University of Virginia Library

SEVENTH PERIOD

RECONSTRUCTION AND EXPANSION, 1865–1895

I. The Spirit of the Faculty

If the civilization of the Southern States, under a system
of slave labor, is tested by economic standards alone,
it was undeniably less successful than the civilization of
the Northern States, under a system of free labor. The
physical aspect of the Southern country was not one which
indicated that its natural resources had been wisely used,
—it was, as a whole, in reality, covered with forest,
broken here and there by spacious clearings for plantations;
and these estates had a permanent drift towards
further enlargement, without bringing a proportionate
area under tillage. With the exception of New Orleans,
there were no very populous cities,—the towns, and even
the villages, sprang up, with wide reaches of hill, and
valley, and plain between them. The number of factories
was too small to be counted. In short, the South was an
agricultural region alone; and its single economic interest
of importance was pursued in so dispersed a fashion
that a very great part of its surface had not passed beyond
the wild condition of the frontier.

But, if the communities of that region, under the system
of slavery, can be justly reproached with a failure to
make use of their material advantages to the degree that
was rightly expected of them, there was one department
of production which was not open to this accusation.
The Southern States could, without the smallest presumption,

claim that the members of their ruling class, in vigor
of character, in firmness and clearness of purpose, in sheer
ability to lead and to govern, had no superiors,—perhaps
no equals,—on the American continent. It was not the
hogshead of tobacco, or the bale of cotton, or the bushel
of wheat, or the barrel of maize, that made up the real
contribution of those States to the civilization of that day.
It was rather that imposing body of citizens who, trained
by a combination of influences to command and set the
example, gave their own tone to the society of the South,
instilled their own ideals into its whole structure, moulded
and guided its political destinies, and stood forth, before
the eyes of the world, as its truest exponents and most
loyal spokesmen. These were the men whose ranks furnished
all the higher officers of the Confederate armies;
and it was also they, or their sons, who,—loftily placed
socially as they were,—formed no unimportant section of
the regular line. It was the members of this class, educated
to leadership under the social and economic system
of the plantation, and made still more virile and unflinching
by the dangers and hardships of the war, who rescued
their native soil from the ruin that accompanied reconstruction.
The two training schools,—each so different
in nature from the other, and yet both so searching in their
tests of character,—had fitted them to cope successfully
with the appalling conditions that followed the collapse
of their cause. There was no great department of life
in the Southern States, after the close of hostilities, which
was not confronted with actual or threatened destruction;
and it was only extraordinary manliness of spirit, seasoned
by harsh experience, and expressing itself in an invincible
determination to subdue and direct circumstances, that
enabled them in time to restore their communities to stability
and prosperity.

The University of Virginia had always been a mirror
which faithfully reflected the varied influences that had
given such a salient individuality to the Southern people.
And never was this fact more perceptible, or more impressive,
than after the end of the war, when the South
was in the first unsettled stage of an involuntary peace.
With the exception of Schele, Boeck, and McGuffey,—the
last, one of the most stalwart and masterful figures in
that entire company,—the members of its Faculty were
Southerners or Englishmen by birth. But Mallet and
Holmes, as well as McGuffey and Schele, had been so
long associated with the governing forces of Southern
life that they were not to be distinguished in the smallest
degree, either in sentiment or sympathy, from their
colleagues of Southern nativity; namely, Cabell, Gildersleeve,
Davis, Smith, Minor, Maupin, Venable, Southall,
Howard and Peters.

These men were not simply teachers after the normal
type. They were true representatives of that Southern
citizenship which was so firmly and courageously facing
the stern realities of reconstruction. At least three
among them,—Venable, Peters, and Gildersleeve,—had
been seasoned soldiers in the field. Venable had served
on the staff of General Lee, and was regarded by that
great commander as one of his most trustworthy officers.
Peters had been the colonel of a regiment under
Early in the arduous campaign in the Valley, which
terminated so unfortunately, in consequence of the
shrinkage in the Confederate resources. Gildersleeve
had been maimed for life in battle, during the same excursion,
while discharging the duties of aid on the staff
of General Gordon. Mallet, by his profound knowledge
of chemistry, had contributed, in an extraordinary
degree, to the efficiency of the ordnance department.

Davis and Cabell had shown equal skill and fidelity in the
military hospitals. Peters, Venable, and Mallet were
not members of the Faculty at the close of the war,
but they were elected to professorships so soon afterwards
that they became as influential in restoring the
University to prosperity as those of their colleagues who
had never disrupted their connection with the institution.
Holcombe, who had been an eloquent member of the
Confederate Congress, and Bledsoe, an assistant secretary
of war, failed to be restored to their former chairs,
apparently only because they took no prompt steps to
assert their right. Coleman, as we have seen, had died
of wounds received on the field of battle.

Something more than mere abstruse learning, something
besides pedagogic skill, was called for in a Faculty
that had to grapple with the perplexing problems of the
University at that depressing hour. Knowledge of the
languages, of science, of medicine, of law, of engineering,
was not sufficient for the conquest of all those
crowding difficulties; nor was distinguished service in the
professorial chair through a protracted series of peaceful
years. Firmness and loftiness of character that commanded
the respect of all men; shrewd intelligence that
could direct the most intricate business affairs; a power
of diplomacy that could disarm the antagonism that
still lingered about legislative halls, in spite of the burden
of common sorrows and the memory of common glories;
the ability to persuade and conciliate, which reconciled
and permanently secured the support of conflicting interests;
the deep-seated, the farsighted patriotism which
looked upon all their efforts as designed as much for the
restoration of their stricken land as of their beloved institution,
—such were some of the qualities, such was the
spirit which has conferred a special distinction upon the

Faculty of the Period of Reconstruction, who successfully
undertook to revive every function of the University,
and to set in motion all the benignant influences
that were essential to its continued existence and future
prosperity.

They were to demonstrate even more conspicuously
than the Faculty of 1895 the fact that the men who occupy
chairs in a higher seat of learning, can, in an emergency,
show not only the justest comprehension of the
best methods of surmounting practical obstacles, but the
promptest energy in carrying those methods into action.
The difficulties created by the upshot of the great war
were more serious than those which followed the destruction
by the great fire, but the manner in which
both groups were overcome reflected honor upon the
practical capacity of the professors who had to contend
with them and settle them. Nor was the credit which is
to be awarded these men, whether they belonged to 1865
or to 1895, the smaller, because, in both instances, they
were sustained by the cooperation of able and zealous
Boards of Visitors.

II. Energy of the Faculty

When the war ended, the prospects of the University,
if not precisely of a character to excite a feeling of hopelessness,
were yet full of uncertainty and perplexity.
The buildings had fallen into disrepair; the grounds were
disfigured by neglect; the indispensable apparatus belonging
to the different scientific departments had grown defective
from disuse; the treasury was empty. The organization,
however, was substantially intact. The
machinery of government had almost run down, but
had not been shattered,—the pavilions were still occupied
by members of the Faculty; the doors of the lecturerooms

were still open for the admission of classes; the
dormitories were still in existence to receive new tenants,
and the hotels to welcome new boarders.

The interval between the surrender of the Southern
armies and the close of the session of 1864–65, was too
brief to justify the authorities in striving to increase the
attendance during that time. The revived energies of
the Faculty were concentrated upon making a complete
preparation for the opening of the session of 1865–66.
There was, however, no trustworthy assurance that the
number of students during that session would exceed the
number present during the years of the war. Whether
there was to be any addition or not would depend altogether
upon the rehabilitation of the South. The appalling
impoverishment of its people, the political confusion
which prevailed from border to border, and the
complete disorganization of the system of labor,—all
seemed to foreshadow a limited attendance; but the
hope was nursed that the temporary disablement of so
many Southern colleges, and the desire on the part of
so many former soldiers to take up again their interrupted
education, would swell the number of matriculates
to the one hundred mark at least.

But even with one hundred students enrolled, it was
clearly perceived that, without the State's assistance, the
University could not reasonably expect to recover even
a moderate share of its former prosperity; with the annual
appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars withdrawn,
the institution must sink to the level of a seminary of
secondary merit. Indeed, it was probable that it would
be entirely extinguished. It was only with this addition
to its financial resources that the professors could be properly
remunerated, the required administrative officers retained,
the buildings kept in repair, and provision made,

in the hotels and dormitories, for the accommodation of
students. No petition for the renewal of this appropriation
could be sent to the General Assembly before
that body had convened; and it was not until December
(1865) that it was expected to hold its first session.

In the meanwhile, it was imperative that certain practical
steps should be taken; and no delay was shown in
taking them. The Board met in July (1865), but exhibited
little energy. They first adopted a resolution
commending the fidelity of the Faculty in keeping the
institution intact during the war; and then they went a
little further and expressed the hope that a large number
of students would be enrolled during the approaching
autumn.[1] The Faculty, on the other hand, were
not satisfied to sit down quietly, in this drifting mood,
and await the upshot of future events. Two of the
members especially were opposed to the pursuit of such
a policy of optimism unsupported by works,—these were
Maupin and Minor, who had jointly been so instrumental
in preserving the buildings from depredation, and even
from destruction, at the close of the war. Both clearly
foresaw that the presence of a large number of students
in the autumn was the most certain means of obtaining
the hoped for appropriation from the General Assembly
in the following winter. In their own names, and on
the strength of their own high standing, they, during the
summer of 1865, borrowed of the bank of Charlottesville
an amount sufficient to defray the expense of advertising
liberally and restoring the buildings to the point
required to make them comfortably habitable. To assure
economy, they personally superintended the carpenters
from day to day.

Auspiciously for the upshot of the application to the
Legislature for assistance, the Faculty were able, when
that body convened, to report that two hundred and
twenty students had already matriculated; that the vacancies
in the Faculty had been filled by the election of
professors of remarkable qualifications; and that not less
than five thousand dollars had been spent in the repair
of the different structures. "The indications of an abiding
public confidence and future patronage," it was announced,
"was all that could be desired."

The General Assembly failed to show its appreciation
of the energy which had rendered these good results
possible, by responding at once to the petition for aid.
A combination of influences had to be brought to bear
on the members before they would consent to do this.
One of the most powerful of these was a letter which
was printed in the Richmond Enquirer, in January, 1866,
while the Legislature was in session. The writer presented
an elaborate statement of the scholastic advantages
which the University had to offer to the young men
of Virginia who were desirous of obtaining an education;
of the beneficial impression which the institution had
made upon the standards of instruction then employed
in the private secondary schools; and of the lofty principles
for personal conduct which it had always inculcated
among its students, who were drawn from every
part of the South. In addition, he vigorously combated
the objections which had been urged, either sincerely or
maliciously, against the University. He demonstrated
that the burden imposed upon each individual in the
Commonwealth by the former annual appropriation was
only one cent and a half; that the larger proportion of
the young men in attendance had always belonged to
families in moderate circumstances; and that, while few

of them, comparatively speaking, had won the diploma
of master of arts, yet at least one-third of their number
had graduated in one or more schools. Virginia had
spent not less than half a million dollars in the erection
of the buildings of the University, in the purchase of its
library, and for its general support. Would she be so
callous as to allow all this valuable property to fall into
physical ruin for the want of a few thousand dollars to
keep it in repair? Would she be so shortsighted as to
let the interest on the University's debt remain unpaid,
and thus expose her people to the reproach of a breach
of the public faith? If that institution should be compelled
to suspend from lack of the necessary funds, all
the secondary schools dependent upon her prosperous existence
would languish, and some would even be extinguished;
the spirit of education throughout the State
would feel the shock; and the welfare of the whole Commonwealth
would be seriously impaired.

Convincing as all these arguments were, so abysmal
was the poverty of the hour that the modest appropriation
asked for was, after a long delay, only granted by
the bare margin of votes which the State constitution
required; and there is good reason to think that, without
the degree of restoration which the energy of the Faculty
had been able to bring about, the upshot of the ballot
would have been adverse. That body was justified in
making an optimistic report to the Board of Visitors at
the meeting held at the end of the first session. Two
hotels had already been opened for the accommodation
of the students, and a third was in course of equipment;
all the buildings which had fallen into dilapidation had
been fully repaired; a part of the floating debt liquidated;
the interest on the bonded debt, which amounted to $38,500,
paid; and all the current expenses defrayed to the

last cent. A surplus of two hundred dollars was left in
the treasury.

III. Students of the First Session

If the Faculty which exhibited all this practical capacity
was a remarkable body, the students who attended
their lectures, during this first session, were, in the mass,
worthy of equal respect and admiration. With the failure
of the Confederacy, there sprang up among Southern
parents an intense solicitude to give their sons all
the benefits which an excellent education at least would
confer as some compensation for the destroyed prospect
of an inheritance. The very first money which could
be rescued from the debris of their shattered fortunes
was set aside for this sacred purpose. The young men
who matriculated were fully aware of the privations
which their fathers and mothers had cheerfully endured
in order to accumulate the sums that would be needed
to pay for tuition and board; and remembering the sacrifices
which had been made for their sake by the people
at home, they showed, in their entire conduct, a degree
of earnestness and sobriety unusual at that period of life.
No doubt, too, this spirit was deepened by the sadness
of the times.

The memory of William Wertenbaker went back to
the foundation of the University. He had been associated
with the institution, in one capacity or another, during
forty years at least. Session after session, during
that long interval, he had possessed the fullest opportunity
to observe the spirit of the successive waves of students.
In his report as librarian written in June, 1866, he remarked
that he had never before perceived so keen a
desire on the part of the young men to make the utmost
use of the advantages which the library had to offer,

whether for purposes of general information or of
special research. The same attitude was discernible in
all the departments. "The legal and medical lecturerooms,"
says a student of this session, "the moot court,
the dissecting rooms, and the academic schools, were
crowded with countenances as eager to seek as the
professors to impart knowledge. When the lecture was
over, hurrying throngs hastened back to their respective
rooms, not for play or idleness, but to transcribe notes,
refer to authorities, and secure the full benefit of what
had been taught."

But it was not simply the shadow of this intense assiduity
which invested these earnest young men with such
an extraordinary degree of interest. Many of them had
won distinction in the war as officers of high rank in the
service. There were colonels who had led the most
famous regiments of the Confederate armies to battle;
majors who had commanded battalions of artillery or
squadrons of partisan rangers; adjutants of brigades and
divisions; captains of batteries and captains of cavalry
and infantry; and private soldiers who had fought from
First Manassas to the last volley at Appomattox. Many
of these veterans still wore their Confederate uniforms,
now faded and threadbare from long use; some lacked an
arm or a leg; and there were few who could not show on
some part of their persons the scars of wounds caused
by a bullet or fragment of shell. "And yet," says
W. Gordon McCabe, the comrade of many of them in
bivouac, skirmish, and battle, "and yet they were a
cheerful set, with a natural exultation that they had done
their duty as good soldiers; that they had stuck to Ole
Mars Robert to the last, and seen the thing through.
And so they buckled to their tasks, with hearts as high as
when they charged with Stuart at Aldie, and went up

the slopes of Cemetery Ridge. They wanted so little
that they felt that they still had much; even if things
were ill today, it would not to be so tomorrow. Hadn't
Horace said this identical thing nearly two thousand years
ago; 'non, si male nunc, et olim sic erit'?"

These youthful veterans,—youthful in years, but not
in fortitude and feats of bravery,—could claim as
former comrades in the field, and on the march, at least
three of the men from whose lips they were catching
the learning which they had come, at so much sacrifice,
to accumulate for their own equipment for the struggles
of practical life. There was Venable, who, as an aid to
Lee, had borne many an order from his chief to the most
dangerous angles of the battlefield; there was Peters,
who had led his regiment through many a scene of carnage;
there was Gildersleeve, who had been struck down
under fire and permanently crippled. "Not seldom,"
says Colonel McCabe, "would this great scholar relax for
a brief space his inexorable syntactical grilling and enliven
the close of the lecture-hour by reading aloud his
own exquisite and inspiriting translations of the marching
songs of Tyrtaeus, the rush of whose swift anapaest
recalled to his delighted hearers the lilt of their own warsongs,
which they had sung, it seemed but yesterday, to
the rhythmic beat of tramping feet, as they swung down
the Valley pike under old Stonewall."

IV. Schools and Departments

When the session of 1860–61 opened, there was a band
of thirteen professors ready to discharge the duties of
their several chairs. Coleman and Holcombe, as we
have already mentioned, resigned their posts to enter,—
one, the military service of the Confederacy, in which he
was to lose his life; the other, its civil service. Gildersleeve,

when Coleman withdrew, took charge of the consolidated
schools of ancient languages, and Minor, of
the two departments of the subdivided school of law.
Bledsoe, with the Visitors' permission, accepted the office
of assistant secretary of war. He returned to the
University for a brief period; but during the greater
part of the time that hostilities continued, the courses
formerly taught by him were taught by Smith, who combined
them with the courses of his own professorship.
In June, 1865,—Bledsoe being then absent from Virginia,
—the Board declared the chair of mathematics to
be vacant, and they elected Colonel Charles S. Venable
to fill it. Subsequently, Colonel William E. Peters was
chosen as the successor of Gessner Harrison and Coleman,
which led to the reestablishment of the separate
School of Latin,—Gildersleeve retaining the School of
Greek. S. O. Southall succeeded Holcombe, and the
two departments in the School of Law were revived.

But the Board were not satisfied simply to restore the
original number of chairs. In 1867, two new schools
were created,—one, the School of Applied Mathematics,
embracing the different courses in engineering; the other,
the School of Analytical and Applied Chemistry, covering
the different applications of that science to the various
industrial pursuits of life. During the same year, a
laboratory of analytical chemistry, and a museum of industrial,
were built. Through the munificence of Samuel
Miller, a wealthy merchant of Lynchburg, a School of
Agriculture was added in 1869;[2] and through the similar
generosity of W. W. Corcoran, a School of Geology,
in 1879–80. A museum of natural history was presented
by Lewis Brooks. At a later period, a sum sufficient

to erect an observatory was received from Leander J.
McCormick; and through his gift also, a great equatorial
telescope was acquired. A School of English was
established in the course of the same year.

By 1895, the end of the Seventh Period, the number
of academical schools,—which had been curtailed to
eight in 1865,—had expanded to fourteen. At first,
the entire round of them was divided into the four great
departments of literature, science, medicine, and law.
Subsequently, a different grouping was adopted. There
were then the following five great departments; the
academic, subdivided into literary schools and scientific
schools; the medical; the law; the engineering; and the
agricultural. The entire number of departments now
comprised nineteen schools. In 1882–3, a somewhat
different arrangement was introduced,—there were then
created two fundamental divisions: (1) the academical
schools, composed of the literary department and the
scientific department; (2) the professional schools, composed
of the law department, the medical department,
the pharmaceutical department, the engineering department,
and the agricultural department. This grouping
seems to have been retained without modification down
to the beginning of the Eighth Period in 1895. It will
now be necessary to consider at length the lines of development
which the different schools pursued during the
thirty years that followed the session of 1865–66.

V. Courses of Scientific Instruction

In our description of the schools which were in existence
anterior to 1860–61, the place of foremost importance
was given to the humanistic studies. They
were put at the head of the list of courses, because this
was the position which they then held in popular esteem.

Jefferson, as we have seen, was acutely interested in
natural science, and the uses to which it could be applied
for the improvement of mankind's physical condition;
and yet not even he was willing to subordinate the languages
to its acquisition. The scientific professorships
established in the beginning stood upon a platform of
equality with all the others; but the courses in those
schools were limited to the fundamental aspects of
their subjects. No additional chair in practical science
was set up until a short time before the war,—an event
which soon brought to a close whatever activities this
new chair had shown.

The University of Virginia had not kept fully abreast,
—principally on account of a lack of the necessary income,
—with the forward leaping scientific spirit of the
age. The courses in civil engineering had remained almost
rudimentary; instruction in agriculture had received
no recognition at all; while the subjects embraced in the
School of Chemistry had been restricted in scope and
number. But even before the hard and impoverished
conditions brought about by war had stimulated the practical
abilities of the Southern people, some persons among
them, in harmony with the growing tendencies of the
world at large, were coming to think that the study of
the classics, as the preponderant means of education, did
not accomplish what was really required as a suitable
preparation for active life. These opinions, however,
were largely theoretical and academic, since the economic
system of the Southern States, under the institution of
slavery, was so simple that there was little room for
the use of highly trained technical skill.

The only competent school in which to learn the art
of Southern agriculture was then supposed to be the
cotton, corn and tobacco fields,—not the lecture-room,

the laboratory, and the library of a university. The art
of Southern manufacture had been developed so little
that it had failed to create any appreciable ground for
the application of expert information. The towns and
cities were so few in number that the profession of architect
was not alluring for its profitableness. New railways
were not being laid down in such rapid succession
that the civil engineers could always be sure of employment.
The public works were too scattered and too
small in their scale to induce many young men to study
mechanical engineering. All the natural resources of
that vast region, outside of the fields given up to the
staple crops, were allowed to remain almost precisely as
they had stood through the ages. The coal and iron
ore, for the most part, rested, undisturbed by pick or
shovel, in their primaeval beds; the foaming water
tumbled over the highest ledges in the rivers without
any use to man beyond driving a passing sturgeon or
pike into a wicker trap placed on the rocks below; the
forests only fell before the axes and grubbing hoes of
slaves, whose master had no object beyond widening the
area of his virgin grounds.

The failure of the Confederate cause set in motion at
once influences that were destined in time to alter the
entire economical character of the Southern States. The
plantation system was not destroyed as by a flash of
lightning; but the abolition of slavery, by which institution
that system had been supported, made the out-look
for it, as well as for the different learned professions,
—which were always more or less dependent on its
prosperity,—extremely precarious, and in doing so,
tended to divert the hopes of many Southern parents
to other employments for their sons. The old expectation
had been that these sons would adopt the callings

of planters, farmers, lawyers, doctors, or clergymen.
The desire was now, for the first time, aroused that they
should obtain a livelihood in those varied fields of technical
work which had long existed in the North, but had
hardly existed in the South at all before the War of
Secession. It was looked upon as a decisive advantage
that the young men so educated would not be confined in
their search for a subsistence to the impoverished region
below the Ohio and Potomac, but would be at liberty
to pass into the wealthy and diversified communities which
lay beyond those dividing streams. There were thousands
of parents in the South, who, because of the losses
sustained in the recent conflict, were unable to open up
to their sons the opportunity of acquiring a thorough
education. It is true that many of these sons would
not have possessed either taste or aptitude for the professions
of law, medicine, or the church, even if they
had previously enjoyed a careful academic training. For
such,—the calling of a planter now offering few inducements,
—there remained only those departments of science
which were useful in their application to the industrial
pursuits of life.

The Faculty of the University of Virginia perceived,
before the close of the session of 1865–66, that it was
necessary that the institution should create certain special
educational facilities, if it was to be in a position to
secure the patronage of that particular section of young
Southerners, who, without such advantages held out to
them in their own communities, would be compelled to
seek the Northern colleges. The first suggestion of organizing
schools of applied science was broached at a
meeting of the Faculty in December, 1865, when a committee
was appointed to submit to the General Assembly a
plan for the employment of the land fund set apart for

each State by Congress in 1862. In their report to the
Board in June, 1866, the Faculty dwelt upon the need
of a School of Applied Mathematics, and also of a
School of Analytical Chemistry and Technology; and they
only failed to recommend the introduction of these courses
at once because the funds in the treasury were, at that
time, insufficient.

In their annual report for June, 1867, the Faculty
again reverted to the expediency of organizing schools
of the applied sciences; but as the fixed salary of each
professor was only one thousand dollars, and these
schools could not, for several years, expect to make up
the deficiency by the income from a large attendance of
students, their acquisition seemed to be still beyond the
present power of the University to bring about. Had
the rule of the period before the war been still in force,
the surplus fees of all the schools would have gone into
the common treasury, and, in consequence, there would
have been no difficulty in creating the two chairs, now,
very properly, considered indispensable, if the institution
was to keep abreast with the practical needs of the hour.
These surplus fees were now distributed among the members
of the Faculty, to the palpable detriment of the
University, to which they really belonged. The false
position in which this abnormal condition placed the institution
as well as themselves came to be so clearly recognized
by the professors that they agreed to loan the
college treasury two thousand dollars each session, for
the space of five sessions, out of that very surplus fund,
which was produced, not by the reputation of particular
instructors, but by the general reputation of the University
itself, and which that institution had a moral
right to appropriate as its own at this time; and a legal

right to boot, as was demonstrated before many years
had passed.

In consequence of the Faculty's offer to reserve a portion
of their fees for the payment of the necessary salaries,
the two projected chairs were established at the
meeting of the Board in June, 1867. As it was correctly
thought to be wise to enlist the sympathy and active cooperation
of the farming interests, it was decided to
confer upon one of these professorships the name of the
School of Chemical Technology and Agricultural Science.
The School of Applied Mathematics was created at the
beginning of the session of 1867–8; but it was not until
April, 1868, when Professor John W. Mallet, the incumbent
of the other new chair, arrived at the University,
that the School of Chemical Technology and Agricultural
Science was inaugurated as an adjunct to the original
School of Chemistry. Both of these schools, at the
start, were lacking in laboratories, models, specimens, apparatus,
and instruments. The Faculty urged the Board
to borrow at once the money needed to supply all these
deficiencies. Unless this was done, and done promptly,
they said, the Northern seats of learning would draw
away to themselves the young men of the South, who
would prefer to attend such schools at the University of
Virginia, if in existence. Already, the military and
academic colleges at Lexington were founding the like
schools, with the fairest prospects of success; and other
Southern institutions, now impoverished, would soon be
imitating their example.

While in this inchoate state, the School of Chemical
Technology and Agricultural Science was renamed the
School of Analytical, Industrial, and Agricultural Chemistry.
By September, 1869, through the agency of Professor

Robert Mallet, of London, the father of Professor
John W. Mallet, a collection of technological specimens
had been formed and shipped to the University of
Virginia. This was pronounced by experts to be unsurpassed
in America in its composition; and in some
of its aspects, it was unequaled. The laboratory had
already been completed, and a lecture-room provided for
the professor; and a home for his occupation was made
certain by an appropriation which the trustees of the
Miller fund voted for that purpose. The scheme of instruction
consisted of (1) a course of lectures upon technical
chemistry; and (2) a course of practical experiments
in the chemical laboratory. After the death of
Professor Maupin, during the session of 1871–2, Mallet
was placed in sole charge of the chair of pure and applied
chemistry, while the department of analytical
chemistry was brought under an adjunct professor,—
who, however, was subject to his senior's control and
constant supervision. This adjunct professor also delivered
a series of lectures on agricultural chemistry.
By the session of 1872–3, Mallet's chair was designated
the School of General and Industrial Chemistry, and
Chemistry and Pharmacy. Adjunct Professor F. P.
Dunnington gave instruction in the courses in analytical
and agricultural chemistry. In June, 1885, the Faculty
recommended that these courses should be separated
from the School of General Chemistry and Pharmacy,
and that Professor Dunnington,—whose "industry,
painstaking, and ability" they warmly praised,—should
be advanced to the position of full professor of the
School of Analytical and Agricultural Chemistry.
Pharmacy seems to have been transferred to this chair
also.

The School of Applied Mathematics was, at first, under

the supervision of the professor of mathematics, but
was really conducted by Professor Boeck.[3] During the
session of 1878–9, when the chair was occupied by Professor
William M. Thornton, one of the most distinguished
pupils of Venable, the subjects taught were simplified
and abbreviated. They seem now to have fallen
under two general heads: civil engineering and mining
engineering. The method of instruction in the former
consisted of an exact exposition and drill in theory, with
constant practice in the field and at the drawing-board.
The student was also required,—in addition to attending
lectures on building,—to prepare independent designs
for projected structures. A commodious, well-lighted
drawing-hall had been provided at an earlier date.

VI. Courses of Scientific Instruction, Continued

By the session of 1881–2, the scientific department of
the University, besides the schools already mentioned,
comprised the Schools of Natural Philosophy, Mathematics,
Natural History and Geology, Agriculture, Zoology
and Botany, and Practical Astronomy. Within a
few years, there was in existence a separate chair restricted
to biology and agriculture.

During the session of 1876–77, a museum of natural

history was erected, through the special benefaction of
Lewis Brooks, of Rochester. A large number of specimens
were then added, in illustration of the sciences of
zoology and botany, and also of geology and mineralogy.
The objects which the donor had in view in his noble
gift were to increase the popular interest in these sciences,
—the study of which, he said, had afforded him a keen
solace in his old age; to assist an institution which had
been founded by Jefferson, and nurtured by Madison,—
great figures in history, whose memories he deeply revered;
and, finally, to bestow a lasting benefit upon the
South by augmenting the number of opportunities open
to its young men to acquire a practical education. The
sum of seventy thousand dollars was expended upon the
building itself, and eleven thousand, five hundred more
in adding the cases, and also in paying off certain small
charges. A part of this second fund was obtained by
a loan from the Society of Alumni, and by the sale of
University bonds to the Miller Board of Trustees.

The architectural plan adopted for this useful structure,
though handsome of its kind, was not in harmony
with the style of the adjacent edifices. The executive
committee, thinking it the wisest policy to avail themselves
of the expert knowledge of Professor Ward, who
represented the Brooks estate, asked him to choose a
Rochester architect to draft the plans; but to Ward himself,
it seems, the final decision as to their character was
expressly reserved. The single question of convenience,
regardless of congruity, appears to have given the ultimate
shape to his selection; and the model submitted, excellent
in itself, but out of accord with the general grouping
of the University, was accepted by the committee,
who followed this up with a request for the necessary
specifications and working drawings. The cabinets

were collected, arranged, and prepared by Professor
Ward at Rochester; and he also superintended their removal
to the University, and personally took part in
mounting and labelling the different specimens. The
assortment of fossils and plaster casts was one of extraordinary
merit. The assortment of minerals, which contained
samples of every important variety, and many of
great rarity, was hardly less valuable; and so was the
collection in illustration of botany. From the start, it
was intended to gather together in the museum such a
grouping of specimens in all these sciences as would be
copiously representative of the resources of the State in
these several departments.

Through the liberality of W. W. Corcoran, the philanthropic
banker of Washington, a professorship of
natural history and geology was established in 1878,[4]
with an endowment fund of fifty thousand dollars attached
to it. What ought to be the characteristics of
the man who should be elected to it? It required a
very distinguished committee of the Faculty to answer
this interrogatory. And this was their conclusion: he
should be a geologist of thorough training; he should be
an original investigator in his province; he should be
a competent teacher; he should be the respected associate
of distinguished scientists; and, finally, he should be a
gentleman, whose individuality and example would increase
the social light, and broaden the moral influence,
of the University. How many men were there, who
could, without appearing overbold and presumptuous,
come forward as candidates and tacitly hold themselves
out as possessing all this rare combination of claims to
consideration? The number necessarily was small. It
was all the more to the honor of Professor William M.

Fontaine that he was chosen, after the application to his
personality and attainments of such a varied series of
tests. The courses in his school comprised geology,
mineralogy, and botany. The board, in 1880, authorized
the annual expenditure of a respectable sum by him
and his pupils in excursions each spring to places that
could be quickly reached, where they would be able to
make a study, on the ground, of the different aspects of
the several sciences taught in the school under his charge.
Another object of these excursions was to procure specimens
that should illustrate the varied character of these
sciences,—especially ores and minerals,—for preservation
in the museum. Any student of the University,
whether a member of Professor Fontaine's class or not,
was, after the payment of a fee, permitted to take part
in these interesting explorations. In 1880, botany was
transferred to the School of Agriculture, but was returned
during the session of 1887–8.

Additional dignity was imparted to the School of
Natural History and Geology by including it among the
elective studies for the degree of master of arts. By
the session of 1893–4, there had been adopted two
courses of instruction for it,—one embraced that section
of geology which was designated as an elective for the
degree of bachelor of arts; the other, that more advanced
section designated as an elective for the degree of master
of arts. The first allowed of such an acquisition of
knowledge as an educated man or woman would aspire
to; the other, when thoroughly mastered, fitted the student
for a professional career in that science.

In 1886, the Faculty urged upon the Board of Visitors
the great advantage of securing for the University, Virginia's
proportion of the land fund assigned to the several
States by an act of the Federal Congress in 1862.

It seems that the General Assembly had, during the session
of 1865–66, been content simply to provide for the
reception of this share, which was primarily intended
to be used in giving lessons in the military and agricultural
arts. The recent death of Thomas Johnson, of
Augusta county, who had bequeathed to the University
a reversionary right to property valued at twenty thousand
dollars for agricultural instruction, had quickened the
Faculty's interest in the national landscrip. The final
question of how to distribute the large sum thus acquired
by the State came up in the Legislature for decision
during the session of 1866–7. Should that body offer
the money to a literary school already in existence? or
should a new technical school be founded in harmony with
the true spirit of the grant? The people of Virginia,
at this time, were not thought to need a technical school.
Should the money be kept in the treasury until the advantages
of such a school should come to be fully perceived?
After assigning one-third of the fund to the
use of Hampton Institute in 1870–1, the General Assembly
determined to employ the remainder in erecting
an agricultural and mechanical college. Such was the
genesis of the institution at Blacksburg. The University
authorities of that day have been since criticized for their
failure to obtain the appropriation of this fund. On the
face of the records at least there seems to have been no
tenable ground for this censure.

In June, 1868, the Board of Visitors had accepted a
plan drafted by Professor Mallet for the creation of an
experimental farm. Not long after Samuel Miller's
donation of one hundred thousand dollars, for the teaching
of the science of agriculture at the University, was
announced, there was a joint effort on the part of the
Board and Faculty to persuade the trustees of that fund

to devote at least a portion of its income to the support
of the two new chairs of analytical and agricultural
chemistry and applied mathematics, on the ground that
these chairs had been established principally for the advancement
of the science of agriculture and the arts congenial
to it. A committee appointed by the Board to
confer with the trustees went so far as to say that the
Visitors would be willing to add a new professorship of
natural history, and any other course that might be desired,
to the two schools just mentioned, and to name this
combination the Agricultural Department of the University
of Virginia. They promised besides that the projected
experimental farm should be laid off at once, and
at the earliest time practicable brought to the highest
condition of productiveness.

The trustees refused to accede to these suggestions,
because to do so, they asserted, would be inconsistent
with Mr. Miller's intentions; but they agreed that the
Visitors should undertake the organization of a School
of Agriculture, the only school to which, they declared,
they were impowered to pay the income of the fund.
They estimated that, during the ensuing session, this
income would amount to at least three thousand dollars;
but they reserved to themselves the right to withdraw
it in any one year of the future, should they think that,
during the previous session, it had not been used for
purposes fairly and legitimately within the scope of the
provisions of Mr. Miller's gift. In the meanwhile, they,
in accord with the power conferred on them by the terms
of their trust, nominated Mallet as the professor of applied
chemistry in the projected School of Agriculture,
and Leopold J. Boeck as the instructor in those courses
in applied mathematics which related to the same school.

The Board of Visitors promptly confirmed this action.

A site for the experimental farm was soon chosen. This,
by the following June (1870), had been surrounded with
a fence; and a few agricultural tests on a diminutive
scale had been undertaken. It was not until the July
of this year (1870) that the trustees of the Miller fund
were in a position to announce that its income was now
sufficient to allow the practical creation of the School of
Agriculture, Zoology, and Botany; but no professor had
been appointed by the Board of Visitors as late as May,
1872, although the trustees had protested against the
delay. During the interval, they had been appropriating
a large sum for the development of the farm; for the
rents of the houses occupied by Mallet and Boeck; for
the salaries of these two professors in part; and for the
support of at least one scholarship. It was suspected,
whether justly or not, that neither the Faculty nor the
Board of Visitors would ever be brought into sympathy
with the purpose of Mr. Miller's gift, unless that gift
should be used primarily to increase the efficiency of the
chairs of analytical and agricultural chemistry and applied
mathematics. It was not until September, 1872, that
John Randolph Page was appointed the professor of the
new school, and the scheme contemplated by Mr. Miller
set in practical motion.

The first report of the Visitors' committee that had
the affairs of this important school in charge was pessimistic
in its tone. They announced that the experimental
farm held out only a narrow prospect of usefulness.
The ground on which it had been laid off was
stated by them to be barren and liable to overflow,—
an indication of carelessness, if not indifference, in the
original selection. Unless the soil was drained and fertilized,
they predicted, this site would have to be abandoned.

The Miller trustees were very properly keenly interested
in the success of this farm. They requested that
a field at least forty acres in extent should be assigned to
the school elsewhere; and that this area should be of the
proper quality, and should lie conveniently. They reserved
the right to suspend the payment of the money
hitherto appropriated to the Miller scholarships until
they should be able to improve the condition of the farm
up to the point at which it would realize fully the purposes
of its creation. In order that the trust might be
more faithfully performed, they requested that the professor
of applied mathematics should deliver weekly, during
four months, a series of lectures in exposition of the
basic principles and best methods of constructing agricultural
buildings, implements, and machinery. This was
in 1874. At this time, the agricultural department consisted
of the following studies: to Professor Page was
assigned the course in natural history, and in experimental
and practical agriculture; to Professor Mallet,
the course in general and applied chemistry; to Adjunct
Professor Dunnington, the course in analytical and agricultural
chemistry; and to Professor Boeck,[5] the course
in applied mathematics and engineering.

The entire province of agricultural science seemed to
be embraced in the scope of these combined chairs, and
yet the trustees of the Miller Fund announced that they
were not satisfied with the fruits of the teaching. The
department, they said, was not efficient. They asked
the Faculty to explain the failure. That body, in their
reply, described somewhat copiously the handicaps which
were blocking the progress of the school. If the two
greatest colleges in the United States, Harvard and Yale,
found it impossible, with all their inexhaustible pecuniary

resources to make their agricultural departments
prosperous, how could such a consummation be reasonably
expected of an institution with the relatively small income
of the University of Virginia? The urgent need
of the young men of the South was a practical education.
Was this to be got by the study of botany and the kindred
subjects of the School of Natural History, Experimental
and Practical Agriculture? That these young men
thought not was silently demonstrated by the small attendance
in that school. As to the science of agriculture
proper, which undoubtedly could be used to gain a livelihood,
there were now scattered about the South a number
of excellent colleges which offered the opportunity
of obtaining a general education at the very time that
they offered also the chance of learning how to become a
skilful farmer. In all these colleges, the expenses were
cut down to the most economical footing, and the student
was able, by manual labor under their roofs, to earn
money enough for the payment of his different expenses.
Perhaps, the most successful of them all was the one
which had been founded at Blacksburg. This institution
drew to its lecture-rooms and shops most of the
young Virginians who wished to acquire a practical knowledge
of mechanical trades or agricultural pursuits. The
advantages which it proffered had only a shadowy
counterpart in those held out by the agricultural school
of the University of Virginia.

The trustees of the Miller fund could hardly have
received much comfort from this forcible reply of the
Faculty, of which we have given only a scant synopsis.
Four years afterwards, the experimental farm seems to
have become the principal target of the wit and humor
of the editors of the magazine, who were always on the
watch for professorial shortcomings. Many a barbed

jeer, in the form of a short paragraph, was flung at it in
the pages of Collegiana; and so ribald grew these really
brilliant jests that a stern warning came from the Star
Chamber of the Faculty that they must not be repeated;
and this order was reluctantly obeyed, to the sensible decline
in the gaiety of that periodical. The ridicule so
freely showered on the farm by the editors was probably
a reflection, in exaggerated shape, of the popular impression
of its lack of usefulness. The trustees of the
Miller Fund,—the persons most directly concerned about
the success or failure of the experimental tests,—
seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion, although
in a more sober spirit. At their meeting in June, 1880,
they declared that the School of Agriculture had reached
far short of the intentions of Mr. Miller and of the
expectations of its supporters, and they gave notice there
and then that, unless the attendance should increase, and
more practical results be accomplished during the next
twelve months, the department would have to be reorganized.
But how little change in its condition occurred
before June, 1881, was revealed in Professor
Page's melancholy confession that his class in agriculture
had shrunk to one lonely auditor; and that in the class
of botany, a branch of the course in natural history,
the attendance had fallen to three.[6]

Notwithstanding this indisputable vacuum in the lecture-room,
the Board of Visitors, assembling in the following
August, refused to acknowledge that the trustees
of the Miller Fund were correct in asserting that the
school of experimental and practical agriculture had

proved to be "a lamentable failure." They also denied
with emphasis that that body possessed the right to discontinue
their usual annual appropriation as threatened,
and demanded that, before such a step should be taken,
the question of its legality should be brought up in the
Court of Appeals for a decision. The Visitors appear to
have been very much offended by the trustees' supposed interference
with the government of one of the professorships.
"Under no circumstances," they declared, "will
we admit that there is a divided authority as to the guidance
or control of any school in the University." A soberer
mood suggested the wisdom of settling the dispute
privately and amicably; and with that wise purpose in
mind, the Board appointed a committee to confer with the
trustees. The latter, it would seem, had only been doing
their duty in making the complaint so warmly, if not
intemperately, excepted to. The resentful attitude of
the Visitors was pushed too far. That the complaint had
just ground was acknowledged by themselves at their
meeting, held in November, 1883, when their own committee,
instructed to make a thorough investigation, reported
that Mr. Miller's plans had remained "dormant,"
on account of the "unproductive management" of the
School of Agriculture. They recommended that it
should be reorganized from top to bottom. The steps
taken by both parties with this object in view reflected a
spirit of mutual conciliation. A joint committee was
appointed, in which the Visitors and trustees were equally
represented. From this time, no cause for friction of
importance seems to have arisen.

By the session of 1883–4, the Agricultural Department
was made up of the Schools of Agriculture, Botany,
and Zoology, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Analytical
and Agricultural Chemistry, Natural History and Geology,

and Mathematics applied to engineering. The
Board of Visitors were indefatigable in fostering the usefulness
of the department as thus readjusted. In 1886, a
committee of that body recommended that the instruction
which was given in it should be drawn out over two years;
that the course in engineering should be enlarged; and
that, in the other important branches, a junior and a
senior class should be enrolled. The experimental farm
now received a valuable addition in the erection of a
grapery and pomological station. During the ensuing
session, the different studies embraced in the agricultural
department were distributed between an introductory
course and an advanced course. The first comprised
zoology and botany, mineralogy and geology, physics and
general chemistry; the second, scientific and practical agriculture,
industrial chemistry, analytical and agricultural
chemistry, and agricultural engineering. The School of
Agriculture itself was confined to three courses: (1)
zoology and botany, (2) scientific and practical agriculture;
and (3) agricultural engineering.

In June, 1887, the joint committee recommended that,
at the end of twelve months, there should be elected a
professor of agriculture who was known to be an authority
on scientific biology; and that, after a conference with
the new instructor, the school should be again reorganized.
At this time, the University of Virginia was not
provided with the equipment necessary for experimental
research in biology; and without it no really valuable
progress could be made in that particular field of study.
Money for this purpose could only be obtained by allowing
the income from the Miller Fund to accumulate; and
for this reason, the proposed alteration in the scope of
the school was not at once undertaken. The Visitors
seem to have regarded the experimental farm now with

an emotion of undisguised disappointment. Indeed, they
considered its utility to be so open to question that they
were skeptical of the wisdom of spending upon it the
sum annually appropriated for its maintenance. Instruction
in the different branches of scientific agriculture
was already given in the Schools of Natural Philosophy,
General Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Geology and
Mineralogy. These four schools were supposed to furnish
a complete basis for the study of the kingdom of
inanimate nature. Besides the four named, there was
the School of Industrial Chemistry, which offered a course
of technical instruction in the arts touching the raw materials
furnished by the farmer; and also the School
of Engineering, which held out the like course in agricultural
engineering and machinery. There was lacking,
however, a course of instruction in the two sciences
which represented the kingdom of animate nature;
namely, botany and zoology.

As soon as the original school was reorganized, Professor
A. H. Tuttle was elected by the trustees of the
Miller Fund to fill the chair, and he was promptly accepted
as the incumbent by the Board of Visitors. There
were two classes of students whom his teachings were
intended to benefit: (1) those who wished to acquire
such information about biological principles as would
enable them to grasp with intelligence the relations of
biology to agriculture; (2) those who were aiming to
equip themselves for independent research in the same
science, or to serve as instructors in that branch of education
after leaving the institution.

The professorship was named the School of Biology
and Agriculture. Neither subject had previously been
adequately taught at the University of Virginia. The
attendance in the agricultural course, as we have seen,

had shrunk to one lonely student, and its only practical
illustration was to be found in a contracted farm and a
pile of miscellaneous implements. The course in biology
was, if possible, still more unproductive. Professor Tuttle
was thoroughly fitted, by acquired knowledge and native
talent alike, to give distinction to his school; and he
threw into every branch of his work an enthusiasm that
proved immediately contagious. He had first been instructor
in natural science in the college from which he
graduated; had subsequently pursued an advanced course
in the same department at Harvard; and after lecturing
upon the subject of zoology in one of the Pennsylvanian
seats of learning, had, during fourteen years, occupied
the chair of biology in the State University of Ohio. Besides
delivering a series of lectures on embryology, histology,
bacteriology, comparative anatomy, zoology,
botany and general biology, he passed much of his time in
independent research; and also wrote numerous articles
and text-books relating to the various subjects of his
school. He was unremitting, from day to day, in his
endeavor to stimulate his pupils' interest in the experimental
work of the laboratory.

The first step towards the establishment of a school of
practical astronomy,—a topic which had hitherto been
taught by the professor of natural philosophy, as a section
of his already plethoric course,—was taken during
September, 1866, when the Visitors instructed the rector
to solicit the assistance of Commodore Maury, the
famous scientist, in collecting a fund for the erection of
an observatory; and he was also, at the same time, to be
invited to assume charge of the School of Practical Astronomy,
Physics, Geography, and Climatology, which
the Board proposed to create specially for his incumbency.
There was no man in the United States who would have

performed the duties of this professorship with more
brilliant efficiency than he; and, perhaps, not another
could have given it equal celebrity in Europe. Unfortunately,
it was not then possible to obtain the necessary
sum, and Maury continued, to the close of his life, in
the service of the Virginia Military Institute.

It was not until 1878 that the scheme of an observatory,
with its accompanying professorship, began to take
on the shape of an actuality. In the course of that year,
Leander J. McCormick, a native of Virginia, who had
accumulated a great fortune in the West by the manufacture
of reaping-machines, offered to present the University
with one of the largest telescopes in the world.
This was accepted by the Visitors; and subsequently, Mr.
McCormick followed it up with the gift of eighteen thousand
dollars, to be used in the erection of an observatory
building. The only condition attached to this gift was
the collection of a fund sufficient to endow the chair.
William H. Vanderbilt very generously contributed
twenty-five thousand dollars of the amount required, and
the alumni and friends of the institution the remaining
fifty thousand. An additional sum was afterwards secured
to defray the expense of erecting a dwelling-house
for the director. The telescope was thirty-two feet
in length, and belonged to the class of refractors. The
object glass was twenty-six and one-quarter inches in
clear diameter, and of proportionate magnitude in focal
length. The revolving hemispherical dome of the observatory
rested on a frame of steel girders, with an
envelope of galvanized iron. Although the director,
Professor Ormond Stone, was, on the nomination of Mr.
McCormick, elected to that office in June, 1882, the
building had not been finished, in every detail, previous
to 1884. The dilatoriness of construction seems to

have become the target for numerous gibes on the part
of the students.

The course of instruction laid down in 1882–3 for
the School of Theoretical and Practical Astronomy embraced,
besides the fundamental principles of the subject,
the theory of meridian and equatorial instruments,
the methods of determining time, latitude, and longitude,
right ascensions and declinations, the formation of star
catalogues, the computation of orbits, and every other
higher aspect of the science. By the session of 1886–7,
a special course had been arranged for the benefit of
those who intended to become practical astronomers.
The director was also required to carry on investigations
that would add to the sum of the general knowledge of
the stars, and of the laws that governed those heavenly
bodies.

VII. Courses of Literary Instruction

We have now come to the history, during the Seventh
Period, 1865–1895, of the department which embraced
the Schools of Latin, Greek, Modern Languages, English,
Moral Philosophy, and Historical Science. The
School of Ancient Languages remained, throughout the
session of 1865–6, under the direction of Professor Gildersleeve.
At the end of this interval, the chair was
again divided, and Colonel William E. Peters was appointed
to take charge of the restored School of Latin.
Apparently, he made no change of importance in the
programme which his distinguished predecessor had
adopted. During the first years of his incumbency, only
three events occurred in the annals of the school that are
worthy of mention: (1) by the session of 1867–8, an
assistant had become necessary in consequence of the

remarkable increase in the volume of attendance; (2) a
course in Sanskrit was now provided for all who wished
to study it; (3) by the session of 1880–1, a post-graduate
class had been formed. The School of Latin was
reorganized, along with the other schools in the Academic
Department, when it was decided to be expedient
to establish a college or undergraduate course,—the
subjects of the former junior and intermediate years,—
for the degree of bachelor of arts; the university or
graduate course,—the subjects of the old senior year,—
for the degree of master of arts; and the doctorate or
post-graduate course, the course that embraced the subjects
which had hitherto occupied the attention of advanced
students.

During the session of 1866–7, a post-graduate course
was introduced in the School of Greek, and the professor
in charge also offered to give instruction in Hebrew,
should the number of students be sufficient to make up
a class. Thomas R. Price, who succeeded Gildersleeve
during the session of 1876–7, retained all the courses
which had been previously taught. Professor Wheeler,
who followed Price, in 1882, also made no change of
importance. Professor Milton W. Humphreys, who
followed Wheeler, in 1887, lectured along the new lines
brought about by the reorganization of the courses and
degrees in the academic department.

During many years, Professor Schele remained the
sole instructor in the School of Modern Languages, but,
by 1888, an assistant, in the person of Wiliam H. Perkinson,
a distinguished graduate of that school, had been
appointed. This school too was fully reorganized to
adapt it to the requirements of the new coordination of
degrees. Schele taught Anglo-Saxon and the French,

Spanish, and Italian languages, while Perkinson, now
adjunct professor, had charge of the classes studying the
German tongue.

But the most remarkable aspect of the history of the
academic schools between 1865 and 1895 was the expansion
in the English courses,—a forward step almost
as significant as the expansion in the courses in science
during the same period. We have seen how cramped
the English and historical studies were previous to the
establishment of the School of History and Literature;
and even after the creation of that school, it can hardly
be said that the English language and the English literature
received, at the University of Virginia, the attention
which they deserved. During the years that came
immediately after the war, the original School of History
and Literature underwent no alteration. There were
still two classes,—one of history; the other, of English
literature and rhetoric. There was still but one
professor; and only a single diploma was awarded. In
June, 1868, the course in political economy was transferred
to this school from the School of Moral Philosophy;
and during the session of 1870–71, instruction in
oratory or spoken composition, was also given.

But there was now a rapidly growing sentiment in
favor of introducing into the University a more thorough
and extensive examination of the English language than
had ever before been undertaken there. This attitude
soon became aggressive. Professor Price, who had won
so much reputation by his brilliant courses of instruction
in this department at Randolph-Macon College, in reply
to questions put to him, in 1878, by the Board of Visitors,
complained of the ignorance of their mother-tongue
shown by so many of his pupils in the School of Greek.
"This ignorance was so great," he asserted, "as to hamper

their Hellenic studies;" and the same defective education,
he declared, diminished the value of all the work
in philology done in the other schools of the institution.
Schele confirmed this statement by deploring the small
knowledge which so many of the young men in his classes
possessed of the English language; and Holmes reluctantly
acknowledged that the preparation of his students,
—especially in grammar, spelling, expression, biography,
and general information,—was marked by the
gravest shortcomings; and that this preparation, such as
it was, was growing to be more superficial every year that
passed. He attributed this regrettable condition to the
elective system, because it left the young men at liberty
to enter any school of the University without having first
pursued a full and searching course of study in their own
language. But it was not until 1882,—after a committee
had submitted a very thoughtful report,—that a separate
School of English Language and Literature was
established by the Visitors. The same committee, in
recommending the creation of this school, suggested that
the subject to which it should be confined should be accepted
as one of the two modern languages which were
prescribed in the curriculum for the degree of master of
arts.

When the Board again assembled (September, 1882),
they laid down the courses to be followed when instruction
should begin; and it is pertinent to mention these, as
revealing the high degree of thoroughness and comprehensiveness
which they were anxious to enforce: (1)
the nature of language and its relation to thought as exhibited
in the structure and applications of the English
tongue; (2) the correct and effective employment of that
tongue, whether in speech or composition; (3) the principles
and art of style as disclosed in the master-pieces

of the English language; and (4) the history of that
language.

The first incumbent of the chair was James M. Garnett,
a scholar of reputation in his specialty. But, by
1887, the Board had begun to show dissatisfaction with
the upshot of this professorship, on the ground that it had
signally failed to win the popularity confidently expected
of it. Definite alterations in the courses of instruction
were suggested by Garnett, and these having been
adopted, a certain interval within which to test their effectiveness
was allowed him. In January, 1893, through
the munificence of Mrs. Linden Kent, the widow of an
alumnus, the School of English Literature, as distinguished
from the School of the English Language,—
which was assigned to Garnett,—was established; and
Charles W. Kent, a brother-in-law of Mrs. Kent, and a
professor in the University of Tennessee, was appointed
to fill the new chair.[7] By the terms of the endowment,
three thousand dollars was to be paid annually by Mrs.
Kent for the support of this professorship, which was
to be a memorial to her husband; and at her death, the
sum of sixty thousand dollars was to be set aside from
her estate for its maintenance. In 1893, courses in
rhetoric and belles-lettres were added to the courses in
English Literature.

By the time the various subjects taught in this school
had been adjusted to the undergraduate, graduate, and
post-graduate degrees,—in harmony with a simultaneous
change in the other academic schools,—the attendance
of students had come to embrace nearly one third of all
those enrolled in that general department. In the meanwhile,
the School of English Language had languished,
and Garnett suggested that it should be consolidated with

the School of Modern Languages. The Board declined
to do this then; but in July, 1896, they decided to divide
the latter school into two sections: (1) Romanic languages;
and (2) Germanic languages, including the English
tongue among the number to be taught. James A.
Harrison was placed in charge of the one, and William
H. Perkinson in charge of the other.

In the meanwhile, important alterations had taken
place in the original course in history. In consequence
of the munificence of Mr. Corcoran, there had, by the session
of 1882–3, been established what was designated as
the School of Historical Science. This school was divided
into two classes, one of which was engaged with
the study of general history; the other with the study of
the processes of historical change,—which included the
science of political economy, and also the science of society.
By the session of 1889–90, this school had been
reorganized: Professor Holmes was assigned to the
courses in sociology and political economy, and Richard
Heath Dabney, a master of arts of the University, and already
a teacher and writer of distinction, to the course in
general history. Dabney had been elected adjunct professor
at first, and began the performance of his duties in
September, 1889. A very valuable part of the ground
traversed by his lectures was English and American history,
with special reference to constitutional development.
As long as Professor McGuffey occupied the chair of
moral philosophy, no change was made in his course of
instruction beyond the transfer of the subject of political
economy to Professor Holmes's charge; but after the
election of his successor, Noah K. Davis, this topic was
returned to the School of Moral Philosophy.

VIII. Coordination and Entrance Examinations

In glancing back at the history of the academic department
during the Seventh Period, 1865–95, we perceive
that the most significant fact belonging to it was
the abolition of the old nomenclature of junior, intermediate,
and senior classes, and the adoption instead of
the collegiate or undergraduate course, the university or
graduate course, and the post-graduate course,—a collocation
more consistent with the true nature and purposes
of the institution. In reality, that institution, had, from
the beginning, been doing the work of both a college and
a university; but the division line between the two had
never been clearly drawn until 1892. The University
of Virginia was compelled to go on with its collegiate
tasks by the existence of certain educational conditions
in the communities to which it looked for its annual recruits.
Had it dropped that work and confined its attention
to university and post-graduate work, its material
prosperity,—which, in the absence of a great endowment
fund, it was forced to nurse,—would have suffered, perhaps,
irretrievable damage. Jefferson had always shown
impatience in acknowledging the necessity of giving the
lower grades of instruction in his new seat of learning.
By making the university and the post-graduate course
rest upon a basis of collegiate preparation within the
bounds of the institution, that institution came as near to
the realization of his fundamental design as the status
of general education in the South now permitted. Its
university or graduate work had always been founded
upon its collegiate or undergraduate work,—the work of
its senior classes on the work of its junior and intermediate,—but it was not until the Seventh Period, 1865–
1895, that the university courses were completely and logically

coordinated with the collegiate on the lowest platform,
and with the post-graduate on the highest.

An important measure for raising the scholarship of
those who were enrolled in the academic department was
the adoption of a rule which imposed the test of an examination
for admission. During the winter of 1875–
6, the General Assembly had passed an act that granted
to every student from Virginia above the age of eighteen,
the privilege of entrance without any charge for tuition
fees, provided that they had stood such a test successfully.
In May, 1876, a committee of the Faculty enumerated the
following as the fundamental subjects to be submitted in
this examination: (1) English grammar and composition;
and (2) modern geography and arithmetic. For
admission to the junior class in Latin, Greek, mathematics,
history and literature, rhetoric, and natural philosophy,
a particular course in each school, laid down upon
simple lines, was recommended, while for admission to
the intermediate or senior class in each, the course to be
passed was to be the same, but in a higher grade. No
severer test than the ordinary entrance examination was
to be applied for admission to the Schools of Modern
Languages, Moral Philosophy, General and Industrial
Chemistry, Natural History, and Agriculture. It may
be stated in a general way that the examinations were to
be confined to the subjects which were customarily taught
in the secondary schools, public or private.

In order to adapt the dates of these examinations to
the popular convenience, it was arranged that they should
be held at different places in town and country. The
first to come off took place in the summer of 1878, and
were not largely attended; but they were repeated, in
1879, with more success, under the supervision of persons
appointed by the Faculty. Afterwards, they were not

confined to Virginia; nor were they restricted to young
men,—certificates of excellence were granted to women
who had attained to a high level in their papers. During
the session of 1892–3, the examinations were limited to
two grades,—the junior and senior classes of the academic
schools.

There was, in the course of the Seventh Period, 1865–
1895, no important alteration in the character of the usual
intermediate and final examinations held in the different
schools. The valuation was still graduated under
four divisions: a minimum of three-fourths was still required
for the first, one-half for the second, one-fourth
for the third, and a figure more reduced for the fourth.[8]
It was suggested, in 1889, that the standards in each division
should be lowered. To this, the chairman, Professor
Thornton, very pertinently demurred. "As matters
now stand," he said, "there is a happy equilibrium between
the University, and the other Virginian and Southern
colleges. Any graduate from one of these colleges
coming to the University of Virginia finds a good year of
solid work still to be done. If the standard was lowered
to the colleges, it would hurt the latter, as the University
of Virginia, having no tuition fee for Virginia students,
with more eminent professors, and greater reputation,
would inevitably attract the bulk of the students.
No rivalry now exists. The University powerfully stimulates
the colleges, and they in turn send up well-trained
students to the University."

The formal English examination was abolished in
1869. In its place, the following rule was adopted as
pertinent whenever the applicant's examination papers
should indicate that his knowledge of orthography or syntax
was defective: the professor was to report the case

to the Faculty for final disposition. The temper of that
body usually leaned towards a lenient sentence. In June,
1871, Schele sent in the name of a pupil who had submitted
excellent papers for graduation in the department
of French and German, but had "failed lamentably,"—
to use the professor's painful words,—"in his English
spelling." The Faculty seemed to have inquired into his
special deficiencies in this respect; but ultimately decided
to grant him his diploma on condition that he would
promise to "devote himself diligently to English orthography,
"—an occupation of his time, which, possibly, was
soon brought to a termination.

IX. Academic Degrees

Throughout the interval now under review, 1865–
1895, the subject of the degrees was one which was almost
continuously under debate. The remarkable number of
alterations, additions, and revocations that were made,
demonstrates that, during many years, the minds of the
Visitors,—who alone had the power to create or abolish
these degrees, or to broaden or narrow their scope,—was
in a state of conspicuous instability. The historian of all
these expansions, modifications, and eliminations, can
hardly avoid contrasting what may be described as this
gorge or surfeit of academic degrees with the elementary
system of graduate and academical and professional doctorate
devised by the thoughtful intellect of the Father of
the University.[9] There was about the degree of graduate
especially something of the antique simplicity and suggestiveness
of the words, Civis Romanus Sum. Jefferson

would have looked upon the degrees of master of arts and
bachelor of arts, introduced not long after his death, as
altogether superabundant. In the light of the disposition
to establish so many new degrees in addition to these,
exhibited during the period that followed the War between
the States, the moderation of Dunglison, Bonnycastle,
and George Tucker, in being satisfied with the two degrees
of bachelor of arts and master of arts, seems to be
full of an austere restraint. Tucker, it will be recalled,
spoke of the bare title of "graduate" as a "quaint" designation.
Possibly, one or two of the degrees adopted
between 1865 and 1895 would have seemed to him to be
still more deserving of the descriptive application of that
old-fashioned adjective.

But there were, in reality, two sound reasons for the
adoption of additional degrees,—the first of which was
the extraordinary expansion in scientific study during
these years; and the second, the desire to swell the number
of matriculates. The same reasons also, in a measure,
account for the alteration in the ground which the
candidates for the degrees of bachelor of arts, master of
arts, and doctor of philosophy, had to traverse, in order
to win their respective diplomas.

During the first sessions that followed the war, the old
academic division into titled and untitled degrees was retained,
—there were the proficient and the graduate in
the second category, and the bachelor of arts and the
master of arts in the first. The list of studies embraced
in the course for each remained unabbreviated and also
unenlarged. The new scientific spirit had not yet crept
in to modify the conservatism of Board and Faculty, and
the number of students was so satisfactory that there appeared
to be no need of devising means of increasing it.
It was not until about 1868–70 that the first indication of

the revolution which was to modify the old degrees and
add new ones began to crop out; two new degrees were
then established,—that of bachelor of science and that of
bachelor of letters.[10] The first was to be awarded to the
student who had graduated in the Schools of Mathematics,
Natural Philosophy, and Chemistry; obtained certificates
of proficiency in anatomy, comparative anatomy,
physiology, botany, mineralogy, and geology; and a certificate
of distinction in the junior grades of applied mathematics.
He must also show that he had made satisfactory
progress in the School of Analytical Chemistry. On
the other hand, the degree of bachelor of letters was to
be awarded to the student who had graduated in the
Schools of Ancient and Modern Languages, Moral Philosophy,
and History and Literature.

The first alteration in the curriculum of an old degree
took place in the instance of that of bachelor of arts.
The acquisition of this degree had previously called for
graduation in any two of the literary schools, and in any
two of the scientific, with the winning of distinctions in the
junior classes of those remaining literary and scientific
schools in which graduation had not been attempted.
During the session of 1868–69, however, new requirements
were put in force. It then became necessary for
the candidate for the degree to gain diplomas in the
Latin, Greek, chemistry, moral philosophy, French or
German courses, and certificates of proficiency in junior
and intermediate mathematics, physics, and history or
literature. Subsequently, as we shall see, it was still further
modified.

So far, the ground covered by the degree of master of
arts had not been changed. That degree had possessed

such an exalted reputation from its very inception that
the Faculty and Board entertained an almost superstitious
reverence for it just as it was. Indeed, it seemed to
them to be an act of sacrilege to raise an altering hand
against it. The first timid iconoclastic step was taken in
1872, when the oral examinations previously imposed on
the candidate, in review of all the courses in which he had
graduated in preceding years, were reduced to oral examinations
in any two which he had passed successfully previous
to his closing session. In spite of the increase in
the number of scientific studies which were considered
now to be essential to a liberal education, it was possible
that further change in the curriculum of the degree of
master of arts would have been indefinitely deferred had
not the number of students about 1879–80 showed an
alarming falling off. In a report submitted by Professor
Price to the Faculty, and by them to the Board, with
some alterations, it was recommended that the degree of
master of arts should be awarded thereafter to every
student who had passed with credit examinations in the
new courses which had been prescribed for the degree of
bachelor of arts, and had also graduated in a stated additional
number of the academic schools. The conditions
of success suggested in the report for the degree of bachelor
of arts were the acquisition of proficiencies in the intermediate
classes of the Schools of Pure Mathematics,
Latin, Greek, Natural Philosophy, or Moral Philosophy;
graduation in any two of the academic schools; and
the composition of an essay on some subject of science,
history, or literature.[11]

The Faculty approved of the changes thus recommended
so far as they related to the degree of bachelor
of arts, but not so far as they related to the degree of
master. This was simply another proof of the indifference
with which the first degree was regarded, and the
veneration in which the second was held. But it was, in
reality, the first forward movement in that progression
of events which, in the end, was to make the contemned
stone the corner-stone of the new scholastic edifice of the
University. The degree of bachelor of arts was the
earliest to exhibit a spirit of elasticity, a free adaptability
to alteration, and it was ultimately to become, by its exclusive
association with the collegiate or undergraduate
department of the future, the most important, although
not the highest, of all the degrees.

The spirit of innovation, generated as much by the
practical needs of the University as by the broadening of
the general field of education, in time began to show its
presence in a conspicuous way. In April, 1883, a committee
of the Faculty reported to that body a very elaborate
new scheme of academic degrees. First, the degree
of bachelor of arts. This required for its attainment (1)
the winning of a distinction in the senior class in Latin,
and in the junior and intermediate classes in Greek; of a
proficiency in either of the two classes in moral philosophy,
in junior and intermediate mathematics, and in junior
physics; (2) of a proficiency in either of the classes in
English, historical science, and geology; or a diploma in
either the French or German language; of a distinction in
a prearranged course in general chemistry; and (3) graduation
in any two of the ten existing schools. Second,
the degree of bachelor of letters. This was to be
awarded to the student who had received diplomas in
Latin, Greek, and moral philosophy; and also in the

School of Modern Languages, or English, or Historical
Science. Third, the degree of bachelor of science.
This required graduation in the courses of pure
mathematics, natural philosophy, general chemistry, natural
history, and geology. Fourth, the degree of master
of arts. This was to be awarded for graduation in
the Schools of Latin, Greek, Modern Languages, Moral
Philosophy, Pure Mathematics, Natural Philosophy and
General Chemistry. Fifth, the degree of doctor of philosophy.
This called for the completion by a bachelor
of philosophy or bachelor of arts of a graduate course
in any two or more of the literary schools, or in any two
or more of the scientific.[12] Sixth, the degree of doctor of
letters. This was to be conferred upon a bachelor of
letters who had continued his graduate courses in any
two or more of the literary schools. Seventh, the degree
of doctor of science. This was to be awarded to
any student who had won the degree of bachelor of science,
and also had protracted his graduate studies in any
two or more of the scientific courses. Eighth, the degree
of bachelor of philosophy. This was to be conferred on
one who had graduated in any three of the following
schools: Latin, Greek, both French and German, English,
Historical Science, and Moral Philosophy, and in any
two of the remaining schools.

There were very sharp lines of division adhered to in
drafting this elaborate scheme. The first category embraced

such degrees as covered a specialized literary
course; the second, such as covered a specialized scientific
course; the third, such as represented a combination
of literary and scientific studies. To the first belonged
the degrees of bachelor of letters, and doctor of
letters; to the second, the degree of bachelor of science
and doctor of science; and to the third, the degrees of
master of arts, bachelor of arts, bachelor of philosophy
and doctor of philosophy. The doctorate was designed
for students whose intended professions called for previous
research in some special field of letters or of science.
It was necessary that every candidate for a doctorate
should have won the degree of bachelor of arts,
either at the University of Virginia, or at some chartered
seat of learning of recognized standing. He must also
have graduated at the University of Virginia in the
schools in which he proposed to take up a post-graduate
course.

Carefully digested and logically arranged as this system
of degrees appeared to be, and in spite also of its
prompt adoption by the Board, there was a keen feeling
of antagonism to many of its provisions on the part of
persons interested in the welfare of the University. In
a report which the Faculty submitted in June, 1888, they
endeavored, by proposing certain alterations, to allay this
opposition. They suggested (1) that the degree of
bachelor of letters should be confined to graduation in any
four of the following six schools: Latin, Greek, Moral
Philosophy, Modern Languages, English, and Historical
Science; (2) the degree of bachelor of science to graduation
in any four of the following six: Mathematics, Natural
Philosophy, General Chemistry, Natural History
and Geology, Biology and Analytical Chemistry; (3) the
degree of bachelor of arts to acquisition of diplomas in

any five of the academical schools, of which at least two
should be literary, and at least two scientific; (4) the degree
of master of arts to graduation in the Schools of
Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and
Moral Philosophy, and in any two of the remaining academic
schools.

In this recommendation of the Faculty, we discover
increased symptoms of weakening in their determination
to maintain the degree of master of arts in its original
proportions. It was no longer to be obligatory on the
candidate for that degree to win diplomas in the modern
languages, in chemistry, or in English.

The Faculty's report was submitted by the Visitors to a
committee of their own body, the chairman of which was
Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, one of the most experienced
teachers and one of the ripest scholars in the South. The
revolutionary recommendations of this committee, after
examining the report, were substantially as follows: that
a general academic degree, to be known as the degree of
bachelor of arts, should be established, and that no student
should be permitted to become a candidate for the
degree of master of arts unless he had first obtained this
lower degree; that in order to win this lower degree, it
should be necessary for him to have been awarded certificates
of proficiency in the Schools of Latin, Greek,
Mathematics, and Practical Physics, and also in one Teutonic
language, in one Romanic language, in general chemistry,
in logic, and in the history of philosophy. The purpose
of the degree as thus arranged was simply to enable
the student to acquire a fair general knowledge of the
subjects which its curriculum embraced. A thorough
specialistic training was to be deferred to the groups of
elective courses which were to be introduced into the
transformed degree of master of arts. It was presumed

that, with moderate assiduity, the bachelor's degree could
be won in a period of two years.

The practical, apart from the purely scholastic, benefits,
which were expected to accrue from this altered degree,
were (1) that it would draw to the University many
young men, who, but for its adoption, would be driven
away by the difficulty of carrying off the old diploma of a
master of arts; and (2) that it would, by creating a new
class feeling,—through the winning of this honor by
so many,—confirm and widen the spirit of loyalty to the
institution. The scholastic advantage consisted of the
ability of the new bachelor of arts, in becoming a candidate
for the mastership, to take up the precise elective
group of higher studies in the advanced course which was
in the nicest harmony with his tastes. Whether it was
literary or scientific, or a combination of both by being
partly literary and partly scientific, he was to be at liberty
to choose the studies which he preferred, instead of being
forced to confine himself to the inflexible round
which was formerly prescribed for the mastership of
arts. But should he aspire to graduate in all the original
schools of this higher degree, it was the committee's
conviction that he should be permitted to do so.

The report containing these radical suggestions was
referred by the Visitors, in July (1888), to the Faculty,
with simply a request for their judgment. In the ensuing
autumn, two replies,—one embodying the views
of the majority of the members, the other those of the
minority,—were returned; but the Board were so dissatisfied
with this divergence that, on the following day,
they again referred the same question back to the same
body with the expression of the hope that the difference in
opinion would be overcome and a decision common to
all arrived at. The Visitors were, no doubt, convinced

that the innovations would prove unsuccessful unless they
should have the cordial support of the men who were to
be the immediate agents in carrying them out. After an
exhaustive discussion extending over five meetings, the
Faculty drafted a report in which, it seems, they simply
recommended that the academic degrees should be reduced
to three; and that the degree of bachelor of arts
should be awarded to a student who had, apart from the
acquisition of proficiencies, graduated in at least two
studies in a general scheme that embraced nine.

In February, 1889, this report was referred by the
Board to a committee, of which Colonel McCabe was
again the chairman. This committee approved the
Faculty's recommendation that the degrees should be reduced
to those of master of arts, bachelor of arts, and
doctor of philosophy; but they refused to assent to the
change proposed for the new degree of bachelor of arts.
They declared that this degree should embrace such a
circle of studies as was generally considered to be indispensable
as a sound and sure foundation for the liberal
education which the degree of master of arts was presumed
to stand for. In other words, it should be a solid
stepping-stone to that higher and broader platform.
Five times during the interval between 1865 and 1885,—
the committee pointed out,—had the requirements for
this degree been altered in the effort to make it more popular
by making it more attractive. Why had these successive
changes failed to commend it to favor? Chiefly
because the old nomenclature of graduate and proficient,
—which suggested at once its continued inferiority to the
mastership of arts,—had been retained. It was still
looked upon as a badge of consolation for the students
who had fallen down in the endeavor to win the higher degree.
It signified a partial defeat, not a full victory, in

the possessor's collegiate career. The committee, in order
to remove this traditional taint from the degree, recommended
that the sole purpose to be represented by it
should be the acquisition of a sound general knowledge of
the subjects to be embraced in its curriculum, and that in
place of the long descended nomenclature of graduate and
proficient, the simple words "passed successfully" should
be substituted.[13]

The conclusions reached by the Board,—which were
only partly in accord with the committee's recommendations,
—were incorporated in the report which the rector,
W. C. N. Randolph, submitted to the Governor at the
end of the session of 1888–9. All academic degrees, except
the following, were abolished: (1) the degree of
master of arts,—which was to be awarded to the student
who had graduated in the Schools of Latin, Greek, French
and German, Moral Philosophy, Pure Mathematics, Natural
Philosophy, and General Chemistry; (2) the degree
of bachelor of arts,—to be conferred on the student who
had "passed successfully" examinations in Latin, Greek,
or logic, mathematics, physics, chemistry, general history,
one Romanic language, and one Teutonic; (3) the degree
of doctor of philosophy,—to be awarded to the student
who had won the degree of bachelor of arts or master of
arts, and completed a full course in two or more literary
schools or in two or more scientific. Either of the preliminary
degrees was to be accepted as sufficient, whether
obtained at the University of Virginia, or at some other
institution of respectable standing. In every instance,
however, the student must have received a diploma at the
University of Virginia in the particular study or studies in
which he had announced his intention of pursuing a line of
post-graduate research.

X. Academic Degrees, Continued

The scheme of academic degrees just described, having
been thoughtfully framed both from a practical and a
scholastic point of view, might have been confidently expected
to operate satisfactorily from the beginning. But
it does not appear to have done so. Each degree stood
the scholastic test, but none of them stood successfully
that practical test which a contemporary member of the
Faculty had in mind when he said that what was "really
wanted was a degree attractive enough to induce men to
stay at the University more than one year."

How was this end, which was so much desired, to be
brought about? The Board, at their meeting in December,
1893, seems to have returned, in the main, to the recommendations
of the McCabe committee of 1885, which
they now ventured to hope would accomplish the purpose
by proving more popular than the modifications which
they had adopted: (1) the degree of bachelor of arts was
to be conferred on the student who had succeeded in eight
courses selected from the following list, of which, however,
at least one must be taken from each group: ancient
languages, modern languages, history and literature,
mathematical sciences, natural sciences, philosophical sciences;
(2) every candidate for the degree of master of
arts must have won the diploma of a bachelor of arts; and
he was to be required to pursue a course of advanced or
graduate study in at least four schools, all of which were
to bear a close relationship to each other. For instance,
the circle elected might be Latin, Greek, moral philosophy
or history, one Teutonic language and one Romanic language.
This course led up to the degree of master of
arts in letters. Or the circle might be mathematics, natural
philosophy, natural history and biology, or mineralogy

and geology, and the applied chairs. This course led
up to the degree of master of arts in science. Or the circle
might be partly literary and partly scientific,—for instance,
Latin, Greek, natural philosophy, or one Teutonic
and one Romanic language, mathematics, or natural philosophy,
or mathematics and astronomy. This course led
up to the degree of master of arts in philosophy. No
change of importance was to be made in the requirements
for the degree of doctor of philosophy.

The fundamental purpose of this scheme, which was
proposed by the committee of which Colonel McCabe
was still the chairman, was to increase the popularity of
the degrees by broadening their elective scope. The student,
under the provisions of this arrangement, was able
to exercise a greater latitude of choice in selecting his
studies, and was, therefore, more likely, not only to follow
his natural preference, but also, in doing so, to feel
more disposed to remain for a longer period at the University.
The new system was not to be put in force until
the advent of the session of 1892–93.

Before taking up the controversy which the abolition of
the original fixed curriculum for the degree of master of
arts aroused, it will be pertinent to compare the number
of winners of that degree belonging to successive intervals
between 1865 and 1892. In the course of the first fifteen
years,—when the list of studies prescribed for it remained
unaltered,—the proportion of masters was but
one for every sixty-two students in attendance. Between
1882 and 1884,—when there was allowed a restricted
freedom of election,—the ratio was one to approximately
every twenty matriculates. Between 1885 and
1892,—when this freedom of choice had been withdrawn,
—there were only thirty masters of arts in all.
As the annual average attendance in the academic schools

had now advanced to two hundred students, the falling off
in the proportion of masters, during this period, was
from one in twenty to one in forty-seven,—which proved
that the previous privilege of election, taken away now,
had allured a larger number of candidates.

It had been often asserted that the scholastic reputation
of the University of Virginia had been acquired
through the high standard adopted for the original degree
of master of arts; and that this reputation had
been prolonged by the retention of that standard. No
alumni were more sure of the correctness of this opinion
than a large majority of the men who had won
the mastership by surmounting all its early undisputed
difficulties. They looked at the new requirements for the
degree from a sentimental and scholastic point of view.
They did not consider at all those requirements in the
practical way which the Board and Faculty were compelled
to keep in mind, if the prosperity,—and it might
be even the continued existence of the institution,—was
to be preserved. If the primary benefit of education is
what the followers of Locke declared it to be; namely, the
mental drill which study gives, then the course embraced
in the original degree of master of arts was quite as fruitful
as any that could have been adopted. If, on the other
hand, the disciples of the opposing school are right in
thinking that it is the knowledge, and not the drill, that is
of paramount importance, then that degree, as formerly
arranged, fell, as time advanced, altogether short in many
of the most useful branches of modern science. To hold
the old degree up to eulogy because there had been no
change in its requirements during the long interval between
1832 and 1882,—except the addition to its curriculum
of one entire school and a section of another,—was,
as the Board correctly said, to announce that many

studies, now very properly considered essential to a liberal
education, had been ignored. That charge, as we
have seen, had, before the War of Secession, been specifically
brought against the old degree by the editor of the
Southern Literary Messenger, who was decrying the absence
from the circle of its studies of a School of History
and Literature.

It is a fact of somewhat curious interest that the same
disparagement was now launched against the new degree
by the signers of the remonstrance sent to the Board in
November, 1891. "A student," this remonstrance asserted,
"might become a master of arts without any
knowledge of chemistry, or physics, or psychology, or
logic; and with only knowledge enough of Latin and
French to pass the intermediate classes. Was it becoming
the dignity of the University to confer its highest degree
upon one who had shown no scholarly knowledge of
the languages, ancient or modern, and might not have
stood a single examination in pure mathematics? Are
not standards being sacrificed to supposed means of increasing
the numerical attendance upon the institution?"

The Board, in their reply, so far admitted the pertinency
of this last interrogatory as to say that "it had
long been a source of weakness to the University that
there had not been a reputable degree for undergraduates
which appealed to any large number of students of fair
ability and determined industry, who were desirous, not
of the specialized training of a schoolmaster, but of a
sound general knowledge of such subjects as are commonly
deemed essential in any scheme of liberal education."
"The original degree of bachelor of arts is not such a
degree," they added. "On the other hand, the new degree,
the basis of the altered degree of master of arts, is
at once sound as to scholarship and attractive to the great

body of the students. Five times had that degree been
changed between 1865 and 1885,—once in every four
years,—yet few of the young men had applied for it. A
tacit stigma attached to it because it was at bottom an
advertisement of academic failure. A degree of bachelor
of arts was needed such as would induce the large
majority of the academic students to stay long enough at
the University to acquire the basis of a liberal education.
Not more than two-fifths remained more than one year."
The Board further remarked that the degree of master
of arts had "attained such an exaggerated importance"
in the minds of alumni and collegians alike that "it was
impossible for any other degree to flourish at the University
at all." "It had increased," they said, "the tendency
in the direction of disassociating the institution
from the life of the State by narrowing its capacity for
practical usefulness, and by restricting its chief function
to that of a mere nursery of specialists and technical
scholars."

Professor Garnett pointed out that, owing to this "exaggerated
importance" of the master's degree, all schools
not enlisted in its round of courses "were placed in an inferior
position and deprived of their natural support."
"This," he said, "had become a serious condition, now
that the number of them had been so much increased."
It was the conviction of this experienced member of
the Faculty, a master of arts himself, that the "recent
changes had given greater freedom of choice in studies,
and still preserved such requirements in language, literature,
and science, as should characterize a well-educated
man."

Professor Richard Heath Dabney, also a master of
arts, and one who had finished his education in foreign
universities, expressed himself very vigorously in favor

of the new degrees.[14] The superiority of the innovation,
he said in substance, lay in its perfect flexibility. The
course for the preliminary degree of bachelor of arts
would give the student a fair knowledge of nearly all the
subjects necessary to be studied for the acquisition of a
liberal education, while the alternative schools open to
election in the scheme for the degree of master of arts
would leave him free to pursue exactly the advanced line
of investigation which his natural bent would cause him
to prefer. In other words, if his tastes leaned to the
literary side, they could be gratified by taking up the literary
schools; if they leaned to the scientific side, then
scientific schools could be chosen; and if they were both
literary and scientific, then he would find open to his industry
a double field in which to follow them. Moreover,
as Professor Dabney also pointed out, the new system
of degrees tended to foster a spirit of harmony
among the members of the Faculty, for, under its operation
"each professor felt that his department was given
an equal chance for development and influence." Furthermore,
the practical purpose which the alteration in
the two degrees had in view would encourage a closer
affiliation with other institutions because it would allow
credit for baccalaureate work done in them, so soon as
the holder of that degree, obtained in some of these institutions,
should seek admission to the more advanced
classes of the master's course in the University of Virginia.

At first, important restrictions were imposed on this
privilege, since few of these outside colleges even pretended
to exacting standards of scholarship. In the beginning,
the bachelors of these colleges were compelled to

traverse at the University of Virginia practically the same
ground which they had already gone over; and this fact
diverted many talented young men to other seats of learning
that were more liberal in giving credit for the courses
of study which these young men had already finished.

By the session of 1895–6, some additional changes had
been made in the requirements for the degree of bachelor
of arts. The scientific group of subjects was still limited
to (1) physics and chemistry; and (2) biology and
geology. The course to be pursued by the candidate was
to consist of at least nine studies,[15] and at least one of
them was to be taken from each of the following groups:
(1) Latin and Greek; (2) French and German; (3)
English language, English literature, and general history;
(4) moral philosophy and political economy; (5)
mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy, (6) physics and
chemistry; (7) biology and geology. This new arrangement
of the baccalaureate course was supposed to create
a broader and more liberal foundation for the advanced
studies embraced in the degree of master of arts.

During the session of 1893–4, the requirements for
the degree of doctor of philosophy were as follows: no
student was to be permitted to become a candidate for it
unless he could show the diploma of a bachelor or master
of arts, conferred either by the University of Virginia,
or by some other chartered institution of learning
approved by the University's Faculty. He must also
have passed examinations in the post-graduate courses of
two schools which he had selected as those in which he
wished to continue his special researches. In addition,
he must have submitted an acceptable dissertation bearing
upon the subject of his major study.

At the end of the Seventh Period, 1865–1895, there

was in operation at the University of Virginia a logical
and flexible system of degrees. First, the degree of bachelor
of arts,—which was designed to afford a thorough
and well proportioned education in all the six great provinces
of human knowledge; namely, ancient languages,
modern languages, history and literature, mathematical
science, natural science, and philosophical science. Second,
the degree of master of arts. This was established
for those students who should wish to extend to wider
ground certain completed undergraduate courses, with a
view to laying a broader foundation for purely professional
study, or to equipping themselves for the calling of
teachers, or to following a line of special investigation in
the field of either letters or science. Third, the doctorate
of philosophy,—which was created for those who
were anxious to push their finished work for their second
degree into still larger and richer fields of research.