324 



SCIENCE. 



[N. 6. VuL. X\. ^o. S74. 



promoted by athletic sports in the gi'oves 

 of Aeademus. The promised land which 

 Moses sees from Pisgah, our Joshua AvilJ 

 possess. 



Some curious parallels, familiar to the 

 readers of history, may here be brought to 

 mind. Thrice, in three centuries, great uni- 

 versities have arisen with their healing in- 

 fluence at the close of long wars. In fa- 

 miliar language. Motley tells us how the 

 university of Leyden was established by 

 the Dutch Republic, after the fearful siege 

 which that brave city had endured. On 

 the 5th of February, 1575, three hundred 

 years before our natal day, the city of Ley- 

 den crowned itself with flowers, and ' with 

 harmless pedantry, interposed between the 

 acts of the longest and dreariest tragedy 

 of modern times,' celebrated the new 

 foundation. Allegorical figures moving in 

 procession escorted the orator of the day, 

 the newly appointed professors and other 

 dignitaries, to the cloister of Saint Barbara 

 where with speech and banquet they cele- 

 brated the day. Ever since, Leyden has 

 been a noble seat of learning, and many of 

 our own countrymen in early days resorted 

 to it. The university of Berlin was estab- 

 lished after the humiliation of Prussia by 

 the Napoleonic wars. William von Hum- 

 boldt has many titles to fame,— but none 

 of his laurels are so fresh as the wreaths 

 which crown his brow as the founder of 

 that great university to which so many of 

 the foremost scholars of Europe have been 

 called, from F. A. Wolf to Van't Hofe. 

 Within the memory of most of us, the uni- 

 versity of Strasburg sprang into life at 

 the close of the Franco-Prussian war. The 

 German Emperor could see no better way 

 of giving peace and prosperity to the cap- 

 tured province, than by making it the seat 

 of a great university. 



At the close of our civil war came the op- 

 portunity of Baltimore. It led to an extra- 

 ordinary and i^ndesisned fulfilment of an 



aspiration of George Washington. As his 

 exact language is not often quoted, I ven- 

 ture to give it here. In his last will and 

 testament, after expressing his ardent de- 

 sire that local attachments and State preju- 

 dices should disappear, he uses the follow- 

 ing words. 



"Looking anxiously forward to the aooomplish- 

 ment of so desirable an object as this is (in my 

 estimation ) , my mind has not been able to con- 

 template any plan more likely to effect the meas- 

 ure, than the establishment of a University in 

 a central part of the United States, to which the 

 youths of fortune and talents from all parts 

 thereof may be sent for the completion of their 

 education, in all the branches of polite literature, 

 in arts and sciences, in acquiring knowledge in the 

 principles of politics and good government, and, 

 as a matter of infinite importance in my judg- 

 ment, by associating with each other, and form- 

 ing friendships in juvenile years, be enabled to 

 free themselves in a proper degree from those 

 local prejudices and habitual jealousies which have 

 just been mentioned, and which, when carried to 

 excess, are never-failing sources of disquietude to 

 the public mind, and pregnant of mischievous con- 

 sequences to this country." 

 You will please to notice that he did not 

 speak of a university in Washington, but 

 of a university ' in the central part of the 

 United States.' What is now the central 

 part of the United States? Is it Chicago 

 or is it Baltimore? 



Let me now proceed to indicate the con- 

 ditions which existed in this country when 

 our work was projected. You will see that 

 extraordinary advances have been made. 

 The munificent endowments of Mr. John 

 D. Rockefeller and of Mr. and Mrs. Leland 

 Stanford, — the splendid generosity of the 

 State legislatures in Michigan, Wisconsin, 

 Minnesota, Califorjiia, and other Western 

 States, the enlarged resources of Harvard, 

 Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Pennsylvania 

 and other well established universities, and 

 now the unique and unsurpassed generos- 

 ity of Mr. Carnegie have entirely changed 

 the aspects of liberal education and of sci- 

 entific investisation. 



