What Made the Institute Possible. 321 



to become inefficient. There is little record of the schoolmasters of 



all. They were not mere strolling preachers of low degree, sent out to 

 the new colonists as superfluous refuse, but were men of brain and 

 learning. The Dutch dominies had been educated in their home 

 universities, and brought scholastic cpialifications with them; the 

 clergy of the English church were graduates of Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge; the Jesuit missionaries of whose occasional presence the 

 colonists were not intolerant, carried with them into their exile the 

 training of their own learned seminaries. Those were days when the 

 cities of Europe, with few exceptions, leaned lovingly toward the acqui- 

 sition of universities; and some of them held their 'rank among other 

 cities as much through the number of students within their walls as 

 through the wealth of the traders in their guilds. Beverwyck might 

 never hope to found a university, that, certainly, would be asking too 

 much. But would it be extravagant to dream that in the course of 

 time, the scope of its schools might widen, and something broader and 

 higher than mere elementary education be established, teaching the 

 more profound sciences? Here, therefore, in the minds of cultivated 

 men, might perhaps be found the earlier germs of the longing for 

 that more thorough knowledge which would make associations like the 

 Institute possible. 



As time ran on, and the Dongan charter came, abundantly providing 

 freedom for universal education, Albany began to mingle more freely 

 with the outside world ; not by any means letting itself remain shut 

 up in narrow-minded seclusion, but gathering information eagerly from 

 every possible source. It began, too, to become an important point 

 for interchange. The French and Indian war brought officers of the 

 British army, with ready knowledge of the doings at Whitehall ; and 

 now and then a captive French officer came in with traditions of the 

 glories of the Bourbon Court. The Revolution broke out, and the 

 scales turned. It was now the English who were captured; but all the 

 same the city was becoming almost cosmopolitan, at times, in the 

 possession of that intercourse from outside which fosters new ideas, 

 and turns the routine education of the day into an enlightened aspi- 

 ration for something higher. Then, in turn the Revolution-passed into 

 history-; and Albany— already proud of its varied and unstained past, 

 took its place as the capital of the state and prepared itself for newer 

 and higher possibilities from the hand of destiny. There were poli- 

 tics at that time, as now ; but there were also statesmen and states- 

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