arrived as the royal governor in 1768, took much interest in its affairs. He instituted prizes of gold medals for the best Latin oration, and for superiority in the mathematics, and attended the morning and evening prayers.* lle : James Malison, in 1788 chosen Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Virginia, was a Virginian by birth, and a graduate of the college. was for several years Professor of Mathematics, both before and after his occupation of the Presidency. He also gave lectures in natural, moral, and political philosophy-first introducing the study of political economy, which has since been pursued in the college with much distinction. Bishop Madison was a man of amiable character. His lectures on Natural Philosophy were much thought of. They have not been published. He was a contributor to the Philosophical Transactions. His delivery as a preacher was perfectly toned. During the Presidency of Dr. John Augustine Smith, an effort was made to remove the college to Richmond. The discipline had become somewhat relaxed, and President Smith met with considerable opposition in his measures to restore it. Previously to his holding the office, Dr. Smith had been a lecturer on anatomy in New York, in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1809, he elited the New York Medical and Physical Journal, in which he published a reply to the work of Dr. Smith, of Princeton, on the Unity of the Race. Since his retirement from the Presidency, he has become a resident of New York, where he has occasion illy delivered metaphysic ď and scientific lectures, which are included in his volume, Prelections on some of the more important subjects connected with Moral and Physical Science. Thomas R. Dew, at the age of twenty-three hal occupied the chair of in oral science in the college, of which he was a graduate. He publishe la volume on Slavery, in which he held the views urged by Calhoun, and a volume of Lectures on Ancient and Modern History. He died suddenly at Paris, of an affection of the lungs, on & second visit to Europe, in the summer of 1846. Of the Professors, none was more distinguished than William Small, who was Mr. Jefferson's tutor in mathematics. He was not only an eminent mathematician, but, as Mr. Jefferson informs us, was possessed of a philosophic mind, and of very extensive and accurate information on a great variety of subjects. He went to Eng kind some time before the Revolution, and never returned, but became a distinguished mathematician in England. The Professorship of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, Belles Lettres, and Rhetoric, is at present, in 1855, held by the Rev. Dr. Silas Totten, formerly President of Washington College, at Hartford. He has in preparation an Historical Account of the College, an undertaking rendered difficult by meagre and imperfect records; but his work will be an unportant one, from the consideration of the men and times which will pass under his view, and from the circumstance, that what may be known of the institution has never • Miller's Retrospect, IL 872. hitherto been properly narrated. It is to his kind assistance, that we are indebted for much of the information here presented. Since the Law Department was added to the college, there have been some eminent professors of law. Wythe, Nelson, St. George, and Beverly Tucker are among these. Four Presidents of the United States, viz. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Tyler, were educated in the college. Chief Justice Marshall and General Scott were also students of William and Mary. The secret literary society of the Phi Beta Kappa originated at William and Mary, about 1775. The affiliated society of Harvard derived its charter from that source. The original, however, was interrupted by the Revolutionary war. When the college broke up in 1781, the records of the society were sealed up and placed in the hands of the college steward. Subsequently they came into the possession of the Historical Society of Virginia. On examination, it was found that one of the old members, William Short, of Philadelphia, still survived in 1850. It was also discovered that he was President of the Society when it had been interrupted. Measures were immediately taken to revive it in the college, with Mr. Short as the connecting link with the original society, and it is now in active operation, with the old records restored to the college. YALE COLLEGE THIS institution dates its formal beginning from the year 1700. As early as 1647, the people of New Ilaven, at the instance of the Rev. John Davenport, who was eminent for his zeal in the cause of education, undertook the enterprise of establishing a college in that colony, but postponed it in deference to the interests of Cambridge. In 1700 a meeting of ministers of Connecticut, representing, by general understanding, the churches and people of the colony, took place at New Haven, This was arranged to consist of eleven clergymen, for the purpose of forming a college association. living within the colony. The original parties* shortly met again at Branford, when each member brought a number of books and laid them upon a table, with the declaration, "I give these books for the founding a college in this colony." About forty folios were thus deposited. application for a charter was made and granted by the General Court in 1701. It had been at first proposed that the objects of the college should be especially theological. This plan, however, was modified to the design of "instructing youth in the arts and sciences, who may be fitted for public employments both in Church and Civil State," though the religious instruction for a long while practically predominated. The creed of the Saybrook platform was adopted in 1708 by the agency of the trustees, and made binding upon the officers of the college. An Abrahain Pierson was made the first rector of They were James Noyes, of Stonington; Israel Chauncy, of Stratford; Thomas Buckingham, of Saybrook:Abraham Pierson, of Killingworth; Samuel Mather, of Windsor: Samuel Androw, of Milford; Timothy Woodbridge, of Hart. ford: James Pierpont, of New Haven; Noadiah Russell, of Middletown: Joseph Webb, of Fairfield. To these Bamuel Russell, of Branford, was afterwards added. 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 Commenceinent in New Haven was held in 1717. 20 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 be caine the name of the institution itself. Yale 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 Asin 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 rend, take care For this most certain Exit to prepare, Wethersfield had its pretensions, and a number of students having been educated there, under the care of Elisha Williams, a commencement was held there and degrees conferred, which were afterwards ratified at New Haven. To remove the library from Saybrook to New Haven process was issued and the sheriff resisted. Important papers, and two hundred and Afty valuable volumes were lost to the college in the struggle. —Baldevin's list, of Yale, 1st Ed. p. 35. ↑ History of Yale College, 80, For only the Actions of the Just, 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 En vir! cui meritas laudes ob facta, per orbis which the poet Percival has thus imitated. The wealth that o'er the sea from India came. 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 Whis ton, 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 honse 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; ho 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, Kingsley's Sketch of Yale College. Am. Quar. Reg. viil 19. Sketches of Yale College, with numerous anecdotes. 1648, p. 28. and rhetorician. In the philosophy and metaphysics and ethics of his day, he was great. lle spoke Latin with great fluency and dignity, and with great propriety of pronunciation. He was a man of extensive reading in the academic sciences, divinity, and ecclesiastical history; and of a commanding presence and dignity in government. He was of a lofty and despotic mien, and made a grand figure at the head of a college.' Mr. Andrew, of Milford, one of the trustees, again took the management, as head of the college, pro tempore, till 1726, when the Rev. Eli-ha 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 bis 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 Grock 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 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 sixtyone. President 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 commence ment with great honor. He spoke Latin freely, delivered orations gracefully and with animated dignity." 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 adininistration of twenty-seven years. He had been educated by Dr. M'Sparran, the missionary clergyman of Rhode Island. His literary accomplishments were large. He excelled espe cially 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 Tale College, 41. 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 posthu mously 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 calın, still, judicious great man."t 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 Presidency 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 administration. 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 tingent Volition. 12mo. And in 1841, An Eramination of Pres. Ldwards'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 Gerinany. 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 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. His 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 anuals, 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 Truunbull, 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 tico p sages 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 male 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 worthles of his library, from Johnson, with his ghost in Cock-lane, to Milton, in St. Giles's, Cripplegate. One could easily have 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 Hive in intellectual converse, "With Horace, and Petrarch, and two or three more, Or the best wits that reigned in the ages before." Discourer, p. 48. 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, tho 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 Es-avs, 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 1810; 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 durnb; 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 when he was nine years old the treatises in the Library of Useful Knowledge. At the age of thirteen he read the Eneid, 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 traluing and edn. cation of a Child of Genlus, By Denison Olmsted. New York, Dayton and Nowman, 1642. 18o. pp. 959. |