WILLIAM AUGUSTUS STEARNS. 297 



or disorder by his moral influence over the minds of his students, but 

 yet so that they should understand it to be deliberate wisdom and not 

 timid 23olicy that inspired his mild rule, and that the severities of dis- 

 ci[)line were at hand for the vindication of the laws in the last resort. 

 Personal instruction of the students in the class-rooms was not to his 

 taste, and he had no special gift in this direction, and he largely left 

 that office to those to whom nature or experience had made it easy. 

 In planning, directing, and superintending the teaching of others, he 

 found his more congenial and appropriate employment as the head of 

 the college. In these duties, and especially in the exercise of the most 

 important function of the president of a college, that of the selection 

 of the instructors and officers who are to work under his supervision, 

 he used his constitutional diligence and evinced that instinctive knowl- 

 edge of men and that intuitive discernment of spirits which leads to 

 the filling of the right places with the right men at the right time. 



Besides the qualities at which we have glanced, which eminently 

 fitted President Stearns for the headship of an institution of good 

 learning, he had others which enabled him to do his college most ma- 

 terial service. He had a natural turn for affairs and was an admirable 

 man of business. Under his presidency, the funds of the college were 

 very largely increased, the number of students and of teachers more 

 than doubled. The college buildings are twice as many as at his 

 accession to office. The departments of instruction have been enlarged 

 and extended in every direction. While holding firmly to the sound 

 orthodox faith that a knowledge of the ancient languages is the indis- 

 pensable foundation of a truly liberal education, the departments of 

 the modern languages and literatures, of theology, astronomy, the 

 physical sciences, of history and philosophy, and of the science of gov- 

 ernment, were all of them reinforced, and some of them established 

 during his incumbency. The importance of the fine arts and an- 

 tiquities as a part of education was first recognized in his time, and a 

 museum established for the promotion of those elevating and refining 

 pursuits. The long-neglected but most important study of hygiene 

 and the physical education wliich belongs to it received under him the 

 attention it deserves, and with excellent results in the improved health 

 of the students. The marked advance which Amherst Colleore has 

 made within the last quarter of a century and the high rank it holds 

 among the academic institutions of the country may be said, without 

 disparagement of his eminent predecessors, to be mainly owing to the 

 zeal and labors of President Stearns. The interests of his own col- 

 lege, however, did not absorb his attention, to the neglect of those of 



