THE STATE AND HIGHER EDUCATION. 703 



trust" by the new company for the destined university. Tbcre is prob- 

 ably little dan<^er that it will ever be thrown upon the market in a 

 solid bh)ck by the Treasury of the United States, to which the stock 

 loyally belongs, unless the present surplus should suddenly vanish, 

 and the General Government be forced to realize upon its assets for the 

 expenses of the administration. 



Georji'e Washington's educational schemes were by no means vision- 

 aiy. His stock in the James Kiver Company, wiiich, like the Potomac 

 Company, Ir-j had heli>ed to organize, actually became productive and 

 was by him presented to Liberty Elall Academy, now Washington and 

 Lee University, at Lexington, Va., where General Lee died and was 

 buiied, having served his native State, as did George Washington, in 

 the ca[)acit3' of a college president. Washington raised Liberty Hall 

 Academy to what he called " a senuuary of learning upon an enlarged 

 plan, but not coming ui) to the full idea of uuiv^ersity." He meant to 

 maivc it one of the three Virginia supporters of the university at Wash- 

 ington. Liberty Hall, or Washington College, his own William and 

 Mary, and Hampden Sidney, were all to be State pillars of a national 

 temi)le of learning. 



Washington's dream of a great university, rising grandly upon the 

 Maiylami bank of the Potomac, remained a dream for three-quarters 

 of a century. But there is nothing more real or persistent than the 

 dreams of great men, whether statesmen like Baron von Sti'in, or poets 

 bke Dante or Petrarch, or prophets like Savonarola, or thinkers like 

 St. Thomas Aquinas, the fathers of the church ami of Greek philosophy. 

 States are overthrown; literatures are lost; temples are destroyed; 

 systems of thought are shattered to pieces like the statues of Pheidias; 

 but somehow truth and beauty, art ami architecture, forms of poetry, 

 ideals of liberty and government, of sound learning and of the educa- 

 tion of youth-^these immortal dreams are revived irom age to age and 

 take concrete sha[)e before the very eyes of successive generations. 



The idea of university education in the arts and sciences is as old as 

 the schools of Greek philosophy. The idea was perpetuated at Alexr 

 andria, liome, and Athens under the emperors. It endured at (!oi)t 

 stantino[)le and Ravenna. It was revived at Bologna, Paris, Prague^, 

 Heidelberg, Oxford, anil Canibridge under varying aus[)ices, whethep 

 of city, church, or state, and was sustained by the munificence of mer- 

 chants, princes, prelates, kings, and cpieens. Ideas of higher education 

 were trausnutted to a new worhl by Englishmen who believed in an 

 educated ministry and who would not suffer learning to perish in the 

 wilderness. The collegiate foundations laid by John Harvard in Mas- 

 sachusetts and Commissary Blair in Virginia were the historic models 

 for many similar institutions, north ami south. George Washington, 

 the chancellor of William and Mary, when he became President of a 

 Federal republic, cuiglir. up, in Ihe- capital of a westward moving 

 empire, the old university ideaanil gave it national scope. Tiiere upoij 



