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the college, and instructed the students in his house at Killingworth. The first Commencement was held at Saybrook, in 1702, with advanced scholars, several of them from Harvard, of which college Pierson was also a graduate. He continued to receive his pupils at Killingworth, till his death in 1707. He prepared a text-book for the students in Natural Philosophy. The collegiate school, as it was called, was now set up at Saybrook, under the care of tutors, where the commencements continued to be held, though the Rev. Samuel Andrew, of Milford, rector pro tem., instructed the senior class at his home. New Haven and Hartford, too, had their claims for the seat of the college. There was much agitation of the matter, but it was finally carried in favor of New Haven, in 1716.* The first Commencement in New Haven was held in 1717.

Elihu Yale.

Elihu Yale, a native of the place, who had left it in his boyhood, became possessed of great wealth in the East Indies, and was created Governor of Fort St. George, and had married, moreover, an Indian fortune. On his return to London, he contributed books and merchandise to the college of his native town. The trustees now took advantage of this prominent opportunity to name the new college house after so liberal a benefactor, and Yale College soon became the name of the institution itself. Yale

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was a gentleman," says President Clap, in his history of the college, "who greatly abounded in good humour and generosity, as well as in wealth. The following is a copy of his epitaph in the church-yard at Wrexham, Wales.

Under this tomb lyes interr'd Elihu Yale of Place Gronow, Esq.; born 5th April, 1648, and dyed the 8th of July, 1721, aged 73 years. Born in America, in Europe bred, In Afric travell'd, and in Asia wed, Where long he liv'd and thriv'd: at London dead. Much Good, some Ill he did: so hope all's Even, And that his soul thro' Mercy's gone to Heav'n. You that survive and read, take care For this most certain Exit to prepare,

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For only the Actions of the Just,

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

Under an engraved picture of Governor Yale, sent to the college at an early period, was the following inscription in manuscript :

Effigies clarissimi viri D. D. Elihu Yale
Londinensis, Armigeri.

En vir! cui meritas laudes ob facta, per orbis
Extremos fines, inclyta fama dedit.
Equor arans tumidum, gazas adduxit ab Indis,
Quas Ille sparsit munificante manu:
Inscitiæ tenebras, ut noctis luce corusca

Phoebus, ab occiduis pellit et Ille plagis.
Dum mens grata manet, nomen laudesque YALENSES
Cantabunt SOBOLES, unanimique PATRES.

which the poet Percival has thus imitated.
Behold the man, for generous deeds renown'd,
Who in remotest regions won his fame:
With wise munificence he scattered round

The wealth that o'er the sea from India came.
From western realms he bids dark ignorance fly,
As flies the night before the dawning rays:
So long as grateful bosoms beat, shall high

YALE's sons and pious fathers sing his praise." Jeremiah Dummer, of Boston, the agent of Massachusetts in England, in 1714, had been an earlier generous donor to the library. He gave, or procured, some eight hundred valuable volumes. The names of his friends who were associated with him in the gift, impart to it additional value. They were among the most distinguished men of that day, and include Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Richard Steele, Burnet, Woodward, Halley, Bentley, Kennet, Calamy, Edwards, and Whiston, who gave copies of their writings to the collection.

When the college was thus established at New Haven, the Rev. Timothy Cutler, of Stratford, was chosen its Rector, and, as a compensation to the people of the place he was leaving, the trustees of Yale bought their minister from them, paying for his house and lot, and giving them to the town. A new difficulty now presented itself. The orthodox Rector, with a tutor and two neighboring clergymen, announced, in 1722, their intention to give up New England theology for Episcopal ordination in England. The discovery was made at the time of Commencement, shortly after which occasion, Gov. Saltonstall held a personal dispute on the subject with the recusant Rector and one of his most distinguished associates, the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of New Haven. The trustees met, and voted that they "do excuse the Rev. Mr. Cutler from all further service, as Rector of Yale College." The connexion was at an end. Mr. Cutler, with his friend Johnson, afterwards President of Columbia College, and several other of the New England clergy, went to England, where he received the degree of Doctor in Divinity from Oxford; he returned to America, and was rector, till his death, in 1765, of Christ Church, in Boston. He was a loss to Yale, from his strength of mind and his acquirements in Oriental literature. He was, says President Stiles, in his Diary, "a good logician, geographer,

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Mr. Andrew, of Milford, one of the trustees, again took the management, as head of the college, pro tempore, till 1726, when the Rev. Elisha Williams, of Wethersfield, became Rector, which he continued till 1739. It was during this time that Berkeley, afterwards the Bishop of Cloyne, made his celebrated donations to the college, which, with great liberality, he took under his particular favor. He had become acquainted, at Newport, R. I., with one of the trustees, the Rev. Jared Eliot, and with the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, who called his attention to the wants of the college. On his return to England, in 1732, he gave to the college a deed of his house and farm in Newport, for the assistance of the three best scholars in Latin and Greek who should reside at college for nine months of each of the three years between the first and second degrees. To determine the priority in scholarship, a special examination is to be held annually, by the President and senior Episcopal missionary within the colony. If these do not agree, the choice is to be determined by lot. The persons selected are to be called "scholars of the house." Any surplus which may remain by vacancies is to be expended in Greek and Latin books, to be distributed as

prizes to undergraduates. Such were the provisions of the settlement. The property does not yield any considerable income, having been leased for a long term at a time when money was of more value than it is now. There have been a number of successful applicants for "the dean's bounty," who have afterwards become distinguished. Of these may be mentioned, Dr. Wheelock, the first President of Dartmouth; the Rev. Aaron Burr, President of the College of New Jersey; the Hon. Jared Ingersoll, Presidents Daggett and Dwight, the Rev. Joseph Buckminster, and the Hon. Abraham Baldwin. The Berkeleian prizes have also reflected honor on the college. Berkeley also procured a choice collection of books for the college-contributing in all nearly a thousand volumes, including a set of the Christian Fathers, a large representation of the Greek and Latin Classics, and other well chosen works, among which were Ben Jonson, Dryden and Pope, Butler and Wycherley. When Rector Clap arranged the general collection, in 1742, he tells us, "in honour to the Rev. Dr. Berkeley for his extraordinary donation, his books stood by themselves, at the south end of the library."

The career of Rector Williams was more varied than falls to the lot of most college Presidents. He was born in Massachusetts, and was a graduate of Harvard. He passed from his parish duties at

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Wethersfield to the Presidency of Yale. Compelled to retire from the latter by ill health, he became member of the Connecticut House of Representatives and a Judge. In 1745 he revived his clerical functions to become army chaplain in the Cape Breton expedition. The next year he was appointed colonel of a regiment in the expedition against Canada. Going to England to secure his half-pay, he married there and returned to die at Wethersfield in 1755, at the age of sixtyPresident Stiles, in his Literary Diary, speaks of him as a good classical scholar, well read in logic, metaphysics and ethics, and in rhetoric and oratory. He presided at commencement with great honor. He spoke Latin freely, delivered orations gracefully and with animated dignity."

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Williams was succeeded, in the year 1740, by the Rev. Thomas Clap, who was withdrawn from the ministry of Windham, the college as before buying his time from the townspeople. The compensation for loss of services was referred to three members of the General Assembly, who " were of opinion, that inasmuch as Mr. Clap had been in the ministry at Windham fourteen years, which was about half the time ministers in general continue in their public work; the people ought to have half as much as they gave him for a settlement; which, upon computation, was about fifty-three pounds sterling."* Clap entered vigorously upon the duties of the college, drew up a body of laws, the books were catalogued, and a new charter obtained, by which the Rector and Trustees became entitled President and Fellows.

In 1747, a part of the means for erecting a new college building, to accommodate the increasing number of students, was raised by a lottery. The preaching of Whitefield having agitated the popular faith, a theological professorship was founded, which took its name from its first contributor, the Hon. Philip Livingston, of New York. A new confession was made of the college faith, according to the Assembly's Catechism, Dr. Ames's Medulla and Cases of Conscience, and the Rev. Naphtali Daggett, from Long Island, was appointed Professor of Divinity in 1755. In 1763, the question whether the Legislature of the State had a right to exercise visitatorial power over the college was much agitated. President Clap argued that the legislature, not being the founders, had no such power, and successfully maintained this position. Difficulties in the discipline and administration of the college led to the resignation of President Clap in 1766. His death occurred a few months after. He was a man of piety, and a diligent head of his college, which greatly increased under his administration of twenty-seven years. had been educated by Dr. M'Sparran, the missionary clergyman of Rhode Island. His literary accomplishments were large. He excelled especially in the Mathematics and Natural Philosophy --and constructed the first orrery or planetarium in America. He published a letter to Jonathan Edwards, on the Whitefield matter. His other publications were an essay on the Religious Constitution of Colleges, 1754; a Vindication of the Doctrines of the New England Churches, in 1755; an Essay on the Nature and Foundation

*Clap's History of Yale College, 41.

He

of Moral Virtue and Obligation, in 1765; and a History of Yale College in 1766.* His Conjectures on the Nature and Motion of Meteors above the Atmosphere, was issued posthumously in 1781. He made collections for a History of Connecticut. His manuscripts, then in the possession of his daughter, the wife of General Wooster, were plundered in Tryon's expedition against New Haven, and thrown overboard into Long Island Sound. A few were picked up after some days by boatmen, but most were lost.

President Stiles has left a minute literary character of him, in which he speaks enthusiastically of the extent of his attainments; his knowledge of Newton's Principia; his study of moral philosophy in Wollaston, and of the ancient and modern powers of Europe. Stiles, warming with the recollections of his predecessor, describes his habits of reading, by subjects rather than volumes -and his aspect, "light, placid, serene, and contemplative," adding, "he was a calin, still, judicious great man.Ӡ

In 1767, Professor Daggett was chosen President pro tempore, and continued in this position until 1777, when Dr. Ezra Stiles was elected President, Pres. Daggett continuing in his Chair of Divinity. The latter was a man of worth and usefulness. When the British took possession of New Haven in 1779, he was taken by the enemy wounded, with his musket in his hand, resisting their advance. He was unhandsomely treated with violence and personal injury by his captors.‡ His college Presidency is memorable in our narrative for the presence in the college as pupils, of Trumbull, Dwight, Humphreys, and Barlow.

Of Stiles and of Dwight, who succeeded with so much distinction to the college, something is said on other pages of this book. The Presi

dency of the former extended from 1777 to 1795; of Dwight, from that date till 1817. The college increased greatly in influence and resources at these periods, after the interruption of the Revolution. The personal influence of these men was great. Dwight enlarged the scope of studies by furthering the claims of general literature, in which he was himself so accomplished a proficient. The Professorships of Kingsley and Silliman were instituted during Dwight's adminis

tration.

Jeremiah Day held the presidency from 1817 till his retirement in 1846. He was born in New Preston, Connecticut, in 1773, and in 1795 had succeeded Dwight in the conduct of his school at Greenfield Hill. He was a graduate of Yale, and in 1801 had received the appointment of Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, which he held till his election to the government of the college. He has published several mathematical treatises for students, which have been widely circulated, and in 1838, An Inquiry Respecting the Self-Determining Power of the Will; or, Con

The Annals or History of Yale College, in New Haven, in the Colony of Connecticut, from the first founding thereof in the year 1700, to the year 1766: with an Appendix, containing the present state of the College, the Method of Instruction and Government, with the Officers, Benefactors, and Graduates. By Thomas Clap, A.M., President of the said College. New Haven: Printed for John Hotchkiss and B, Mecom, 1766. 8vo.

† Appendix to Life of Stiles, by Holmes, 896.

Baldwin's Hist. Yale Col. 103.

tingent Volition. 12mo. And in 1841, An Eramination of Pres. Edwards's Inquiry on the Freedom of the Will. 12mo.

Alexander Metcalf Fisher was the successor to President Day in his Professorship. He was a young man of high promise, and had already made important contributions to mathematical and physical science. His sudden death, at the age of twenty-eight, in the shipwreck of the Albion on the coast of Ireland, in 1822, when he was on his voyage to Europe for the collection of scientific material, and for self-improvement, has lent additional interest to his memory.

Theodore Dwight Woolsey succeeded to President Day. He was born in New York in 1801, the son of a merchant, and a nephew on the mother's side of President Dwight. His education was at Yale and the Theological Seminary at Princeton. After this he passed several years in Europe, extending his studies of the Greek language and literature in Germany. On his return he was appointed Professor of Greek at Yale in 1831, and discharged the duties of the position for twenty years, giving to the public during this period his editions of the Greek tragedians, the Prometheus of Eschylus, the Antigone and Electra of Sophocles, and the Alcestis of Euripides. He has also edited the Gorgias of Plato. His inauguration discourse in 1846, on the subject of college education, was a philosophical view of the subject, asserting the claims of a classical education. In his Historical Discourse, delivered before the graduates of Yale in 1850, on the completion of the third semi-centennial period, he has sketched the development of the college, in its studies, with an able pen. In the sphere of philosophical discourse he has a thoroughly disciplined mind.

The college has been distinguished by the long periods of service maintained by its officers and professors. The terms of four of its presidents, Clap, Stiles, Dwight, and Day, cover a period of nearly a hundred years. Kingsley was tutor and professor for more than fifty years. The connexion of Benjamin Silliman with the instruction of the college, dates from 1799; of Chauncey Allen Goodrich, from 1812; of Olmsted, from 1815; of President Woolsey, from his tutorship in 1823.

Professor James L. Kingsley was long a representative man of the college. He had taught in nearly every one of its departments, and identified himself with each step of its development. Born in Connecticut, he was a graduate of the college of the class of 1799, the same year with Moses Stuart. Two years afterwards he was appointed tutor, and in 1805, professor of the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin Languages and of Ecclesiastical History, discharging with ability the various duties of these offices as required, till with the improved adjustment of the college instruction, he entered in 1831 upon a distinct professorship of the Latin Language and Literature, continuing for some time to give instruction in Hebrew. He resigned his post in 1851, exactly half a century after his first appointment from the college, and was then honored with the title of Emeritus Professor, till his death, shortly after, in August, 1852. He was a close and accurate scholar, well versed in Greek and Hebrew, and an adept in Latin. "I doubt," said President Wool

His

sey in an address at his funeral, "if any American scholar has ever surpassed him in Latin style." He first introduced into use in America, about 1805, as a text-book, the two volumes of the Graca Majora, with which most American students have been at some time familiar. encouragement of mathematical science was also of importance. His familiarity with American history, particularly of his own state, was great; and he had given to the college annals, and the large opportunities of biographical study offered by the Triennial Catalogues, in the preparation of which he was concerned, an attention inspired by taste and habit. The Historical Discourse, which he delivered in 1838, On the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the First Settlement of the Town and Colony of New Haven, and his Sketch of the History of Yale College, published in 1835, in the American Quarterly Register, are proofs of this. He was, besides, the author of The Life of President Stiles, in Sparks's American Biography, of a Eulogy on Professor Fisher, and of various critical articles in the North American Review, the Christian Spectator, the New Englander, the American Journal of Science, the Biblical Repository, and other periodicals. His successor in the Professorship of Latin, Thomas A. Thacher, in a Commemorative Discourse, in October, 1852, speaks of his genuine love of his classical studies, of his fondness for biographical anecdote, and of his intimacy with English literature.*

Professor Benjamin Silliman was born in 1779, in Trumbull, in Connecticut. He was a graduate of the college, of the year 1796, for a time studied the law, in 1799 became a college tutor, and has since been prominent in its faculty,his Professorship of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology dating from 1804. He visited Europe the following year, to procure books and apparatus for the college, and was abroad fifteen months. In 1810, he published an account of this tour in his Journal of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland, and two p stages on the Atlantic, in the years 1805 and 1806. Nearly fifty years later, he crossed the Atlantic again, and has contrasted his observations after this interval in the two volumes which he published in 1853, with the title, A Visit to Europe in 1851. Another record of his travels is his Remarks made in a Short Tour between Hartford and Quebec in the autumn of 1819. In the course of his college engagement, he has published Elements of Chemistry in the order of the Lectures in Yale College, in 1830; and has edited Henry's Chemistry and Bakewell's Geology. His lectures on Chemistry, to which the public have been admitted, at Yale,

"He enjoyed a kind of personal acquaintance with Addison and Johnson and Milton and Shakespeare, and many others, whose writings he relished the more from his habit of giving a personal existence to the writers. He took an interest in their history; and when he visited England the streets and corners of the capital seemed to be peopled, almost, with the old worthies of his library, from Johnson, with his ghost in Cock-lane, to Milton, in St. Giles's, Cripplegate. One could easily bave imagined, at times, from observing the heartiness of the pleasure he derived from the more elegant writers of past times, both classical and later, that he might even join in Walter Pope's wish, and ask for retirement from the world, to live in intellectual converse,

With Horace, and Petrarch, and two or three more,
Of the best wits that reigned in the ages before.”
Discourse, p. 46.

and which he ..as delivered in the chief cities of the country, have gained him much reputation, which has been extended at home and abroad by his American Journal of Science, of which he commenced the publication in 1818.

Denison Olmsted succeeded to the chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in 1825, which he held till 1836, when a new distribution of the duties took place, under which he entered upon his present Professorship of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy. He was born at East Hartford, the son of a farmer, in 1791, became a graduate of the college in 1813, then a tutor, when in 1817 he was appointed to the Professorship of Chemistry in the University of North Carolina, which he held for seven years. At that time he commenced, with the support of the legislature, the Geological Survey of the State, the first survey of the kind in the country, and published papers on the Gold Mines of North Carolina, and Illuminating Gas from cotton seed, in the American Journal of Science, to which he has been a frequent contributor. His chief writings have been Thoughts on the Clerical Profession, a series of Essavs, in 1817; his Introduction to Natural Philosophy, in 1832; an Introduction to Astronomy, in 1839, the substance of which he embodied in a volume, Letters on Astronomy addressed to a Lady, in 1840; Rudiments of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, 1843, a work of such clearness and simplicity that it has been published in raised letters for the use of the blind, by the Massachusetts Asylum, and has been found well adapted to the instruction of the deaf and dumb; a Life of Mason, the young astronomer, and materials for several volumes of miscellanies in his contributions to the leading reviews, consisting of Moral Essays, Biographical Sketches, one of the earliest being Pres. Dwight, in the Port Folio of 1817, Addresses, and Scientific Memoirs.

Connected with the labors of this chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, was a young man, a graduate of the College, whose career, soon cut short by the fatal malady of consumption, was yet long enough to make a name for himself, and confer lasting honor on the institution. This was Ebenezer Porter Mason, who died in 1840, at the age of twenty-two, the story of whose precocious childhood, early mature development, and scientific acquirements, has been narrated with many sound reflections by the way, in an interesting volume by Prof. Olmsted, with whom he was associated.* Mason was born at Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut, in 1819; he died in 1840, at the house of a relative near Richmond, Virginia. His attention was awakened in his childhood to books of science. He studied with interest hen he was nine years old the treatises in the Lib. ry of Useful Knowledge. At the age of thirteen he read the Æneid, and made excellent translations from it in heroic verse. His original verses written shortly after this time, if they display ingenuity rather than poetic conception, show the general powers of his mind and his literary tastes. Science, however, was to be his

Life and Writings of Ebenezer Porter Mason; interspersed with hints to Parents and Instructors on the training and education of a Child of Genius, By Denison Olmsted. New York, Dayton and Newman, 1842. 12mo. pp. 252.

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peculiar vocation, and astronomy that branch which he was especially to cultivate. His skill and manual tact in constructing instruments and recording observations, while a College student, were very remarkable. On the completion of his course in 1839, he became a Resident Graduate; and in the short interval which remained before his death, found time in narrow circumstances, with rapidly failing health, to pursue and publish his Observations on Nebula,* a paper which gained the admiration of Sir John Herschel, who has thus spoken of the composition and its author:-"Mr. Mason, a young and ardent astronomer, a native of the United States of America, whose premature death is the more to be regretted as he was (so far as I am aware) the only other recent observer who has given himself with the assiduity which the subject requires, to the exact delineation of Nebula, and whose figures I find at all satisfactory." He also prepared a college treatise on Practical Astronomy. In the autumn of 1840, he was engaged in the difficult public service of Prof. Renwick's North Eastern Boundary Survey. He returned to his friends to die before the year closed.

Oh! what a noble heart was here undone,
When Science' self destroy'd her favourite son.

The Rev. Chauncey A. Goodrich was elected professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in 1817, and discharged the duties of this office until 1839, when he was transferred to the Professorship of Pastoral Theology, in which office he still continues. He was for several years editor of the Quarterly Christian Spectator, and is extensively and favorably known by his works of Greek elementary instruction, his Collection of Select British Elo

In the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society for 1840. + Sir John F. W. Herschel's Results of Astronomical Obserrations, 1834-8, at the Cape of Good Hope, p. 7.

quence, and his revised and enlarged edition of Webster's Dictionary.

In 1841, a Professorship of the Arabic and Sanskrit languages and literature was established in the college, and Prof. Edward E. Salisbury was appointed to the chair. His Inaugural Discourse (New Haven, 1843, 8vo. pp. 51) is a learned and comprehensive survey of the wide and important field of Oriental literature. He has for many years been the Secretary of the American Oriental Society, and the editor of its journal, to which he has contributed many valuable papers. This work has reached its fourth volume, and is highly creditable to American scholarship. In 1854 the professorship was divided, Prof. Salisbury retaining the Arabic, and resigning the Sanskrit. To the latter professorship Mr. William D. Whitney, an eminent Sanskrit scholar, was then appointed.

The Medical establishment was organized in 1813, and has enjoyed the services of many eminent men as instructors from that time to the

present. The number of professors is now six.

The Theological department of the college was organized in 1822, the Rev. Nathaniel W. Taylor being associated as Professor of Didactic Theology with the Rev. Eleazar T. Fitch, who, in 1817, succeeded Dr. Dwight as Professor of Divinity. These gentlemen have long been well known by their lectures and published works. In 1824, Josiah Willard Gibbs was chosen Professor of Sacred Literature, which office he still holds. He is the author of a valuable Lexicon of the Hebrew Language, and of very many contributions to general philology.

The Law School, which was commenced about 1820, was not definitely connected with the college until 1830; and the degree of LL.B. was first conferred here in 1843. The school is conducted by two professors-Clark Bissell, late Judge of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, and Henry Dutton, Governor of that State.

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