price, and the present site of the university was
then selected.

The first Board of Visitors to the new college
were Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James
Monroe, Joseph C. Cabell, David Watson, and
J. H. Cocke. The plan for the new college
was drawn by Jefferson and the corner-stone
was laid October 6, 1817, in the presence of
James Monroe, then President of the United
States, and of Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison, ex-Presidents. Thus, three Presidents
of the United States presided at its birth. The
only endowment for the institution was the
money which had been received from the sale
of the two glebes of the two parishes of St. Ann
and Fredericksville, in Albemarle County, the
small subscription already mentioned, and the
devotion of Thomas Jefferson and his friends
to the idea of higher education. But devotion
to a high ideal is a priceless endowment.

Ten days after the charter of Central College
was created Mercer's bill was passed within
two hours of being introduced, calling for a

digest of a system of general education which
should embrace in it a university to be called
the University of Virginia, and such additional
colleges and schools as should diffuse education
throughout the commonwealth. The feeling in
favor of the higher education was beginning to
crystallize.

The first meeting of the Board of Visitors of
the new Central College took place on May 5,
1817. On this board, as stated, were Mr. Jefferson,
Mr. Madison, and Mr. Monroe.

As the plan, however, unfolded itself by which
the Central College was to be elevated into a
real university, a new difficulty arose in the
claims of the western district of the State to
have the university established beyond the Blue
Ridge in the Valley of Virginia, Staunton and
Lexington each claiming the honor of becoming
its seat.

By this time the spirit in which Jefferson
labored had spread widely. Governor Nicholas
as president of Central College, inspired with
Jefferson's broad idea, had addressed to a number
of men throughout the country a letter asking
their views upon the subject of a great university.
Among those whom he consulted were
Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, at that time
Secretary of State, Dr. Thomas Cooper, of

Philadelphia, Dr. Augustin Smith, President
of William and Mary College, and Dr. Timothy
Dwight, President of Yale.

It was in Mr. Jefferson's reply, which set
forth his views with that breadth which characterized
all his views whenever they related to
the subject of education, that he expressed his
opinion as to the proper construction of a college
building, outlining the "village form" rather
than one immense building. This broad plan he
afterward carried out when he built the university,
and to it we owe what is possibly the most
beautiful range of academic structures in the
country, the first that was laid out from the
beginning in one harmonious whole.

For years the struggle went on. Opposition,
beaten in one session, again and again
revived and ranged itself around the desire to
have the institution, if established at all, placed
beyond the mountains; but finally, Jefferson's
persistence and Cabell's diplomacy prevailed.

On the 21st of February, 1819, the bill was
finally passed by the Legislature, in which were
provisions relating to a system of primary
schools. Provision was made for the establishment
of the University of Virginia with an
annual appropriation of $15,000. And this small
sum was the annual appropriation made for the

university for over sixty years. It was in pursuance
of this bill that the commission of eminent
men, appointed thereunder to decide where
the university should be placed, met on August
1, 1818, at Mountain Top, in Rockfish Gap,
through which the main road to the West winds
over the Blue Ridge. Staunton, Lexington, and
Central College, at Charlottesville, were rivals
for the honor. Mr. Jefferson, who was unanimously
chosen president of the Board, testified
at once his superiority of intellect by being able
to show the superior claims of the position of
Central College, at Charlottesville. This he
did by producing a long list of octogenarians
living in that region and by presenting maps,
which he had prepared in advance, proving that,
of all the claimants, Central College was nearest
the centre of the State.

The same arguments which are now urged
in favor of urban institutions as against rural
institutions were advanced on this occasion, but
Mr. Jefferson, being warmly seconded by Mr.
Madison, the vote was carried overwhelmingly
in favor of the place which was finally selected.

Thus, the University of Virginia is seated on
the sunny slopes of Albemarle, facing the little
mountain on which Thomas Jefferson had
perched his home, from which, later on, he used

to watch with a telescope his beautiful buildings
rising day by day.

The fight, however, was only getting under
way, and the contest was more bitter at the next
session of the Legislature than ever before.
Some idea of the tension of feeling may be
gleaned from the fact that when the bill came
up, Cabell, as he wrote Jefferson afterward, left
the House of Delegates "to avoid the shock of
feeling" which he "would have been compelled
to sustain." "The scene," when Staunton
withdrew her claims, he declares, "was truly
affecting. A great part of the house was in
tears." However this was, on the 25th of January,
1819, the bill was passed, chartering, on
Mr. Jefferson's lines, the University of Virginia,
to be established on the site of that Central College
which he had labored so long to establish,
and, although it was over six years before the
University of Virginia was opened, and these
six years were to be filled with more strenuous
labor than the six years that had already passed,
it was true, as Cabell wrote, that they had
"gotten possession of the ground" and it would
"never be taken from them."

As soon as this victory had been gained,
Jefferson began to plan at once how to build
his university and how to render it worthy of

the name. The motto which he chose by which
to guide his action in the selection of his professors
was, "Detur digniori," and he set to
work not only to secure the best professors
possible in this country, but planned to send
Mr. Cabell to Europe to secure a corps of professors
there—a mission which was actually
performed later by Mr. F. W. Gilmer.[4]

Jefferson's first estimate of what would be
needed for the buildings, exclusive of the library,
was $162,364, and every dollar counted, for
every dollar had to be fought for. But his broad
plans soon outstripped his estimate and staggered
even faithful coadjutors, like Cabell, who
wrote to him and implored him to keep within
bounds and avoid extravagance. Jefferson,
however, was building for Posterity. The great
object of his aim from the beginning was, he
declared, to make the establishment the most
eminent in the United States in order to draw
to it the youth of every State. "If we cannot

get the money now we will at another or another
trial." And when he had completed his work
he had largely overstepped his estimates.[5]

Happy it was for Virginia and the South, if
not for the whole country, that Jefferson's plans
were so spacious. Not only his beloved creation,
but every great college throughout the
land has profited by the noble example he set
them, not merely in the forms of architecture,
but in the higher forms of his academic organization
and the spirit of scholarship which he
infused into its life.

Indeed, as paradoxical as it may appear, it
seems an unquestionable fact that the upbuilding
of every new educational institution tends
to strengthen rather than to weaken all other
similar institutions within the range of its influence.
The spirit of enlightenment is the atmosphere
in which educational institutions have
their being.

The very plan on which Jefferson had projected

his structures exhibits the breadth of his idea.
Eschewing all recent forms of architecture, he
had from the first, as if to link his conception
to the historic forms of the Old World, chosen
for his academic buildings the pure classical
models of ancient Greece and Rome. At the
top of a fine quadrangle, open to the south, he
placed a beautiful structure, modelled after that
noblest of the relics of ancient Rome, the Pantheon.
On either hand, stretching to the southward,
lie long lines of buildings connected by
long colonnades, broken at intervals by the façades
of the professors' houses and modelled
on such examples of ancient architecture as the
baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, the Temple
of Fortuna Virilis, and the Theatre of Marcellus;
while on the slopes below and parallel
to the colonnades on the lawn extend similar
ranges of pavilions and colonnades. These
colonnades are the cloistered rooms of the
students, while the houses are the residences of
the professors. They are taken, as their designer
states, from Palladio's great work on Architecture.
The whole system forms possibly the most
beautiful architectural achievement yet produced
in this country. Back of these houses,
enclosed by curious serpentine walls of the thickness
of a single brick, lie gardens some of which
the writer recalls as among the most charming
tangles he has ever seen. If the Higher Philosophy
has a soul which demands a fitting abode
this abode would be here. If any pile of buildings
in the world is fitted by its beauty to be the
abode of the Higher Philosophy, it is this.

The final battle was fought when, with a view
to defeating Jefferson's plans, the effort was
made to move William and Mary College to
Richmond; but the battle was won. Before its
decision, however, Jefferson had to yield to some
extent to the religious sentiment, which, crystallizing
on the fact that Dr. Cooper, a Unitarian,
had been selected as the first professor, made
the success of his plan doubtful. He wrote suggesting
that religious denominations might establish
their own theological seminaries just
outside the limits of the university, and thus
receive the benefits of association with the institution.
This, said Cabell, contributed to win
him votes and carry the day. However this may
be, though for long the Church looked with cold
eyes on the institution which stood for Freedom
of thought in every field, the religious life
is as marked at the institution which Jefferson
founded as at any secular institution in the land.

Jefferson, himself, provided rooms for religious
exercises and arranged for the services

of a chaplain. And ever since that time a chaplain
of first one denomination, and then another,
has been in attendance, his term being
limited to two years. Among these have been
such eminent men as the late Rt. Rev. Thomas
U. Dudley, Rev. Dr. John S. Lindsay, and the
Rev. Dr. John A. Broaddus. The attendance
of the students, while not compulsory either at
chapel or at church, is, perhaps, quite equal to
that in any institution where such attendance is
compulsory.

II

Such, in brief, is the history of the building
of the first true University in this country. But
those who see the charming architectural pile
which, through Thomas Jefferson's genius, finally
rose in all its harmonious beauty, and who
know the wonderful intellectual success which
the university has attained, can get little idea
of the immense expenditure of labor and sacrifice
it cost, unless they know its full history.
That achievement was the result of a labor
little less than Herculean. For at least fifty
years Jefferson had the project in his brain; and
as we have seen, for at least twenty years he gave
to its fulfilment every energy which he possessed.
Every resource that he could summon was called

forth. Often he appeared on the point of defeat,
but he never despaired. His able and devoted
lieutenant, Joseph C. Cabell, happily had caught
the spirit which inspired him, and in season
and out of season, seconded his efforts. Yet
often he would have given up, but for Jefferson's
divine enthusiasm. In 1821, when Cabell,
broken and worn with his efforts to help Jefferson
carry through his project of a great university,
announced his decision to retire from the
Virginia Legislature and give up the struggle,
Jefferson wrote him a pathetic letter urging him
to hold on and declaring his resolution to "die in
the last ditch." "Health, time, labor," he demanded,
"on what in the single life which
Nature has given us can these be better bestowed
than on this immortal boon to our
country? The exertions and mortifications are
temporary; the benefits eternal. . . . If any
member of our College of Visitors could justifiably
withdraw from this sacred duty, it would
be myself, who `quadragentis stipendiis jamdudum
peractis,' have neither vigor of body nor
mind left to keep the field, but I will die in the
last ditch." It is gratifying to know that Cabell
did continue with him in these "holy labors,"
and the institution he had done so much to establish
was, in succession to Jefferson, Madison,
and Monroe, served by him as Rector until
1856.

So great was the opposition to Jefferson's far-reaching
plan that, as we have seen, it required
all his enthusiasm and persistence to carry it
through. But Jefferson, like most reformers,
looked to posterity for his reward. "I have been
sensible," he wrote his chief lieutenant Cabell,
"that while I was endeavoring to render our
country the greatest of all services, I was discharging
the odious duty of a physician pouring
medicine down the throat of a patient insensible
of needing it. I am so sure of the approbation
of posterity and the inestimable effects we shall
have produced in the elevation of our country
by what we have done, that I cannot repent of
the part I have borne in co-operation with my
colleagues."

It was this long struggle, ending finally in
supreme success in the establishment of a great
University, combined with academic taste in
such perfection that it is almost as though a
dream of ancient Greece had crystallized and
taken form upon that Virginia hill-top, which
justified Thomas Jefferson in his order to carve
on his tomb that he was the "Father of the
University of Virginia."

But it was not only "the shell" that the old

philosopher was undertaking to lay the foundation
of in a broad and lasting manner. His
conception was to breathe into this body a soul
worthy of this beautiful tenement. His design
was no less lofty than to make the institution
"the most eminent in the country" for scholarship
and intellectual work, and with this in view
he had long been preparing the way to secure
the most eminent professors to be found. For
that purpose he used his great prestige and sent
to Europe and there engaged Professors George
Long, Blatterman, Thomas Hewitt Key, Charles
Bonnycastle, Robley Dunglison, and John P.
Emmet. By this time it is probable that he
had been in correspondence with every body of
distinguished educators in Europe.[6]

On March 7, 1825, the university opened

with five professors and sixty-eight students, of
the average age of nineteen years. By the end
of the year there were seven professors and one
hundred and twenty-three students and the
university was under way.

The institution thus started on such broad
and lofty lines soon began to justify the hopes
of its parent and those who had labored so
faithfully with him. His high conception to
bring it a faculty and establish a standard which
should at once give it a place among the universities
was realized. And although it went
through the troublous period incident to the early
years of most institutions of learning, its fame
spread abroad.

From the first it took high rank. It was
promptly recognized as a real University. For
it was laid on broad foundations as a University,
not as a mere college. And as a University—not
large, and certainly not wealthy, for it is modest
in size and poor in means—it has since that time
held its course by virtue simply of its high ideals
and sound standards, making its impress on the
scholastic life of the nation, second to none in
its scope and work and equalled only by the
greatest. How it has fulfilled its mission is
known by all scholars, and, in some sort, by the
outside world; but is truly known only by its

sons who have been the beneficiaries of its nourishing
care and have caught, often unknown to
themselves, something of its illuminating spirit.

Students were drawn there from all over the
country, though mainly, as Jefferson had foretold,
from the South and West, and there is not
a State in that section which has not felt in
every profession the vivifying effects of its teachings.
Bench and Bar, Pulpit and Medical
Faculty have all been uplifted by the high standard
set in the University of Virginia. Here
Poe drew his inspiration for those immortal
works which have made him the first poet and
first story-writer of America. And here many
less noted, but not less worthy sons have found
the equipment with which they have served their
age and country.

From the first it began to fulfil its founder's
high ideal: "To form the statesmen, legislators,
and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual
happiness are so much to depend; to expound
the principles and structures 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 individual rights of

another; to harmonize and promote the interests
of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce,
and by well-informed views of public
economy to give a free scope to the public industry;
to develop the reasoning faculties of our
youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their
morals, and instil into them the principles of
virtue and order; to enlighten them with mathematical
and physical sciences which advance
the arts and administer to the health, the subsistence,
and the comforts of human life; and
generally to form them to habits of reflection
and correct action, rendering them examples of
virtue to others and of happiness within themselves."
Truly this was no mean ideal.

Now that the university was a reality, one of
the chief questions which occupied its founder
was the practical concern of governing such a
body of young men as would be thrown together.
The principle was dear to his heart, "That government
is best which governs least." Rejecting
the time-honored plan of rigid laws enforced by
proctors and masters, with a high faith in the
virtue of youth, Mr. Jefferson proposed to govern
the students by appealing to "their reason,
their hopes, and their generous feelings." And
therein lay one of the secrets of his success, and,
no less, of the success of the Institution.

The distinctive features of the University of
Virginia are the independence of its schools;
its elective system, by which every student may
attend the school of his choice; the conferring of
degrees in the individual schools; its allowing candidates
to stand examination for degrees without
reference to time of residence; the bestowal of degrees
only after the attainment of a high degree
of excellence shown in written examinations of
great strictness; the method of instruction by lectures
and oral examinations as well as by textbooks;
the requirement brought over by Long
and Key from Cambridge University, of written
examinations for all honors. But even more
distinctive, if possible, than these is the absence
of all sectarian influence and control; and finally,
that system of discipline which more than any
other one thing has distinguished the university,
known as the "Honor system." In the development
of the institution this principle has taken
a commanding place as the fruit and product
of the high conception in which the institution
was founded, and it has always been one of its
most admirable and distinctive teachings. It
is an appeal to the sense of honor, truth, and
manhood in youth. Founded upon the principle
of the recognition of honor among gentlemen,
it throws them frankly upon their honor,

and thus fosters and establishes it in them. It
is impossible to give too much importance to
this feature. It so permeates the life of the institution
that no student can enter its classic precincts
and not feel it sensibly. It stamps itself
on his mind with a force which can never be
forgotten, follows him through life and remains
one of the master forces of his whole career.
Its effects are discernible throughout the whole
South, and other institutions are following an
example so fruitful of good. This good also
the institution owes to Mr. Jefferson.

It should not be imagined that this system
reached its full maturity in a season. It is an
error to suppose that the Honor system can be
"adopted," or even founded, in a session. The
system had its roots deep in the essential virtues
of the gentle youth to whom Mr. Jefferson appealed;
yet its growth was slow. At first, freedom
was debauched and became license, and it
was not until a great tragedy flared its fierce light
into their eyes that the student body sobered to
a high conception of the nobleness of the trust
confided to them. The novelty of the situation
was such, when the Honor system was first introduced,
that the young men, habituated to a
system of espionage, began to take advantage
of the freedom allowed them and were soon at

such odds with the professors that the whole
faculty, brought together with so much pains
by Mr. Jefferson, resigned in a body. In this
exigency Mr. Jefferson was called in and the
faculty and students were requested to meet the
Board of Visitors. An account of the meeting was
written long afterward by one of the students
present on the occasion. The meeting took place
in one of the old lecture halls, and Mr. Jefferson
arose and addressed the students. He was,
however, so affected by the apparent failure of
one of his most cherished ideas that he burst
into tears. Instantly the whole body of students,
who had been guilty of the acts which occasioned
the trouble, arose and, rushing forward, made a
full confession of the part they had taken. The
ringleaders were expelled, among them being a
near relative of Mr. Jefferson, on whom he
poured the vials of his wrath and visited the extreme
penalty. The others were forgiven. Even
then, however, the trouble was not wholly eradicated.
The students were at first unable to
realize the high ideal set for them. And a number
of petty rules caused, until remedied, much
friction. A military company formed by the
students began to interfere so much with scholastic
duties that the arms were taken from them.
This gave rise to so much discontent that annually
the disbandment was commemorated by a
celebration which was accompanied by much
boisterousness. Finally, in 1842, when the conduct
of certain of the students reached the point
of carousal, one of the professors seized two of
the students, who wore masks, and one of them
shot him. This tragic act put an end forever to
the unseemly license which had sprung from Mr.
Jefferson's lofty conception, and since that time
the institution he founded has approached more
and more, as its traditions have become established,
his noble ideal.

Its original eight schools have increased until
now it has twenty-three, of which its law
school has three classes and its medical school
six.

Its one hundred and twenty-three students
have increased steadily until it has eight hundred
on its rolls, representing thirty-six States
and several foreign countries. But it is not by
the number of its students that its usefulness is
to be measured. Its true gauge is the work it is
doing, the high standard of its scholarship, and,
above all, its high aim to make men.

"Every great college," said Hamilton W.
Mabie, in a thoughtful and charming paper on
the University of Virginia, "has a background
which must be taken into account in any endeavor

to understand its history or to enter
into its spirit. A college is a visible embodiment
of certain invisible influences, which are
as much a part of its educational equipment as
its libraries, laboratories, teachers, and course
of study. These constitute its larger and deeper,
if less obvious life; the life which searches, inspires,
and often recreates the spirit of the sensitive
student." And he observes, as the writer
thinks truly, that "of no institution of the higher
learning is this truer than of the University of
Virginia—an institution of original organization
and methods, with traditions and convictions
which give it a place by itself in the educational
history of the country."

On the outbreak of the Civil War, of the sons
of the university, about twenty-three hundred
entered the army; and not less than three hundred
and fifty fell in battle. Of the students
who were then at the university almost the entire
body enlisted. It was estimated that even
twenty years ago over one thousand alumni had
engaged in educational work, and in 1896 over
two hundred of her sons were professors in universities
and colleges—a noble tribute, not only
to her scholarship, but to that earnestness which
is so distinguishing a characteristic of the university
life.

Thus, it happens that the University of Virginia,
with its limited number of students, has in
the past possibly excelled in scholastic results any
other similar institution in the country. She has
had a larger representation in Congress than any
other; she has a larger representation on the bench;
and she has had a larger representation in the medical
departments of both the army and navy. All
this result has been accomplished on an income
less than that of many second-rate colleges.[7]

Through the years, notwithstanding her want
of means, this university, which sprang in her
beauty from Jefferson's teeming brain, has continued
to perform the work which he laid out
for her and to follow the course which he marked
down for her to follow, with her eye single to
two great principles—the highest standard of
scholarship and the highest standard of honor.
Through all discouragements and in the face
of all difficulties, she has been true to his ideal,
which has been happily expressed in the motto
chosen for her by a later rector, Mr. Armistead
C. Gordon, "Ye shall know the truth and the
truth shall make you free."

Lying on the sunny slopes of the Albemarle
hills, with her classical arcades stretching away
southward, bathed in the Virginia sunshine, she
has from the first taught her sons the nobility of
truth and hereby has pointed them to freedom.
Neither professor nor student can long breathe
that atmosphere and remain untrue.

Always cramped in her resources, often
strained to the utmost to carry on her work; she
has yet carried it on through the self-denial of
her professors. And there has been this compensation,
that, as has been well said by Hamilton
W. Mabie: "Simplicity is still the note of
student-life in Virginia, and simplicity is always
a note of the highest culture."

It is the most Republican institution the writer
has ever known. Here, in this age of money-loving,
money-getting, and money-spending,
money counts for nothing. Here Jew and Gentile,
gentle and simple, rich and poor, stand on
the same platform: that "all men are created
equal." The only aristocracy is one of intellect,
manliness, and loftiness of purpose. And
the wealth of Crœsus could not save a man a
moment if he fell below the high standard set
for gentlemen. This is why there is that in
the life of the University of Virginia which
stamps its impress on the life of her sons in a

way which can never be wholly erased. It is
not Scholarship; it is not even always the ability
to appreciate Scholarship; but it is that which
comes from having in youth had a glimpse of
the Truth and having had her breathe the breath
of freedom into the nostrils that is never again
wholly lost. More than the knowledge acquired,
far more than the material advantage
derived, one alumnus wishes to record that the
greatest benefit he secured from his life at the
University of Virginia was some appreciation of
her ideals.

Times and conditions even in scholastic life
have changed since Thomas Jefferson, on the
tentative election of William Wirt to the presidency
of the university, wrote with his own hand
on the page of her records a protest against instituting
such an office. Owing to these changes,
after much thought, those charged with the responsibility
have deemed it for the best interests
of the institution to establish this office.

The great need at present is the means to
carry on the work of the institution. A disastrous
fire a few years ago destroyed its valuable
library, and to rebuild it was necessary to mortgage
heavily its property. "To widen its sphere
of usefulness and to meet properly the educational
demands of the age, a considerable sum

is required." It has long outgrown the narrow
limits within which it is confined by its meagre
income.[8]

The same local prejudices which so long
operated to prevent its establishment have prevailed,
and what it has accomplished has been
with hopelessly meagre resources. Its best
work has been done by men who have made
great sacrifices to do it.

Meanwhile, however cramped her resources,
she is performing a great work—upholding the
standard of high scholarship and right living.

Looking back with pride to her noble past

and looking forward with confidence to her
future, her friends may well adopt as their own
the brave words of Jefferson, uttered during
one of the most trying periods in the struggle
to establish her, "It is from posterity we are to
expect remuneration for the sacrifices we are
making for their service, and I fear not the appeal."