DANIEL COIT GILMAN, LL.D. Ixiii 



anthropy and particularly toward training in technical and scientific 

 schools. The thoroughness and breadth of his investigations ap- 

 pears in the paper entitled " Scientific Schools in Europe," pub- 

 lished on his return in Barnard's Journal of Education, and the 

 direction which this study gave to his own thoughts can be inferred 

 from the appeal therein made for such scientific education in 

 America as would make it unnecessary for " scores of young men " 

 to visit Europe annually " to pursue those special courses of instruc- 

 tion which are there so liberally provided." The three years' resi- 

 dence abroad aroused in the mind of this young man of twenty-four 

 his first definite understanding of the needs of education in America 

 and of new reaches in the world of scholarship. Higher courses of 

 instructions became to him the great need of the American college. 

 " A school " he said, " which, rising above those common places 

 which are everywhere known, should supply an education of the 

 most elevated order and should stimulate original inquiries and in- 

 vestigations, would confer unspeakable benefits upon every portion 

 of our country and would not be without its influence upon the 

 progress of humanity." Herein is expressed the essential educa- 

 tional principle that was destined to play so conspicuous a part in 

 Dr. Oilman's educational program ; and herein lies the germ of the 

 Johns Hopkins Universitly. The idea was not peculiar to Dr. Gil- 

 man. As he himself said, " Throughout the civilized world the 

 improvement of universities was engrossing the attention of the 

 wisest men and the most enlightened states ;" but the important fact 

 remains that among the first of the wisest men was he whose three 

 years sojourn abroad had given him a clue to the solution of the 

 problem. 



Returning to America in 1855 Dr. Oilman was appointed assist- 

 ant-librarian and afterward librarian of Yale College, a position 

 he held until 1865. At the same time he became chairman of the 

 visiting committee of the public schools of New Haven, secretary of 

 the State Board of Education, and co-editor with Henry Barnard 

 of the Connecticut Common School Journal. He travelled about the 

 state visiting schools and acquiring such information as to justify 

 his sharp and trenchant criticisms of the existing system. His 

 report abounds with suggestive statements : " Bricks and mortar 



