440 AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT-IX 



me there as professor of history Charles Kendall Adams ; 

 and so began a second and most prosperous adminis 

 tration. 



In thus leaving the presidency of the university, it 

 seemed to me that the time had come for carrying out a 

 plan formed long before the transfer to the univer 

 sity of my historical and general library, which had be 

 come one of the largest and, in its field, one of the best 

 private collections of books in the United States. The 

 trustees accepted it, providing a most noble room for it in 

 connection with the main university library and with the 

 historical lecture-rooms; setting apart, also, from their 

 resources, an ample sum, of which the income should be 

 used in maintaining the library, in providing a librarian, 

 in publishing a complete catalogue, and in making the 

 collection effective for historical instruction. My only 

 connection with the university thenceforward was that of 

 a trustee and member of its executive committee. In this 

 position it has been one of the greatest pleasures and sat 

 isfactions of my life to note the large and steady develop 

 ment of the institution during the two administrations 

 which have succeeded my own. At the close of the admin 

 istration of President Adams, who had especially distin 

 guished himself in developing the law department and 

 various other important university interests, in strength 

 ening the connection of the institution with the State, and 

 in calling several most competent professors, he was suc 

 ceeded by a gentleman whose acquaintance I had made 

 during my stay as minister to Germany, he being at that 

 time a student at the University of Berlin, Dr. Jacob 

 Gould Schurman, whose remarkable powers and gifts have 

 more than met the great expectations I then formed re 

 garding him, and have developed the university to a yet 

 higher point, so that its number of students is now, as I 

 revise these lines, over three thousand. He, too, has been 

 called to important duties in the public service; and he 

 has just returned after a year of most valuable work as 

 president of the Commission of the United States to the 



