FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF CORNELL -1870-1872 383 



to the tender mercies of a sophomore, they would prob- 

 ably have mobbed me. This mode of examination con- 

 tinued until the young man's graduation, when he was 

 openly appointed examiner in history, afterward be- 

 coming instructor in history, then assistant professor; 

 and, finally, another university having called him to a 

 full professorship, he was appointed full professor of 

 history at Cornell, and has greatly distinguished himself 

 both by his ability in research and his power in teaching. 

 To him have been added others as professors, assistant 

 professors, and instructors, so that the department is now 

 on an excellent footing. In one respect its development has 

 been unexpectedly satisfactory. At the opening of the uni- 

 versity one of my strongest hopes had been to establish a 

 professorship of American history. It seemed to me mon- 

 strous that there was not, in any American university, a 

 course of lectures on the history of the United States ; and 

 that an American student, in order to secure such in- 

 struction in the history of his own country, must go to 

 the lectures of Laboulaye at the College de France. Thi- 

 ther I had gone some years before, and had been greatly 

 impressed by Laboulaye 's admirable presentation of his 

 subject, and awakened to the fact that American history 

 is not only more instructive, but more interesting, than 

 I had ever supposed it. My first venture was to call 

 Professor George W. Greene of Brown University for a 

 course of lectures on the history of our Revolutionary 

 period, and Professor Dwight of Columbia College for 

 a course upon the constitutional history of the United 

 States. But finally my hope was more fully realized: I 

 was enabled to call as resident professor my old friend 

 Moses Coit Tyler, whose book on the "History of Ameri- 

 can Literature " is a classic, and who, in his new field, 

 exerted a powerful influence for good upon several gen- 

 erations of students. More than once since, as I have 

 heard him, it has been borne in upon me that I was born 

 too soon. Remembering the utter want of any such in- 

 struction in my own college days, I have especially envied 



