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 



