322 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. ISo. 374. 



original research, praiseworthy and bene- 

 ficial. We might sit with them in a little 

 room on North Charles Street, and listen 

 to Presidents Eliot, Angell, and White as 

 they were subjected to ' interviews, ' re- 

 corded by the swift strokes of the steno- 

 graphic pen, and now preserved in our ar- 

 chives. We might wonder by what process 

 the Trustees selected a president, and be 

 willing to learn what he said to them in 

 his earliest conversation. It would gratify 

 some curiosity to review the correspond- 

 ence carried on with those who afterward 

 became members of the faculty, — and with 

 those who did not. It would be an extra- 

 ordinary pleasure to the speaker on this 

 occasion, to awaken the memories of those 

 early days of unbounded enthusiasm and 

 unfettered ideality, well described in a 

 periodical by one who was here at the out- 

 set, — days which surprised and delighted 

 intelligent observers. 



These temptations must be avoided. 

 The occasion is too important, the audience 

 too varied, the visitors too many and too 

 distinguished, to warrant the employment 

 of this brief hour in personal reminiscences 

 and local congratulations. We are rather 

 bound to consider some of the grave prob- 

 lems of education which have engaged, dur- 

 ing a quarter of a century, the study of 

 able and learned men, and have led to the 

 development, in this country, of the idea 

 of the University. This period has seen 

 marvellous improvements in higher educa- 

 tion, and although, in the history of intellec- 

 tual development, the nineteenth century 

 may not be as significant as the thir- 

 teenth, when modern universities came in- 

 to being at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, yet 

 we have lived at a time when forces have 

 been set to work of the highest significance. 

 Libraries, seminaries and laboratories have 

 been enlarged and established in every part 

 of the land. 



Let us go back to the year 1876, that 



year of jubilee, when the centennial cele- 

 bration in Philadelphia brought together, 

 in open concord, states and peoples sepa- 

 rated by dissension and war. Representa- 

 tives from every part of the land assem- 

 bled, in the City of Brotherly Love, to com- 

 memorate the growth of a century. The 

 triumph of liberal and industrial arts, the 

 progress of architecture, sculpture, and 

 painting, were interpreted by the music of 

 our Sidney Lanier. The year was certain- 

 ly propitious. So was the place. Mary- 

 land was a central state, and Baltimore a 

 midway station between the North and the 

 South. The people had been divided by 

 the war, but there were no battle fields in 

 our neighborhood to keep in mind the strife 

 of brethren. The State of Maryland had 

 been devoted to the idea of higher educa- 

 tion ever since an enthusiast in the earliest 

 colonial days projected the establishment 

 of a university on an island in the Susque- 

 hanna. Liberal charters had been granted 

 to colleges, of which St. John's, the suc- 

 cessor of the first free school, must have 

 honorable mention, a college likely to be 

 increasingly useful during the twentieth 

 century. The University of Maryland, 

 with scanty resources, encouraged profes- 

 sional training in law, medicine, and the 

 liberal arts (nominally also, in theology), 

 but its efforts were restricted by the lack 

 of funds. Nathan R. Smith, David Hoff- 

 man and other men of eminence were in 

 the faculty. The Catholic Church had es- 

 tablished within the borders of the state a 

 large number of important schools of learn- 

 ing. One of them, St. Mary's College, un- 

 der the cultivated fathers of St. Sulpice, 

 had been the training place of some of the 

 original promoters of the Johns Hopkins 

 University. Yet there was nothing within 

 the region between Philadelphia and Char- 

 lottesville, between the Chesapeake and the 

 Ohio, which embodied, in 1876, the idea of 

 a true university. Thus it appears that 



