University of Virginia Library

4. THIRD PERIOD
THE BUILDING OF THE UNIVERSITY

I. Rockfish Gap Commission

It was on February 21, 1818, that the bill for the establishment of a State university received the final approval of the General Assembly. The clause providing for the choice of the site was vague and general: it simply required that it should be "convenient and proper"; and as these words left a broad field for selection, the decision was really reserved for a Board of twenty-four Commissioners. This Board was to be appointed, not by the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, but by the Governor and Council. Cabell used his influence to have this latter method adopted because he looked upon it as the first important step towards the designation of Charlottesville as the site; for was not the Governor a citizen of Albemarle, and in picking out the Commissioners might he not be biassed by that fact to nominate men known to be friendly to the selection of Central College?

But there was another fact quite as auspicious: a Commissioner was to be chosen from each senatorial district, and the districts situated east of the Blue Ridge were more numerous than those lying west. With the rivalry narrowed down to Staunton, Lexington, and Charlottesville, the local partizanship of the eastern majority would probably tip the scale on the side of Charlottesville even should the Commissioners from beyond the mountains,

who were in the minority, cast their votes as a body in favor of a western site.

But Cabell was not satisfied with creating all these propitious conditions in advance: he was acutely solicitous that Jefferson should serve as a member of the Board; and that he should induce Madison to consent to his appointment also. The influence of these two distinguished men, Cabell rightly anticipated, would carry extraordinary weight with their associates. Deeply interested as Jefferson was in the approaching conference, he debated with hesitation for some time the wisdom of his becoming a Commissioner. "There are fanatics both in religion and politics," he said in reply to Cabell, "who, without knowing me personally, have long been taught to consider me as a rawhead and bloody bones; and as we can afford to lose no votes in that body (General Assembly), I do think that it would be better for you to be named for our district. Do not consider this to be a mock modesty. It is the cool and deliberate act of my own judgment. I believe that the institution would be more popular without me than with me, and this is the most important consideration, and I am confident that you would be a more efficient member of the Board than I would be." Cabell submitted Jefferson's candid suggestion of his own unfitness to a parley of their friends, who decided unanimously and wisely in favor of Jefferson's nomination as the Commissioner of the Albemarle district. Madison was appointed for the Orange district. Their fellows on the Board were men of substance, distinction, and influence. The full membership of that body embraced Creed Taylor, of Cumberland, Peter Randolph, of Dinwiddie, William Brockenbrough, of Henrico, Archibald Rutherford of Rockingham, Archibald Stuart, of Augusta, James Breckinridge, of Botetourt, Henry E. Watkins, of Charlotte,

James Madison, of Orange, A. T. Mason, of Loudoun, Hugh Holmes, of Frederick, Philip C. Pendleton, of Berkeley, Spencer Roane, of Hanover, James M. Taylor, of Montgomery, John G. Jackson, of Harrison, Thomas Wilson, of Monongahela, Philip Slaughter, of Culpeper, W. H. Cabell, of Buckingham, N. H. Claiborne, of Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, of Albemarle, W. A. G. Facie, of Prince William, William Jones, and four other, Commissioners, who sent word that they were unable to be present to take part in the deliberations. But it was remarked at the time that the absentees represented that part of the State which had always been loyal to the College of William and Mary.

The specific duty imposed on this Board by the Legislature was to report to that body (1) a site for the University; (2) a plan for the building of it; (3) the branches of learning which should be taught therein; (5) the number and character of the professorships; and (5) such general provisions for the organization and government of the institution as the General Assembly ought to adopt. All these requirements were precisely in harmony with Jefferson's wishes, and they had quite probably been indirectly, through Cabell, proposed by him. An additional clause in the Act, -which, no doubt, caused him equal satisfaction, as increasing the chance of Central College winning the coveted prize, -authorized the Board to "receive any voluntary contributions, whether conditional or absolute, in land, money, or other property, which may he offered through them to the President and Directors of the Literary Fund for the benefit of the University."

On Saturday, August 1, the Commissioners assembled at the Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ride Mountains. This spot had been selected as lying on the great natural line

of division between the western and eastern sections of Virginia; and as the Gap was crossed by a public road that was very much frequented, and was near the centre of the State, it could be reached by an equality of exertion from the Potomac and the Carolina border, from Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River. In our own age of rapid, easy, and constant transit by steam, it is difficult to take in fully the inconveniences and discomforts which all the Commissioners had to endure in order to attend the Conference. There were lines of stages, it is true, running from Richmond to Western Virginia, and from Lynchburg to Washington, or the reverse, but it was necessary for many of the Commissioners who were not travelling in their own carriages to go some distance before they could connect with one of these cumbrous public coaches. After it had been caught at some small roadside tavern, a journey of two days was required, in some instances, before the Gap could be reached. The rough jolting, the deep stallings, the blinding dust, and the inclement weather, which was so often encountered in these primitive vehicles, must have been irksome and fatiguing to men already past their prime. General Breckinridge, of Botetourt, Mr. Claiborne, of Franklin, and Mr. Taylor, of Montgomery, who were compelled to come all the way from the Southwest, or Judge Cabell, Judge Creed Taylor, or Mr. Watkins, from the equally remote Southside, quite probably traversed the intervening ground in their own carriages, driven by their own servants. Mr. Holmes, of Frederick, Judge Jackson, of Harrison, Mr. Pendleton, of Berkeley, and Mr. Wilson, of Monongahela, were able to make the journey more easily, whether by stage or private coach, since good turnpikes had been constructed through the Alleghanies and down the Valley; but not so with those whose homes were situated east, south, or north of Charlottesville, for, in these regions of the State, the roads were often in a condition of aboriginal imperfection. August was chosen as the month for the Conference, not only because the weather was certain to be then at its best, and the highways more passable, but also because. the larger number of the persons to attend it were judges or lawyers, who, during that month, were in the habit of taking their annual vacation. This too was the time of the year when the mountain resorts were most visited, and some of the Commissioners, following.-their annual custom, could, after participating in the Conference, continue their journey to the Sulphur, the Hot, or the Sweet Springs.

There was not within the bounds of the Commonwealth a more romantic prospect than the one which was unrolled before the gaze of the Commissioners as they climbed up from the side of the Valley or of Piedmont to the tavern that stood in the Gap. Here, towards the north and towards the south alike, the peaks of the chain rose to a cloudy height; and far below, in every direction of the compass, the region spread out like a gigantic map, the great Valley on the one hand, and on the other, a landscape broken by foothills, plateaus, forests, streams, and cultivated lands, as far as the eye could reach. The country, in this double picture, promised in its extensiveness and in its fertility even more than it, at this time, actually possessed, for it was still only sparsely inhabited in comparison with the surface of the Old World. The little company of thoughtful men, who, on the first day of August, 1818, looked down on that wide panorama, from the green mountain flanks, might justifiably enough have been meditating more on its future than on its present, in associating it, and all the territory beyond, with the university which they were about to define in

character and fix in site. Where they saw an hundred people now, there would be a thousand tomorrow; and they were not too sanguine in anticipating that the seat of learning which they were about to locate, would shed its kindly light, either directly or indirectly, over them all for centuries.

But if the magnificence of the views from these mountain heights was in harmony with the noble enterprise which they had come to launch, the actual place of meeting was plain and democratic enough to suit the birthplace of a popular university. It was a tavern, spacious and comfortable, but like all its fellows of that day lacking in pretension to even the simplest elements of architectural beauty. Around it, however, there must have been always a scene of extraordinary liveliness, for the regular stages, private carriages, and the jingling caravans of canvas-covered wagons, with their ribbon-bedecked teams, passing in a broken stream eastward and westward, halted there to allow the horses to be fed or watered, and the travelers to breakfast or to dine. This customary animation was conspicuously increased by the arrival of the Commissioners, so many of whom had brought with them their own coaches and servants. Never, indeed, before had there been such a throng of distinguished citizens under its roof.

There has been handed down the tradition that the first session of the Conference was held in the large public dining-room, an apartment which possessed no other pieces of furniture besides a long, rough table and numerous well-worn split-bottom chairs, such as were then in common use in the log-huts of the mountaineers. Jefferson, the most eminent member of the Board, was promptly chosen to preside; and it was, perhaps, in some measure, due to his moderate and urbane spirit that the

proceedings were, from start to finish, characterized by so much smoothness and harmony. There was a sharp antagonism in the views advanced as to the proper site for the new university, but no bitterness entered into this diversity of opinion; or if it really existed below the surface, it was held in check by the silent force of the quiet and impartial bearing of the chairman, who, as all were aware, was so earnestly in favor of Charlottesville's selection, and yet who did not permit an opposing partizanship in others present to ruffle his temper or to color his decisions. "If any undue influence (in favor of Central College), was exercised," Judge T. G. Jackson, the Commissioner from the Harrison district, has recorded, "there certainly never was an instance of greater forbearance or moderation in its exercise. Mr. Jefferson did not even intimate a wish at any time or in any shape except when his name was called and his vote given." [35]

The choice to be made did not concern simply the welfare of literature and education. Had that been the sole issue, the dignity of it would have explained the self-restraint shown in the discussions of the body; but there was an inflammatory political question involved, which was known to all, whether or not frankly mentioned and discussed, for every man present was convinced that the choice of a site for the University would give a powerful bias to the choice of a site for the new Capital, should the General Assembly determine to abandon Richmond as it had formerly deserted Williamsburg. The antagonism which such a thought was so calculated to raise did

not crop up in word or act; and there was apparently a common desire, even in pushing individual and sectional preferences, to do so in a spirit, and in a manner, worthy of the great purpose which had brought them together. The first day of the session seems to have been given up. to a debate on the advantages which each of the three places canvassed, -Staunton, Washington College; and Central College, -possessed as a site for the projected university. It was admitted by all that there was no difference in the fertility and salubrity of the respective regions in which they were situated; the decision, therefore, rested upon the two vital points: (1) which of the three could offer the most opulent inducements in the way of buildings and endowments; and above all, (2) which of the three was nearest to the centre of the State. If any proposal was made in the name of Staunton by her representative, Judge Archibald Stuart, it was only done in the form of a promise of a future appropriation of money and land; but Washington College and Central College alike were in a position at once to contribute substantially, in both buildings and endowments, to the new institution, should either be chosen as its site. Washington College offered to transfer one hundred shares in the stock of the James River Company, the thirty-one acres on which its buildings were standing, its philosophical apparatus, its expected interest in the funds of the Cincinnati Society, the libraries of its two debating societies, and three thousand dollars in cash. In addition, the people of Lexington at large gave their bond to contribute the sum of $17,878. But a more valuable donation still was the estate of 3,337 acres of agricultural land, twenty-two acres of suburban property, fifty-seven slaves, and all his remaining personalty, which John Robinson, a citizen of Rockbridge, would convey to the President and Directors of the Literary Fund for the benefit of the university after his death, should Washington College be preferred.

The offer submitted by the Central College was also an imposing one. It consisted of its entire possessions the one hundred and ninety acres purchased of Perry; a pavilion and its dormitories "already far advanced"; a second pavilion also, with its appendix of dormitories, which was to be completed before the end of the year; the proceeds in hand of the sales of two glebes, aggregating $3,280.86, and of a subscription list of $41,248. The whole of this last amount had not yet been collected, and it was also subject to deductions for sums due under existing contracts. A deed conveying these several properties to the Literary Fund had already been executed and recorded in the clerk's office of Albemarle county.

The value of the estate offered by Washington College as compared with the value of the one offered by Central College, -had the difference between the two been accepted as the final test in the choice of a site, would have given the superior claim to the institution in which Jefferson was so zealously interested. But he was not satisfied to rest his chances of winning the prize on this foundation alone; the query in the minds of the Commissioners which he knew was to shape their decision more powerfully than any other was this: which of the three sites lies nearest to the centre of the State's population? Having fully anticipated this controlling point, he came amply fortified with statistics to uphold his contention in favor of Central College. It required little shrewdness on his part to foresee that Lexington, and not Staunton, was the formidable rival which had to be overthrown, for Lexington alone of the two had substantial advantages in buildings and endowments to offer

at once. The information which he was now to use so effectively had been collected with characteristic comprehensiveness and minuteness: through Alexander Garrett, he had written to each court clerk in Virginia, and from him obtained a statement of the distance of his county-seat from some well known town in the State, whilst additional facts relating to transportation, highways, and population had been gathered up from the same or similar obscure but reliable sources. With this mass carefully sifted and skilfully arranged to guide him, he had patiently and industriously constructed a large map, which indicated alike the geographical centre of the State and the centre of its population. This map was the most esteemed part of his baggage in his journey to Rockfish Gap.

During the progress of the debate which sprang up on the subject of centrality the first day, Jefferson sat in silent attention to it until the arguments on that point for and against Staunton, Washington College, and Central College had caused such confusion in the minds of the Commissioners that they appeared entirely incapable of arriving at an accurate and common conclusion. It was at this critical moment that he modestly drew forth that innocent-looking blunderbus, his map, and quietly spread it out for the inspection of the body.[36] While the vote was not taken at this sitting, there is reason to think that the evidence, so unostentatiously presented in this graphic form, proved so unanswerable that it brought about the decision announced a few days afterwards.

What did the map demonstrate? First, that, if a straight line was drawn from the mouth of the Chesapeake

Bay to the Ohio River, by way of Central College, Rockfish Gap, and Staunton, there would be a difference of only 15,000 individuals between the population south and the population north of its course. On the other hand, the number of persons inhabiting the region north of a line drawn from the same point through Lexington to the Ohio River was 91,009 in excess of the number residing south of that line. There were 150,121 more white people to be found to the east of a line drawn from south to north along the crest of the Blue Ridge than were to be found to the west of it. Draw the like north and south line through Staunton, and the numerical superiority in favor of the east would be 221,733. Draw it again through Lexington, and the eastern majority would be 175,191. If, however, it was drawn through Central College, the majority would be only 36,315. In other words, whether the line was drawn from east to west, or south to north, through Central College, the numerical difference between the two sections of the divided population would approach nearest to equality.[37] On the other hand, if the decision was to be governed by a comparison of distances, then the argument in its favor was quite as strong, according to the figures of the same necromantic map. From Staunton to the boundary line of North Carolina, as the crow would fly, was one hundred and twelve and a half miles, and from Staunton to the Potomac, one hundred and ten, -a difference of two and a half miles. In the case of Lexington, the difference between the two like reaches was fifty-two and a half miles. On the other hand, the difference in the case of Central College was only eleven and a half miles, -about nine miles more than marked the situation of Staunton, but forty-one and a half miles less than distinguished that of Lexington. It was Lexington, not Staunton, which caused Jefferson the most serious apprehension, and it was the pretension of Washington College that he was really aiming to prick.

There has long been a tradition that, besides securing these convincing statistics in support of his claims for Central College, he hunted down the name of every man and woman in Albemarle county, who had passed their eightieth mile-stone, and presented the list, which was of extraordinary length, to the Conference as a proof that the salubrity of its climate was as productive of Methuselahs as ancient Judea. Doubtless, some jocularity was excited by the reading of this list, but it did not strike the less straight to its mark because of that genial accompaniment.

After carefully examining the map, the Commissioners agreed to defer their decision as to the site from Saturday until Monday, and in the meanwhile, a very distinguished committee was appointed to draw up the statement required by the General Assembly touching the plan of the buildings, the courses of instruction, the number of professors, and the provisions for organization and government. Its members were Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, General Breckinridge, Judges Roane, Stuart, and Dade. Now, there was not in Virginia, at this time, an equal number of men more competent to draft the necessary recommendations within a period of forty-eight hours than these seven Commissioners; but the principal contents of the report that was submitted would seem to prove that it had been composed by the brain of Jefferson alone, -not under the roof of the tavern where they were assembled, but in the philosophical and stimulating quiet of Monticello. No doubt, the manuscript of most

of its clauses had accompanied the map to Rockfish Gap, under cover of the same portmanteau stored away in the boot of his carriage. If any amendments to these particular parts were offered by members of the committee, no record of that fact has survived; and all had probably too much discernment to think .that any change would improve the substance of that remarkable document.

At least two additions to it, however, were made after Jefferson's arrival on the ground: first the offer of the Board of Trustees of Washington College and the provisional donation by John Robinson; and second, the insertion of the name of Central College as the place finally adopted as the site for the projected university. This decision was reached in the course of the meeting of the Commissioners on Monday. When the votes were counted, it was found that Breckinridge, Pendleton, and John M. Taylor had expressed a preference for Lexington; Stuart and Wilson for Staunton; and the remainder of the Commissioners for Charlottesville. The selection of the latter site was then unanimously confirmed, in a spirit of harmony worthy of the highest demands of popular education, which all were anxious to advance in spite of natural local aspirations. A conciliatory attitude had distinguished the members of the Conference throughout their deliberations, upon which Jefferson commented in feeling language at the close. Adjournment did not take place until Tuesday, August 4. In the meanwhile, the report had been read and adopted.

II. The Report

In writing to John Adams, several years afterwards, Jefferson somewhat modestly declared that the Report consisted simply of "outlines addressed to a legislative

body, and not of details, such as would have been more suitable had it been addressed to a learned academy. "But however briefly and succinctly couched, it is perhaps the most pregnant and suggestive document of its kind that has been issued in the history of American Education. Few men of his day had given the penetrating and discriminating thought to the subject which he had done; here, in a very narrow compass, will be found the kernel of every conviction that he had reached as to the proper college architecture, the true aims of both elementary and advanced instruction, the branches of learning that should be taught in a university, the inadvisability of sectarianism in its management, the methods of governing its students, and the duties which should be incumbent upon its board.

As this report was drawn with direct reference to the University of Virginia, and afterwards shaped the general character of its whole system, a synopsis of its most salient features will be distinctly pertinent to our subject. In proposing a plan for the architectural setting of the institution as required by the Legislature, Jefferson simply repeats the scheme which he was already carrying out in. the lawn, pavilions, and dormitories of Central College. To it, however, he adds a large building "in the middle of the grounds," which was his earliest public foreshadowing of the present Rotunda. With respect to the branches of learning to be taught in the new seat of learning, he first dwells upon the conspicuous benefits to accrue from elementary and advanced instruction respectively, and combats the perverse idea of those persons who consider the sciences as useless acquirements, or at least, such as the private purse alone should pay for. On the contrary, he said, a great establishment

in which all the sciences should be embraced was far beyond the means of the individual, and it must either derive its being from public patronage . or not exist at all. In such an establishment, the following courses should, in his judgment, be introduced: (1) the ancient languages, including Hebrew, as well as Latin and Greek; (2) the modern languages, -French, Spanish, Italian, German and Anglo-Saxon; (3) mathematics, -algebra, fluxions, geometry, and architecture; (4) physico-mathematics, mechanics, statics, dynamics, pneumatics, acoustics, optics, astronomy and geography; physics or natural philosophy, chemistry, and mineralogy; (6) botany and zoology; (7) anatomy and medicine; (8) government, -political economy, history, and the law of nature and nations; (9) municipal law; and (10) ideology, -general grammar, ethics, rhetoric, belles-lettres and the fine arts.

Jefferson was regretfully aware that, without more preparatory schools than existed in Virginia at that time to train the youths who intended to enter the University, its standards in the ancient languages, -tuition in which he so highly valued, -would necessarily be damaged. No greater obstruction to that particular study, he remarks in the Report, could be suggested than the presence, the intrusion, and the noisy turbulence of small boys; and, said he, if they are to be permitted to go to the University to acquire the rudiments of these languages, they may be so numerous that the characteristics which should belong to it as a scat of higher learning, will be submerged in those of an ordinary grammar school. He pressed upon the consideration of the General Assembly the expediency of erecting a system of intermediate academies, for, unless they were set up, the

University would be overwhelmed with pupils not at all fitted by their previous schooling to uphold its scholarship.

The proposal of a course in Anglo-Saxon was a novel one in those times, when its study was confined to a few private investigators. "It will form," he said, "the first link in the chain of an historical review of our language through all its successive changes to the present day; and will constitute the foundation of that critical instruction in it which ought to be found in a seminary of general learning." He candidly admitted in the Report that only a single professor for both medicine and surgery was possible at first, as the population of Charlottesville and the surrounding region was not as yet sufficiently large to justify the erection of a hospital, where students would enjoy the practical advantage of clinical lectures and surgical operations. Only the theory of medicine and surgery as a science was to be taught. Anatomy, however, was to be fully covered. The Report, in addition, recommended that no chair of divinity should be established, for to do so, it said, would be repugnant to that principle of the Constitution which puts all religious sects on a footing of equality. It advised that, for the present at least, only ten professors should be chosen, and that a maximum for their salaries should be determined. Whilst no formal provision for gymnastics was suggested, the expediency of encouraging manual exercise, military manoeuvres, and tactics in general, was urged; so also was instruction in the arts which embellish life, such as dancing, music, and drawing; and finally, -and this was perhaps the most original feature of the Report, -it proposed that training in the handicrafts should be given.

From some points of view, the most distinctly Jeffersonian

recommendation was the one that a system of government should be devised for the students which should be entirely devoid of every form of coercion. All sense of fear should be banished. "The human character," so the Report asserted, "is susceptible of other incitements to correct conduct more worthy of employ and of better effect. Pride of character, laudable ambition, and moral dispositions are innate correctives of the indiscretions of that lively age. A system founded on reason and comity will be more likely to nourish in the minds of our youth the combined spirit of order and self-respect."

The Report, still following closely Jefferson's previously expressed opinions, further recommended that all questions concerning qualifications for entrance, the arrangement of the hours of lecture, the establishment of public examinations, the bestowal of prizes and degrees, should be entrusted to the board of visitors. It also laid down the additional duties of this board, the most important of which were represented to be: the general care of the, buildings and grounds, and the other properties of the University; the appointment of all the necessary agents; the selection and removal of professors; the prescribing and grouping of the courses of instruction; the adoption of regulations for the government and discipline of the students; the determining of the tuition fees and dormitory rents; the drawing from the Literary Fund of the annuity to which the University would be entitled; and the general superintendence and direction of all the affairs of the institution. The Report, in closing, advised that the board should convene twice a year; that it should nominate a rector; and that it should enjoy the right to use a common seal, to plead and be impleaded in all courts of justice, and to receive subscriptions and donations, real and personal. Appended to

the document were two statements, -one indicating the amount of property which John Robinson was willing to devise to Washington College, should it be chosen as the site of the new university; the other, the amount which the Central College was ready to deliver at once, on the same condition as to itself.

III. Struggle for the University Site

Not until November 20, 1818, did Jefferson send the Report on to Cabell, the representative of the district in the upper chamber, to whom it was now intrusted for delivery to the proper officials. Cabell's first step was to print the manuscript, and his next, to hand one copy of it to the President of the Senate and another to the Speaker of the House. On the second morning of the session, it was brought to the attention of both bodies, and its reading, -so we are informed by William F. Gordon, now a member of the General Assembly, and a staunch supporter of the University scheme, -was followed by exclamations of "universal admiration." A bill was promptly introduced in the lower chamber to carry into effect the recommendations of the Report. This bill was under the patronage of Mr. Taylor, of Chesterfield county, who had been selected by the pilots of the measure because he seemed to be entirely disentangled from the meshes of local interests and ambitions. Opposition was expected from the start by Cabell and Gordon, who were marshalling the partizans of Central College, -the one in the Senate, the other in the House. The bill, with the Report appended, was referred to a select committee which contained a majority in favor of passing it; and a further auspicious condition was that the

delegation from the region of the Kanawha River were frankly well disposed towards the measure.

The advocates of the Lexington site in the committee urged, with persistence, that the clause recommending Central College should be expunged, and a blank substituted for it; and also that the bill should be held back for more careful scrutiny before this blank should be filled up. The members from Rockbridge in the committee were especially vehement in questioning the correctness of Jefferson's way of arriving at the centre of population. They were supported by Chapman Johnson, who represented Augusta county in the Senate. He asserted in the presence of Cabell and Gov. Preston, that, to start the line of division at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, "was to make it nearer to the southern than to the northern side of the State." This suggestion seems to have worried Cabell, and he at once wrote to Monticello for information to combat it. In his reply, Jefferson acknowledged, what was obvious, that at its commencement, the line was nearer to North Carolina than it was to Maryland; but was not the area towards the north entirely occupied by water without any inhabitants except numerous fish and many wild fowl? "Wherever you may decide to begin," he added, "the direction of the line of equal division is not a matter of choice. It must from thence take whatever direction an equal division of the population demands; and the census proves this to pass near Charlottesville, Rockfish Gap, and Staunton."

Some of the advocates of Lexington shrewdly laid off the southern half of the State in the form of a parallelogram and the northern half in the form of a triangle. This method, Jefferson gently intimated, was suggested

by ingenious minds seeking to force the situation in favor of their preferred site. As the whole State was in a triangular shape, why should not each half be made to conform to that fact instead of only one? If the line of equal division was drawn straight from east to west, Lexington would be thrown out of the contest at once by its distance from the centre of population. Not so Charlottesville. Run that line north and south, -again would Lexington be thrust out, but again would Charlottesville successfully stand the test. "Run your lines in whichever direction you please," exclaimed Jefferson, triumphantly, "they will pass close to Charlottesville, and for the good reason that it is truly central to the white population."

At the third meeting, the Committee declined to strike the words "Central College" from the bill. The measure was then reported to the House in its original form; but here it again ran upon the ugly snag that had threatened to wreck it in the committee room: the advocates of Lexington again disputed the correctness of Jefferson's calculations, and demanded that the vote upon the bill should be deferred until they had been given an opportunity to refute them. Cabell soon began to feel doubt as to its passage, for he had found out that the party opposing the acceptance of the Central College site, -which consisted principally of the delegation from the West, -had decided that, should they be unable to substitute Lexington for Charlottesville, they would endeavor to overthrow the whole university scheme; and in this course, they counted on the support of those members who favored the permanent breaking up and dispersal of the Literary Fund.

Cabell plucked up heart once more when privately informed by his colleague in the Senate from Clarksburg

that the entire delegation from the Northwest with one exception, -twenty-one members, -had determined to stand by the recommendation of the committee; this was about the 17th of December; and although Christmas was so close at hand, and most of the members were departing for their homes, when not too remote, he decided to stand to his post in Richmond. His health had been so much undermined by his assiduity that he was advised to spend the holiday season at Williamsburg with his wife's family, for the sake of the change; but he emphatically refused to do so. "Even if the danger of my life existed which my friends apprehend," he said, "I could not risk it in a better cause." He urged the supporters of the bill in the House to hold it up until the opening of the New Year. At the same time, he was very much alarmed lest his opponents should continue to gain strength by wily intrigue and unscrupulous bargaining. Once more, indeed, he began to fear the complete failure of the measure through the working of these malignant agencies. He was fully aware that, in the strongly cohesive delegation from the eastern counties, there were at least twenty-six members who were expected, under the influence of their loyalty to the interests of the College of William and Mary, to show themselves hostile to the establishment of a university at all, by casting their votes against the bill, whether in the original or the amended form. There was thought to be but one provision that could ward off this blow :the appropriation of five thousand dollars annually to the use of that institution. This was Cabell's not unprejudiced impression, for the antagonism which he had to overcome had left him in an exasperated and jaundiced mood. "The best informed of these partizans of the ancient college," he wrote Jefferson, "whilst they, their sons, connections, and friends have been educated at William and Mary, quote Smith, the Edinburgh Review, and Dugald Stewart, to prove that education should be left to individual enterprise, the more ignorant part pretend that the Literary Fund has been diverted from its original object, -the education of the poor, -and accuse the friends of the University of an intention to apply all the funds to the benefit of the University."

Some opposition to Charlottesville, as the site for a great seat of learning, was expressed by a small circle of thoughtful and enlightened members on the ground that, as it was simply a village and remote in its situation, it would offer no social advantages to draw thither distinguished professors; nor could it, for the same reason, serve to polish the manners of the students, furnish them with the needed accommodations, or bring forward sufficient physical force to put down large bodies of young men, should they fall to rioting.

By January 1, 1819, the delegates from the Valley had united in solid rank against Central College, and nearly one-half of the delegates from the region west of the Alleghanies had joined their company. In addition, the delegates from the southeastern part of the State were inimical; and there were members in the same mood who were scattered throughout the representation from the other districts. Cabell, bracing himself against a rising feeling of dismay, urged all the friendly absentees to hasten their return, and in the meanwhile, he sought encouragement in the loyalty of his supporters on the ground. "I consider the establishment of the University," wrote John Taliaferro, of the Lower House, as he was about to set out from Fredericksburg for Richmond, "of more vital consequence to the State than the sum of all the legislation since the foundation of the government";

and this was also the spirit of the men who had remained at their posts. "I had indulged the hope," wrote William F. Gordon to his wife on Christmas day, "that I could have gone home about this time, but the importance of our University bill is so great to Virginia, and particularly to Albemarle county, that I feared to leave it." In a letter to Jefferson a few days earlier, Cabell had said, "I have passed the night in watchful reflection and the day in ceaseless activity . . . . I have conveyed from person to person intelligence of our view, and endeavored to reconcile difference of opinion and to create harmony . . . . I have called on and influenced the aid of powerful friends out of the Legislature, such as Roane, Nicholas, Brockenbrough, Taylor, and others. I have procured most of the essays in the Enquirer."

Within a few weeks, this persistent spirit had forced a favorable turn. Absent friends came to his assistance. Especially assiduous and energetic among these were Captain Slaughter, of Culpeper, and Mr. Hoomes, of King and Queen; but above all, Chancellor Green, who, on the day of his arrival, sat up with him until three o'clock in the morning. The foremost purpose now was to contrive a plan to break the assaults of the delegates from the Peninsula; and it was in consequence of such prolonged mental strain and constant loss of sleep, that Cabell suffered, at this crisis, an attack of blood spitting, which lasted, without interruption, for a period of seven or eight hours.

The ablest and most disinterested of all Cabell's coadjutors, outside of the Assembly itself, in this protracted contest, was the Rev. John H. Rice, the most distinguished Presbyterian divine in the State. Perhaps his most notable service at this time took the form of a letter over the signature of Crito, which he contributed to

the issue of the Enquirer for January 9, 1819. "Ten years ago," he wrote, "I made certain inquiries on the subject (the pecuniary loss to Virginia from the absence of a State university) and ascertained, to my conviction, that the amount annually carried from Virginia for purposes of education alone exceeded $250,000. Since that period, it has been greater. Take a quarter of a million as the average of the last eight and twenty years, and the amount is the enormous sum of $7,000,000. But had our schools been such as the resources of Virginia would have well allowed, and her honor and interest demanded, it is by no means extravagant to suppose that the five States that border on ours would have sent as many students, as under the present wretched system; we have sent to them. Thus this reaches another amount of $7,000,000. Let our economists look to that 14,000,000 of good dollars lost to us by our parsimony. Let our wise men calculate the amount outside of our losses, and add it to this principal."

Dr. Rice made no plea for a particular site for the University, because he thought that this should be decided by the General Assembly, of which he was not a member; but his reasoning for the creation of the institution itself was a powerful influence towards the overthrow of the unscrupulous propaganda then prevailing that would have shut out Central College by undermining the whole project of setting up a great seat of learning. A searching discussion of the several clauses of the bill took place in the Committee of the Whole of the House on January 18 (1819), and all the arguments in support of, and in opposition to, its different provisions were elaborately presented. A determined attempt was again made to discredit the statistics of Jefferson's map showing the centre of population in the State; but when the

last speech had been finished, and the motion was put whether the clause relating to Central College, as the proposed site of the University, should be accepted or discarded, the vote stood sixty-nine in favor of rejection and one hundred and fourteen in favor of retention. The brilliant Briscoe G. Baldwin was then a delegate from Augusta, of which Staunton, one of the competitors for the University, was the county-seat. So soon as the decision of the House was announced, he rose from his chair, and, in proposing that the bill should he adopted unanimously, appealed to the Western delegation to dismiss all local prejudice, to repress all spirit of partizanship, and to join with the majority in acquiescing in the entire measure as it stood. His speech was so eloquent in its utterance of the noblest patriotic emotions that most of his hearers were melted to tears. Cabell, who had been present in the chamber before the roll was called, had retired to avoid the shock to his feelings, should the upshot be adverse. The final vote on the passage of the bill was taken on the following day (January 19), and only twenty-eight of the one hundred and sixty-nine members present persisted in their opposition.

William C. Rives, a delegate at the time, expressed to Cocke his gratified surprise at what he described as the "unexpected result " of the voting. "You have seen from the newspapers," he wrote on the 20th, "the vigorous and persevering attempts that were made on the floor of the House to repeal it (the University bill). The efforts that were employed out of doors to defeat it by intrigue were not less vigorous, and possibly were more alarming; because more difficult to be met and counteracted."

On the 21st, the measure, having reached the Senate, was referred to a very able committee. When at last

reported, a motion to strike out of the text the choice of Central College was lost by a vote of sixteen to seven. It finally passed the Senate on the 25th by a vote of twenty-two to one, an indication of more enlightened views in that body as a whole than prevailed in the House. The discussion of its different provisions had continued uninterruptedly through two days; and so strenuously did Cabell participate in the debate that a blood vessel in his lungs, which he had formerly ruptured, opened again, and he was compelled to sink to his seat.

The opposition to the bill, as we have seen, had its origin in a variety of hostile influences, some of which were directed against the acceptance of Central College as the site and some against the establishment of the University at all, because supposed to be repugnant to the interests either of the College of William, and Mary or of the poor in the distribution of the income of the Literary Fund. At the bottom of the antagonism, there was present a distinct political motive. The desire to obtain the site of the Capital, should Richmond be abandoned, prompted many of the delegates from the Valley to cast their votes against the selection of Central College, for it was generally anticipated that the Capital and the University would, in the end, be located together. There was also a lingering antipathy to Jefferson himself, in spite of his venerable age and long retirement from public life. This feeling, however, was not shared by many. William C. Rives expressed the more generous attitude of the majority towards him when he said, "Among the many sources of congratulation that present themselves on this occasion (the passage of the bill), it is not the least with me that the man to whom this country of ours owes more than to any other that ever existed, with

the exception of Washington, lives to see the consummation of all his wishes in the establishment of an institution which will be a lasting monument to his fame."

Jefferson himself received the announcement of the realization of his hopes of so many years with the philosophical moderation so characteristic of him when his faculties were not disturbed by the red flag of Federalism or Sectarianism. "I sincerely join in the general joy," was his brief and simple reply when the news had been conveyed to him.

IV. The First Board of Visitors

The Act establishing the University of Virginia, after accepting the conveyance of the lands and other property belonging to Central College, laid down with minuteness the necessary prescriptions for the number of Visitors, their appointment, their powers and duties, the courses to be taught, and the number, salaries, and accommodations of the professors. Substantially, the Act followed the recommendations of the Rockfish Gap Report in every particular, and it will, therefore, not be requisite to add to the synopsis of that Report which has been given. The most vital provision of the original bill for the creation of a university was retained: the annuity was again fixed at fifteen thousand dollars. Among the characteristic features of the subsequent government of the institution which were not foreshadowed in the Act was the chairmanship of the Faculty, and the great power which its incumbent was to exercise in the management of its affairs. The Board of Visitors were authorized in a general way "to direct and do all matters and things which to them shall seem most expedient for promoting the purposes" of the new seat of learning, and it was

under this clause that this unique method of administration came into existence.

The first Board of Visitors, -which, as the Act required, was appointed by the Governor, -consisted of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John H. Cocke, Joseph C. Cabell, Chapman Johnson, James Breckinridge, and Robert B. Taylor. The Board of Central College, it will be recollected, embraced only five members, and all of these, with the exception of David Watson, were transferred to the new Board. Of the three new additions, two were lawyers of the highest standing for learning, probity, and astuteness, and the third a citizen equally conspicuous for ability and public services There seems to have been no undertaking to divide the membership among the different sections of the State, but the homes of several were notwithstanding widely dispersed: Taylor resided in Norfolk, Johnson in Staunton, and Breckinridge in Botetourt county. There was not a single Visitor from the region of country lying west of the Alleghany Mountains, -the reason for which, quite probably, was that, in those times of stage coach and private carriage, there was small prospect of even a rare attendance at the sessions of the Board of a member who had to traverse the long road from the valley of the Kanawha or the Monongahela. Johnson and Breckinridge were also, in their homes, remote from Charlottesville, but both were constantly passing through on their way to Richmond to be present at the sessions of the General Assembly or the terms of the Supreme Court. The original plan of Jefferson was to ask for the appointment of men who resided within convenient reach of the University; but this was modified by the action of the Governor and Council, who thought it wise to select only a majority of the Board from the neighboring

region and the remainder from the other parts of the State. This had a tendency to diminish the chance of sectional carping; and it also conferred on the institution the distinction of being governed by a larger number of influential public men than could be found within the bounds of any single group of counties. The line of exclusion seems to have been drawn in the first appointments sharply against judges and members of Congress; but in the course of time this rule was entirely abandoned as to the latter at least.

The last meeting of the Visitors of Central College was held on the 26th of February, 1819. They had been impowered by the University Act of January 25 to perform their former functions until superseded by the coming together of the new Board. The proceedings of this meeting were far from being merely nominal, in anticipation of the early extinction of the old Board; at least three of its members belonged to the new; and they perhaps felt that they were an expiring body only in law and not in fact. Jefferson was present, and through his influence, no doubt, the necessary measures were adopted to ensure the continuation of the building, since upon this he had always laid the primary stress. It was resolved (1) that the funds of the University remaining after the payment of current expenses, should be applied to the erection of additional pavilions and hotels; (2) that workmen for this purpose should be contracted with at once before the season had advanced too far to secure the services of the number required; (3) that the funds in hand, or in prospect, would justify entrance into engagements for the building of at least two more pavilions, one hotel, and as many additional dormitories as the amount left over would allow; (4) that Alexander Garrett should be retained as the treasurer,

with the authority to act as bursar also; and that he should receive from the State the annuity payable for the present year (1819).

Central College, as a working corporation, came to an end on March 29, 1819, when the new Board, with a full attendance of members, convened for the first time. The transition was merely nominal; there was nothing radical in the spirit of the change; it continued to be the same institution, under the same guiding and controlling hand. Its aims were the same, and so were its principles. Jefferson now felt more confident of the successful consummation of his long matured plans for a really great seat of learning; and this was perhaps the only alteration in his outlook for the institution on the broader stage of operation upon which it had entered. Even the social customs of the old Board were to be those of the new so far as his hospitable instincts could bring it about. "It has been our usual course," he wrote to General Taylor, when inviting him to Monticello, "for the gentlemen of Central College to come here the day before the appointed meeting, which gives us an opportunity of talking over our business at leisure, of making up our views on it, and even of committing it to paper in form, so that our resort to the College, where there is no accommodation, is a mere legal ceremony for signing only."

The officers chosen by the Board at their first memorable session were Thomas Jefferson, rector, Peter Minor, secretary, Alexander Garrett, bursar, and Arthur S. Brockenbrough, proctor. Jefferson and Cocke were reappointed members of the committee of superintendence. The Board promptly adopted the recommendations of the Visitors of Central College at their last meeting; namely, that all but necessary current expenditures

should, in the beginning, be restricted to building, and that as little as possible should be reserved for the engagement of professors, until a sufficient number of pavilions, hotels, and dormitories had been provided to accommodate them and the pupils expected.

At this time, there was a considerable body of land, laid off in two lots and owned by John M. Perry, lying between the tracts, -one of forty-seven acres, the other of one hundred and fifty-three, -which had been acquired by Central College, and transferred to the infant university. The Board, on March 29, instructed the committee of superintendence to purchase this intervening area on the condition of a deferred payment; and it was due to this complication, perhaps, that it was not until January 25, 1820, one year later, that Perry conveyed the first lot of forty-eight acres; and not until May 9, 1825, more than five years afterwards, that he signed the deed to the remaining lot of one hundred and thirty-two acres. The first lot was improved with a dwelling house and curtilages, and its value was estimated as high as $7,231.00. The second lot was assessed at $6,600.00. The payment, even in instalments, of these large sums imposed on the resources of the University an irksome burden for several years. The acquisition, however, was rendered compulsory by the fact that the springs which supplied its cisterns were situated a little without the observatory tract owned by it, whilst the communicating pipes had been run entirely within the boundaries of Perry's property before reaching the actual site of the University itself. At any time, the owner of that property could order the removal of the pipes and thus cut off the natural reservoir from use. Jefferson had long been aware of this possibility, but until the institution was incorporated, was lacking in the means to remove

it. One of the first provisions of the new Board, under his inspiration, was to arrange for this purchase, which, when accomplished, put an end to the risk of future interference.

An additional section of land, -presumably situated between the present Staunton Road and a parallel line running west and east in front of the north portico of the Rotunda, aggregating about eight acres, -was bought in 1824, from Daniel A. Piper.[38] These four parcels of land increased to the extent of one hundred and eighty-four acres the domain already in the possession of the University. Another addition was made in 1824: a small parcel was bought of Mrs. Garner. This also was probably situated on the present Staunton Road, and if so, lay west of the present Gothic Chapel.

V. Course of Construction

Although Central College had been raised to the platform of a university, the general outline of the original plan of building underwent but few alterations. Jefferson had drafted that plan for a broad and populous seat of learning, and now that this consummation of his hopes was assured, he had but to push to a termination what he had long ago conceived, and what he had already substantially begun. The scheme of construction which he submitted to the General Assembly in the Rockfish Gap Report made no addition to the scheme in harmony with which the carpenters and bricklayers were already at work in the old ferry field: and in the letter written by him to William C. Rives, only three days after the

University was incorporated, he simply canvasses the ability of the Board of Visitors to provide during that year for the building of two pavilions, with their dormitories, besides those already in course of erection. It is true that the Report referred specifically to an edifice of large size "in the middle of the grounds," to be used for certain purposes carefully enumerated, but, as we have already pointed out, this structure, in the form now known to us, had been suggested, in a general way, by Latrobe, and accepted as a part of the plan.

The first and only really important modification that was made in the setting was in April, 1820, when Jefferson, confronted with the necessity of choosing the site of the first hotel, decided that he would not place it on an extension of the Lawn in alignment with the pavilions, but instead would erect it on what was afterwards named Western Back Street, now West Range. Thus began the existing array of four instead of two parallel rows of buildings. In the original draft, the distance from the eastern line to the western was seven hundred and seventy-one feet; but, in fixing the sites of the pavilions, Jefferson contracted the interval. The addition of hotels and dormitories, in the form of parallel East and West Ranges, enabled him to return to the dimensions of the original plat. He seems to have at first intended that each of the lateral ranges should have its front in precise correspondence with the front of that side of the Lawn; and he was ingenious enough to devise a scheme by which the denizens of these lateral ranges could be prevented from peering from their front windows into the ugly premises in the rear of the adjacent parallel pavilions and dormitories. But the expense of carrying this out was shown to be so great that he ultimately determined to change the plan to the one afterwards

followed, in which the East and West Ranges, facing outward, turn their back yards upon the back yards of the Lawn. Another modification of the original plan left the projected Rotunda with a lawn on either side. These two small areas of open ground, which, with the actual site of the Rotunda itself, had, in Jefferson's earliest scheme, been reserved for pavilions and dormitories, were, in the end, occupied by wings, which, during many years, were in normal use as gymnasia.

Taking the noble group of buildings in the mass as completed, they enable us to understand clearly Jefferson's purpose of teaching the principles of architecture by example in this new seat of culture. It will be recalled that, in the Rockfish Gap Report, he had recommended the study of the fine arts; but the General Assembly, in the Act of Incorporation, had pointedly omitted that theme in enumerating the courses of instruction. Jefferson got around this tacit injunction by persuading the Board of Visitors to enter military and naval architecture among the subjects to be taught in the school of mathematics. It was, however, in the peculiarities of the surrounding buildings that the fundamental lessons of the art were to be learned. "The introduction of chaste models," he wrote to William C. Rives, "taken from the finest remains of antiquity, of the orders of architecture, and of specimens of the choicest samples of each older, was considered as a necessary foundation of the instruction of the students in this art." And so highly did he value this aspect of the University edifices that he urged upon the same correspondent, -at this time a distinguished member of Congress, -that the capitals and bases recently arrived from Italy should be exempted from custom duties because they were designed as much

for illustration as for practical use. With perfect propriety, said he, these monuments might have been placed "in our museum for an indefinite period." This was not done, he added, "because we thought that, to show their best effects, they would nowhere be exhibited so advantageously as in connection with their columns and the super-incumbent entablature. We, therefore, determined that each of the pavilions . . . should present a distinct and different sample of the art. And these buildings being arranged around three sides of a square, the lecturer, in a circuit, attended by his school, could explain to them successively these samples of the several orders."

There was another practical reason which Jefferson gave in justification of that splendid but costly architectural scheme. It was his conviction that, without a "distinguished scale in structure," to employ his own words, foreign scholars of celebrity would hardly be willing to accept chairs in so new an institution. This was a somewhat fanciful notion, for certainly the only alien professors who ever occupied those chairs apparently made no inquiry at all as to the character of the University's architecture, when they entered into their engagements. The prestige of this seat of learning, in our own country, was unquestionably enhanced from the start by its noble physical setting, and this, perhaps, has had a calculable influence in securing for it, throughout its history, the services of the ablest and ripest American scholars.[39] It is quite possible, -and it is no discredit to Jefferson to say so, -that he would have followed the plan which he did adopt even if there had been no practical recommendation

for it, such as he was led to bring forward to combat the weight of the ignorant provincial criticisms leveled at it. He himself had said that it was as inexpensive to build a beautiful house as it was to build an ugly one. Within the privacy of his own breast, he probably agreed with good judges of subsequent generations in thinking that the architectural charm of the University of Virginia, like the immortal poet's thing of beauty, was a joy forever in itself that called for no additional reason to justify its existence.

The entire setting of the original group was classical in its character. Beginning at the head of the West Lawn, it will be found that Pavilion I was an adoption of the Doric of the Diocletian Baths; Pavilion III, Corinthian of Palladio; Pavilion V, Ionic of Palladio; Pavilion VII, Doric of Palladio; and Pavilion IX, Ionic of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis. Beginning again on the east side of the Lawn and descending from the north end, we observe Pavilion II, Ionic, after the style of the same temple; Pavilion IV, Doric of Albano; Pavilion VI, Ionic of the Theatre of Marcellus; Pavilion VIII, Corinthian of the Baths of Diocletian; Pavilion X, Doric of the Theatre of Marcellus; and the Rotunda, after the Pantheon at Rome.

Jefferson reduced, modified, and adapted to new purposes, but still preserved with fidelity, the art of the originals, both in their lines and in their proportions. His inspiration, in general, was derived from Palladio, but when his own judgment, in any instance, suggested a departure, he did not shrink from following it, and in doing so, exhibited always precision and certainty. Sometimes, he preferred a simpler form, as in his copy of the pilasters of the Temple of Nerva, because he thought that it was "better suited to our plainer style." It has been said of

him, in his relation to the architecture of the University, that, instead of working, like the disciples of Indigo Jones, downward from Palladio to the debased Georgian imitations of the classic, he worked upward from that great artist to the purest and most refined types of the classic. "He removed from the classic forms of the Cæsars," says Dr. Lambeth, summing up his merits in this particular in a remarkable phrase, "the architectural rubbish of the centuries." His bent was towards the Roman classical, when all or nearly all his contemporaries exhibited a leaning towards the Georgian, Italian, Vitruvian, Gothic, or Renaissance styles. In his report to the General Assembly in November, 1821, he modestly declares that he had no "supplementary guide but his own judgment"; and while he does not seem to have looked for even grudging approval in the general public, yet some instances of high and generous appreciation of the beauty of his buildings soon came to his knowledge to gratify him. John Tyler, the younger, being a citizen of the Peninsula, and residing not far from the College of William and Mary, had not been friendly to the University, yet after inspecting the completed group, he was "so much impressed with the extent and splendor of the establishment," according to Judge Semple, who reported his words to Cabell, and Cabell to Jefferson, that he regretted that he had not been a member of the last Assembly to vote for the cancellation of its bonds.

The same feeling of admiration was aroused in other men of culture who visited the spot at this time, although the Rotunda, the most imposing of all the structures, was not yet fully completed. Thus Garrett Minor, writing to Cabell, in 1822, said, "I was much pleased and delighted with the beauty, convenience, and splendor of the establishment." The word "splendor," used both

by Tyler and Minor, expressed very pertinently the surprise of Virginians of that day, -who had travelled little, and had few very fine models of residential architecture in their own State to educate their taste,-when they viewed the classical buildings which Jefferson had caused to rise in the shadow of Observatory Mountain. Ticknor was perhaps a more competent judge, for he had passed many years in Europe, had visited all its famous capitals, and had examined all its edifices of celebrity. He had thus become both fastidious and discriminating. In 1824, he happened to be a guest at Monticello, and, accompanied by his host, rode down to inspect the University edifices. At this time, ten pavilions, with their dormitories, and four hotels, with dormitories also attached, had been finished; and the Rotunda too was so far completed as to stand forward with a very noble aspect. In _a letter to W. H. Prescott, Ticknor described the group "as a mass of buildings more beautiful than anything architectural in New England, and more appropriate to a university than are to be found, perhaps, in the world." And it is the general opinion of more modern experts in the art that this extreme statement of the accomplished Bostonian was not exaggerated. "Although it cannot be but regretted," remarked Stanford White, of our own day, "that it was not possible to use marble where wood and stucco painted white take its place, yet as the use of marble was necessarily impossible, the mind, reverting to the period when the buildings were erected, forgives the homely substitute in delight at the charming result." And on another occasion, he spoke of the physical setting of the University of Virginia as the "most perfect and exquisite group of collegiate buildings in the world." Dr. Fiske Kimball, summing up the merits of the structures in the mass, has characterized the whole as the "greatest surviving masterpiece of the classic revival in America, the most magnificent architectural creation of its day on this side of the Atlantic." [40]

Even the persons who were most enthusiastic in commenting on the extraordinary beauty of Jefferson's conception as incorporated in the Lawn and Ranges, could not blind themselves entirely to the inconveniences of his plan, and particularly to those connected with the dormitories. With doors facing either east or west, and with one small window only breaking the back wall of each room, there was little prospect of their catching the southern breeze during the heats of early summer. The burning rays of the declining sun struck the face of the western arcade in June and September,[41] the closing and opening months of the session, and the cold eastern winds poured against the eastern arcade both in winter and early spring alike. It was apprehended by some, at the beginning, that the constant noise of tramping feet under the cover of the arcades would disturb the students engaged with their books in their several apartments. The long, flat roofs of the Lawn, under the thawing of recurring snows, soon developed a tendency to leak, while smoking chimneys, within a short time, proved such an annoyance to the professors that Bonnycastle wrote an elaborate treatise to demonstrate how this irritating evil could be remedied.

The lecture-hall reserved in each pavilion became almost at once a source of perplexity; it was anticipated that some members of the Faculty would draw classes too small in size to occupy the whole of their several halls, whilst others would be so popular in themselves or their

courses, that their halls would not, at any one time, furnish seats for all their pupils. Naturally, these professors would find the repetition of the same lecture on the same day to the students who had been shut out highly irksome; and the necessity of such repetition, should it arise, was certain to throw the whole table of recitation hours into confusion. Cabell, as early as April, 1819, suggested that the Greek, Roman, and French model of an oval room, with seats rising one above another, would, give a large area for use; but it was pointed out to him that such a disposition of space would render the apartment unserviceable to the professor and his family during those hours when the lecture was not proceeding. There was then left but one way of removing the difficulty, the enlargement of the lecture-room; but as that would upset the plan which Jefferson had adopted, Breckinridge, Cabell, and Cocke, who were impatient with the existing defect, felt that they must not only act with caution, but must also act together. "We should move in concert," remarks Cabell in a letter to Cocke, "or we shall perplex and disgust the old sachem." As the size of the rooms was not altered, the old sachem, it is to be inferred, remained obdurate to the proposal; indeed, to make the change effective, the scheme of each pavilion would have had to undergo a structural modification, which would have added substantially to the already high cost of building.

According to tradition, the purpose which Jefferson had in view for these single ground-floor apartments was blocked, not by formal resolution of the Board, but by that more delicate and subtle instrument of change, a woman's will. It is said that the wives of the professors, finding that they needed the lecture-halls for reception or dining-rooms, brought furtive conjugal influences to

bear that shutout the students from them except as social visitors. There seems, however, to have keen a more practical reason for the change than this, -as we shall see hereafter.

Not only was Jefferson the author of the common plan for Central College, and its successor, the University of Virginia, but, in spite of the burden of his increasing years, he continued to act as the practical superintendent of the building down to the completion of the entire group of structures, with the exception of the Rotunda, which, at his death, was still unfinished in some details of importance. He was assisted in this supervision by Cocke, and he possessed in the proctor, Arthur S. Brockenbrough, a vigilant and well-informed agent; but the bulk even of the specifications came from his brain and pen. In the interval between February and October, 1819, he drafted the plans and wrote out the specifications for five pavilions, with their adjacent dormitories, and also for five hotels. In 1821, he drew up the plans and specifications for the Rotunda. He was now in his seventy-ninth year. After the celebration of his eightieth birthday, he prepared the plans for an observatory and an anatomical hall. The entire set of these original plans, elevations, and specifications have been preserved, but only a few of the working drawings for the guidance of the builders have survived, since most of them were destroyed in their necessarily rough use by the mechanics. The knowledge which he had acquired of materials in erecting the Monticello mansion was put to practical service on afar greater scale iii the construction of the University buildings; he was now as able to test the quality of brick, stone, mortar, and lumber, and to calculate their value, as the most expert artisan on the ground, while his taste in ornamentation was reflected in the

beautiful details which still adorn the interiors of the pavilions.

Under his watchful and experienced eye, the progress of construction from the day that the Visitors of Central College turned the property over to the Visitors of the University was rapid and uninterrupted. The committee of superintendence, Cocke and himself, had at first contemplated the erection of a hotel, so as to open the institution to students during the following winter, but, as early as May 12 (1819), they had, with the Board's approval, decided to finish the entire group of buildings before taking this final step. Workingmen were soon engaged in digging the foundations for the two additional pavilions and their dormitories, which had been authorized in anticipation of the payment of the annuity of the ensuing year. We obtain a glimpse of the busy scene on the University grounds in August (1819) from a letter written by George W. Spooner, who represented the proctor in the work out of doors during his absence in Richmond. "Mr. Phillips," he says, "has commenced to lay in bricks, and has the basement story (of one of the new pavilions) nearly up. Mr. Ware's foundation will be ready in a few days, but he is not yet ready for laying, not having burnt any of his bricks yet. Mr. Perry will begin as soon as they have succeeded in blasting a rock which has impeded their progress in digging his foundation. The two Italians are going on quite leisurely. They have cut three bases and one Corinthian cap. The two from Philadelphia I went out to the quarries to see. They appear to go on quite slowly, owing to the difficulty of quarrying the very hard rock. Mr. Dinsmore is puting up modillions in the cornice of his pavilion. Mr. Oldham is making his frame." [42]

By December 17 (1819), the brickwork of the five pavilions, with their respective dormitories, situated on West Lawn, had been completed, whilst the rafters of the roofs of two pavilions situated on East Lawn were in the course of being adjusted. By November 21, 1821, six pavilions, eighty-two dormitories, and two hotels, were in condition for immediate occupation; and by October 7, 1822, ten pavilions, one hundred and nine dormitories, and six hotels. Only a small amount of plastering remained to be finished. The gardens had not been entirely laid off, nor the serpentine walls, designed to bar them against intrusion, erected. A few capitals also had not as yet arrived from Italy. By October 6, 1823, all these deficiencies had been supplied. But the Rotunda had still to be carried through the last stage of construction.

VI. Men Who Built the University

We know the mind that conceived the plan of that noble group of buildings, and the hand which platted that plan, and drew up its vital specifications. Who were the men who actually laid the foundations, raised the walls, set the roofs, and decorated the entablatures? We have already mentioned the names of the contractors employed by the Visitors of Central College, and Spooner's letter, from which we have quoted, gives the names of most of those who were engaged in the work of construction after the University had been incorporated. Each pavilion in Jefferson's schema represented in his view a separate school. It is significant that the amount which, according to his estimate, each would cost was precisely the same as that which, by his calculation, would be required to erect each of the district colleges called for in his famous scheme for popular education. In a very

definite sense, he looked upon each of the University schools as a distinct institution, not unlike the projected academies, and, therefore, the man who built one of these pavilions, which typified in brick and mortar a single school, was entitled to as much credit as if he had erected the main structure of a district college.

Starting with the pavilion situated at the northern end of West Lawn, we find that the bricks used in its construction were laid by Phillips and Carter, of Richmond, whilst its woodwork was from the hand of James Oldham. The brickwork of the second pavilion, on the same side of the Lawn, was from the hand of Matthew Brown; the woodwork from that of James Dinsmore. The contractor for the brickwork of the third pavilion was John M. Perry, and for the woodwork, Perry and Dinsmore; for the brickwork of the fourth pavilion, Matthew Brown, David Knight, and Hugh Chisholm, and for the woodwork, John M. Perry. Carter and Phillips furnished the brickwork for the fifth pavilion -at the south end of West Lawn, -and George W. Spooner the woodwork. At least three of the pavilions situated on the East Lawn, beginning at the northern end, were erected by Richard Ware. The woodwork for the fourth pavilion seems to have been from the hand of James Dinsmore. The hotels, A, B, C, D, E, and F, were built by Perry, Spooner, Nelson Barksdale, Curtis Carter, William Phillips and A. B. Thorn. Perry alone had a share in the construction of all the hotels except Hotel D. The contractors for the numerous dormitories were the same men as the contractors for the pavilions and hotels. The bricks for the serpentine walls were furnished by Perry, Phillips, and Carter; the tin for all the houses by A. H. Brooks.[43]

We have already referred briefly to the history of John M. Perry. He not only conveyed to the College and the University almost the entire area of ground on which the group of buildings now stands, but he also had a more extensive part in their erection, as a whole, than any other person employed in the work. Spooner, who was associated with him in his carpentry, appears first under contract to General Cocke at Bremo, where he was a co-laborer with Neilson, afterwards a partner of Dinsmore in the construction of the Rotunda. He remained at the University during many years engaged in making the repairs which were soon constantly required; and he was so much respected there, that, during a short interval, he filled the responsible office of proctor. Curtis Carter and William Phillips were brickmakers in business in Richmond. The famous Brockenbrough House, afterwards the White House of the Confederacy, was a monument of Carter's mechanical skill; and he had manufactured most of the material used in the thick walls of the handsome banks of that city in those times. This firm, responding to the advertisement inserted in the Enquirer by the proctor in the spring of 1819, sent in a bid to supply one million bricks for the use of the University, which was an indication of the great scale of their operations.

Alexander Garrett, a shrewd and competent judge, and as bursar in a good position to compare the skill of the different contractors, pronounced the work of Richard Ware to be superior to that of all the others. Ware resided in Philadelphia, where he had built several of the most imposing public and private edifices adorning that cultivated city. He had seen the advertisement, -which had appeared in the journals there, -for the erection of the University pavilions and dormitories,

and had visited Charlottesville at once to offer his bid in person; and Jefferson had accepted that bid on the condition of his procuring his brickmakers and bricklayers from the North. It was perhaps due largely to them, and to the superior opportunities for training that had been open to them there, that the work with which Ware was credited, received such warm encomiums.

Subordinate to the contractors, there were at least three stonecutters who deserve some notice: John Gorman and Michael and Giacomo Raggi. Our first view of Gorman is in Lynchburg, where, before he was induced to come to the University by Jefferson, he had been employed in a large marble quarry. Having been heartily recommended by Christopher Anthony, a highly esteemed citizen of that town, he was engaged to chisel the Tuscan capitals and bases; and was also expected to do all kinds of stonework that might be required, such as keystones, and window and door sills. He seems to have hacked into shape most of those needed for the hotels and dormitories. He was paid in accord with a tri-monthly measurement; and the fact that one-half of the amount due him at the end of each interval was always held back for six months, would seem to prove that he was not entirely reliable, and, for that reason, had to be subjected to a check of some sort.

The Raggis were Italian brothers who had been imported in accord with the advice of Jefferson. The first intimation that he gave of his intention to pursue his architectural scheme on a more ambitious scale than was reflected in the first pavilion, was his request for authority from the Board of Visitors to bring in a stonecutter who had been trained in his art in Italy. Micheli and Giacomo Raggi were procured through the offices of

Thomas Appleton, the American consul at Leghorn. They arrived in Baltimore in June, 1819. They proved to be expensive from the very start: it was necessary to advance them a large sum of money before they sailed; and this was swelled by another draft on the bursar to pay the cost of the journey from Maryland to Virginia. The stone which they were called upon, after their arrival, to chisel, had nothing in common with their native marbles; and this was perhaps one reason why Micheli, at least, showed almost at once a lazy callousness to the requirements of his contract. Previous to July 16, some test of their abilities had been made, for writing on that day to the proctor, Jefferson said, "If Mr. Micheli should be sufficiently advanced in his carving of a capital to judge of its success by to-morrow morning, I would ride up in the morning to see it." One month afterwards, Spooner, in a letter to Brockenbrough, then absent in, Richmond, remarked rather pointedly that the "Italians are going on at the same gait, earning fifty cents a day." Their services, in the end, promised to be so unprofitable, owing primarily to the unfit nature of the stone which they had to work in, that, in September, 1820, the committee of superintendence decided to release them both, although the contract of one had still to run for eighteen months and of the other, for twenty. Giacomo had given only fourteen months of labor; Micheli, only twelve; and on that ground, the committee refused to pay the sum that would be due for their homeward passage. Although Micheli Raggi, the least industrious and trustworthy of the two, had been in the University's employment for twelve months, he had been the cause of an expenditure on his account of $1,390.56. Giacomo Raggi did not accompany his brother to Italy; or if he did, he had returned to Charlottesville by November 22, 1821, for, by that date, the outlay for his board and lodging had again become a charge on the funds of the University.[44]

VII. How Materials Were Procured

If we except the marbles imported from Italy, the fundamental materials for the construction of the pavilions, dormitories, and hotels were obtained in the neighborhood of the University. There was a quarry nearby which afforded a great quantity of stone; the quality of it, as we have seen, unfitted it for conversion into capitals and bases; but it served very well for foundations and for the sills which were required for so many of the doors and windows. As this local stone was too hard and flinty for more pretentious forms, the Board endeavored to find a better sort in other Virginian deposits; and with that object in view, one of the Italians was sent, in October, 1819, to Bremo, on the James River, to examine General Cocke's freestone quarry, and to report whether or not the blocks were suitable for Corinthian capitals. He was ordered to bring back a load of four thousand pounds. Cocke gave him the sample solicited, but he wrote the proctor that he had no confidence in its real adaptability to such a purpose. He thought, however, that the freestone which was to be found in large quantities on Mt. Graham in his neighborhood, could, with ease, be used in the carving of Ionic capitals.

Brockenbrough, concluding that it would be cheaper to purchase in Richmond the stone that was needed, requested Thomas R. Conway, -who was interested in a quarry situated near that city, -to send him a sample of

a Tuscan base and capital made of his product, and also asked him to blast out blocks suitable for the Corinthian and Ionic capitals. The Italians were so successful in carving a beautiful Corinthian leaf out of this stone that Brockenbrough wrote to Cocke in November (1819) that he had no doubt of his ability to obtain in this new quarter all the capitals wanted. On December 8, two blocks were sent from Richmond by Conway, one of which weighed 5,572 pounds, and the other, 2,856 pounds. They proved to be very difficult to chisel, and the capitals fashioned from them were decided to be too brittle to withstand the disintegrating influence of heat and cold. But that hope of procuring the right material in Virginia was not yet relinquished was disclosed, a few months later, by the search which Gorman and one of the Italians together made in Augusta, and probably in other counties of the Valley, for stone better adapted to the carving of Corinthian capitals. All the specimens, however, which were tested in this excursion, turned out to be disappointing.

As early as October, 1819, Cocke had urged the dismissal of the Raggis, and the importation from Italy of the marbles required. His prediction that this course would have to be pursued was fully verified in the end. In April, 1821, the Visitors received from Thomas Appleton, the American consul in Leghorn, a statement showing the cost of Ionic and Corinthian capitals delivered on shipboard in that harbour; and it was found that these marbles, in spite of the wide ocean, could be transferred from Europe to the University for a sum smaller than the one that had been dissipated in the attempted use of the Virginian stone. The committee of superintendence were, therefore, instructed to procure from Carrara all that should be thereafter needed.

The bricks used in the buildings were moulded and burnt in the neighborhood, as it was too expensive to transport them from a distance. The chief manufacturers were Perry, Thorn, Carter, Phillips, and Nathaniel Chamberlain.

The lumber required by the contractors in such large quantities was purchased from the numerous sawmills in the thickly wooded surrounding region. Perhaps, the most productive of these was the Hydraulic Mill, owned by Perry, who, through it, was able supply, not only himself, but the other contractors with lumber. He also furnished for use at the University a large quantity of plank in such manufactured forms as scantlings, ceilings, joists, rafters, floorings, and sills. Nelson Barksdale, the former proctor, provided lumber of all sorts for the same general purpose; so did several members of the Meriwether family; so did Thomas Draffin, Warner Wood, and David Owens, of Albemarle, and William Mitchell, of Orange. The greater part of the glass and hardware was obtained from firms in Richmond, the most prominent of which were John Van Lew and Co., and Brockenhrough and Hume. The painting and glazing were principally the work of Edward Lawber of Philadelphia, through skilful assistants like John Vowles and Angus McKay. The ornaments for the entablatures that adorned the pavilion drawing-rooms, -the ox-heads and flowers, the rosettes, lozenges, female heads, flowers on pannels and friezes, -came from the expert fingers of W. J. Coffee, an artisan from the North.

Among the most expensive items in the general account for the building of the pavilions, dormitories, and hotels were the charges for transportation. Many articles used in their construction were brought overland from Richmond, and as the number of wagons on the road increased

and fell off with the seasons and the volume of trade, tedious delays were thus often caused in obtaining even indispensable materials. The principal highway from the Valley passed through Rockfish Gap, and thence zigzagged westward by way of Charlottesville to the capital of the State. Caravans of lumbering, canvas-covered vehicles jolted along in spring, summer, and autumn, backwards and forwards, over this road; and the waggoners were as well known on their route as the coachmen who drove the tallyhoes between London and Oxford in the early part of the last century, were on that great turnpike, or the captains of the Mississippi steamboats, in more modern times, were on that stream. Many belonged to the German stock that had settled on the banks of the Shenandoah, as their names, Jacob Craft, Jacob Shuey, Philip Koiner, and the like, indicate. Kegs and barrels made up the freight usually conveyed in these wagons, while small articles were put in the heavy stages that carried passengers to and from Richmond. All ponderous goods were necessarily transported by the lines of batteaux that navigated the James River; some of these batteaux, when of light draft, were poled up the Rivanna to Milton, where their cargoes were unloaded, to be sent to the University by wagon; but, in many cases, the boats stopped at Scottsville, on James River, and from thence their large packages were carted up to Charlottesville overland.

In the course of the building, the University had use for the labor of many hired slaves. In 1821, the number employed there in different ways was thirty-two, some of whom were still under age. The terms for which they served did not run over one year, although, doubtless, the contracts with their owners were most often renewed at expiration. The overseer in charge was James Herron,

who was responsible for the safe keeping of the necessary supplies for the men and horses, and also for all the carts and tools. There seems to have been a large garden full of vegetables under cultivation for the benefit of the laborers; and the overseer was required to have it properly sowed, planted, and tended in season.

VIII. The Building of the Rotunda

The various details dwelt upon in the preceding chapter are pertinent only to the pavilions, dormitories, and hotels. The Rotunda was not only separate from these edifices in a physical way, but the history of its construction is equally distinct from theirs. Most of the buildings of the University were erected simultaneously, and all were practically completed before the excavations began for the foundations of the dominating edifice. In the earliest scheme, it will be recalled, the pavilions were to be placed on each of the three lines forming the boundaries of the first plat; and there were to be twenty dormitories attached to each pavilion. When it was decided to raise an imposing structure irk the middle of the north line, this scheme was altered, -instead of the original number of pavilions and dormitories to be erected on the east and west lines respectively, it was necessary now to build five pavilions, with ten dormitories attached to each.

Although the Rotunda, the central feature of the beautiful architectural setting of the University, seems to have had, in its main lines at least, its germ with Latrobe, yet in the shape which the suggestion, once dropped in Jefferson's mind, finally took, that building was more distinctly characteristic of his classical taste than any other standing on the ground. It must have been as perceptible

to him as to Thornton and Latrobe that a stately edifice rising on this conspicuous site would enhance the imposing aspect of the whole group; and it is quite probable that, -in the beginning at least, -when there was so slim a prospect of the College ever becoming a university, his omission of such a structure was due, as already intimated, to the dictation of economy. It is easy to conceive of the artistic delight which he must have felt in planning for such a building; and it was due to him alone, apparently, that the Pantheon was adopted as the model. That temple was considered by many to be the noblest specimen of the architecture of antiquity surviving to the present day; and it was reproduced with perfect fidelity in the plates of Palladio, so well known to Jefferson.

This famous building was in the form of a cylinder surmounted by a hemisphere. The exterior walls were of concrete, faced with brick and marble. The dome was of concrete also, with a bronzed outer surface and a gilded ceiling. Sixteen granite columns, crowned by Corinthian capitals of marble, upheld the weight of the portico. A row of fluted marble pillars ran around the circumference of the great apartment, while the interior walls were covered with variegated marbles, upon which, and upon the floor, shone the rays of the sun falling through a circular orifice in the top of the dome.

In reproducing this splendid edifice, Jefferson was compelled to use the humble materials of brick and mortar instead of brick and concrete; plaster and white-wash instead of a marble facing; tin plates instead of bronze tiles. In one detail, however, the building in imitation is superior to the one copied. The masterpiece of Agrippa is approached by only five steps, a condition that imparts a squat appearance to the structure looked at from the front. The Rotunda, on the other hand, is approached

by fourteen steps, which to the eye lifts it up from the ground, and imparts to it a lighter and loftier aspect. By thus elevating the floor of its portico, the height of its cylindrical dome was so far increased as to be equal in degree to the diameter. This diameter is one half of the Pantheon's in extent, and the area of the edifice is about one fourth more contracted than that of its prototype. At first, it was Jefferson's design, as already stated, to lay off a lawn on either side of the Rotunda, but low-roofed gymnasia were afterwards substituted for them, -not perhaps because they enhanced the beauty of the central building, but more probably because the space was too valuable to be left in a purely ornamental state.

The Rockfish Gap Report recommended that the Rotunda should contain apartments for religious worship and public examinations, and also for instruction in music, drawing, and similar studies, but that the section of it which would be immediately under the dome should be reserved for the storage of books. That the latter was the principal end which the building was expected to subserve was demonstrated by the fact that, in the successive reports of the .Visitors, it is ordinarily designated as the "Library." There was no provision for numerous lecture-rooms in the proposed structure, the explanation of which lay, of course, in the assignment of halls for that purpose in the pavilions; but after the edifice was finished, the little use which could be made of the apartments below the highest floor for the objects for which they were intended, -there being no demand for music and drawing lessons, and the examinations taking place only at long intervals, -led to the shifting of the lecture-rooms from the pavilions, where they caused so much domestic awkwardness, -to these vacant apartments in the Rotunda.

The first step towards this was the order of the Board of Visitors that the rooms should be kept for such schools as were attended by so many students that they could not be conveniently accommodated in a pavilion lecture-hall; and on the same occasion, an apartment in the basement was fixed upon as the future chemical laboratory.[45]

There were not sufficient funds on hand, during the early period of construction, to permit of the erection of so large and costly an edifice as the Rotunda. In April, 1821, the Board of Visitors ordered the committee of superintendence to refrain from entering into any contract for its building until they were fully satisfied that the expenditure "on its account would not interfere with the completion of the pavilions, dormitories, and hotels," the erection of which had either begun or would soon begin. This made it impossible to start upon its actual construction before the General Assembly had appropriated a large sum for that purpose. It was not until October 7, 1822, indeed, that the proctor was told to stipulate with "skilful and responsible undertakers" for its erection according to the provisions of the plan already in his possession. Cocke, as a member of the committee of superintendence, had criticized the disjointedness of the terms

in accord with which the pavilions, dormitories, and hotels had been built, and he now begged Cabell to support him in the resolution "not to permit the last grand building to be carried on in the loose and undefined manner as to the contracts, which, in the previous parts of the work, had been productive of so much disappointment to us, and had been the just cause of so much dissatisfaction to the public." The persons who, in the beginning, submitted bids were either too lacking in capital to dispense with the aid of advances by the University, or they demanded a fifty per cent increase in the figures of their estimates. Neither Jefferson nor the proctor, -perhaps, from Cocke's warning, -thought it judicious to accept any offer on these conditions, and for that reason, the Rotunda was practically erected, piece by piece and stage by stage, by the University itself, instead of being turned over in the end to the Board of Visitors, an edifice completed but still one to be paid for.

Among the builders of the Rotunda were Thorn and Chamberlain, to whom were assigned the brickwork; for which they were required to furnish the mortar; and they also agreed to bring on trained men from Philadelphia for the actual bricklaying. Thorn received a wage of fifty dollars a month for overlooking the manufacture of the bricks, since most of this material was made in the University kiln by hired labor. From a letter written in February to Cocke by Neilson, we learn that Jefferson was full "of brickmaking ideas at present," which clearly indicates how minute was the supervision which he gave even to so ordinary a detail. Dinsmore and Neilson were the principal agents in carrying through carpenters and joiners' tasks for the new building; but the lumber, in this instance, as in that of the brick, was furnished at the University's expense, although the firm

made all the purchases; and it was also held responsible for the accuracy of the bricklaying.[46] The charges for measuring all the building work periodically as it went forward were borne in equal shares by the University and the contractors.

On July 4, Jefferson was able to write to Cabell, in a spirit of unrepressed exultation, that the Rotunda "was rising nobly." In the course of 1823 not less than thirty persons, whether or not regularly engaged in business, supplied the different articles that were required for this building, such as lime, lumber, dressed plank, shingles, hardware and iron; and there were almost uncountable bills for hauling as well as for providing food for man and beast employed in its construction. The persons who furnished the principal materials were the same as those who had furnished the like for the pavilions, dormitories, and hotels. For instance, three hundred thousand bricks, in addition to those burnt in the University kiln, were purchased of John M. Perry. The most admirable features of the Rotunda were the ornate capitals and bases. In September, 1823, Jefferson and Cocke, as the committee of superintendence, entered into a contract with Giacomo Raggi, which obliged him to obtain in person in Italy for that edifice ten Corinthian and two pilaster bases of Carrara marble. He was to receive sixty-five dollars for each of the Corinthian, and thirty-two dollars and fifty cents for each of the pilaster, -one half of which sums was to be paid before the bases were dumped on shipboard at Leghorn, and the other half afterwards. Raggi had spent his hours of leisure in carving numerous articles in alabaster marble, and these he hoped to sell privately for his own profit;

but so improvident had he been, in spite of a high wage, that, in leaving for Richmond by coach on his way to Italy, he was compelled to ask for an advance of fifty dollars from the proctor to settle his tavern bill on his expected departure from that city, and also to cover the cost of his ocean passage. The contract proved to be futile and valueless, for while Raggi seems to have gone to Leghorn with the purpose of carrying it out, he failed, -no doubt from impecuniosity, -in fulfilling what had been required of him. The marbles were finally procured with the assistance of Thomas Appleton, and, in the course of 1825, were sent over in two vessels, one of which made port at Boston, and the other at New York. When he informed the proctor of the arrival of the ship at Boston, General Dearborn, the Collector of Customs, who had been the Secretary of War in Jefferson's Cabinet, and who, from this fact, was interested in the University, repeated Mr. Appleton's statement to him that the capitals "would be found probably superior in dimensions, but certainly equal in architectural perfection to any in the United States"; and that they were copies of those which adorned the Pantheon at Rome. There were twenty-four ponderous cases, and Dearborn recommended that a petition should be addressed to Congress to admit them free of duty. As the custom charges would run as high as $2,057.15, exemption from payment would save a large amount that might be applied to some useful purpose. There seems to have been two consignments unloaded at New York: one, of six cases; the other, by a different vessel, the Caroline, of thirty-one.

The marbles were transported to Richmond from Boston and New York by vessel, and there turned over to Colonel Bernard Peyton, the agent of the University, who seems to have looked upon the responsibility of taking

care of them as a very clumsy and perplexing burden. So prodigiously heavy were the capitals and bases that it was found very arduous to transfer them from the dock to the canal basin, from which the batteaux plying up the James set out. They weighed from three to five tons, and the question arose: were the boats wide and staunch enough to take them on board without risk? They were finally carried up the river and unloaded at Scottsville, and from that village were borne by wagons to the University. It required the services of a very capable overseer to bring about their safe delivery; and such was Lyman Peck, who superintended their removal on board the batteaux, their passage up stream, and finally their conveyance overland. Several weeks were consumed in accomplishing the entire task after the marbles had left the Richmond wharf. It was not until April 19, 1826, six months at least after their arrival in the dock there, that Colonel Peyton was able to report that, before the end of the ensuing week, the last capital would have been forwarded by water. Already the marbles which had reached the University were in the course of being put in their appointed places.

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826. A few days before he was forced to take to his bed with his fatal illness, he visited the University, and in the final glimpse which we have of him within the precincts of the institution to which he had given up all his thoughts and energies in his old age, he is seen seated and looking out through a window on the Lawn to watch the workingmen as they raised a capital to the top of the column at the southwest corner of the portico. So oblivious was he of all besides that he had unconsciously remained standing until Mr. Wertenbaker silently brought him a chair. It seems very appropriate that his last association in his own person with

the university which he loved so absorbingly should have been with the noblest of all its buildings.

Dinsmore and Neilson were sometimes disposed to act impatiently in their intercourse with the Faculty. They were pointedly complained of, on one occasion, as replying offensively when they were asked to provide shelves for the books in the galleries of the library. Certain stairways of this apartment had not yet been finished, and these builders resented the suggestion that the work should be hastened on this part at the expense of other parts equally important, although many volumes thereby might have been made accessible for use at an earlier date. Nor did they concern themselves about the deafening noise raised by their tools. Dinsmore was requested to remove a workingman whose hammer rendered it impossible for one of the professors to go on with his lecture; the only answer from him, according to the report of the Faculty, was "a gross insult in the presence of the class." What he had said was, no doubt, true enough at that time; namely, that "the professors had no business in the building," and it seems to have been this fact alone that had caused him to threaten, with a fierce oath, "to turn them all out." It is quite probable that the inconveniences of the lecture-halls in the pavilions had proved so irksome to the teachers, -not to bring in their wives, -that some of them had been forced to take refuge in the half-finished lecture-rooms of the Rotunda, to the natural discomposure of both Dinsmore and Neilson, who were endeavoring to hurry forward its completion.

In October, 1826, the noble apartment reserved for the library was on the point of being finished; only a flight of steps and the laying of the marble flags on the floor of the portico were thereafter wanting to complete

the whole building. The adjacent gymnasia, however, were still in the course of construction. In November, the proctor was able to announce that the Rotunda, although the work on it was not entirely concluded, was in actual use; and that the professor of chemistry was now in possession of two rooms on the floor below. A third room was used for the purpose of both chemistry and natural history; and there was, in addition, a large lecture-room. There were still to receive the last touches one large and one small oval room, as well as the general entrance hall. It was not until 1832 that the stone steps were finally erected, but, in the meanwhile, wooden ones had certainly been in use as a temporary substitute. So defective did the fireplaces, by 1827, turn out to be, that the Faculty, in disgust, petitioned the Board to set up stoves, and the ingenuity of Bonnycastle was sharply tested to find a remedy for the smoking chimneys.

IX. Additions to Main Building

The Rockfish Gap Report had recommended that anatomy should form a part of the course to be taught in the School of Medicine, but it was not until March, 1825, that the Board decided that Jefferson's design for an anatomical hall should be adopted, and that steps should be taken to erect it just as soon as the funds then expected to be paid by the National Government had been received. In anticipation of the shelter of its roof, two skeletons were purchased by Dr. Robert Goodhow, of New York; and this seems to have been the first practical step towards the establishment of the medical school. By February, 1826, the construction of the hall had begun under a contract with Dinsmore and Neilson, and by August the roof had been completed. As it was necessary

to build with strict economy, the proctor, -who, in the absence of General Cocke, was overseeing the work, -complained to him of an expensive Chinese railing which had been put up on the edge of the roof. So rapid did the construction go forward that the hall seems to have been ready for use by February of the following year, only twelve months after the foundation stone was laid.

There was no suggestion in the Rockfish Gap Report of the need of an observatory in the projected university, and yet astronomy was a study which Jefferson looked upon as almost as important as architecture. An entry in his notebook accompanying a plan which he had drawn for such a building shows that he thought that astronomy, like architecture, could he taught by the object lesson of one of the University's structures. "The concave ceiling of the Rotunda," he remarked, with a characteristic absence of humor, "is proposed to be painted sky-blue, and spangled with gilt stars in their position and magnitude copied exactly from any selected hemisphere of our latitude. A seat for the operator, movable and flexible at any point in the concave, will be necessary, and means of giving to every star its exact position. A white oak sapling is to he used as a boom, its heel working in the centre of the sphere, with a rope suspending the small end of the boom and passing over a pulley in the zenith, and hanging down to the floor, by which the boom may be raised or lowered at will. A common saddle with stirrups is to he fixed as the seat of the operator; and seated in that, he may, by the rope, be propelled to any point in the concave."

It was probably the costliness of the projected building that influenced Jefferson to go slowly in advising the erection of an observatory, which, in size at least, should

be in proportion to the other structures. In 1820, he calculated that ten and even twelve thousand dollars would be needed; and the only prospect of obtaining so large a sum at this time lay in collecting the balance of the subscription money, to be supplemented by the rents expected from the hotels and dormitories so soon as the institution should open its doors. This prospect vanished in a short time; and three years afterwards, Jefferson was disposed to convert the house occupied by the proctor on Monroe Hill into the building desired. The isolation and elevation of its site appeared to adapt it to such a purpose. Not long before his death occurred, he, with characteristic care and minuteness, after examining the plans of all the principal establishments of this kind then in existence, drew up one of his own. The edifice was to be constructed so massively in its foundations and walls that it would be impossible for it to be liable at any time to disturbing vibrations. There was to be a cupola to shelter the telescope, with openings towards every point of the horizon, and thus, in every direction, looking out on a very wide expanse. A very high attitude for the site, however, would not be required, as the sky line at the University was not, as in Europe, shut in by numerous houses, both public and private. On the reservoir mountain there existed a site which combined in itself all the favorable conditions that were indispensable, except that the remotest limits of the eastern heavens were concealed by the barrier of the Southwest Range. For that reason, Jefferson seems to have, at one time, canvassed the expediency of placing the observatory on the top of one of these intervening peaks. A small structure was erected on the reservoir mountain about March, 1828; but it appears to have served no practical purpose owing to the lack of a proper fitting out, and in 1859, it was pulled down, and the materials which entered into it were carted away for building elsewhere. A small brick house was erected on a knoll just south of Monroe Hill, was equipped by Lukens, of Philadelphia, and put in charge of Dr. Patterson, who took many observations there, and there did other astronomical work in connection with his classes in natural philosophy.

So soon as the contracts were given out, in the spring of 1819, for the construction of additional pavilions and dormitories, Jefferson began to consider the means of obtaining a permanent and voluminous supply of water. On April 9, he received a proposal from Mr. Balinger, of Philadelphia, to bring it within the precincts by means of pipes that were to tap springs on the side of Observatory Mountain. A previous bid seems to have been made in March by William Cosby, who was to have a share of some importance in the building of the University. By August, the work of boring the pipes, which were manufactured by hollowing out large logs of wood, had begun. The reservoir, however, had not yet been constructed, for, on October 7, James Wade, who had recently inspected the ground, advised Jefferson to place the receiving basin as high up on the mountain as practicable, so as to avoid the use of pumps. This method, he said, would be certain to create a strong natural flow of water for extinguishing a great fire, or for supplying an ornamental jet d'eau, should one be desired for diversifying the beauty of the University grounds. He suggested the construction of a circular reservoir, to consist of oak plank two and a half to three inches in thickness, and capable of holding three thousand or even four thousand gallons, with an arch of brick thrown over it for protection. The excavation of the ditch to contain the pipes occupied the interval from May to November.

Either the work of laying them was delayed, or they had to be replaced or renewed in part, for both in August, 1821, and in May, July, and November, 1832, the University was subjected to the expense of hauling logs and pipes. In the meanwhile, a number of cisterns had been constructed here and there within the precincts by Hugh Chisholm and William Phillips; and there were also sunk wells that required as many as ten thousand bricks to be brought from the Perry kiln.

There has already been a brief allusion to the gardens which lay in the rear of the ten pavilions. The walls enclosing these gardens were of a shape which has been aptly described as serpentine. It will be recalled that Jefferson, during his mission to France, had made a tour of the English counties, and in the course of his circuit of the island, had been very much pleased with the beauty of the gardens, especially in their relation to landscape. It was, probably, during this tour that he first noticed the serpentine walls, which, in those times as in these, environed so many of the English gardens, and being delighted with their graceful and unique sinuosity, he, no doubt, carried this impression with him until he had an opportunity of reproducing their shape in planning the garden walls for Central College. In England, this type of wall, because it presents a larger surface to the rays of the sun, is thought to be better adapted to the growth of flowering vines and fruits. The smaller cost of such an enclosure was, perhaps, an important reason for its adoption for the protection of the University gardens. The serpentine wall can be safely raised with a thickness of one brick to a greater height than an ordinary straight wall of the same dimensions. The original serpentine walls at the University were only half a brick through, and yet from ground to top the distance

is as much as six or seven feet; and the strength of their framework is proven by the endurance of most of the first material used, during a period of nearly one hundred years.

In providing for the buildings for the new seat of learning, Jefferson did not forget the need of a clock and bell. In 1825, the proctor obtained an offer from Joseph Saxton, of Philadelphia, who represented the famous maker, Lukens, who was then in Paris. Apparently, this was not accepted, for, in April, Jefferson wrote to Mr. Coolidge, of Boston, -a city which then had a high reputation in the art of bell making, -to ask him for assistance in procuring the bell so soon to be used "We want one," he said, "which can be generally heard at a distance of two miles, because this will always ensure its being heard at Charlottesville."

Coolidge, in his reply to this letter, seems to have recommended Mr. Willard, of Boston, but no clock and bell were manufactured that year, for, on April 3, 1826, the Board of Visitors empowered the executive committed to buy a clock and bell, should Congress consent to remit the duties on the capitals imported from Italy.[47] The order for the bell given to Willard was countermanded by Cocke after Jefferson's death, and an order for a triangle at first substituted; but the clock was

finally made by Willard in accord with the elaborate instructions which Jefferson had given in his letter to Coolidge in June, 1826. In the spring of 1827, the clock appears to have been put in place, for it was during that year that Willard visited the University for the purpose. A bell seems to have been ordered at first from Joseph White, of New York, but it did not give satisfaction. In November, 1827, a bell was shipped by Mr. Coolidge from Boston, and this was probably the one which remained in constant use until 1886, when having cracked, it became necessary to discard it; but it still survives as a venerable relic of the many years during which it sounded through the precincts of the University, and over the surrounding region of country.

When, in the spring of 1819, the appointment of a proctor was under discussion, Governor Preston, recommended Arthur S. Brockenbrough, a member of a distinguished family, who, at that time, was superintendent of repairs to the Capitol in Richmond, and was also in charge of the improvements to the Capitol Square, then in progress. "Brockenbrough," he wrote, "was judicious, economical, and industrious, a man of correct taste, who had been trained in building; and in character, unexceptional, and in disposition, amiable." These encomiums were not exaggerated. His ability and fidelity in performing the practical part imposed on him officially in the erection of the University have not been awarded the praise to which they fully entitle him in the history of the institution. Constant vigilance, unceasing activity, and the power to direct and use men to advantage, as well as knowledge of building in its general and special features alike, were required of him, and all these qualifications he exhibited. His responsibilities covered a large field of small details arising continuously, and calling

for sound judgment and expert information to meet them correctly and promptly. Jefferson pointed out how intricate were the duties of the office in his letter inviting; Alexander Duke, in 1819, to undertake them. "They are of two characters so distinct," he said, "that it is difficult to find them associated in the same person. One part . . . is to make contracts with workmen, superintend their execution, see that they are, according to plan, performed faithfully and in a workmanlike manner, settle their accounts and pay them off. The other is to hire common laborers, overlook them, provide subsistence, and do whatever else is necessary for the institution."[48]

It is true that Jefferson relieved Brockenbrough of much drudgery that would have fallen on him had Jefferson himself been satisfied with a nominal oversight. We have seen him laying off the site of Central College, drawing up the specifications for the buildings from cellar to garret, prescribing the tests for brick, stone, and timber, writing out many of the contracts with his own hand, and preparing the deeds to the purchased lots. But he very probably did not take upon himself to perform every one of those duties which he enumerated in the letter to Duke. Although he visited the University so frequently, yet it was not possible for him to remain the entire round of working hours, and there must have been, in his intervals of absence, however short, a throng of small matters of business rising up suddenly and requiring to be at once passed upon. As Bremo, the home of General Cocke, the other member of the committee of superintendence, was situated a day's journey off, it was not possible for him to be constantly within the precincts.

Brockenbrough, on the other hand, resided on the ground; the affairs of the University rested upon him, from morning to night, through the entire week, regardless even of the Sabbath; and when his two superiors were not present, he alone was responsible for the correct and orderly progress of the buildings. The accounts of his office, which still survive, are very voluminous, and they embrace every side of the original expenditures for construction.

That his temper was sometimes harassed by the exasperating intricacies of his duties crops out in the history of his relations with some of the workingmen. W. J. Coffee, whose artistic eye and hand fashioned the ornamental parts of the entablatures of the pavilion drawing-rooms, roundly denounced him, on one occasion, as "illbred, unhandsome, and insulting," but as there had been a difference of opinion in the settlement of his balance, it is quite possible that Brockenbrough was only endeavoring to safeguard the interests of the University. That was certainly so in the case of a contention with Edward Lawber, who supplied the paints for so many of the buildings. The records indicate that there was but one suit of importance brought against the institution during his administration by any of the contractors; this was by James Oldham; a proof that care had been taken by him to deal justly and exactly with all the persons who had a share in constructing it.

After Jefferson's death, Brockenbrough's prolonged experience under circumstances that sharpened his powers of observation was very serviceable to both Cocke and Madison as the executive committee. There still survives a letter written by him to the latter about the time that Madison succeeded to the rectorship, which contains many valuable practical suggestions respecting

the dormitories and hotels, and also the hospital, which had been projected but not yet begun.

X. Cost of Buildings

What was the outlay required for the erection of the elaborate fabric of the University? The answer to this question is an important one, not only from an economical and historical point of view in general, but also because it demonstrates in another way the breadth and dignity of the work which Jefferson performed for his native State in founding and building that institution. It would be possible, from the contents of the proctor's vouchers belonging to the period of construction, to offer tables that would embrace every detail of the entire cost; but the prices of a few of the essential and fundamental materials used by the contractors will be sufficient for our present purpose.

The chief price list at that time was known as the Philadelphia Price Book, and we shall find that it governed many of the charges in the building of the University, although, in some cases, with modifications called for by local conditions. Take, for instance, the bids of the carpenters and joiners in 1819. "From my knowledge of the manner in which the work is to be done," writes James Dinsmore in May of that year, "and of the difficulty of procuring good workingmen, and also in the difference in [the price of] the materials between here and Philadelphia, I shall not consider myself justified in undertaking by the book (Philadelphia Price Book) as the standard, at a less advance than the difference of the currency between Pennsylvania and Virginia. Should it be more agreeable to the Visitors, I would undertake it at five per cent less, provided they get an experienced

Philadelphia measurer to measure the work after it is executed. At these rates, I should wish to undertake the carpenter's and joiner's work of the Ionic pavilion, with the range of dormitories attached to it." It seems that Dinsmore and Perry, after this letter was written, consented to reduce the amount of their bid because there had been a fall in wages since it was first submitted; and they asserted their willingness now to conform to the Philadelphia Price Book provided that a Virginia dollar should be accepted as equal in value to a Pennsylvania dollar. Perry, testifying, in 1830, in the suit of James Oldham, said that he recalled "that it was distinctly understood that the last work let at the University was to be done at ten per cent. below the first work undertaken. I recollect I applied to Mr. Jefferson, and urged it, that, as we were fixed then to do the work, I did not think it right that we should be required to work for less than we had done. His reply was, that work had fallen everywhere and that no more would be given."

The men who had the principal share in building the University, lacked, with hardly an exception, even a moderate amount of capital; when they did buy their own material, payment was usually effected by advances on their accounts with the proctor; the purchase, in each case, was really made by him, and a deduction for it was entered against the balance due the contractor on his books. But this fact rather increases than diminishes our ability to find out the most significant charges.

Down to a period as late as 1819, the former habit of stating all prices in the terms of the old Colonial currency of pounds and shillings was very often followed. Thus we find that the edge plank used in the construction of the pavilions was valued at so many shillings the one hundred feet; but when the quantity was very large, the

price was expressed in American units. Richard Ware, in 1820, bought 2,424 feet of W. D. Meriwether at the rate of thirty dollars the thousand; but this was probably undressed, as flooring plank furnished by Nelson Barksdale, the same year, was valued at forty-five dollars for the same number of feet. The shingles for the kitchen roofs were purchased at the rate of three dollars and seventy cents the thousand and scantlings at the rate of thirty-four dollars. In 1819, John M. Perry agreed to furnish three hundred thousand bricks in return for fourteen dollars the thousand for place-brick, and twenty-four dollars for oil-stock, while the charge of Carter and Phillips for the same proportions was respectively eleven dollars and fifty cents, and twenty dollars. The accounts reveal that the University was able to manufacture one hundred and eighty thousand bricks within the space of a month; and the expense of doing this was estimated at $539.68. This seems to have taken in the wage of the moulder, the hire of the laborers, and the cost of their food, as well as the cost of the fifteen cords of wood consumed in the making.

In the beginning William Leitch, of Charlottesville, acquired the sole right to supply all the ironmongery for the buildings; but as this monopoly brought down the criticism of the trade, and raised up enemies for the new institution, the contract, with his consent, was cancelled. As this material was afterwards procured from Richmond, the prices were very much swelled by the charges for hauling.

The most onerous single feature in the construction of the University was the importation of the capitals and bases from Italy. Writing to Cabell in September, 1821, Jefferson calculated that the seventeen capitals for pavilions II, III, V and VIII had cost $1,784.00; and that

the charge for the same number yet to arrive would be $2,052.00. The freight upon thirty-one boxes from Leghorn amounted to $264.00. In April, 1823, four Ionic capitals for pavilion II cost $60.00 apiece; four Corinthian for pavilion III, $180.00 each; six Ionic for pavilion V, $55.00 each; and two Corinthian for pavilion VIII, $110.00 each. Jefferson estimated that the outlay for transportation added fifty per cent to the expense at the quarry. In 1825, the cost of ten whole and two half capitals for use in the Rotunda amounted to $6,270.27.

The wages of ordinary stonecutters, in 1820, was twenty-five cents for each superficial foot. It was, however, fifty cents per foot in straight moulded work, and seventy-five cents in circular. Alexander Spinks, the quarrier, received a wage of thirty dollars a month, and as the charge for board was ten dollars only for the same length of time, he still retained a satisfactory margin of profit. In January, 1820, John Gorman was working at the rate of seventy-five cents the superficial foot in chiseling the Tuscan bases and capitals. For the Doric bases and capitals, on the other hand, he was paid at the rate of eight dollars apiece; for the moulded doorsills, four dollars and eighteen cents; and for the plain, two dollars and fifty cents; and for setting the sills, two dollars respectively.

The work of sheeting the roofs with tin during the years 1820, 1821, and 1822, was done by the hand of A. H. Brooks. His scale seems to have been six dollars and thirty cents for each square. Jefferson soon became dissatisfied with him because of this high charge, for such he considered it to be. "The tinning," he wrote Mr. Yancey, of Buckingham, "can be done as well for one dollar as he can do it. We were led to it from a belief that it could not be done without the very expensive and

complicated machine which he used to bind the tin, which he told us was a patent machine costing forty dollars, and not to he had in the United States. At that stage of our business, I got him to come and cover a small house for me. Seeing his machine at work and how simple the object was, I saw that the same effect could he produced by two boards hinged together. I had this done accordingly, and it did the work as neatly, and something quicker, than his forty dollar machine, while this could be made for fifty cents. Any person will learn to do it in a day as well as in a year."

This letter brings into light, not only Jefferson's unremitting vigilance in superintending the work of building at the University, down to the minutest particulars, but also his shrewd discernment and his mechanical ingenuity. Brooks seems to have been retained in spite of the discredit cast upon his machine by this object lesson, for, in 1826, he was employed in laying on such sheets of tin as the Rotunda needed, at the rate of five dollars and fifty cents the square, -which was only about one dollar less than he had charged for the like covering on the other buildings.[49]

The cost of all the materials used in the construction was very much increased by the high charge for wagonage and boatage. We have seen that packages from a distance, however ponderous, -and there was no one thing of its size heavier than a marble capital or base, were conveyed either in the overland vehicles, or in the river batteaux that put Charlottesville and Richmond into commercial intercourse by water. The rates for local hauling were moderate in comparison, but formed a serious expense on account of the quantity of lumber and

the like weighty articles dumped by carts within the precincts of the University. The hardware purchased in Richmond was transported by wagon at an average return of one dollar the hundred pounds; and this was also the rate for blocks of stone. If the overland freight consisted of but one or two casks, the charge was seventy-five cents the hundred pounds. On one occasion, William Estes hauled twenty-five boxes of tin from Richmond for eighteen dollars and fifty-eight cents; and this seems to have been the rate customary with his associates on the road: William Dietrick, James Myers, and Thomas Priddy. There is on record a charge by another wagoner, John Craddock, of forty cents the hundred pounds in the instance of one box of general merchandise and six boxes of tin. The rate for articles of ordinary weight brought by boat to the Milton landing was usually about fifty cents the hundred pounds; on four barrels of Roman cement transported thither in 1821, and from thence carted to the University, the aggregate charge was six dollars. When the Ionic and Corinthian capitals were imported in 1823, the boatage from Richmond to Scott's landing in Albemarle, was found to be very expensive, -Peter Rutherford and William Megginson were the owners of the batteaux used, and to one of them the sum of one hundred and twenty-five dollars was paid; and, no doubt, the same amount to the other. Not less than six persons were employed for the wagonage to the University, each of whom received five dollars for every day of service. Some were occupied with the work at least eight days and some only four. If the hauling was from the immediate neighborhood, and the materials were wood, rock or lumber, the charge by the day ranged from four dollars to five.

One of the continuous expenses which had to be met

was the hire of slaves and the purchase of provisions for their support. In 1820, the outlay on this score amounted to $1,099.08; in 1821, to $1,133.73; in 1822 to $868.64; and in 1825 to $681.00, a steadily falling scale from year to year. The charge for each negro was gauged by his age and physical condition. Sixty dollars was the average amount. When the slave was returned at the end of his time, he had to be fitted out with outer and underclothing, and double-soled shoes. The monthly wages of a white or free colored laborer ranged from ten to sixteen dollars. These men were either boarded by the University at a weekly rate, or they were supplied with meal and bacon, large quantities of which were bought for them, and also for the slaves, at the rate of ten cents the pound for the bacon, and two dollars the barrel for the corn. John Herron, the overseer, received one hundred and twenty dollars annually for his services; and this income was increased by his wife, an industrious seamstress, whose time was chiefly taken up with sewing for the hired workingmen.

The amounts required for the purchase of separate articles would fail to give even an approximate idea of the total expenditures for erecting the several buildings of the University. There are figures available to show what was the aggregate outlay which each of these edifices entailed. In 1820, Jefferson, writing to Cabell, enclosed for his examination the following estimates: ten pavilions were to cost six thousand dollars each; six hotels, three thousand, five hundred dollars each; one hundred and four dormitories, three hundred and fifty dollars each. Independently of the Rotunda it was his belief that the entire group could be constructed for $162,364.00. In 1821, he stated that the average expenditure for the pavilions which had been finished was

$8,982.49; for sixteen of the dormitories, $13,898.35, and for nineteen others, $11,083.63. The estimated amount to be paid for the pavilions not completed was $33,563.15, and for dormitories in the like condition, $39,462.60. Down to this time, the total estimated cost of buildings unfinished was $110,911.49; the actual cost of buildings finished, $84,188.51. The divergence between the expended outlay and the actual outlay for such structures as were completed before November 29, 1821, is thus explained in the report of the Board drawn up on that day: "The two (first) pavilions and their dormitories were begun and considerably advanced when all things were at their most inflated paper prices, and, therefore, have been of expanding cost; but all the buildings since done on the more enlarged scale of the University have been at prices of from 25 per cent to 50 per cent in reduction. It is confidently believed that, with that exception, no considerable system of buildings in the United States has been done on cheaper terms, nor more correctly, faithfully, and solid of execution, according to the value of the materials used."

An impression that the outlay for constructing the University was far larger than was justifiable was very wide-spread in 1822; Cabell conceded that the charge of extravagance was now on the lips of even the "intelligent circle of society"; but he did not think that there was any substantial foundation for it. Writing to Jefferson in March, he said, "The admissions of our own friends, and the known opinion of a part of the Board of Visitors, have mainly contributed to give currency and weight to the prejudice prevailing on this subject." He insisted that, instead of prodigality, there had been strict economy in the expenditures; but it is probable that the opposing opinion of Cocke, who was not so much under Jefferson's

influence, and who had had practical experience as a builder, was, in the main, correct. There can be no doubt, however, that Jefferson was rigidly accurate in saying, as he did do in the course of the construction, that, with the exception of one payment of seventy-five cents, every penny had been fully accounted for in properly signed vouchers. Cocke's disposition to question arose from his disapproval of some of the details of the style of architecture adopted, which required so much to be spent in apparently useless ornament. The expression "raree show," which he jocularly applied to the whole grouping, indicated that he thought that some of the sacrifices of money for sake of mere beauty were unnecessary. He was looking at the structure from the point of view of a man who was scrupulously keeping his eye on the amount of the balance in bank, whereas Jefferson never really considered that balance at all, because, in his anxiety to carry out his whole scheme in its perfection, he was sanguine that the General Assembly could be wheedled into providing the funds in the end. As a member of the committee of superintendence, Cocke, a very prudent and conservative man of business, would have crept forward in the expenditures with even more caution than if the buildings had been his own property, and not the property of the University. Cabell occupied no such relation to the actual construction as this, and he was naturally more complacent in accepting Jefferson's perfectly honest but too hopeful estimates, and more indignant than Cocke or Chapman Johnson when public criticism was leveled at the sachem for being too liberal in the use of the large sums already put at his disposal.

The following tables show the actual cost of the pavilions, hotels and dormitories, which were in existence when the University was thrown open.

           

Pavilions	Hotels	Dormitories
I. $ 9992.05	Hotel A $4,499.21	$78,509.58
II. 10,863.57	Hotel B 6,278.29
III. 16,528.47	Hotel C 4,525.38
IV. 11,173.30	Hotel D 6,245.39
V. 11,723.41	Hotel E 4,638.71
VI. 9,793.40	Hotel F 6,013.68
VII. 9,399.73
VIII. 10,786.86
IX. 8,785.04
X. 11,758.06

The balance sheet of the proctor for 1828 disclosed that, up to that year, the residential buildings of the University had called for an expenditure of $236,678.29, and the Rotunda, of $57,749.33. The figures for the latter edifice clearly exhibited Jefferson's proneness to undercalculate the cost of construction, for he had agreed with the proctor in thinking that $46,847.00 would be sufficient for its erection. John Neilson, -who was pronounced by Cocke to be one of the few men employed in the work at the University who was competent to make an estimate, -had predicted that the outlay necessary for the Rotunda would not fall short of fifty-five thousand dollars; and this anticipation turned out to be almost precisely correct. In 1830, the entire property belonging to the institution was valued at $333,095.12, in which account the lands were assessed at $9,465.75 and the books and apparatus at $36,308.07.

XI. The Tight for Appropriations

From what sources were obtained the voluminous funds that were necessary to carry through the elaborate and expensive programme of building which has been described? It will be recalled that, before the College

was converted into a University, the only means of collecting money consisted of the subscription list. Had the University, like the College, been compelled to depend upon this alone, it would have had a very precarious outlook from the start. The General Assembly foresaw that, in incorporating the institution, it would be imperative to afford it a definite measure of support. The sum to be appropriated annually for its benefit, namely fifteen thousand dollars, was not enough in itself for the erection of the buildings, but it would at least be sufficient to pay the salaries of the professors, and at a pinch, be used as interest upon a loan negotiated to embrace the remaining cost of construction. The annuity, small as it was, was granted somewhat grudgingly, and there were to be times in a future not at all remote when a warning threat of discontinuing it was to be heard.

There was one man who never for a moment was satisfied with fifteen thousand dollars as the annual limit to the State's assistance; that man was Jefferson. The petition for aid which he wished to submit to the General Assembly while Central College was still in existence, seemed to him more imperative than ever after it had been merged in the University. He was clearly aware, that, should he not succeed in obtaining the appropriation of very large sums by the Commonwealth, in addition to the annuity, he would not be able to complete the buildings in the splendid form upon which he had set his aspiration in the beginning. He, and his staunch coadjutor, Cabell, and their few unwavering supporters in the Legislature, never suffered any sort of set back, however staggering, to balk them long in their crusade. How deeply Cabell's heart was enlisted in it is revealed in one of his letters to Jefferson: "I returned (to Richmond) over stormy rivers and frozen roads," he wrote,

"to rejoin the band of steadfast patriots engaged in the holy cause of the University "! The holy cause of the University! That was the view which both of them took in their unceasing fight for appropriations; and, as we shall see, neither of them, -as, for instance, in opposing the transplantation of the College of William and Mary, -allowed any sentimental scruples to palsy the resolute energy of their purpose.

There was in the avidity with which Jefferson fixed his eyes on the Literary Fund, -the only source from which more of the State's money could be got, -something that would appear pathetically ludicrous but for its unselfish and disinterested spirit. That Fund was barred to the University beyond the annuity by numerous influences which could be broken down only with painful difficulty; among them were (1) the disposition of the General Assembly to restrict all large appropriations from this fund to the use of the elementary public schools, such as they were; (2) the sour feeling against Jefferson himself, which lingered among his political foes of the past; (3) the impression among the friends of the College of William and Mary that the waxing of the University would be accompanied by the proportionate waning of the College; (4) the jealousy and rivalry of small institutions like Hampden-Sidney College and Washington College; (5) the belief among the several denominations that the University was friendly to irregligious tendencies; and finally, (6) the provincial indifference to the claims of literature and education, which was then so much abroad in Virginia. As these hostile influences existed in the State at large, they were, of course, reflected in a concentrated form in the popular representation in the General Assembly. It was Cabell who had to ride down this powerful array, for it was he, and not Jefferson,

who, under the roof of the capitol, was brought face to face with it in its most threatening shape. "The University," wrote General B. J. S. Cabell, who was a member of the Legislature during these years, "had the warm support of a number of enlightened men in both Houses, but he it was whose generous enthusiasm and burning zeal always called and marshalled the forces to battle. It was remarkable that, though promptly opposed and sometimes beaten in the vote, with what elasticity he would rise again in a few days, and return to the charge stronger than ever; and a session rarely passed without his having obtained a signal victory for the University. It is no disparagement to the memory of his patriotic colleagues to say that he was the Ajax Telemon of that sacred war. I know several of his enlightened compeers, devoted patriots, men of exalted worth and talents, who delighted to honor him as their leader in that great work."

Among the most conspicuous and indefatigable of these "compeers" was William F. Gordon, a delegate in the House, and afterwards a representative in Congress, the author of the Sub-Treasury Scheme, and as a member of the Convention of 1829-30, -in itself a badge of civic distinction, -the proposer of the plan that settled the vehement controversy between the East and West that was so near to the verge of breaking up that great body. He had been in the first rank of those who strove to establish the University on the site of Central College; and he stood always at Cabell's elbow, whenever, as General Cabell expressed it, "a charge" was to be made for an appropriation. Chapman Johnson, William C. Rives, George Loyall, General Breckinridge, General Blackburn, R. M. T. Hunter, and Philip Doddridge, were some of the other high-minded and public-spirited men,

who, either in the Senate or the house, could, like Gordon himself, be always relied upon to use their influence with their colleagues to ensure the passage of any measure that was favorable to the interests of the University.

With characteristic promptness and singleness of purpose, Jefferson began the fight for the appropriations of large sums to the University only three days after its incorporation. Would it not be possible, he inquired of William C. Rives in January, 1819, to induce the General Assembly to turn over to the institution all that portion of the annual reservation for the charity schools which remained derelict because not accepted by them? "I mean so much of the last year's $45,000 as has not been called for, or so much of this year's $65,000 as shall not be called for. These unclaimed dividends might enable us to complete our buildings and procure apparatus and library, which, once done, the institution might be maintained in action by a moderate annual sum. Could it have any ill effect to try this proposal with the Legislature?" Cabell, and very probably Rives also, disapproved of this course, because it would revive the popular impression that the University was covertly seeking to absorb the entire income of the Literary Fund. This alone would make certain its defeat. The interests which had striven to divert the location of the University from Charlottesville were still sore and angry over their discomfiture. "They will seize upon every occasion," wrote Cabell in February, "and avail themselves of every pretext to keep it down." "Better," he urged "to put off to another session the petition for a special appropriation." But Jefferson was not disposed to accept this advice. "We should go on in our duty," he said sturdily, "and hope the same from them, and leave on them the blame of failure." And it was not until Cabell

pointed out to him that the income from the Literary Fund was, for the time being, exhausted, and that the Assembly would refuse to create a special fund, that he desisted.

By January 22, 1820, -the Legislature, in the meanwhile, having been in session during several weeks without making the appropriation so eagerly desired and expected, -Jefferson began to grow impatient and reproachful. "Kentucky," he said "has a University with fourteen professors, and two hundred students, though the State was planted after Virginia. If our Legislature does not heartily push our University, we must send our children for education to Kentucky or Cambridge. If, however, we are to go a-begging anywhere for our education, I would rather it should be to Kentucky than any other State, because she has more of the flavor of the old cask than any other. All the States but our own are sensible that knowledge is power, and we are sinking into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect, like them, to oppose by ignorance the overwhelming mass of light and science by which we shall be surrounded. It is a comfort that I shall not live to see it."

About a month later, -perhaps, under the influence of Jefferson's temporary dejection of mind, -Cabell was inclined to make an effort to obtain that portion of the income of the Literary Fund which remained unappropriated after there had been paid out the regular annuities to the University and the public schools. It seems that this surplus had now swelled to forty thousand dollars. Nothing of practical value, however, was done by the State for the institution until February 24, 1820, when the General Assembly impowered the Board of Visitors to borrow sixty thousand dollars for the purpose of finishing the group of buildings. Security for the payment

of the interest, and for the redemption of the principal, was to be created by the pledge of a definite proportion of the annuity. In March, forty thousand dollars of the authorized loan was obtained from the President and Directors of the Literary Fund. The Visitors, at their meeting in April, decided to apply one-half of this amount to the liquidation of the University debt, and the other half to the completion of such buildings as were already in the process of construction; and should there remain a surplus, this surplus, together with all the annuity for 1821, -except the portion needed to pay the interest on the loan, -was to be expended in the erection o f additional pavilions and dormitories. And the Visitors further determined to borrow of the Literary Fund the additional twenty thousand dollars which the General Assembly had allowed.

Jefferson very correctly thought that the loan of the sixty thousand dollars should have been an appropriation for the benefit of education, and as such should not have been accompanied by a proviso as to interest and redemption. He soon began to swing the club which he wasp 1 always to find so effective. Now, he was fully aware of the fact that the public expected the lectures to begin at an early day, and that the members of the Assembly were responsive to the popular desire. What was more likely to make an impression on them than the warning that, unless they were liberal in their grants of money to the institution, there would be but a slim prospect of its throwing open its doors within any limit of time that could then be reasonably predicted? He was shrewd enough to recognize that it would be short-sighted to admit students while the buildings were only partly completed, for if it were known that the University was obtaining an income from this source, the members of the

Assembly would be more inclined than they were then to be apathetic to his insistent calls for financial assistance.

We catch the tone of a cold but polite rebuke in the report of the Visitors for October 3, 1820, which was written by him and reflected his attitude of mind: "If the Legislature shall be of opinion that the annuity already apportioned to the establishment and maintenance of an institution for instruction in all the useful sciences, is its proper part of the whole (Literary) Fund, the Visitors will faithfully see that it shall be punctually applied to the remaining engagements for the buildings, and to the reimbursement of the extra sum lately received from the General Fund; that, during the term of its application to these objects, due care shall be taken to preserve the buildings erected from rain or roguery; and at the end of that term, they will provide for opening the institution in the partial degree to which its present annuity shall be adequate. If, on the other hand, the Legislature shall be of the opinion that the sums so advanced in the name of a loan from the General Fund of education were legitimately applicable to the purposes of a university; that its early commencement will promote the public good (1) by offering to our youth, now ready and panting for it, an early and near resource for instruction, and (2) by arresting the heavy tribute we are annually paying to other States and countries for the article of education, and shall think proper to liberate the present annuity from its charges, -the Visitors trust it will be in their power, by the autumn of 1821, to engage and bring in place that portion of the professors designated by law to which the present annuity might be found competent; or by the same epoch, to carry into full execution the whole object of the law, if an enlargement be made of

its participation in the General Fund adequate to the full establishment contemplated by the law."

These words, respectful as they are, barely veil Jefferson's contempt for the niggard spirit of the General Assembly; and they also put forward something broader than a hint for a larger share of the income of the Literary Fund. The public suspicion that he was really aiming to divert most of that income to the University was not altogether without foundation. "One hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars," he remarked a few weeks later, "had been appropriated, in the course of three years, to the primary schools. How many children had been instructed during that time? " "I should be glad to know," he adds, "if that sum has educated one hundred and thirty-five poor children. I doubt it much. And if it has, it has cost us one thousand dollars apiece for what might have been done with thirty dollars. Divide the income of the Fund, amounting to sixty thousand dollars, between the University and the primary schools, and there would be an ample sum for both."

Again he bitterly reproaches his native State for its apathy to education. "The little we have, we import like beggars from other States, or import their beggars to bestow on us their miserable crumbs. And what is wanted to restore us to our station among our equals? Not more money from the people. Enough has been raised by them and appropriated to this very object. It is that it should be employed understandingly, and for their great good."

When the session of the General Assembly for 1820-21 opened, Jefferson was as fixed as ever in his resolution to obtain a large appropriation from the State for the benefit of the University. Cabell informed him

that the condition of the Literary Fund was, at this time, so parched that its revenue would, perhaps, not he sufficient to pay the annuities; and if a surplus should be proven to exist, it would be so small that it would afford but a few crumbs to the numerous mouths now wide open to receive them. He soothed Jefferson's impatient spirit by suggesting that, just so soon as the first loan to the University had been put "on the proper basis for managing it," a petition should be sent to the Legislature for authority to borrow the further sum of fifty thousand dollars.

Cabell was now suffering from an alarming weakness of the heart, and he became so dejected, in consequence, that he determined to resign his seat in the Senate; he declared that he could not, without risk of bringing himselve "to the grave," expose his person to the rigor of the long rides from courthouse to courthouse in order to address his constituents. Jefferson received this entirely rational announcement with a Spartan's remonstrance. "I know well your devotion to your country and your foresight of the awful scenes coming on her sooner or later. With this foresight, what service can we ever render her equal to this? What object of our lives can we propose so important? What interest of our own which ought not to be postponed to this? Health, time, labor, on what in the single life which nature has given us can be better bestowed than on this immortal boon to our country? The exceptions and mortifications are temporary; the benefit, eternal. If any member of our College of Visitors could justifiably withdraw from this sacred duty, it would be myself, who quadragenis, stependis jam dudum peractis, have neither vigor of body nor mind left to keep the field. But I will die in the last ditch. Do not think of deserting us, but view

the sacrifices which seem to stand in your way as the lesser duties, and such as ought to be postponed to this greatest of all. Continue with us in these holy labors until, having seen their accomplishment, we may say with old Simeon, nunc dimittis Domine."

This appeal to friendship, duty, and patriotism, which reflected the sturdy and resolute spirit of the writer, was irresistible, and Cabell, in spite of his declining health, decided to retain his seat. With renewed energy and fidelity, he took up again the great work of cooperation; and so successful was he during this session (1820-21), that on February 24, the General Assembly authorized the President and Directors of the Literary Fund to make a second loan of sixty thousand dollars to the Board of Visitors for the purpose of completing the buildings, and thus enabling the University to throw open its doors at an earlier day than had, for some time, been anticipated. Jefferson, it will be recollected, had, during some years, been inclined to disparage the usefulness of the College of William and Mary, -perhaps, because it was still a rival to he counted with. This feeling, on his part, was aggravated at this time by the opposition which the friends of that institution raised to the passage of the Act of February 24, -a fact which should be borne in mind when we come, at a later stage, to describe the rather ruthless way in which he endeavored to deprive the College of its endowment fund after he had used his powerful influence to frustrate its purpose of removing from Williamsburg to Richmond, a step, at that time, apparently imperative, if it was to continue to exist at all. Cabe11 happened to be seated in the Senate chamber, just above the hall of the House of Delegates, when the Loan bill passed the latter body; and his first intimation of its success was obtained from the tumultuous clapping

of hands with which the upshot of the voting was received by its supporters.

XII. Fight for Appropriations, Continued

There is an amusing side to the almost nervous eagerness with which Cabell started in at once to discourage his persistant co-worker at Monticello from looking upon this second loan as simply a spur to another application to the General Assembly for money. Jefferson's attitude towards appropriations for the University was very much in the spirit of the Frenchman's definition of gratitude: he was never satisfied with what he was able to drag out of the reluctant Legislature, -it was always the favors to come, and not those already received, which he kept in view. No one understood better than he how much expenditure was required to complete the University in the grand manner which he thought indispensable; and his eye, therefore, was never withdrawn from the future appropriation, however much he might be pleased with the past one.

"It is the anxious wish of our best friends," wrote Cabell, who was uneasily conscious of this peculiarity of his correspondent, "and of no one more than myself, that the money now granted may he sufficient to finish the buildings. We must not come here again on that subject. These successive applications for money to finish the buildings give grounds of reproach to our enemies, and draw our friends into difficulties with their constituents." On March 10, he wrote again in the same strain. The Legislature, he now hints, may indirectly force the Board of Visitors to throw open the doors before the University is completed, by requiring the unencumbered part of the annuity to be reserved for the payment of the

salaries of the professors. "The popular cry," he adds, "is that there is too much finery, too much extravagance." In April, he was convinced that the University had lost ground of late among the great body of the people. How was the public confidence in the institution to be restored and strengthened? "By a call upon all the friends of literature and science in the State to see that their influence was directed to the choice of the very best men in each community for the next Assembly." He repeated with alarm the censorious utterances of the Presbyterians at Hampden-Sidney College, and of the Episcopalians at the College of William and Mary. "I learn that the former sect, or rather the clergy of that sect, in their synods and presbyteries talk much of the University. They believe, I am informed, that the Socinians are to be installed at the University for the purpose of overthrowing the prevailing religious opinions of the country." It is quite possible that this preposterous suggestion had its fountain-head, not so much with the denomination to which it was attributed by rumor, as with the opponents of further loans to the University within the ranks of the General Assembly itself. Not long after the session of 1821-22 began, Mr. Griffin, of the House of Delegates, endeavored, in a private interview with Cabell, to ascertain whether the University would desist from asking for more appropriations, should the Legislature consent to cancel its bonds. On that condition alone would the debt be released. Cabell declined emphatically to give the pledge, and his supporters in the Assembly, anticipating Jefferson's indignation at such a proposition, heartily approved his reply.

Whilst this tortuous and ceaseless struggle for State assistance was going on, Jefferson was threatened with disability in the use of the only weapon which he had at

his immediate disposal. When, during the session of I821-22, Cabell asked him to write to numerous influential members of the Assembly in support of the University, he replied, "You do not know, my dear sir, how great is my physical inability to write. The joints of my right wrist and fingers, in consequence of an ancient dislocation, are become so stiffened that I can write but at the pace of a snail. The copying of our report and my letter lately sent to the Governor, being seven pages, employed me laboriously a whole week. The letter I am writing has taken me two days. A letter of a page or two costs me a day of labor, and of painful labor." But this fact did not permanently curb his industry, or diminish his assiduity in pushing the cause which he had so closely at heart. Estimating in January, 1822, the amount still required for the completion of the buildings at $5,564, he started in to secure the release of the annuities for the years 1822 and 1823 from the interest charges imposed by the Legislature; and he even had the quiet hardihood to ask for a substantial increase in the allotted fifteen thousand dollars. In the meanwhile, the obstacles which Cabell as spokesman had to overcome grew more numerous and alarming. He still ascribed many of the stones in his way to the influence of the clergy. "William and Mary," he wrote in January, 1822, "has conciliated them. It is represented that they are to be excluded from the University . . . . I have made overtures of free communication with Mr. Rice, and shall take occasion to call on Bishop Moore. I do not know that I shall touch on this delicate point with either of them. But I wish to consult these heads of the church and ask their opinions."

While Cabell, in this state of perplexity, was turning from one group of opponents to another, in the hope of

bending them all to his purpose, he received a suggestion from Jefferson which, for a short interval, shifted his attention elsewhere. It appears that, during the war of 1812-15, when the British, having landed on the Patuxent, were threatening to invade the Northern Neck, the State, not having time to obtain pecuniary assistance from the National Government, borrowed a large amount from the Richmond banks, upon which it had since been compelled to pay a high rate of interest. After the war, a claim was entered at Washington for the reimbursement, not only of the principal, but of this interest also. The principal was promptly paid, but not the interest. It was the State's claim to the latter which Jefferson hoped would be transferred in part at least to the University. The accumulated interest due amounted to several hundred thousand dollars; but so small was the prospect of its being paid that Cabell said that an effort to secure it was "like working for a dead horse." Nevertheless, he was convinced that a petition for the appropriation of this prospective fund was the only one which the Assembly, at that time, would consider with favor. "The members," he wrote in January (1822), "seem liberal in giving lands in the moon . . . . Some of our friends are much dissatisfied with what is called the intended Dead Horse bill; but all estimate it is better than nothing."

But Jefferson and himself did not allow so precarious a hope as this to keep them from pressing for some substantial advantage from the General Assembly. In February (1822), a bill was submitted which provided for the suspension of interest on the loans during five years, and also arranged for the final extinguishment of principal and interest by means of the amount to be collected from the Central Government. There was now a faction

in the Assembly which was urging the transfer to the State treasury of the entire Literary Fund, on the ground that the sum annually granted for the education of the poor had been loosely spent; and this wing, combining with those members who were opposed to giving aid to the University, was successful in defeating, not only the bill which would have liquidated the University's debt, should the Government pay the interest claim, but also the bill suggested by Jefferson, which, had it been enacted, would have authorized the interest charge on the University annuity to be temporarily suspended. Perhaps, the Legislature was not so niggard as it appears to have been from this action, for there was still a widely dispersed report that economy had not been shown so far in the erection of buildings; and that this wastefulness was likely to continue.

Were the two co-workers disheartened? If so, only for a very short period, for hardly had a new session begun in December (1822) when Cabell decided to obtain the General Assembly's consent to a loan of fifty thousand dollars for the building of the Rotunda, and at the same time to secure the passage of an Act that would place the University's obligations on the footing of the other debts of the Commonwealth, which would bring about their ultimate extinction along with those debts. "Let us have nothing to do with the old balances, or dead horses, or escheated lands," he said to Jefferson, "but ask boldly to he exonerated from our debts by the powerful sinking fund of the State. This is manly and dignified legislation, and if we fail, the blame will not be ours."

William C. Rives, it seems, had already put the interrogatory to Jefferson: "Which would you prefer, the remission of the principal debt or an advance for the erection

of the Library?" Very emphatically and characteristically, and shrewdly too, Jefferson replied, "Without ,question, the latter. Of all things the most important is the completion of the buildings. The remission of the debt will come of itself. It is already remitted in the minds of every man, even of the enemies of the institution . . . . The great object of our aim from the beginning has been to make the establishment the most eminent in the United States, in order to draw to it the youth of every State, but especially of the South and West . . . . The opening of the institution in a half state of readiness would be the most fatal step which could be adopted. It would be an impatience defeating its own object by putting on a subordinate character in the outset, which never would be shaken off, instead of opening largely and in full system. Taking our stand on commanding ground at once will beckon everything to it, and a reputation once established will maintain itself for ages. To secure this, a single sum of fifty or sixty thousand dollars is wanting. If we cannot get it now, we will at another trial. Courage and patience is the watchword."

This sagacious advice, accompanied by words so convincing and so inspiriting, prevailed. Cabell wrote on the 30th of the same month that the University's friends in the General Assembly had agreed almost unanimously to solicit a loan of sixty thousand dollars, and, for the present, to cease all agitation in favor of the State's assumption of the debt. "We propose," he said with a politician's astuteness, "to move for one object at a time in order not to unite the enemies of both measures against one bill. Should we succeed in getting the loan, we may afterwards try to get rid of the debt." The bill authorizing the loan having passed the House, was

adopted by the Senate on February 5 (1823). During the discussion in the House, William F. Gordon highly distinguished himself in his advocacy of the measure; and on February to, he submitted a resolution calling upon the Committee of Finance to report "the best means of paying off the debts of the University"; but, the members being of the opinion that enough assistance for the present had been extended to the institution, it was rejected by a large majority; and that majority was still larger when a similar resolution, offered by George Loyall, was voted upon the ensuing day. There was an impression in the Assembly that the friends of the University were asking for too much at one session, and this soon created a disposition to censure and obstruct them; but, in self defense, they urged, that, as they had found both the House and the Senate more kindly disposed towards the University than they had been during several years, it seemed to be only the part of common sense to take the utmost advantage of the prevailing and, perhaps, evanescent, feeling.

Two days before the final passage of the bill, Cabell had written to Jefferson, "We must never come here again for money to erect buildings . . . . Should the funds fall short, I would rather ask for money hereafter to pay off old debts than to finish the Library." [50] Cocke advised that all these debts should be liquidated first, and that, afterwards, the cost of the Rotunda should be made to conform to such surplus as remained. Already by March 24, -barely a month after the authority was given to borrow sixty thousand dollars for the completion of the buildings, -both Cabell and Cocke were apprehensive lest the "old sachem" should be contemplating another call upon the Legislature for financial aid.

" It appears to me," Cabell wrote to him, "that the plan you have adopted of engaging for the hull of the Library is a prudent one. I earnestly hope that the house may be got in a condition to be used with the proceeds of the last loan, and that we may be able to make this assurance to the next Assembly when we apply for the remission. Mr. Doddridge requested me to state that he had supported this third loan, but that his patience was worn out, and that another application could not and would not be received . . . . There is a powerful party in this State with whom it is almost a passport to reputation to condemn the plan and management of the University . . . . Perhaps, this may be the result of old political conflicts."

Some impression seems to have been made on Jefferson by these half unreserved, half hinted remonstrances, for his next step was to apply for the remission of the interest on the loans. In the report for October 6, 1823, he informed the General Assembly that the University could be opened at the end of 1824, should the annuity, in the meanwhile, be released from the burden of its incumbrances. He intimated that, should this be refused, no just reason for complaint would exist if the doors were to continue tightly closed indefinitely. The charge for interest on $180,000, the amount of the loans, would be $10,800, and two or three thousand dollars more would be required to keep the finished buildings in repair. As this would leave a surplus of only about two thousand dollars for the redemption of $180,000, it would be necessary for an interval of twenty-five years to go by before the principal could be expected even to approximate liquidation. "This," Jefferson remarked, with dry sarcasm, "is a time two distant for the education of any person

already born, or to be born for some time to come; and in that period, a great expense will be incurred in the mere preservation of the buildings and the apparatus."

In December (1823), Cabell was able to say with confidence that there was a rising sentiment in the State favorable to the remission, not simply of the interest, but of the entire debt. This new feeling was to be attributed either to impatience with Jefferson's patent determination to keep the University shut up until it was fully completed, or to admiration for his stubborn and disinterested zeal in its behalf. Prematurely it would appear, Cabell wrote, on the 29th, that the National Government had finally passed affirmatively on the State's claim to interest on the advances made during the war of 1812-15. Had this been really so, there would have been added at once to the principal of the Literary Fund an amount so large as to produce a surplus in interest sufficient to supply the University's needs in the way of books for the library and apparatus for the laboratories. There was, during the session of 1823-24, no prospect of obtaining a further sum for building; but as the purchase of books, and apparatus would indicate an intention to throw open the lecture-rooms at an early date, the General Assembly, Cabell thought, might be willing to make an appropriation for that purpose out of the surplus of the Literary Fund. "Am I right in supposing," he inquired of Jefferson in February, 1824, "that fifty thousand dollars, payable in ten annual instalments, for the purchase of books and apparatus, with a power to the Visitors to anticipate the money for those purposes only, would be a good measure next to he adopted? I am thinking of it." "Perhaps," he writes three days later, "forty thousand dollars would be more apt to succeed." Jefferson was confident that not a cent less than the latter sum

would be required. While the two friends were debating as to the exact amount to be asked of the General Assembly, that body became so impatient for the University to begin its career that, in January, 1824, it relieved the Board of the obligation to pay interest on its bonds and imposed the whole amount of that charge upon the surplus revenue of the Literary Fund. This proved that Jefferson had whirled his club with success; but how was the fifty thousand dollars needed for the purchase of books and apparatus to be obtained?

Cabell now sprang a stratagem on the Assembly, which kindled an angry flame both without and within the walls of the capitol. The Farmers' Bank, at this time, was petitioning the General Assembly for the renewal of its charter. Here was an opportunity to be pounced upon; and this he promptly did with a glee which he was unable to repress in his report to Jefferson. "I kept my secret even from the Visitors, and my brother, and most intimate friends," he said. The House of Delegates passed the bill without requiring any proviso, but when it came up in the Senate, he moved that the charter should only be renewed on condition that the bank should pay the University a bonus of fifty thousand dollars. Seventeen of the Senators went over to his side; the rest bitterly opposed him. Elsewhere also, as he expressed it, he stirred up "a hornet's nest." The whole number of the stockholders, debtors, directors, and officers combined, "in the midst of a prodigious ferment," to combat and defeat the proposition; and the majority in the Senate, under this pressure from the outside, quickly fell away. In spite of this fact, Cabell kept up the fight, but without success. He found a dubious compensation for his failure in the action of the General Assembly, on March 6, 1824, in empowering the Board of Visitors to receive, for the

University's benefit, fifty thousand dollars of the money which the National Government was expected to pay.

Before this sum could be collected it would be necessary for him to concentrate on Congress the full force of his extraordinary powers of persuasion. A bill, introduced in the House of Representatives by James Barbour, authorizing the payment of the interest as legally due, had failed. Cabell endeavored in vain to prevail on Jefferson to draft a memorial to that body to show how this interest, should it he recovered, was to be spent. The claim offered the only prospect of obtaining the funds needed, for Cabell admitted that the General Assembly's liberality was exhausted. He visited Washington in April to press it, and on his arrival there, found that it was in a state of suspension. A meeting of the Virginia delegation was held, and Barbour was instructed to bring the claim before the War Department, which quickly recommended that Congress should settle it. Monroe was now President, and Cabell wrote to him on the subject, with full knowledge of his interest in the University, and his willingness to assist it by every influence that he could legitimately employ. Monroe was now told that, so soon as Congress should recognize the claim as just, the General Assembly would order an equal amount to he advanced out of the Literary Fund, in anticipation of its reimbursement by the Government.

XIII. Removal of William and Mary College

While the claim against the Government was in a state of suspense, there arose before the watchful eyes of the two protagonists the prospect of securing an endowment fund in another quarter; and for some time, afterwards, their energies seemed to have been diverted from the

pursuit of a legislative appropriation. In a letter which Cabell wrote Jefferson from Williamsburg in May, 1824, there occurs the following curt but pregnant sentence: "A scheme is now in agitation at this place, the object of which is to remove the College of William and Mary to the City of Richmond." He acknowledged that, with the exception of the professor of law, every member of the Faculty favored the transfer. The College, in spite of the broadening of its courses of instruction, and the devotion and ability of President Smith, had been dwindling in prosperity, and it was expected that transplantation to Richmond, where a practical school of medicine, rendered possible by hospital facilities, could be engrafted on it, would arrest the progress of this decay, which threatened it with ultimate ruin. It was anticipated too that the new site in the capital of the State would restore some of that prestige which it had formerly derived from its location at the seat of Government.

The endowment of the College of William and Mary, at this time, was about one hundred thousand dollars, the largest fund in the possession of any institution situated in Virginia. So soon as he was informed of the design to remove the College to Richmond, it occurred to Cabell that this endowment fund might be taken from it, and laid out in the establishment of the series of intermediate academies which Jefferson had always advocated. "We were told some winters ago by the College party," he said, "'we do not want a university -we want preparatory seminaries over the whole face of the country.'" From this arbitrary attitude on his part, there was, for a moment, a generous revulsion of feeling. "To oppose an institution struggling to save itself," he remarked, "and to thwart the natural endeavors of literary men to advance their fortunes, is truly painful." Then the feeling

subsides, and loyalty to the supposed interests of the University comes back. "Are we," he adds, "to suffer the labors of so many years to be blasted by an unnecessary and destructive competition? Most assuredly, we mutt not."

Jefferson was very much startled by the project of transplanting the College. "It is a case of a pregnant character," he replied to Cabell, "admitting important issues, and requiring serious consideration and conduct." It is plain that, like Cabell, he looked upon the plan of removal as carrying in its bosom a very grave peril to the welfare of the University. How far was he really justified in taking this view? On its face, at least, the attitude of almost unscrupulous hostility which he now assumed towards the ancient College, his alma mater, in its hour of pecuniary difficulty, appears to be discreditable to himself and to the institution which he had founded in the noblest spirit of liberty and equality. What can be said in his defense? As we have seen, he had a very exaggerated conception of the advantages which a seat of learning would enjoy, if it were established in the capital of the State. Had Williamsburg remained that capital, he would have looked upon the College of William and Mary as a far more powerful rival to contend with than it was now, because it would, through that fact, have been able to retain its original dignity and influence. A university was an institution, which, in his opinion, bore a direct relation to the civic duties of the people, and where could this function of educating citizens be so fully carried out as on the spot where the central administration was at work? Remove the College of William and Mary to Richmond, and with its large permanent fund, it would soon recover its prestige, and the prosperity which it had lost when Williamsburg ceased to be the capital.

As Richmond was necessarily the first city of Virginia, so an old and highly endowed college, like the College of William and Mary, replanted there, must also become the first seat of learning in the State.

Jefferson, as revealed by the numerous quotations from his letters already given, was always apprehensive that something might occur which would lower the University of Virginia to the level of the two principal subordinate colleges of the Commonwealth, Washington and Hampden-Sidney. It was a practical feeling which caused him to be so solicitous for its prestige. This feeling had led him, apart from any appreciation of architectural beauty, to erect the splendid group of buildings at Charlottesville. Without such buildings, he believed that it would he hopeless to engage European professors of the first order of talents and learning, and without that cast of instructors, the institution, being young, would start without distinction. It was the same sort of far-sightedness that now caused him to oppose the removal of the College of William and Mary, for it seemed to foreshadow a new rivalry that might, in some measure, overcloud the dreams of greatness in which he indulged for his own university. Had the latter been underway, with a corps of foreign scholars lecturing to large classes, he would probably have accepted the thought of this future rivalry with far less acrimony, and shown more tolerance and magnanimity in anticipating it.

The apparently ungenerous and inconsistent spirit of hostility which he displayed perhaps had its origin, in a measure, in two additional reasons of a more definite character. Jefferson must have tacitly recognized, although he never directly admitted the fact, that one of the important deficiencies in the course of studies which he had projected for the University was the entire absence

of hospital facilities. Without those facilities, a medical school, independently of anatomy, must always remain principally an historical school, a school of theory, a descriptive rather than a practically illustrative school. Richmond, on the other hand, even in those times, offered the clinical advantages which the village of Charlottesville entirely lacked. Was not the University's medical school bound to sink at once to a subordinate position, should the College of William and Mary be put in possession of all the facilities for a practical medical education which that city abundantly afforded? A second, and perhaps as important a reason for his opposition, was to be discerned in the fact that the capital of the State was the home of John Marshall and of a coterie of Federalists of great distinction. Their influence, in time, might control the whole political spirit of the transplanted College, and thus be able to spread the poison of their dangerous principles of a centralized government throughout the atmosphere of Virginia and the South.

So soon as Jefferson had fully taken in the menace which he was convinced would follow the removal of the College, he began to devise the means to defeat the project, and in doing so, allowed no sense of loyalty or gratitude to his alma mater, no recollection of his own great principle of equal opportunities to all and special privileges to none, to shake his will or palsy his energy. In the fixity of his purpose, he did not stop at the mere frustration of the ancient College's plan of re-establishment elsewhere, but even aimed to destroy it on the very ground on which it stood by transferring its funds, in whole or in part, to his own seat of learning. "When it was found," he wrote to Cabell on May 16, 1824, "that that seminary was entirely ineffectual towards the object of public education, and that one on a better plan, and in a better situation,

must be provided, what was so obvious as to employ, for that purpose, the funds of the one abandoned, with what more was necessary to raise the new establishmen? And what so obvious as to do now what might reasonably have been done then, by consolidating the two institutions and their funds? . . . The hundred thousand dollars of principal which you say still remains to William and Mary, by its interest of $6,000, would give us the two deficient professors, with an annual surplus for the purchase of books."

Comprehending, perhaps, that it would be impolitic to show such a naked hand, Jefferson pressed upon Cabell the wisdom of "saying as little as possible on this whole subject." "Give them no alarm," he added; "let them petition for the removal, let them get the old structure completely on wheels, and not until then put in our claim." Seated under the serene roof of Monticello, at a remote distance from all the persons who were anxious for the change, and insensible to the memories of the youthful years spent in Williamsburg, he was not in a position, or the mood, to understand the weight of the influences, which, after awhile, made his coadjutor disposed to modify his attitude of hostility. As the months passed on, the transplantation became the subject of still hotter public debate; and Cabell was so much impressed by the arguments in its favor, that he informed Jefferson, in December, that he had decided to vote for the measure, provided that the College would consent to be brought under the control of the General Assembly. What did he mean by the expression, "control of the General Assembly"? Its purport, he said, was that the Assembly should have the power to "reduce the capital of the College, leaving a moiety here (Richmond), and transferring the residue to Winchester and Hampden-Sidney, or other points in

the State connected with the general system." "It would be utterly impracticable," he added, "to procure any portion for the University"; and he, with great earnestness, urged Jefferson to abandon "every such idea, if any plan of the kind had ever been formed."

The short interval of four days had hardly vanished before Cabell's views underwent again what he described as "a material change." He had, as we have just seen, contemplated a compromise, in order, as he expressed it, to avoid the appearance of illiberality. Subsequent reflection, he said, had convinced him that he ought to vote against the removal. In taking this course, he added, "I oppose the wishes of my nearest and dearest relatives and friends." Indeed, no one among them condemned this new decision with more, brusqueness and pungency than his own brother, William H. Cabell, a former Governor of the State, and during many years, the President of the Court of Appeals. His letter is worthy of reproduction in full as throwing a vivid light on the social penalties which Cabell was now inviting by his apparently unreasonable and inequitable loyalty to the supposed interests of the University. If his own brother could not restrain his impatience, it may be clearly perceived what a flood of censure he had to encounter from less kindly critics.

"Do you think it possible," wrote W. H. Cabell, "that Smith and Company (the President and Faculty of the College) can ever make the people of Virginia consider William and Mary, when removed, as the rival of the University? It would be as easy to believe that the frog could swell himself to the size of the ox. The indirect means which the friends of the University have been forced to adopt, in obtaining money from the Legislature, have excited strong hostility in many quarters against

them and the University. Here is a good opportunity of soothing the public mind by showing that there is no disposition to sacrifice everything to the University, but that the advancement of the cause of literature had been the real principle. The friends of William and Mary ask no money from the Legislature. They ask only that the College may be removed to a place where its present funds may be employed advantageously for the public, and I think, and all with whom I have conversed, think, advantageously to the University . . . . The short and long of the affair is that I really think it would ill become the friends of the University, who have got for that institution so much of the public money, now to oppose the wishes of a large portion of the State to remove another institution, already endowed, to a place where it will be made more useful to the public than it is now . . . . As a friend of the University, I would, if I were in the Assembly, aid the removal with all my heart, and I should be happy, if you could take the same view of the subject. I believe it would tend to remove some of those jealousies and heart burnings which your earnest zeal for the University, has, however unjustly, excited towards you. To oppose the removal is attributed to motives of interest, to that sort of feeling that actuated the dog in the manger, and to seize on the funds without the consent of the professors would be to abandon all respect for those laws which protect property . . . . I have taken up more time on this subject, because I have been much concerned at the strange lengths, as they seem to me, to which your zeal for the University has unknowingly carried you, -lengths to which, I believe, no man in the Commonwealth is willing to go, except, perhaps, a Visitor of the University, -lengths which excite the surprise and concern of all your friends."

Having finally determined to oppose the transplantation of the College, Cabell refused to yield to the remonstrances and reproaches of friends, and remained indifferent to the acrimony and obloquy of enemies. In this course, he was sustained by his repeated communications with Jefferson, who marshalled his arguments against the College, and in favor of the University, with consummate vigor and plausibility.

Jefferson seems to have taken it for granted that, even if the General Assembly should permit the College's removal, the funds in its possession would be distributed. As he looked at it, there was some benefit to be expected, no matter what should he the upshot of the controversy: if the College remained in Williamsburg, there would be no further cause for apprehension on the score of competition; if, on the other hand, it was re-established in Richmond, it should, in return, for the advantages of this new situation, give up the whole or, at least, the larger part of its endowment for the erection of the district academies. In his enthusiasm over the prospect of carrying out this part of his original plan of public instruction, by the use of the funds of the older institution, he seems to have accepted with philosophy Cabell's prediction that the University would not be directly benefited pecuniarily by the removal. He foresaw, in the creation of the academies, a full compensation for this, for he was confident that they would prove to be a means, not only of preparing students for entry into his own establishment, but also of raising up a well-informed body of yeomanry. "This occasion of completing our system of education is a god send," he exclaimed, "I certainly would not propose that the University should claim a cent of these funds in competition with the district colleges." This letter was shown to numerous members of the General Assembly.

Chapman Johnson promptly and emphatically denied the State's right, under the charter of the College, to dispose of the latter's funds as Jefferson had suggested. It was generally thought that, whether the Commonwealth possessed this right or not, a distribution, during that term, at least, would not be authorized by the Legislature. In the meanwhile, a resolution was submitted, but not pressed, that pointed out the supposed injustice of permitting the College's transfer to Richmond without forfeiting a portion of its endowment for the benefit of other sections of Virginia. Early in the session, Cabell reported that the College's petition was losing ground, but that there was no prospect as yet of the adoption of Jefferson's plan for the use of its funds. "This measure," he said, "was too bold for the present state of the public mind. We will not bring it forward as an original proposition, but should there be occasion, as a substitute for the measure of removal to this place. The hostile party . . . report that you have sent orders to the Assembly to plunder the College and bribe the different parts of the State."

Jefferson's sensibilities seemed to have been wounded by the animus rather than by the pertinency of this accusation. "The attempt," he replied, "in which I have embarked so earnestly, to procure an improvement in the moral condition of my native State, although in other States it may have strengthened good dispositions (towards me), it has certainly weakened them in my own. The attempt ran foul of so many local interests, of so many personal views, and of so much ignorance, and I have been considered as so particularly its promoter, that I see evidently a great change of sentiment towards myself . . . . It is from posterity we are to expect remuneration for the sacrifice we are making for their service, of

time, quiet, and present good will. And I fear not the appeal. The multitude of fine young men, who will feel that they owe to us the elevation of mind, of character and station they shall he able to attain from the result of our efforts, will ensure us their remembrance with gratitude."

The confidence with which Cabell had anticipated the failure of the College's petition was suddenly shaken by a change in the Assembly's attitude. In January (1825), he unexpectedly informed Jefferson that there was now an increasing danger that the advocates of removal would be able to obtain a decisive vote in their favor; but there was one device, he said, by which they could yet be thwarted, and this was to bring in a bill to appropriate the funds of the College to the establishment of the system of district academies. "Delay is all we want," he exclaimed, "so as to get the representatives of the people away from the Richmond parties, and to give the people the power to act. I beseech you to prepare a bill immediately and send it as quickly as possible by mail . . . . Let the funds be equally divided among the districts . whatever they may be. Give me but this bill, and I think I will yet defeat them."

Jefferson received this letter on January 21 (1825), and by the following evening, he had drafted the bill and deposited it in the post. "I am so worn down by the drudgery," he stated in enclosing it, "that I can write little now." By the 28th, it had reached Cabell's hands. "I shall keep it as private as possible," he replied, in acknowledging its arrival. "The opposite party are triumphing in anticipation, but I think we will yet defeat them." He now published a very able letter in the Constitutional Whig, over the signature of "A Friend to Science," in which he quoted at length from the Plan

for Public Education which had been drafted by Jefferson in 1817. The object of this was to be able, when the trap was sprung, to point out that the plan was not a new one, but had been matured some years before the question of removing the College to Richmond had come up, or the suggestion put forth of dividing its funds for the benefit of the district academies. He again admitted that the public mind was "not prepared for so bold a measure "; "but," he added, "if I am not mistaken, it will enable us to defeat the scheme of removal."

His prediction turned out to be correct, for, on February 7, he was able to announce that the College's petition had been denied by a majority of twenty-four votes. "But," said he, no doubt to Jefferson's keen disappointment, "our friends and myself concur in thinking that it would be improper to bring in the bill for dividing the funds of the College . . . . My friends assure me that the essay under the signature of "A Friend to Science," with the extracts from your letter and bill . . . broke the ranks of the opposition completely . . . . Richmond is now hors de combat." This was the end of the controversy. The College of William and Mary remained on its original site, and the bill for the distribution of its funds, which had been used as such a powerful instrument to prevent its removal, was not again revived. There is no just ground for supposing that, had the ancient College been re-planted in Richmond, it would have become a ruinous competitor of the University. It had a moral and a legal right alike to establish itself there, and the part which Jefferson and Cabell took in balking that right, forms the only chapter in the which is darkened by the spirit of an illiberal and ungenerous policy, -a policy, indeed, only relieved from the taint of positive unscrupulousness by the fact that

it was dictated, not by personal selfishness, but by the supposed welfare of a great institution, struggling to get upon its feet, in the midst of numerous influences destructive, not simply of its success, but of its very existence.

The Committee on Claims in the House of Represenatives had recommended the payment of the interest due the State of Virginia on advances made during the War of 1812-15, but the majority in favor was only one, and Jefferson, in February, 1826, admitted that it had still a long gauntlet to run before it could pass the House itself. In the meanwhile, however, the rents from the dormitories and other buildings offered the supplementary resource needed for the expenses of the moment.

So far unable to secure the approval of the interest claim by Congress, and hesitating to go to the Legislature for an independent appropriation while that measure was pending, both Cabell and Jefferson heartily favored the resuscitation of Jefferson's Bill for Public Education, drafted in 1817-18. The Garland bill, now before the General Assembly, authorized the establishment of twenty-four district colleges; but the Jefferson bill was considered by Cabell to be preferable, provided that it should be so altered that the local districts would be required to contribute at their own expense the land and buildings that would be needed. Under the terms of this bill, should it become law, the University would acquire from $25,000 to $32,000, which would be sufficient to complete the Rotunda and Anatomical Hall. This indirect measure for obtaining money for the institution, however, ended in disappointment, for the State was not yet ripe for any broad and costly scheme of public instruction.

In addition to the appropriations by the General Assembly, a very considerable sum was collected from the persons who had signed the original subscription list.

We referred, in the history of Central College, to the large amount which was promised by the friends of learning in many parts of the State for the erection of that institution. As the time for the payment of these contributions was spread over several years, most of the instalments only matured after the incorporation of the University. On November 23, 1822, the balance still due was estimated at $18,440. By September, 1823, $4,828.77 of this sum had been paid in; $2,069.88 more was collected by September, 1824; $2,734.89 by September, 1825; and $644.85 by September, 1826. The residue outstanding on September 30 of that year was $8,161.68. So long as there were other funds available for the building, the Board of Visitors determined that it would be inexpedient to press those among the subscribers who were delinquent; but when there arose a danger of these obligations lapsing, an agent was employed to collect the remaining sums. In the end, of the $43,808 originally subscribed, only $4,500 proved to be desperate, and a large proportion of this had become so only because some of the subscribers had emigrated to other States or had sunk into insolvency. The Board had considered it unwise to base on the last collections any stipulations which required punctuality in their fulfilment. They had reserved this money while still unpaid as a supplementary and contingent fund, to form a part of the general revenue as it dribbled in, and only to he used in covering up errors in estimating the cost of particular buildings.

XIV. System of Education

The founding of the University of Virginia was not confined solely to erecting a stately group of edifices,

which would, with equal splendor and comfort, furnish dwelling-houses for the teachers and pupils, and halls for the lectures, recitations, and scientific experiments. The adoption of a course of studies, the selection of professors, the purchase of a useful library, and the organization of a system of administration, were as preliminary and as essential to the completion of that work as the laying of the brick and stone, the hoisting of the capitals, the moulding and painting of the entablatures, the construction of pillar and portico, cornice and arcade, sloping roof and rounded dome. These we now propose to consider in turn, in detail, as supplementary to the actual building.

Jefferson, it will be recalled, had very often expressed his conviction as to what departments of knowledge should be embraced in the platform of instruction of every higher institution of learning. On the seventh of April, 1824, before the Rotunda had been finished, the Board of Visitors, under his guidance, adopted a scheme of studies which was precisely the same in general character as the one recommended by himself in the Rockfish Gap Report. The chair of anatomy was only omitted because the poverty of the funds did not, at that time, supply the amount needed for an additional salary; but on October 6, of the same year, this deficiency was removed. The several schools prescribed on that date, in anticipation of the opening of the University in the ensuing February, comprised the following: I. -Ancient Languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew; and there were to be taught in the same school in addition, belles-lettres, rhetoric, ancient history, and ancient geography; II. -Modern Languages: French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English in its Anglo-Saxon form, while modern history and modern geography were also to be included in the same course; III. -Mathematics in all its branches, to which

was to be appended military and civil architecture; IV. -Natural Philosophy: the laws and properties of bodies in general, such as mechanics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneumatics, acoustics, and optics; and the science of astronomy was also to be attached to this chair; V. -Natural History: the sciences of botany, mineralogy, zoology, chemistry, geology and rural economy; VI. -Anatomy and Medicine: the sciences of anatomy and surgery, the history of the progress and theories of medicine, physiology, pathology, materia medica, and pharmacy; VII. -Moral Philosophy: the science of the mind, general grammar, and ethics; and VIII. -Law: common and statute law, chancery law, federal law, civil and mercantile law, law of nature and nations, and the principles of government and political science.

The eight broad courses of study embraced in this short but pregnant list represent the three prime divisions of the Higher Education; namely, the disciplinary, the scientific, and the vocational. In their association in that list, they resembled three great apartments, entirely distinct from each other, but so closely connected as to be standing under the same roof. As a whole, the scheme was not more disciplinary than scientific, nor more scientific than vocational. It reflected an equal respect for the humanistic studies, which are essential to the intellectual cultivation of men, and the practical studies, which fortify their physical well-being, and enhance their worldly prosperity. The follower of Locke, who looked upon education as precious for its intellectual drill rather than foe the facts learned, would have detected in it enough to satisfy his requirement, while the pupil of the modern Spencer, in spite of his exclusive and intolerant convictions, would have been unable to reject it altogether.

There was the classical course for mental discipline; there was the scientific course for practical knowledge in general; there was the vocational course for equipment for a special pursuit. Utilitarian and rationalistic in spirit as Jefferson was, he did not regard all education as only useful so far as it prepared its recipient for a calling in life. The culture of the moral and intellectual sides of the individual was, in his view, of incalculable benefit in itself, independently of its influence m sharpening the capacity for winning success in some future business or profession. Pestalozzi, it will be remembered, placed the Latin and Greek languages in the class of studies that were interesting only as curiosities. On the other hand, Jefferson, who admired the methods of that revolutionary teacher, and had as just an esteem for Real Knowledge as the Germans themselves, nevertheless reckoned the value of classical learning as high as Milton or Johnson, and would have looked upon his system as radically incomplete had not the ancient languages been included; and he would have considered it to be equally defective had not the most important natural sciences also been brought within its scope.

Apart from the catholicity and perfect equilibrium that distinguished the course of studies thus selected, the general scheme possessed three practical features of an uncommon character: (1) the division into schools; (2) the ability of each school to expand more or less as the funds of the institution increased; and (3) the unhampered right of election which the student enjoyed instead of his being bound down to an inflexible curriculum. It will be seen hereafter that, when Jefferson came to draw up rules to govern the choice of professors, he revealed his dislike of single attainments, however great, by requiring that the men to be selected should be so broadly

qualified that they could converse with ease with each colleague on the subject which that colleague was employed to teach; and yet by this division into schools, he created a powerful influence for the production of specialists, which his elective system was to confirm and make absolute.

Each school was confined to one great subject of study. At the start, a single professor was in charge of each school, but with a larger attendance of students, and a rising income, the number was increased. Thus arose what were designated as departments, which, in every instance, were devoted to the study of at least one branch of one fundamental subject. In 1851, the School of Law was subdivided into two departments,[51] which were under the direction of two professors; and in a broader manner, the School of Ancient Languages expanded into two schools in 1856, when the single chair was abandoned, and the course in Latin was taken up by one professor, and the course in Greek by another.

Each of the original schools of 1824 was independent of the rest; each not only had an exclusive property in its professor, but possessed, in that professor's pavilion, an academic building of its own, in which its students were required to assemble from day to day in their private lecture-hall. In the beginning, each of these pavilions, as we have stated, was expected to cost as much as one of the intermediate academies which Jefferson had so carefully planned as the secondary part of his scheme of public education. His attitude towards each school and its pavilion was almost as if he looked upon the two combined as an institution as distinct as one of these district

colleges, but still, like the district college, a link in the chain of a system. The tendency of his mind seemed to be to disapprove of whatever leaned towards consolidation. His preference was always for numerous bodies held together by some sort of centripetal power, but existing and moving in their own separate orbits. The principle that he advocated in the relations of the States, he, in a different way, put in force in the establishment of these new schools, and in the regulations which he devised for their practical working. Had he been an astronomer also, it might he said of him that, as an upholder of states rights, and as the creator of university schools, he had caught his inspiration while following the revolutions of the Heavens, where every star is at once dependent and independent.

In the curriculum that prevailed in other colleges, definite courses were assigned to the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years respectively, and no departure from the rule was tolerated. On the other hand, in the system of schools which Jefferson created for his university in 1824, there were to be no such limitations as these. If the student aspired to graduate in the entire round of studies provided for in the general scheme, he was to be at liberty, not only to begin and end with such as he preferred, but he was to be under no compulsion even in selecting his grades; if he wished, he was to be permitted to attend, for instance, the senior class in Latin, the intermediate class in Greek, and the junior class in mathematics during the same session. In the curriculum college, time was an element of controlling power. In Jefferson's system of schools, on the other hand, time was expected to play no part whatever. The student might pass ten years, or even twenty years, if he liked, in the endeavor, successful or unsuccessful, to graduate in one

or all of the schools; or if he had the physical strength and the intellectual capacity as well required for so extraordinary a feat, he might spend only one year in winning, or strenuously striving to win, the whole number of diplomas which the institution awarded. Each school was to confer its own diploma, and the acquisition of this single diploma was to entitle the winner as much to the designation of "Graduate of the University of Virginia" as if he had gathered in the entire eight. This fact very naturally tended to increase further the dignity of the separate school.

The diploma was to be won by the study of text-books that were to be chosen, not by the Board of Visitors, but by the professor himself. The incumbent of the chair of law alone was not to enjoy this right; for that course, from some points of view the most important of all, the text-books were to be selected by Jefferson and Madison, in accord with their own political doctrines. This was a significant departure from the principle of independence which had been adopted as the mainspring of the other schools. "In most public seminaries," Jefferson remarked in a letter to Cabell, "text-books are prescribed to each of the several schools as the norma dociendi in that school, and this is generally done by the authority of the trustees. I should not propose it generally in our university, because I believe none of us are so much at the height of science in the several branches as to undertake this, and, therefore, it will be better left to the professors until occasion of interference be given." The conclusion thus expressed was the one suggested and confirmed by common sense. With all his versatility of knowledge, Jefferson was too wise to think that he possessed the exact as well as the varied information required of one who was called upon to select the text-books for

such a diversity of courses as those embraced in the round of at least seven of the schools. The obvious part of discretion was to leave their choice to the experts who were to fill these professorships. In the subjects of law and political economy, on the other hand, he not only felt that he was as much of a specialist as any man who might be chosen to teach those subjects, but he was fully determined that such principles alone should be imparted in both as were satisfactory to his convictions.

As one of the purposes for which the University was founded was to propagate and fortify what he considered to be the only sound principles of government, it was right, from his point of view, that he should show the utmost jealousy in restricting the professor of law to text-books which had been picked out by him with discriminating care. But in its broadest aspect, this spirit of exclusiveness, -which, it is significant, he exhibited in connection with no other school as a whole, -was in consistent with the general character of independence which he endeavored so sedulously and so successfully to stamp upon the institution. When it came to political theories, his attitude of liberal impartiality vanished at once. A limitation of thought and action took its place.[52]The intolerance which he justly condemned in sectarianism, only too perceptibly animated him in the bent which he deliberately gave to his school of law on its political side. That school, instead of teaching the Federalist and Republican respective views of the National Government on a footing of historical and academic equality, put its emphatic imprimatur upon the Republican theory,

with the result of giving the University a definite bias, from a purely party point of view, from the start, -a bias which, fortunately for the broad and universal usefulness of its general work, was restricted to a single school. If he went too far in his insistence upon the inculcation of his own partisan convictions only in the new University, time has corrected the possible evil effect of this exclusiveness by transferring some of his dogmas to the domain of past history, and leaving those that have survived in practice to be studied in a spirit of impartial comparison.

Secondly: While the number of schools established on the threshold was only eight, there was embedded in the whole system the elastic principle which allowed, not only expansion within each school by the broadening of its several courses of instruction through the employment of additional professors, but also an indefinite increase in the number of independent schools. We have seen that the plan of building rendered possible an unlimited extension of the double lines of pavilions and dormitories. This physical feature was adopted in anticipation both of a spreading out within the existing schools, and of the augmentation of their number. Jefferson looked forward to the time when many subjects which received but meagre consideration in his day would become an indispensable part of every general scheme of higher education. He foresaw, for instance, the importance of technical philosophy, manual training, agriculture, horticulture, veterinary surgery, and military science,-to designate only a few departments of vocational instruction. His provisions for teaching architecture and astronomy were necessarily restricted, but he laid the foundation for the acquisition of the fullest knowledge of both sciences, although time has assured ample facilities only in the

case of astronomy.[53] Had the condition of the University at the beginning allowed it, he would have set up Schools of Commerce, Manufacture, and Diplomacy. He did plan for thorough instruction in the theory of music and other arts of a similar embellishing nature. It can be asserted with accuracy that there have been few, if any, large divisions of learning added to the courses of study in any of the higher American institutions since the establishment of the University of Virginia, which Jefferson did not suggest in the various schemes of general education that he formulated from time to time in his long career, and for which his system of independent schools was so precisely adapted.

Thirdly: The adoption of the elective principle was the consistent, though not the inevitable, consequence of the first division into schools, and of the power to add new schools to the old indefinitely. The rapid increase in the number of subjects, which, in our times, have forced themselves upon the attention of teachers as indispensable to a liberal education, has compelled the introduction of elective courses even in colleges that remain loyal to the formal curriculum. Had the number of schools at the University of Virginia been permanently restricted to those adopted at first, there would have been no impediment in the way of prescribing a curriculum that would have embraced them all. But Jefferson was hostile to such a system by the sheer force of principle; and he foresaw, that, in time, with the vast expansion of knowledge, it either would become impossible in practice in his university, or would have to be so stretched that it would amount to the general right of election.

In 1816, Dr. Timothy Dwight, of Yale College, ventured to assert, -amid growls of sour dissent, no doubt, -that there was not a single university in the United States at that time. There were seven, he intimated, that pretended to that broad and liberal framework, but tested by the standard of the great seats of learning in Europe, only one in his judgment, Harvard College, approximated it. Eight years after this bold and sweeping pronouncement, the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, which was not yet in operation, adopted the following rule: "Every student shall be free to attend the schools of his choice, and no other than he chooses." This principle did not spring up now for the first time even in the United States, for, many years before, it had been put in limited practice at the College of William and Mary.[54] Now, however, it was flung down as a tacit challenge to Dr. Dwight amid far more imposing surroundings, and with far brighter prospects of success, than had ever greeted it before in America. It was to become, indeed, the corner-stone of the institution; and through it that institution was to claim identity in spirit at least with the universities of the Old World, which had enjoyed renown for ages. "I am not fully informed of the practices of Harvard," wrote Jefferson to Ticknor, in 1823, "but there is one principle we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States, that is, the holding of the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular

vocation to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualifications only and sufficient age."

Jefferson had a clear perception of the difference between the college and the university. It was not a part of his original plan that his own institution was to undertake the work of a college even to a moderate extent. The work which he designed it to do was graduate work, and the only academic diploma -independent of the doctrinate granted for advanced graduation -which it was authorized to award was the graduate's diploma. The adoption of the degrees of master of arts and bachelor of arts was not in harmony with the principle upon which his university was built, in its theory at least, and was a distinctly regrettable, though perhaps, for practical reasons, an unavoidable departure from its fundamental character. It was special culture and not general culture, which he had primarily in view, although the system permitted also of general culture in the highest measure, should the student succeed in passing through all the classical and scientific schools. But it was not to the aspirations of this set among the young men that he directed his most earnest gaze; it was rather to the ambitions of those who had come up to acquire knowledge along some special line, scientific or classical, that appealed to their individual tastes. It is true that, under the existing regulations, each student was required, except in cases of parental dispensation, to pursue at least three courses of study; but these three he was at liberty to choose; and it was always in his power, if he wished to perfect himself in one school, to find two other schools that would he more or less closely related to it.

It was not because of any defect in Jefferson's scheme

that the University of Virginia was, in the beginning, more of a college than a university. The ideal college stands midway between the school and the university; the college looks backward, -the university looks forward; the one treats of the conservation of truth, -the other of its discovery or of vocational training. The University of Virginia, at the start, when, in theory, it was so purely a university, was more taken up with instruction than with research; with undergraduate studies than with graduate. This was due primarily to the incomplete system of secondary education prevailing in Virginia at that time, upon which, it will he recalled, Jefferson had, with palpable exaggeration, animadverted with sarcastic bitterness, -a shortcoming which so far as it existed, his own institution was, in time, as we shall see, so largely to correct. If the full fruit of such a system of instruction as he framed for his own seat of learning is to be garnered, then the community which it is to benefit should contain, not simply public or private secondary schools, however meritorious, but numerous colleges of a high order to pour a constant stream of students into the reservoir of the University at the top. Jefferson sought to create these institutions by urging the General Assembly to adopt a scheme of district colleges, which would have enabled the student to complete his undergraduate studies before beginning his graduate studies at Charlottesville.

The need of these advanced colleges, as distinguished from the large number of superior private schools that existed, was perceived more and more clearly by the Faculty as time passed. "Without an ample provision for intermediate colleges and academies, and a judicious distribution through the State," wrote Professor Lomax to Cabell, in January, 1827, " the University can never

display the utility of which it is capable, and be secure or having its proper support." Professor Dunglison had arrived at the same conviction: "It will be an important event for the institution when efficient academies are established to do away with the necessity of the professors of ancient and modern languages and mathematics fulfilling those duties which ought previously to have been performed in the schools." Jefferson himself could not repress his impatience in contemplating this fact: "We were obliged to receive last year," he wrote to W. B. Giles in December, 1825, "shameful Latinists in the classical school of the University, such as we will certainly refuse as soon as we can get from better schools a sufficient number of the properly instructed to form a class. We must get rid of the Connecticut tutor." [55]

At this tune, there were not in Virginia sufficiently numerous facilities for preliminary instruction of a high order, to equip every student to the degree required by the standards of the University; and the depressing influence of this fact on some of the junior classes of that institution, during the early years of its existence, was so much exaggerated by report, that colleges like Washington and Hampden-Sidney apparently locked on it at first, not as a superior, but as a common rival, engaged like themselves chiefly in undergraduate work. And this was also the prevailing attitude of the College of William and Mary, although that institution had a better right, both from an historical and a scholastic point of view, to assume it.

XV. Plans for Filling the Chairs

Jefferson was not one of that bigoted stamp, perhaps as numerous in his times as in our own, who honestly believe

that America is so faultless that it cannot be improved upon, -at least, not so from without. No one could surpass him in unselfish devotion to his own country; and yet no one was more candid in acknowledging its deficiencies, and more anxious to correct them, even if the only way was to introduce foreign substances, talents, and devices. Whether it was an Italian species of rice, or an English variety of vegetable or thorn for hedges; whether it was a Scotch threshing machine, or a French barometer; whether it was an English strain of rams, bulls, or boars, or the ward system of New England; whether it was a novel chemical discovery in a Parisian laboratory, or a serpentine wall noted in a casual stroll through an English garden; whether it was the entire faculty of a Swiss university, or the philologians, mathematicians, and scientists of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, -his inquisitive eyes looked abroad unerringly for the best in the practical or intellectual life of every foreign land in order to employ it for the betterment of his own. He was resolved to make the genius of every race contribute to the beauty, the commodiousness, and the enlightenment of the sphere in which his own people moved. In politics and ethics alone did he seem to feel that there was no need of foreign illumination and fortification.

Jefferson was a provincial in his intensely partisan interest in the welfare of his own country, but he was a cosmopolite in his discernment in recognizing what was most useful in alien lands, and in his solicitude to reproduce it on this side of the water. The spirit of his mission to France, apart from its purely diplomatic aspects, was summarized in the ever present thought: what advantages

to America in a scientific or scholarly way can I gather up here for the promotion of its wealth, its comfort, its moral and intellectual condition? There was no limit to the personal inconvenience which he was ready to defy to obtain information which he knew would be beneficial to the existing and the future generations.

Such was his mental attitude in considering the vital task of selecting the professors of the new university, when, after the completion of the buildings, and the adoption of the system of instruction, it became imperative to choose the entire number. He was fully determined to appoint only the most erudite, not only because his standard was as high in the respect of scholastic training as it was in all others, but because he was shrewdly aware that it was only the most shining acquirements that could give prestige to a seat of learning which was still in its infancy. The distinction of the teachers alone could overcome the absence of that glamour which tradition and a long history of achievement are so fecund in imparting. Without this distinction, the University could not only assert no superiority over its fellow institutions of older origin, -it could not even claim an equality with them. The first question, which, he said, should be asked of a candidate was: Is he highly qualified? Nor was he to be accepted as so qualified simply because he knew thoroughly his own topic. On the contrary, Jefferson insisted that "he should be educated as to the sciences generally; able to converse understandingly with the scientific men with whom he is associated; or to assist in the councils of the Faculty on any subject of science on which they may have occasion to deliberate. Without this, he will incur their contempt, and bring disrespect on the institution."

It is to be inferred from this expression of opinion, that

Jefferson was inclined to estimate breadth of acquirements more highly than mere specialism, however profound. Such amplitude of accomplishments were more common in his day than it is in our own, and the success of his original selection of professors was, in no one particular, more conspicuously illustrated than in the facility with which the majority of them could pass from the chair of languages to the chair of mathematics and from the chair of mathematics to the chair of natural philosophy. It was his conviction that something besides lucrative salaries and comfortable accommodations was needed to ensure the acquisition of a faculty of the highest reputation for talents and learning. He thought, with a just refinement of view, that scholars of extraordinary merit are influenced to accept a chair as much by the distinction of the university to which that chair belongs as by the actual emoluments that went with it. What was the only means by which this distinction could be created before professors of celebrity had been chosen? By the nobility of its architectural setting. No doubt, as we have pointed out, Jefferson found an acute satisfaction in stately edifices apart from their practical utility, but there is also reason to suppose that, in adopting the classical style in his own seat of learning, he also had before his mind's eye the reputation for imposing beauty which that style would give. Such a reputation was an important asset in itself. "Had we built a barn for a college and log-huts for accommodations," he said somewhat scornfully, "should we ever had the assurance to propose to a European professor of the first order? "

He knew from his own personal observation while abroad that, among the most splendid structures in Europe, were those that housed the ancient colleges and universities; and he could easily comprehend the feeling of

repulsion which the first view of the rude barracks even of great institutions like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard, would arouse in the breast of a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, or Trinity College, Cambridge. It was partly in order to create the deepest impression for beauty that he insisted that the University should remain shut up until the entire round of buildings had been completed, when alone the effect of the whole in its perfection could be fully taken in and discriminatingly relished. This seemed to him to be the more imperative because Charlottesville, at this time, was a small village, with no architectural charm and no social advantages; and while the surrounding country contained a large number of refined and well educated families, and many attractive homes, yet all of them were too dispersed to make the pleasing impression on cultivated and travelled strangers which they would have done, had they been closely and conveniently grouped.

Had Jefferson been able to go from one American seat of learning to another and pick out the very men whom he preferred, it is quite possible that he would not have directed his gaze so soon towards the universities of Europe. During the existence of Central College, as will be recalled, he turned first to Dr. Cooper, who, although of English birth, had resided long enough in Pennsylvania for his original democratical opinions to be confirmed. Dr. Knox was a citizen of the United States. Jefferson clearly perceived the practical advantage of employing instructors who were already in sympathy with American political principles and social customs, and who, he knew, would be satisfied with the still raw American environment because they were born to it. As early as March, 1819, the Board of Visitors, under the spur of his prompting, instructed the committee of superintendence to overlook

no opportunity of engaging for the University "American citizens of the first order of science in their respective lines"; and during the following year, both Mr. Bowditch and Mr. Ticknor, of Massachusetts, were approached with offers of definite professorships. Nathaniel Bowditch, who was famous as a self-taught mathematician and navigator, and as the translator of Laplace's Mechanique Celeste, had already declined to enter the faculty of either Harvard or West Point. Ticknor was, perhaps, the most accomplished man in the United States at that time; had travelled far and wide in the Old World; and was to win a great reputation as a teacher and as a writer. Each refused such liberal inducements to accept as a pavilion, an annual salary of two thousand dollars, and a fee of ten dollars for each student belonging to his class, with a total emolument of twenty-five hundred dollars specifically guaranteed.

The failure to secure these distinguished men seems to have discouraged Jefferson in his pursuit of American professors. "It was not probable," he concluded, "that they would leave the situation in which they were, even if it were honorable to seduce them from their stations." "It was easy enough," he added, "to fill the chairs with the employed secondary characters. But this would not have fulfilled the object or satisfied the expectation of our country in the institution." The impossibility of obtaining in the United States the teachers of the scholarship by him considered to be indispensable, fully justified him in deciding to look henceforward across the ocean for their counterparts. And he may have done this with the less hesitation because he was aware that a foreign professor was, at that time, certain to be invested with the greater prestige because he would he able to show a diploma from some one of the famous European universities;

or what was a still higher distinction, had even occupied a chair in one of them.

Naturally, Jefferson concentrated his earliest attention upon the country which spoke the same language and possessed the same points of view as Americans, and were of the same racial descent, political principles, and social instincts. He was too sensible to presume that an infant university seated in the far-off New World, as yet without reputation because still a pile of fresh bricks, and with no large endowment fund, would be able, by the few inducements that it could hold out, to draw to itself historical scholars like Robertson, or classical scholars like Porson and Parr, or scientists like Playfair. They, he said, "occupied positions which could not be bettered anywhere." It was upon the accomplished members of a younger generation that he cast his eyes, -the men who were already treading impatiently upon the heels of the veterans; and who, within a few years, would be usurping their shoes, and, as their successors, showing even higher qualifications than the veterans themselves had exhibited. The rivalry among these younger English scholars of equal claims to recognition, he knew, was sharp and unceasing; and he was sanguine that there would be found among them some, who, as he said, would prefer a comfortable certainty in Virginia to a precarious stipend in England. So universal and so relentless, indeed, was this competition in the strangle there for a moderate income, that he had been told, he added, that "it was deemed allowable in ethics for even the most honorable minds to give exaggerated recommendations and certificates to enable a friend or protégé to get into a livelihood."

Jefferson was well-informed as to the English universities which must be sounded by him in his search for the

competent professors who were needed: to Oxford, he must go for the classical scholar; to Cambridge for the mathematical; to Edinburgh, for the anatomical expert; and perhaps to that city also for the teacher of natural philosophy and natural history. The professor of modern languages should be procured from one of the continental seats of learning.

The first foreign instructor to send in his testimonials to the Board of Visitors was George Blaettermann, a German by birth and education, who had been recommended by George Ticknor and General Preston. This was in 1821. Again, in 1823, he applied by letter to Jefferson for the appointment, for which he had, in the interval, prepared himself by collecting, during a tour of France, Germany, and Holland, materials for a series of lectures to be delivered at the University. Richard Rush, the American minister to London, had been asked to inquire as to his character and qualifications. It is possible that, at one time, Jefferson was sanguine that all the professors could be selected through the intermediary offices of Rush; but this expectation, if ever nursed, was soon abandoned as impracticable.

It was natural and judicious that he, in casting about for an agent, should first think of Joseph C. Cabell, a man upon whose good sense he had always, as we have seen, relied implicitly, and who, by a previous visit to Europe, and by personal acquaintance with many distinguished persons there, seemed to be exceptionally fitted to carry out successfully the mission which was now to be performed. Cabell, asked for time to consider the request. "I cannot conceal," he wrote, "the gratification I feel at the confidence the proposition discovers." At the moment, he was debating in the closet of his own mind whether he should not resign his seat in the Senate, and withdraw

into private citizenship again; his affairs had begun to suffer alarmingly from the neglect that had followed his long absences from home; and he had also pleasing visions of devoting the leisure hours of his future plantation life to science and literature. The suggested visit to Europe would not be inconsistent with these agricultural and scholarly plans, for it would not absorb a longer period than six months at the most. Cabell, in the end, however, determined, with Jefferson's hearty approval, to remain in public office; and this decision, fortified, doubtless, by his constant anxiety about his health, caused him to decline the invitation to undertake the foreign mission.[56]

At the meeting of the Board of Visitors held on April 5 (1824), Francis Walker Gilmer was chosen in his stead. As Jefferson had known Gilmer intimately from boyhood, the selection was quite certainly the direct result of his advice. From every point of view, it was both a judicious and an interesting one. Gilmer belonged to the same caste in Virginia as Cabell, and had passed his early life in the midst of precisely similar social influences; indeed, the home of Dr. George Gilmer, the father of Francis Walker, was the exact counterpart in domestic refinement, elevated tastes, and simple occupations, of the home of Colonel Nicholas Cabell, the father of Joseph. The mould in which the characters of both young men had been shaped was the typical country-house of the Old Dominion, with its English traditions of manliness, uprightness, and culture of head and heart. Both were animated by the same lofty ideal of intellectual accomplishments and public services. Distinction in literature,

science or politics was the beckoning star of their aspirations; they had, from their earliest youth, nursed a generous ambition to win personal renown by such achievements in at least one of these walks as would be distinctly promotive of the happiness and prosperity of their fellow-men.

Cabell and Gilmer resembled each other even in their flaws of temperament: the one exhibited on the threshold of his active life, the other, throughout the whole of his shortened existence, a definite infirmity of will, which, by shifting their energies from one channel to another, created an impression of instability and inconstancy of character. Cabell, acquiring, by inheritance and marriage, a large fortune, was able in time to concentrate his powers in a brilliant political career, which he followed uninterruptedly until the verge of old age. Gilmer, as we shall see, wavered, not so much in his general spirit, as in his particular aims, and died while still young, leaving behind a memory that was held in all the more tenderness by his numerous friends because it was invested with the pathos of arrested achievement and unfulfilled promise. Both Cabell and Gilmer were sufferers from weakness of the lungs; and Gilmer succumbed to it before his powers had fully ripened. The capriciousness and fickleness which marked his conduct at times were probably due, in no small measure, to the haunting thought of this terrible disease, which naturally tended to confuse his plans for life and debilitate his will in their pursuit. The impression left by the study of his career is one of brilliance that bordered on futility, and of ambition of the noblest order that lacked the necessary fixity of purpose to blossom into full efflorescence.

XVI. Francis Walker Gilmer

ilmer was born at Pen Park, near the steep banks of the Rivanna, and in the long morning shadow of the Southwest Mountains. It was a cultivated and refined neighborhood, as we have shown, in which his childhood and youth were spent. His father, who was of direct Scotch ancestry, and had received his medical education at Edinburgh, was noted, in the community, for his literary culture, his taste for science,-more particularly for botany and chemistry,-and for an uncommon knowledge of the fine arts. William Wirt, who married his daughter, Mildred, described him as being an accomplished gentle man, gay in temper, witty in utterance, and on occasion, capable of eloquence of great force and dignity. He enjoyed Jefferson's friendship, -largely, perhaps, because they were both so deeply interested in every branch of scientific inquiry. Wirt imagined that he detected in Francis as early as his fourth year the general cast of his father's remarkable character. His early education seems to have been discursive and desultory, but it was sufficiently concentrated for him to acquire a great fund of classical learning. His first lessons of importance were received in the family of Thomas Mann Randolph; and here, under the tutelage of Mrs. Randolph, who had been educated in Paris, he obtained a very respectable knowledge of the French language. Afterwards entering Georgetown College near Washington, he passed thence to the College of William and Mary, where he seems to have impressed Bishop Madison as favorably as Cabell had done, for his genial manners, his refined tastes, and his ripe scholarship.

While a student there, he was thrown into the society of his distinguished brother-in-law, William Wirt, for the

first time since his childhood, although the two had very often, during the interval, exchanged letters. Wirt soon formed an enthusiastic opinion of his capabilities and his attainments. "In learning, he is a prodigy," said he. "His learning is of a curious cast, for having no one to direct his studies, he seems to have devoured indiscriminately everything that came in his way. He had been removed from school to school in different parts of the country, -had met at all those places with different collections of old books, of which he was always fond, and seemed also to have had command of his father's medical library, which he had read in the original Latin. It was curious to hear a boy of seventeen years of age speaking with fluency, and even with manly eloquence, and quoting such names as Bochaave, Van Helmont, Van Sweiten, together with Descartes, Gassendi, Newton, and Locke, and discanting on the system of Linnaeus with the familiarity of a veteran professor."

Bishop Madison quite naturally was solicitous to associate such an unfledged prodigy of learning as this with the College of William and Mary; and perhaps it was only Gilmer's youth which stood in the way of the offer of a more conspicuous station in the institution than the ushership of the grammar school. But he seems to have been already looking forward to a more active career than teaching. We learn from a letter addressed to his brother in October, 1810, that he was, at this time, planning a sojourn of several years in Albemarle county, where he expected to devote his time to a special course of reading, for which he would find the necessary volumes in the libraries of his friends. Now begins the somewhat sauntering habit of life which he was to keep up more or less to the end, and which seems to reveal a certain waywardness of spirit in the pursuit of his purposes. He

speaks of his "natural indolence," and fear that it will interrupt the proposed course of reading, although undertaken with no higher object than mere pleasure. In the spring of 1811, he plunges into a debate with himself whether or not he should seriously begin the study of law, but before doing so, he decided, with a characteristic disposition to diverge from his main path, to read Xenophon as giving a part of that moral science which, from its affinity to jurisprudence, should, in the order of things, he said, precede its study.

His friends, among whom were many men of distinction, fortified him with words of encouragement: "I consider you," wrote W. M. Burwell, a representative in Congress from Virginia, "destined to be eminently useful." "You set out," said William Wirt, "with a stock of science and information not surpassed, I suspect, in the example of Mr. Jefferson, and not equalled by any other, I do not except Tazewell." And he tells his young brother-in-law that he will not be satisfied with mediocrity in his career. "Whatever line of life you propose to pursue," wrote Jefferson, "you will enter on it with the high profits which worth, talent, and science present. There would be nothing which you might not promise yourself were the state of education with us what we could wish."[57]

Gilmer, in 1811, accepted an invitation from Wirt to study law in his office in Richmond, the customary method, at that time, of qualifying for the profession. Wirt was not only the most brilliant member of the local bar, but

had also won distinction by his success as an author; indeed, the British Spy had already given him a national reputation, independently of his forensic triumphs. Personally, he was the most delightful of companions; and this geniality, with his influential connections by marriage and by friendship, made him perhaps the most notable figure in the highest social group of the city. The charming benefits which Gilmer reaped from his familiar association with this accomplished man was only one part of his social harvest: he became intimate with the families of the Wickhams, Hays, McClurgs, Brockenbroughs, Cabells, and Gambles, and others of equal standing; formed a close friendship with Tazewell and Upshur; shouldered a musket in the defence of the city against British invasion; and barely got off with his life from the burning of the Richmond theatre, which snuffed out so many useful and distinguished lives.

In the spring of 1814, Gilmer determined to open a law office in Winchester; but during the many months which he passed at leisure before acting on this decision, he seems to have employed his time in the several kinds of literary composition to which he was impelled by the didactic spirit of that day. It was during this interval that he was first thrown with Abbe Corrèa; and as they had many tastes in common, their friendship quickly ripened. Corrèa was a Portuguese, who, for some years, had acted as secretary of the Lisbon Academy, but sympathizing with the French Revolution, had been forced to fly his native country and to take refuge in London. There he won such unreserved consideration that he was appointed the British representative in Paris, and remained there from 1802 to 1813. He was held in high repute by scientists for his knowledge of botany; and he seems to have visited the United States for the first time

to deliver lectures on this topic. At a subsequent period, he served as the Portuguese minister at Washington; and having become an intimate of Jefferson, he was frequently a visitor at Monticello.

Gilmer was irresistibly attracted to him, not only by his universal learning, but also by his knowledge of plants, a subject which had always interested the young Virginian. "Corrèa," said he, with generous enthusiasm, "knows all the languages, all the sciences. He is the most extraordinary man who ever lived." The two very often exchanged roots and seeds, and on at least two occasions, they made long and delightful excursions together in search of rare species of flowers. "The Abbe wishes you were always with him," Henry St. George Tucker wrote from Winchester; and we find Corrèa constantly sending him letters that breathe both affection and admiration. "Go on ascending the ladder," he tells him in February, 1816, "but remember that a genius like yours must not make it the only business of his life, but employ the ascendancy he got by that means to better the mental situation of his nation." Through Corrèa, Gilmer forwarded an essay to the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia to be read at its ensuing meeting; and he also became a correspondent of Du Pont de Nemours, to whom he discoursed on the topic of roads built at the national expense, or of a paper currency that rested on no basis more solid than the public confidence.

He was established in Winchester by 1814. His mind, however, was still so little set upon the profession of law, to the exclusion of all other interests, that Corrèa was able to seduce him into a botanical excursion to the Carolinas. He was also secretly engaged in literary composition. In 1816, a thin volume entitled Sketches of the Orators written by him, but without acknowledgement

of its paternity on the title page, was published in Baltimore, and the authorship soon leaking out, it led to an interesting correspondence with several persons of literary distinction. George Ticknor had already made his acquaintance, -no doubt at Monticello, -and perceiving his genial disposition and extraordinary literary and scientific culture, had been drawn to him with affectionate sympathy. In 1815, Gilmer planned a short tour in Europe. "Shall you set yourself down," wrote Ticknor, "amidst the literary society of Paris, and pass there in solitary study, or intellectual intercourse, the greater part of the time you can allow yourself to be abroad . . . or shall you visit with a classical eye and a classical imagination, the curious remains of art and antiquity in Italy?" It 1817, Ticknor stopped over in Geneva purposely to purchase for him a set of French and Latin volumes in tally with a list which had been sent to Dabney Carr Terrell, a young Virginian, then a student in the university of that city; and during his stay at Göttingen, he was warmly interested in buying for him additional works relating to jurisprudence and political economy. Ticknor's generous friendship for Gilmer never grew cold. In a letter written the same year, he revealed his affectionate solicitude for him by begging him to take care of his health. "The world," he said, "expects a great deal from your talents. I have placed a portion of my happiness on the continuance of your life."

Another correspondent was the versatile Hugh L. Legarè, who, like himself, had an almost inordinate esteem for literary culture and classical learning.

During his residence in Winchester, where he was able to earn his expenses by his profession, Gilmer was daily brought in the most familiar association with Henry St.

George Tucker, Judge Carr, and Judge Holmes, three men of remarkable attainments themselves, who felt for him an almost fraternal affection. But in spite of the genial attractions of their society, and the goodwill and respect of the community at large, he began to grow restive by the end of the second year. Where should he next settle, was the question that then arose to perplex his mind. He consulted his friends. Judge Cabell urged him to come back to Richmond. "Wirt," he wrote, "has removed to Washington, and his business to start with will fall to you." "Hard study, hard labor, and patient waiting," he added, "are necessary to success. I have no doubt of your success if you will be but true to yourself." Gilmer's progressive weakness of the lungs was one of the causes of his increasing restlessness. "You can, easily fulfil expectations," Cabell continued, "if you will preserve your health by adapting your habits to the nature of your accommodations."

He thought at first of establishing himself in Baltimore. Robert Walsh, a prominent resident of that city, whose advice he sought, threw cold water on this plan. "The competition is crowded here," he said, "though not powerful. Much depends on accident and family influence. As for political advancement, the chances are more favorable in Winchester." On the other hand, Wirt, to whom he also turned, counseled him to decide in favor of Baltimore. That wise friend urged him to give up entirely the diversion of writing books until he had accumulated a fortune by his practice; ten years at least should pass before he should permit himself to gratify his literary ambitions. "Be content," adds Wirt, "with the beautiful and captivating specimen of your taste in composition which you have already given." Gilmer, unfortunately, perhaps, for his success as a lawyer,

was in possession of a small income from invested funds and the hire of negroes, -a fact, which, by removing the spur to constant exertion in his profession, allowed him to become more enamored of the literary pursuits in which his heart was really embarked.

The length of residence required by the Baltimore rules before he would be granted a license, finally decided him to enroll his name in the membership of the Richmond bar. He had not been long settled in that city when he was mentioned for the presidency of the College of William and Mary, and under the influence of his leanings as a scholar, he would very probably have accepted it had it been offered, if Jefferson had not somewhat indignantly protested against his suffering himself to be drawn into what he described as a cul de sac. "You must get into the Legislature," he added, "for never did it more need of all its talents, nor more so than at this next session." The success which Gilmer won at the Richmond bar at this time proves that, had he been able to concentrate his thoughts and energies on the profession of law, he would have fulfilled all the sanguine expectations of his friends. Wirt, whose amiable temper, perhaps, led him to form an exaggerated estimate of other people's abilities, had not yet ceased to regret that his young brother-in-law had decided against a residence in Baltimore. "Had you gone thither," he said, "a few years might have placed your name next to Pinckney's." Now, Pinckney was, at this time, the most celebrated advocate in the American courts, and to predict that the young Virginian would, by proper exertion, rise to a position only second to his was to attribute to him the possession of the most extraordinary capacity. Whether his powers were really so great or not, Wirt followed his legal career with affectionate interest; and

receiving a very favorable report of one of his earliest arguments, after the removal to Richmond, expressed his gratification at the reputation which Gilmer was rapidly winning. "I hear you have broken a lance with the Attorney-General. Did you unhorse him? They tell me there was no pomp, no ostentation, no bombast, no pedantry about you, no verbiage for verbiage's sake, but that your words were full of thought, your manner, manly and moderate, yet energetic and cogent."

During one year, Gilmer served as the official reporter of the Court of Appeals, and his name was even suggested for the Attorney-Generalship of the State; but in spite of his apparent attention to the obligations of his jealous profession at this time, he seems to have still had little proclivity for it. His most earnest meditations were, as formerly, constantly directed towards literature and science. "I had not the least suspicion of your talent for poetry," wrote Corrèa, who had just received a copy of verses from his pen. Later, he is found rebutting Jeremy Bentham, and the self-complacent Edinburgh reviewers, in a treatise on usury, which was greeted with warm encomiums by both Jefferson and Wirt. A more imaginative production was an essay, in which he represented himself as lost at night in Westminster Abbey, and listening unseen to a conference between the marble figures, which had turned to flesh and blood and resumed their powers of motion and speech. In a second essay of a scientific cast, he offered an ingenious explanation of the phenomenon of the lunar rainbow.

He never lost his keen taste for the study of botany. Corrèa, in December, 1818, urged him to join him in an excursion to the Dismal Swamp in search of wild plants and flowers; and also, the following summer, to accompany him to the neighborhood of Charleston, for the

same purpose. These invitations apparently were not accepted simply because Wirt protested. "Your future success," he said, " must depend on disproving the whimsicality and instability which the mind is apt enough, without any overt act, to attach to genius." Gilmer seems to have nursed a vague plan of establishing some sort of botanical school in the Alleghanies. "What in the deuce," wrote Corrèa, "put you in the mood of a rural establishment in the mountains, with herb hunting, and lectures, and do nothing?" A letter from Thomas M. Randolph, written to him in 1818, mentions their former wanderings in the vicinity of Richmond in search of flowers; and a jocular note of Littleton W. Tazewell, some years later, quizzes him about a box full of rare blossoms which he had just received from Charleston, with directions to send it on to his address.

It was, during this year, that he became a candidate for the Secretaryship of Florida; but his motive apparently was not to secure a semi-tropical field for the gratification of his botanical curiosity, but to settle himself in a region that would prove more favorable to his precarious health. Wirt, to whom he applied for a backing, was discouraging in his reply. He again, with renewed impatience, enjoined upon him "to bid adieu to the sciences and literature for a season, and let the world see that your soul is in your profession. Avoid the reputation of fickleness. Your next move must be your last." Unfortunately, perhaps, for himself, Gilmer failed to obtain the appointment, and the next few years were passed in Richmond, broken only by the performance of his mission to England, which will be subsequently described. His pursuits continued to be of a desultory cast. We find him in correspondence with Philip Norborne Nicholas, who retailed, for his amusement,

the social gossip of Washington and the floating public news of the hour; with William Pope, of Powhatan county, the local humorist, who wrote that John Randolph had recently spoken of him as the "best informed man of his age in Virginia"; with Abel P. Upshur, Secretary of State in Tyler's Administration; with Benjamin Watkins Leigh, who consulted him confidentially about the agitation of his name as a candidate for the Senate; and with Captain Thomas Miller, a cultivated Englishman, who asserted that he had received more "information and pleasure" from Gilmer's conversation than "from all the people he had seen in all his travels."

These kind words, coming from men of such public distinction or private worth, must have been deeply soothing to Gilmer's disquieted spirit, now that his fatal disease was making such rapid and destructive progress. So extreme was his debility, that, towards the close of 1825, he made up his mind to return to his native county of Albemarle, in reality to die. Thomas W. Leigh, a man like himself of extraordinary promise, and like himself destined to pass away before his prime, wrote to him, after his departure, that "absence and separation would never weaken the sentiment of gratitude, and affection, and admiration with which I shall continue your friend"; and Dr. John Brockenbrough regretted that "one of the greatest pleasures we had is gone," now that he is no longer a citizen of Richmond. "No more friendly chitchat soirees, and no substitute for them," he adds in words that show his sincerity.

Before Gilmer went back to the familiar scenes of his youth and early manhood, he sought the benefit of a change in a visit to Norfolk. Chapman Johnson encouraged him, after his return, by saying that, as a result of the trip, he was "less hoarse and coughed less." "I

am perfectly persuaded," he added, probably with feigned hopefulness, "you want nothing but a tranquil mind, and mild climate to restore you." Gilmer had spoken of visiting Philadelphia to consult Dr. Physic. Johnson urged him instead to seek the affectionate nursing of his friends in Albemarle. "Make up your mind," he said, "to get well or to go to Heaven without another murmur or complaining word, and you will find the prescription worth a thousand times more than all the doctors can do or say for you." Gilmer wisely followed this advice, for his case was beyond the skill of the most competent physician; only a few months later, the religious state of his mind was revealed in his gift of plate for the altar of the Episcopal church in Charlottesville. On February 15 (1826), General Cocke reported his condition as so low, in the opinion of Dr. Dunglison, that he could not survive a fortnight. His last thoughts seemed to have travelled to the kindest and most affectionate of all his friends, the genial, the generous, the true-hearted William Wirt. "Farewell to you," the dying man wrote, with his brother Peachy's assistance, "and to all a family I have esteemed so well. I have scarcely any hope of recovering, and was but a day or two ago leaving you my last souvenir. I have not written to you because I love and admire you, and am too low to use my own hand with convenience." Wirt's reply was full of an agonized tenderness. "I have learned," he wrote, "that your disease has taken a turn alarming to your friends. But this note surpasses all my fears . . . . You have the love and present prayers of every member of my family. God Almighty bless you. If we have to part, I trust it will not be long ere we shall meet again to part no more."

The last scenes in Gilmer's life remind us in many

ways of the closing hours in the life of Keats. Both died young, both unmarried, and both of the same disease; and although the verses of the poet assured him, as he knew, an immortal chaplet of fame, there was, in his fading consciousness, that pang of thwarted hopes and unfulfilled desires which also wracked the heart of the young Virginian, sinking under the same deadly malady. As Keats's haunting sense of his own futility was summed up in the mournful epitaph which he wrote for himself, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," so the pathetic words engraved upon the tomb of the accomplished, aspiring, and high-minded Francis Walker Gilmer express all the sadness of a spirit, which only found surcease from the disappointments of hope and ambition when the frail body which had imprisoned it had been consigned to its native sod:

XVII. The Mission to England

Such in general was the spirit and the quality of the man who was selected to visit England in order to make the necessary choice of foreign professors. Jefferson offered him the mission by letter on November 23, 1823; but it was not until April 5, 1824, that he received a specific direction from the Board to leave for Europe to engage "characters of due degree of science, and of talents for instruction, and of correct habits and morals." The persons to he sought for and contracted with were to be the professors who were to occupy the chairs of mathematics, the ancient languages, anatomy and physiology, which should take in the history of the main theories of

medicine also, -physics, with astronomy added, and natural history, embracing botany, zoology, mineralogy, chemistry, and geology.

Gilmer was impowered to offer to each a fixed salary of a thousand dollars as the minimum, and fifteen hundred as the maximum, and also the tuition fees belonging to the chair to be filled. A guarantee was to be given that, during the first five years, the remuneration of the incumbent was not to be allowed to fall below twenty-five hundred dollars. Two thousand dollars was to be deposited in an English bank to enable Gilmer to make an advance of money to such of the professors as should need it before shutting up their homes in England; he himself was to receive fifteen hundred dollars to cover the expenses of his journey, and also to pay for his services in carrying out the mission; while a sum of six thousand dollars was to be appropriated for the purchase of apparatus for the use of the mathematical, chemical, physical, and astronomical classes. As the University was expected to be in a condition to receive students by February 1, 1825, it was hoped that he would be able to engage all the professors by the middle of November, 1824. His power of attorney was dated April 26, 1824. A letter of introduction from Jefferson to Richard Rush, the American minister in London, which accompanied this document, recommended him to Rush's good offices as the "best educated subject we have raised since the Revolution, highly qualified in all the important branches of sciences, particularly that of law . . . . His morals, his amiable temper, and his discretion, will do justice to any confidence you may place in him." Madison, in a supplementary letter, was equally complimentary. "He will quickly recommend himself," he said, "by his enlightened and accomplished mind, his pleasing disposition

and manners." "It is a sufficient testimonial of his merits," he added, "that he was selected for this mission"; and Rush was asked to bring him into communication with persons in England of the type of Sir James Mackintosh, who would be able to point out the scholars to be approached.

With numerous copies of the Rockfish Gap Report in his baggage, as Jefferson's gifts to his English correspondents, like Dugald Stewart and Major John Cartwright, and fortified with bills of exchange on Gowan and Marx of London, Gilmer set sail from New York on May 8, in the packet Cortez, which steered straight for Liverpool; but, buffeted by fierce headwinds in St. George's Channel, turned into the harbor of Holyhead, in Wales, from which town he travelled overland to the original port of destination, where he arrived twenty-nine days after dropping out of sight of Sandy Hook. Stopping at Hatton, after his departure from Liverpool, to talk with Dr. Parr, he was told that he was absent from home. During the first eight days of his sojourn in London, he was, against his will, left in a state of restive idleness by the crush of Mr. Rush's engagements; but at the end of that interval, was able to obtain from Lord Teignmouth and Mr. Brougham the letters which he needed for Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh. He held personal interviews with these two distinguished Englishmen, both of whom he discovered to be very much interested in the objects of his mission; but Sir James Mackintosh was either too indolent, or too much absorbed in his political duties, to give any assistance. Lord Teignmouth's four letters were addressed to the highest dignitaries at Oxford and Cambridge, -among them, Dr. Edward Coplestone, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff, -while Brougham's three were to persons described

by him as "the fittest" at Cambridge and Edinburgh, one of whom was Dr. Martin Davy, master of Caius College, and a friend of Dr. Parr's. Brougham offered to introduce Gilmer to Davy in London; and was so solicitous for his success as to put him on "his guard against the various deceptions or rather exaggerations" which would be practiced upon him, should he let the purpose of his mission "be known to any but a very few."

Before leaving London, Gilmer signed a contract with Dr. Blaettermann, who, not expecting the appointment, had recently rented and furnished a large house.[58] It is to be noted that he was not guaranteed the salary of twenty-five hundred dollars which Gilmer had been authorized to offer; and it was even intimated to him that the fifteen hundred dollars which he was to receive at the outset, might, during the second year, be reduced to one thousand. No real ground of objection to Blaettermann seems to have been discovered; but as the terms extended to him were less liberal than those granted to the other professors, we can only infer that Gilmer's impression of the man was not of the most favorable nature in the beginning. He spoke with a distinct foreign accent, which may have aroused a feeling of prejudice against him. His salary was to begin to accrue from the day of his sailing; he was to receive, in addition, fifty dollars from every pupil who studied his courses only; thirty, if the pupil attended one other school; and twenty-five, if he attended two other schools. He bound

himself to follow no additional calling during the period of his engagement.

Gilmer set out from London for Cambridge on June 22, carrying with him such letters of introduction as he had been successful in obtaining; and on arriving there, found that the long vacation had begun, and that Dr. Davy was absent. He filled up the interval before the tatter's return with an endeavor to decide whether it would be wise to engage the scientific professors among the fellows of this University; and he finally concluded that only incumbents for the chairs of mathematics and natural philosophy should be selected there, as small attention was paid in that institution to natural history. While busy pushing this vital inquiry, he was the recipient of the warmest hospitality from the masters of the colleges and the undergraduates alike, to whom he was recommended, not only by his scholar's mission, but also by his handsome presence, pleasant manners, varied information, and cultivated mind. He was invited to occupy rooms in Trinity College, and dined almost daily in its hall. The original letters of Sir Isaac Newton, the manuscript of a portion of Milton's Paradise Lost, the mulberry tree planted by the poet, his noble bust, and other memorials of literary interest, were shown him by the Bishop of Bristol in person. It was with a pleasant emotion of surprise that he noted among people of all ranks a genuine feeling of kindness for his own country.

Before leaving Cambridge, he visited several famous spots in its vicinity, -among them, the stately cathedral at Boston, standing on an eminence that rose to a greater height than the capitol at Richmond from a wide plain recently rescued from the fens; and also the church at Grand Chester, which was then thought to be the scene

of Gray's Elegy, from the belfry of which he heard, at nine o'clock, the curfew tolling across the fields "the knell of parting day." A little later, he was writing a letter to William Wirt from the room at Stratford in which Shakespeare was born. The lower floor of the house was, at that time, used as a butcher's stall; and so neglected was the great poet's fame in his native town that Gilmer had to inquire of half a dozen passers-by before he was able to find the grave.

From Stratford, he continued his journey to Oxford, which was now deserted, for professors and students alike had dispersed for the summer vacation. "I have seen enough of England and learned enough of the two Universities," he wrote from that place, "to see that the difficulties we have to encounter are greater than we supposed, -not so much from the variety of the applications, as from the difficulty of inducing men of real abilities to accept our offer . . . . Education at the Universities has become so expensive that it is almost exclusively confined to the nobility and the opulent gentry, no one of whom could we expect to engage. Of the few persons at Oxford or Cambridge who have any extraordinary talent, I believe ninety-nine out of a hundred are designed for the profession of law or the gown, or aspire to political distinction; and it would be difficult to persuade one of these, even if poor, to repress so far the impulse of youthful ambition as to accept a professorship in a college in an unknown country. They who are less aspiring .who have learning, are caught up at an early period in their several colleges; soon become fellows and hope to be masters; which, with the apartments, garden, and 4, 5 or 600 pounds sterling a year, comprises all they can imagine of comfort or happiness."

An additional obstacle, which Gilmer had to overcome

in securing competent men was the necessity, created by poverty, which forced the University of Virginia to assign several subjects to the same professor, -chemistry and astronomy, for instance, to the already laborious chair of natural philosophy. A second obstacle was the shortness of the vacation in that institution; and above all, the season at which it fell. In Oxford and Cambridge, all study ceased between July 1 and October 10. "If the heat is insufferable in England," he exclaims, "what must it be in our July, August, and September, when there is to be no vacation!" He admitted that, at this hour, he felt discouraged and depressed. "Whether I can find professors elsewhere in England is most doubtful; in the time (fixed by the Board of Visitors), I fear not. I shall not return without engaging them, if they are to be had in Great Britain or Germany. I have serious thoughts of trying Göttingen."

Leaving Oxford in this mood, Gilmer visited Dr. Parr in his home at Hatton. Parr was too infirm to be a of service to him in securing the professors sought for, but was of assistance in preparing a catalogue of classical books for the library. From Hatton, Gilmer travelled on to Edinburgh, the city where his father had matriculated fifty years before, and where a brother had died from over-exertion in the prosecution of his studies. On the day of his arrival, he obtained his first glimpse of a tangible success in carrying out his mission. During his sojourn in Cambridge, he had been introduced in the rooms of the poet, William Mackworth Praed, to Thomas Hewett Key, who, at that time, was a student of medicine, after winning distinction in the academic courses of that University. Gilmer, subsequent to their parting there, invited him by letter to accept the professorship of mathematics. It was the favorable reply to

this letter which reached Gilmer in Edinburgh, and gave him a feeling of encouragement in place of the dejection which had so harassed him. Key confessed that, at the request of his father, -himself a physician in large practice, -he had determined to withdraw from the pursuit of pure science and literature. "Indeed," he added, "nothing but your liberal proposition would have induced me once more to turn my thought to that quarter . . . . I shall be happy, should I find it in my power to agree to your offer. The manners, habits, and sentiments of the country, will, of course, be congenial with my own . . . . Nor would it at all grieve me, in a political point of view, to become, if I may be allowed that honor, a citizen of the United States."

Although Key suggests in this letter that the final arrangement should be delayed until they should have the opportunity to talk fully and intimately together at his father's in town, he now submits a number of practical questions for definite answers which would assist him in deciding. What branch of science was he expected to teach? What duties to perform? Would he be entirely under his own or others' directions? How far should he have the right to control his own time? What was the existing state of the University as to government? What were the number, age, and pursuits of its students? Had Gilmer the authority to make a private arrangement? And would the expense of the journey to the University be partly met at his own charge? To these numerous and searching interrogations, Gilmer was able to return a prompt and satisfactory reply by letter. Key would be expected to teach the mathematical sciences by lessons or lectures, as he himself should prefer; he could only be dismissed by a vote of two-thirds of the Board; he could dispose of his time as he liked, provided that he

should follow no other calling that would be a source of emolument to himself; and he was entitled to such an advance of funds as would defray the expense of his passage to Charlottesville.

An interesting paragraph of this letter related to the number of students that would probably be in attendance the first year. The estimate of that number which Gilmer now gave was scrupulously honest, but it was so exaggerated, in the light of the reality disclosed within a few months, that it must have left a painful impression on Key in recalling it after his arrival in Virginia. Repeating Jefferson's sanguine prediction, Gilmer asserted that not less than five hundred would matriculate so soon as the doors of the University were opened to receive them; and he was confident that at least two hundred of these young men would enter the mathematical course. As each pupil would be required to pay a fee of twenty-five dollars at least, the amount that would accrue to Key from students alone would be five thousand dollars, and when the sum due from the University as a fixed salary, namely, fifteen hundred dollars, was added, the total would rise to the imposing figure of six thousand, five hundred dollars. As no rent was to be asked for the occupation of a pavilion, -which would have reduced this figure, -the prospect was well calculated to dazzle a young medical student like Key, who had been looking forward in England to a protracted period of impecunious probation.

So soon as Gilmer arrived in Edinburgh, he personally interviewed a number of persons who had been recommended to him in London. Among the first of these was Professor John Leslie, who had, at one time, been a tutor in the Randolph family, in Virginia. If Leslie had not since become a scientist of indisputable acquirements,

his letter to Gilmer would appear to be distinctly presumptuous and condescending: "I stated to you," he wrote, "that it appeared to me that even the temporary superintendence of a person of name from Europe might contribute to give éclat and consistency to your infant university. On reflecting since on this matter, I feel not averse, under certain circumstances, to offer my own services. I am prompted to engage in such a scheme, partly from a wish to revisit some old friends, and partly from an ardent desire to promote the interests of learning and liberality. I could consent to leave Edinburgh for half a year. I could sail from Liverpool by the middle of April, visit the colleges in the New England States, New York, and Philadelphia, and spend a month or six weeks at Charlottesville. I should then bestow my whole thoughts in digesting the best plans of education, etc.; give all the preliminary lectures in mathematics, natural philosophy, and chemistry; and besides, go through a course comprising all my original views and discoveries in meteorology, heat, and electricity. Having put the great machine in motion, I should then take my leave to visit other parts of the Continent. But I should continue to exercise a parental care over the future of the university, and urge forward the business by my correspondence. To make such a sacrifice as this, I should expect a donation of at least one thousand pounds, which would include all my expenses on the voyage."

Leslie's expansive offer, which was reported to the Board by letter, discloses upon its face that he was too costly a luxury to be in the reach of a poorly endowed university, still in its swaddling clothes. Gilmer, for some days, cherished the hope that he would be able to secure the talents of Professor Buchanan for the chair of natural philosophy and chemistry, two courses which

he soon found it necessary to unite under one instructor. Buchanan objected to a session prolonged through the entire summer, on account both of the heat and the obstacle which it would create to his revisiting his native country at the only season when it would be convenient for his British friends to entertain him. He finally declined the invitation; and so did Dr. Craigie, who was offered the chair of anatomy, for which he was extraordinarily well equipped. It is not a cause for surprise to find that Gilmer was disposed to feel somewhat bitter over his failures. "When I saw needy young men," he wrote Jefferson afterwards, "living miserably up ten or twelve stories, in that wretched climate of Edinbrough, reluctant to join us, I did not know where we could expect to raise recruits."

It seems, however, that not all the scholars were so impoverished. The pedagogic calling in Scotland had become lucrative. "Even the Greek professor at Glasgow, Leslie tells me," Gilmer wrote in the letter just quoted, "receives fifteen hundred guineas a year. Some of the lecturers here receive above four thousand pounds sterling. Besides this, we have united branches which seem never to be combined in the same person in Europe . . . . I have, moreover, well satisfied myself that, taking all the departments of natural history, we shall, at Philadelphia and New York, procure persons more fit for our purpose than anywhere in Great Britain. The same may be said of anatomy . . . . As at present advised, I cannot say positively that I may not be condemned to the humiliation of going back with Dr. Blaettermann only."

Socially, he found the city of the North quite as attractive as Cambridge or Oxford. While there, he was entertained by the distinguished advocate, Murray, a kinsman of Lord Mansfield; and was also kindly received

by Lord Forbes, a retired officer of the army. The numerous acquaintances made by him were, he said, astonished to discover that he had been in Great Britain only, six weeks or seven weeks, "and yet spoke English quite as well as they, to say the least. I believe many of them, on both sides the Tweed, would give a good deal for my accent and articulation, which, I assure you, are nothing improved by this raw climate, which makes every one hoarse." Gilmer had an opportunity to be introduced to Jeffrey, and so pleasing was the impression which he made upon that celebrated critic, his wife, and the members of their particular coterie, that he was pronounced by them to be the most winning and popular American who had ever visited Edinburgh.

XVIII. The Mission to England, Continued

Gilmer stopped with Key in London, and through Key, he was brought into communication by letter with George Long, then about twenty-four years of age, a fellow of Trinity. To Long, he made precisely the same general offer which he had submitted to Key. Longs reply was at once that of a scholar and a man of business: it was sensible, candid, and straight-forward. The peculiar circumstances of his situation, he began, induced him to throw off all reserve. He had lost both his father and mother, and also a considerable property in the West Indies, which he had relied upon to yield him an easy and permanent income. Upon his exertions were almost entirely dependent two younger sisters and a brother under age. He had been studying privately to become a member of the bar, with the expectation that it would afford a subsistence for these relations, as well as gratify his ambition to rise in the world. "Did that

part of America, in which the University of Virginia was situated," he inquired, "open up the prospect of his family obtaining a satisfactory asylum there? Were newcomers there liable to be carried off by a dangerous epidemic disorder? Were common articles of food, apparel, and furniture cheap there? Was the scheme of the University a permanent or experimental one? Would the fixed fee of fifteen hundred dollars possess any chance of doubling when the institution got fully underway? Was the society of Albemarle or Charlottesville so good as to compensate an Englishman, in some degree, for the only comfort which an Englishman would hesitate to leave behind him? What vacation would the professors be granted, and at what seasons? What would be the costs of the voyage, and who would defray them? What sort of outfit for it would be required?"

Such were some of the pertinent questions put by Long. "I have no attachment to England as a country," he concluded; "it is a delightful place for a man of rank and property to live in, but I was not born in that enviable station . . . . If comfortably settled, therefore, in America, I would never wish to leave it." Gilmer replied at length to this letter; and one week afterwards, Long, who had, in the meanwhile, consulted Adam Hodgson, a merchant of Liverpool familiar with Virginia, accepted the original offer.

In reporting Longs acceptance to Jefferson, Gilmer stated that there were two objections to him: (1) he made no pretension to knowledge of Hebrew; but as this study was little esteemed in England, it would require a search that would extend over at least another year, to discover a competent man for the chair of ancient languages, should instruction in the Hebrew tongue be pronounced indispensable: (2) as an alumnus of Trinity, it

would be necessary for Long to return to that college in July, 1825, to stand the examinations for his mastership of arts, the condition of his retaining his fellowship. Both of these obstacles to his appointment could be easily surmounted, -the one by leaving him, after his arrival in Virginia, to acquire the requisite acquaintance with Hebrew; the other, by giving him permission to he present at Cambridge at the time that had been assigned. In accepting the chair of ancient languages, Long stated that "he took it for granted that the professors were not compelled to subscribe to any particular religious principles, or aid in propagation of any doctrine or speculative tenets, about which sects differ." "Allay your fears, I pray about religion," replied Gilmer. "Far from requiring uniformity, we scrupulously avoid having clergymen of any sort connected with the University, not because we have no religion, but because we have too many kinds. All that we shall require of each professor is that he shall say nothing about the doctrines which divide the sects. "When Gilmer submitted his original offer to Long, he also, by way of precaution, wrote to Rev. Henry Drury, of Harrow, soliciting his assistance towards filling the chair of ancient languages, should Long be unable to accept it. It will be seen from this that a clergyman's aid was not despised by him, but no offer of a minister of the Gospel to become a professor was seriously considered. On September 15, he wrote to Jefferson that he was in a position to engage the services of another most competent man for the ancient languages, but as he was a clergyman, he had turned his name down as ineligible. This was probably the person whom the headmaster of Shrewsbury School, Samuel Butler, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, had recommended; or it may have been the brother of the Rev. Henry Drury himself, also a clergyman, who was warmly urged by the Rev. Henry for the chair, although lie was honest enough, at the same time, to acknowledge that the Rev. Benjamin's principal reason for wishing to emigrate was that he was up to his neck in a slough of irremediable pecuniary embarrassments.

By the time Long's consent had been obtained, Key had also agreed to accept the chair of mathematics. Both Key and Long, it seems, noticed the disparity between the offer submitted to them in Gilmer's letters, and the one actually embodied in the contract which they were asked to sign. They raised the objection now, they said, so that there should be no room for dispute after their arrival in Virginia. "There is no doubt," wrote Key on September 27, "that I shall receive a salary of fifteen hundred dollars for the five years, independent of the fees. This is stated in both of your letters, but you wish virtually to reserve to the Visitors the power of diminishing this under certain conditions and limitations. I grant that this power is not to be enforced except at discretion, and for good reasons appearing to the Rector and Visitors. But it is still a power in their hand, which may be employed at their sober discretion, and independent of us. Now the limitation you put to the power of the Visitors is to restrain them from diminishing the fixed salary unless the whole receipts exceed twenty-five hundred dollars. But if the receipts will never be less than four thousand, and the Visitors have the power of diminishing the salary as soon as the whole receipts exceed twenty-five hundred dollars, is this not giving them an unconditional power of diminishing the salary? Ought not the limit to be at the very least forty-five hundred dollars . . . . I have just written

to Liverpool to take my place with the packet that leaves that port on (October) 16th."

The last sentence is a proof that Key had no intention of withdrawing from the engagement because of a supposed contradiction in the terms of the contract. Before this letter was written, Gilmer had been employed in the search for incumbents for the other professorships. "I have had more persons recommended for anatomy," he wrote Jefferson in August, "than for any other place, but immediately they find they will not be allowed to practise medicine abroad, they decline proceeding further." This difficulty, however, was finally overcome with the experienced assistance of Dr. George Birkbeck, the founder in Glasgow of the first Mechanics Institute, afterwards a prominent physician in London, and during many years, interested in the progress of popular education. Birkbeck suggested the name of Robley Dunglison, widely known already as a writer on medical topics. He accepted the anatomical professorship on September 5. On the same day, Gilmer visited Woolwich to talk in person with Peter Barlow, then an instructor in the Royal Military Academy, a member of the Royal Society, and a celebrated investigator in magnetism and optics. Barlow was absent; but afterwards by letter, readily agreed to assist him, and as the first step, promised to write to the son of a distinguished mathematical professor, whose name, however, he withheld. This person was undoubtedly Charles Bonnycastle, the son of John, who had filled the chair of mathematics at Woolwich with conspicuous ability and learning. As Bonnycastle was not in England at that time, for he was in the employment of the Government, Barlow wrote also to George Harvey, of Plymouth. But Bonnycastle was finally selected.

It seems that he had given bond for about five hundred pounds to the British Government, and this he forfeited when he accepted Gilmer's offer. He expected to cancel the obligation by an advance from the University, and there occurred some misunderstanding on this score between Gilmer and himself. Gilmer admitted in April, 1826, in a letter to Jefferson, that he had been compelled "to take Bonnycastle more on trust than the others," as he was anxious to close all engagements in time to get the professors overseas by November. He was under the impression that he had made no promise, in the University's name, to relieve Bonnycastle's sureties, but he declared that, should the Board of Visitors be unwilling to advance the amount, he would do so out of his own pocket. The money was, in the end, paid by the University in full. There was a somewhat furtive reflection on this professor's capacity in a letter which Gilmer received in January, 1825, from George Marx, the member of the banking firm which had honored his letters of credit in London: "I do not know whether it is my duty to tell you in strict confidence," he wrote, "that some opinion has been given me that Mr. Bonnycastle is not adequate to his situation." The conspicuous efficiency afterwards exhibited by him at the University of Virginia is a tacit refutation of this innuendo launched by some unknown and hostile tongue. "The son," said Dr. Birkbeck, "I am persuaded, will extend the fame of the parent. Had I entertained the slightest idea of his being in your reach, he would have been the first recommended."

By the nineteenth of September, Gilmer was in a position to report that he had succeeded in engaging four of the five professors sought for. It had been his expectation that he would certainly be able to embark for home

at an earlier date, but, said he, "At this season of the year, no man in England is where he ought to be, except perhaps those of the Fleet and of Newgate. Every little country school-master, who never saw a town, is gone, as they say, to the country; that is to Scotland, to shoot grouse, to Doncaster to see a race, or to Cheltenham to dose himself with that vile water. With all these difficulties, and not without assistance, but with numerous enemies to one's success (as every Yankee in England is), I have done wonders. I have employed four professors of the most respectable families, of real talent, learning, etc., a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a M.A. of the same University. Then, they are gentlemen, and what should not be overlooked, they all go to Virginia with the most favorable prepossessions towards our country. If learning does not raise its drooping head, it shall not be my fault. For myself, I shall return to the bar with recruited health and redoubled vigor. I shall study and work and speak and do something at last that shall redound to the honor of my country. My intercourse with professional and literary men here has fired again all my boyish enthusiasm, and I pant to be back and at work. Virginia must still be a great nation. She has genius enough; she wants only method in her application."

It only remained to procure a professor of natural history. By the advice of Dr. Birkbeck, Gilmer wrote to Dr. John Harwood, -at this time delivering a series of lectures in Manchester, -who, in his reply, on September 20, expressed regret that his engagements with the Royal Institution made it impracticable for him to consider the offer before the ensuing May. In the meanwhile, he intimated, his brother William Harwood, who had given instruction in natural history, might take the

place as a temporary stop-gap, or as the permanent incumbent, should it not he convenient for himself to leave England in the spring. A few days later, however, Dr. Harwood stated that there was an acquaintance of his in Bristol, -whose name he failed to mention, -who was well fitted by his attainments to assume the chair. This proved to be Frederick Norton. On the same occasion, he again recommended his brother William, who supported his claim in a letter over his own signature. "I confess," he wrote, "that I shall have much pleasure in accepting the appointment provided that my qualifications may meet your approval. I have been long devoting myself to the study of natural history, but more especially to the branch, geology. I am not so familiar with natural history, but I flatter myself with a pretty good acquaintance with chemistry."

Dr. John Harwood, in a letter which Gilmer received just before his departure from England, again revealed his desire that his brother should act as his stop-gap; and so anxious was William Harwood to assume this part, that he crossed to the Isle of Wight to talk with Gilmer in person on shipboard, only to be informed that it was too late for a written agreement to be drawn and signed; but he was advised to run the risk of going out to Virginia without a contract. To this suggestion, he very sensibly demurred. Frederick Norton arrived on the ground a few hours after the ship had set sail (October 5).

During the last week of his sojourn in England, Gilmer's time had not been altogether taken up with the pursuits of possible candidates for University professorships. Among the distinguished persons whom he met in general society was Thomas Campbell, who was interested in America from the association of at least one of

his poems with its scenery, and also from the presence of a brother there. Campbell was prevented from entertaining him at his own home by the mental condition of his son. Gilmer, on several occasions, dined with Major John Cartwright, the author of a laborious disquisition on the English Constitution, and a man of radical leanings, as proven by his sympathy with American and Spanish rebels, and by his advocacy of the reform of Parliament and abolition of slavery. He, like Dr. Parr, was more interested in suggesting a list of editions to be bought for the University library, than in proposing the names of possible professors. Dugald Stewart had been paralyzed in 1822, but he expressed the hope, in a letter dictated to his daughter, that Gilmer would sail from a Scotch port, as this would give the infirm old philosopher the opportunity to make his acquaintance. "I am sorry," he said, "to think that my good wishes are all I have to offer for his (Mr. Jefferson's) infant establishment." Dr. Parr was so much pleased with the young Virginian that he promised to "marry him in England without requiring the payment of a fee." In a letter to Gilmer only a few days before he embarked, he said, "To Mr. Jefferson present, not only my good wishes, but the tribute of my respect and my confidence. I shall write of him what Dr. Young said of Johnson's Rasselas, "It was a globe of sense." I use the same word with the same approbation of Mr. Jefferson's letter to me."

Gilmer, while in London, spent some of his leisure hours in Lambeth Palace Library, and became so much interested in the manuscript of John Smith's History of Virginia preserved there, that he had a copy of it written out for publication in the United States.

During his voyage to New York, he was entirely prostrated by seasickness, and in this unhappy condition, fell

into a raging and devouring fever aggravated by want of medicine, food, rest and attendance. "I am reduced to a shadow," he said, "and am disordered throughout my whole system." A carbuncle appeared on his left side and as the ship-doctor was too incompetent to lance it, he himself was forced to lay open the angry lump with a pair of scissors and with his own hands. "We had no caustic and had to apply bluestone, which was nearly the same sort of dressing as the burning pitch to the bare nerves of Ravillac. All the way, I repeated,

Such is the martyrdom I have endured for the Old Dominion! She will never thank me for it, but I will love and cherish her as if she did." After his arrival in New York, he was detained by illness during several weeks, but, as will hereafter appear, he was, in spite of his feeble condition, ardently interested in engaging a professor for the vacant chair of natural history, the only chair which he had been compelled to leave still unprovided for when he set out from England.