University of Virginia Library

VI. The Courses of Instruction

The increase in the number of students, not only created
the need of more dormitories and lecture-rooms, but
it also led to the addition of one new professorship, the
division of one chair into two chairs, and the subdivision
of several schools into departments, to assure a broader
platform of tuition. As late as 1856, the number of
schools had been neither diminished nor augmented.
That number remained the same as in 1825. It is true
that the professors of mathematics and the languages

were now allowed assistants as a means of teaching their
overgrown classes more thoroughly; and the School of
Law also was now in charge of two professors instead
of one. Within the next few years, however, the School
of History and Literature was established, and the
School of Ancient Languages split up into the School of
Latin and the School of Greek, while the School of
Medicine was divided into four schools and one department,
and the School of Law into two departments. The
general course of instruction in the University, after these
changes had been made, fell within the scope of three
great divisions: First, the literary and scientific schools,
in which were taught the ancient and modern languages,
mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, moral philosophy,
and history and literature; second, the School of
Medicine, which embraced the subjects of medicine, comparative
anatomy, physiology, surgery, chemistry, pharmacy,
anatomy, materia medica, and botany; and third,
the School of Law, with its departments of common
and statute law, and civil, constitutional, and international
law.

Jefferson had contemplated an indefinite multiplication
in the number of important schools, and in the number of
dependent departments in each school. From the three
divisions just given, it will be perceived that it was a generation
after his death before his anticipation in either
particular began to take the form of reality. But there
was still room for further expansion and for further subdivision,
—separate professorships in applied mathematics,
natural history and geology, scientific agriculture,
zoology, botany, and practical astronomy, were still
wanting.

The numerous improvements which were made previous
to 1860 were at least hastened by an article that was

printed in the pages of the Southern Literary Messenger,
in the course of 1856. The author of that article chastised
the more unsparingly because he felt the keenest
interest in the institution. What do the graduates of
the University of Virginia know? he asked. To that
comprehensive question, he returned the following reply:
"They will never have heard of botany; they will never
have heard of zoology; they will never have heard of
English literature, unless a little belles-lettres may be so
denominated. They need not know a word of English
history, or indeed, in any serious sense, of any other.
They will have heard about twelve lectures on mineralogy
and geology. Of political principles, of ethnology,
of comparative philology, they will be equally ignorant;
so of theology, statistics, history of philosophy, archaeology,
physical geography, history of fine arts and aesthetics
in general."

These were serious deficiencies beyond dispute, but
there was not one among them which would have continued
many years longer had not the War of Secession
intervened to halt all further progress for nearly a
decade.

But the soul of a university does not lurk only in its
courses of instruction. The spirit of the scholar is created
as much by the intellectual atmosphere which he
breathes as by the literary food which he takes into his
mind. About the time when the critic in the Messenger
was plying the paternal birch with so much corrective
vigor, another alumnus, who was not less solicitous touching
the welfare of his alma mater, was also forming his
impressions of her. "I have lived and worked in more
than one distinguished institution," remarks Professor
Edward S. Joynes, in recalling this period, "but such students,
such studying, such zeal for learning, I have never

seen elsewhere as existed then. As a student body too,
we were honorable and proud, proud of our university
and her fame, of her professors and of ourselves as her
students. In our minds, we were not merely the University
of Virginia, but the University. Our habitual walk
across the Lawn was an unconscious strut, so proud and
great did we deem our university to be, and ourselves as
its students. And now looking back after sixty years
of large experience, it is my best judgment that, at that
day, there was no institution in America comparable, in
its scholarship, its standards, its influence on personal
character, with the University of Virginia."

There was one deficiency mentioned by the author of
the article in the Literary Messenger which had occasioned
much concern to the Alumni, the Visitors, and the
Faculty alike, during many years. We have seen that the
subject of history had been taught in a restricted though
suggestive form by the professors of ancient and modern
languages, and belles-lettres by the professor of moral
philosophy. The treatment in either instance was necessarily
brief and desultory. In 1841, the Society of
Alumni urged the Board to establish a School of History
and Literature in order to quiet the just criticism
which its absence had caused; but the income of the University
at this time was decided to be too small to justify
so expensive an addition. In June, four years later, the
Faculty were requested by the Board to draw up a report
that would indicate the proper course of instruction
to be adopted for the projected professorship. It seems
that the Visitors, having been again prodded by interested
alumni, were now ready to go so far as to say that
they were sanguine of establishing the new chair at their
next annual meeting (1846). The scheme of study
which the Faculty submitted on this occasion did not receive

the unanimous support of their own body. There
was a majority report and a minority report; and these
reports, apart from their ability and information, are interesting
as throwing light on the intellectual methods of
two of the most distinguished men who have been associated
with the University of Virginia, for one was drawn
by Gessner Harrison, and the other by John B. Minor.

Harrison, as the spokesman of the majority, advised
that the course for the new professorship should be
marked out only in a general way. He thought that the
mere ground to be traversed by members of this class was
much less important than the acquisition by them of a
correct impression of the purposes of historical knowledge,
and of the proper spirit in which historical inquiries
should be prosecuted. They must be trained, he said, to
test the truth of history for themselves; and they must
learn how to group, classify, and generalize without material
assistance from any one. It was right habits of
mind rather than the bare facts of history that were most
to be desired; not so much the amount of information to
be accumulated, as the manner in which it was to be collected.
Past events, he declared in substance, were so
multitudinous that no single teacher would find it possible
to give a detailed narrative of them all, even if he should
restrict his lectures to modern times. The professor,
therefore, should take a comprehensive view of his vast
field, and choosing the leading facts only, should draw
from them those permanent lessons, those general laws,
that guide and control the destinies of nations. As to the
department of literature,—which was also to be introduced,
—he should require of his pupils practical exercises
in writing, speaking, and reading the English language;
should lecture on the characteristics of the classic
authors in each branch of letters, and show their personal

relation to the spirit of their age; and should point out
at length the general features of successive literary eras,
and the orderly development of English literature from
period to period. It seems that Dr. Harrison did not
emphasize so sharply the mental discipline that would accrue
to the students from these literary courses as he had
done in dwelling on the benefits that would follow from
the courses in history.

In drafting the minority report, Professor Minor, on
the other hand, expressed the opinion that the whole field
of study in both history and literature should be mapped
out with the same analytical exactness which he used in
presenting the subject of law. The independent knowledge
of the facts embraced in that field was, in his judgment,
as important as the improving mental effect of acquiring
that knowledge; and bare generalizations, for
sake of the spirit rather than of the substance, were not,
from his point of view, sufficient. These two reports,
which are among the most thoughtful documents having
their origin with the Faculty, were sent to the Board; but
action on them was deferred. Lack of the necessary
funds still stood in the way of the establishment of the
chair.

R. M. T. Hunter was at this time a member of the
House of Representatives, and also a Visitor, and on
June 24, 1846, in anticipation of the meeting of the
Board, and the election of a professor of history and
literature, he wrote to Cabell that he had recently
sounded Caleb Cushing, the distinguished publicist, as to
whether he would accept the new chair; and that Cushing
had expressed his willingness to do so, should it be
associated with the Presidency of the University.
Would Cabell find out whether the Board were favorably
inclined towards Cushing? But the Visitors, whether

well disposed towards this particular candidate or not,
refused to choose an incumbent at that time. We learn
from a letter written by William C. Rives, in April, 1847,
to George Frederick Holmes, an aspirant for the chair,
that the explanation of their action was still the lack of
means to pay the salary that should go with the position.
Two years later (June, 1849), however, they decided to
hold an election for the professorship at their next annual
meeting, and the chairman of the Faculty was directed
to give four months' notice of this intention by a
detailed advertisement in the public journals; but, in February,
1850, Cabell informed Professor Millington, of
the College of William and Mary, who was advocating
Holmes's candidacy, that the creation of the chair would
again have to be postponed for an indefinite period. It
seems that the General Assembly had again required that
all the thirty-two State students should be boarded at the
University's expense,—a provision that not only left no
resources to defray any additional charge, but also prolonged
a burden that had been found difficult to carry
even with the exercise of scrupulous economy.

It was not until 1856 that this repeatedly deferred professorship
was at last established. In the March of
that year, the Legislature repealed the act which limited
the number of chairs to ten; and that body was also wise
enough, on the same occasion, to revoke the regulation
which admitted State students to the institution without
charge for board. The road was, therefore, clear of the
obstructions that had previously been insurmountable.
At a called meeting of the Visitors held on May 26, a resolution
was adopted that added the School of History and
Literature to the number already in existence. In that
resolution also was laid down the line which the lectures
on the two great subjects belonging to the chair was to

follow. It would be inferred that the Board had been
more influenced in their conclusions by the majority report
of Professor Harrison than by the minority report
of Professor Minor, for it was to generalization that the
teaching was to be mainly confined. This was especially
true of the principal branch, in which the instruction
was to touch upon the broad, fundamental lessons of history;
the character of the epochs which had affected human
destiny most profoundly; the impression on the
moral and physical condition of man of the various systems
of religion and jurisprudence; the outcome of diversities
of race and climate; the principles of historical
criticism; the documentary sources of information; and
the proper methods of study. Perhaps, the most significant
features of the course in literature were (1) that all
the students were to be regularly drilled in English composition;
and (2) that the professor should have the right
to invite the members of his class to deliver lectures or
read essays upon any literary subject which he might
designate. It was specifically stated that the studies to
be embraced in the new chair should not abrogate any
of the branches of instruction which had previously been
pursued on the historical side of the Schools of Ancient
and Modern Languages, and the literary side of the
School of Moral Philosophy. The new professorship
did not become operative until October, 1857.