study of the higher education, to whom the names of those Tennessee schools are even known. They were Blount College (afterwards University of East Tennessee and finally University of Tennessee), Greenville College (Greenville and Tusculum College, as it is called to-day), and Washington College. The two last-mentioned Tennessee colleges have had a weak and uncertain existence, but did something in enlarging the horizon for many young men and women; indeed, in the early days of Washington College, it gave training to several influential men. The study of these two colleges reveals a story of heroism and pathos. The inspiration that called them into life came largely from two or three men, and was kindled at Princeton. It is a story that has been repeated in all the North-western States by graduates of the New England colleges, except that more frequently the denominational college has not merely held its own, but has come to much influence. To the dominant feeling that learning is the handmaid of religion must be referred the establishment and fine vigorous growth of the denominational college of the West. To the deepening sense of all the people that learning is essential to the highest citizenship (a lesson that the earlier colleges also urged) we owe the magnificent growth of the Western State university.

An immense change has been effected in the relation of our higher schools of learning by the development in transportation. A century ago nearly every higher institution established was intended to benefit its immediate vicinity, and to meet the want which another college, though only a hundred miles away, was supposed to be by reason of its distance unable to satisfy. It was for this reason that Williams, at a distance of only one hundred and ten miles from Yale, was founded and nourished by Yale men. Of the nearly five hundred so-called colleges and universities in our country, it is perfectly safe

to say that at least one half might with economy be abolished or consolidated with some neighbouring institution; but by no means does this imply that some of those which now seem unnecessary have not had an honourable and even an inspiring history.

There were, a year ago, thirty-nine higher schools of learning in the United States, each of which had over one thousand students. The total number in the thirtynine amounted to about seventy thousand. Of these, only five belong to the twenty-four founded as early as 1800, but those five furnish more than one sixth of the seventy thousand,-in exact numbers, 12,716. It is not more by the striking contrast between the conditions of the strongest of the twenty-four colleges as they were at the beginning and are at the close of this century, than by the large number of well-equipped universities that have sprung into being during the last half of this century, that one is impressed in looking over the field. The solid, original work that some of these later universities are doing could not have been foreseen by an acute observer at the beginning of the century, but the growth of the older schools of learning is of itself amazing. At the beginning of this century Harvard was graduating on an average forty-six bachelors of arts each year, Yale fiftyfour, and Dartmouth thirty-four. In the decade beginning 1851 Harvard had risen to eighty-seven, Yale to one hundred and seven, and Dartmouth to fifty-eight. close of the century finds Harvard graduating as bachelors of arts more than four hundred, most of whom have spent the entire four years of their undergraduate life under her training, though an increasing number of graduates from the Southern and Western colleges spend a year or two at Harvard and obtain there also their bachelor's degree. Although science has been largely admitted to the courses leading to the degree in arts, in 1899 fifty-eight bachelors of science were also graduated from Harvard.

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The same year Yale graduated nearly three hundred bachelors of arts, and from her scientific school more than one hundred and forty bachelors of philosophy. The classes entering Dartmouth already number two hundred or more, which number, however, includes candidates for the bachelor's degree in three kinds: arts, letters, and science. The classes in the other more important favourably situated Northern colleges of the original twentyfour show a like increase in numbers, more especially in Brown, Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. Apparently, location in or near a large city has been a favourable factor in the growth of these schools, particularly with reference to endowments. At the beginning of the century the endowments of the twenty-four colleges were extremely small; most of them had no other resources than tuition fees and annual gifts. To-day the privately supported institutions of the United States possess endowments amounting to more than $100,000,000.

A large part of this expansion has been incidental to the wonderful growth of the country; but the amazing development of our newer States, the transforming of unproductive land into perpetual sources of wealth, the discovery within our borders of great masses of coal, iron, copper, silver, and gold, the magical origin of great cities on areas scarcely denuded of forests-all this has been promoted by the correlation of the discoveries and applications of science with the progress westward of our civilisation. This correlation has stimulated prodigiously the multiplication and the prosperity of the higher schools of learning and, as will be later seen, has revolutionised the curriculum and called into being in our country universities more hospitable to every form of learning than are the oldest universities in the world.

The advance in numbers and resources has enabled the better colleges to increase immensely the opportunities

of instruction; but it is probably equally true that the enlargement of instruction has directly contributed to an increase both in students and in wealth. Whereas, at the beginning of the century, the instruction for candidates for the bachelor's degree was, even in the best-endowed and best-equipped colleges, confined to the ancient languages, mathematics, a little rhetoric and elocution, mental and moral philosophy (as they were called), ethics and theology, and the number of instructors varied from one, the president, to possibly five, -the president, two professors, and two tutors,-now the number of teachers in every well-equipped college with three hundred students will not be less than thirty, and the number of subjects taught, while perhaps still comprised under five or six main departments, will be usually not less than the number of teachers. On all the earlier branches of study the influence of the German university has been profoundly quickening. The frequenting by our brightest young men of the stimulating lecture-rooms and private classes of distinguished German scholars during the last forty years has enlarged the group of ancient languages studied, carrying the Indo-Germanic back to Sanskrit and embracing the Semitic. Under this influence, too, mathematics and philosophy have assumed the largest proportions. But in five directions the college curriculum has been immensely extended; first, in natural science, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, geology, paleontology, botany, in which, not to speak with absolute literalness, a new world has been discovered since the beginning of this century; second, in the modern European languages, the importance of whose literatures and the significance of whose relations to all learning have been established for Americans almost within the last quarter of the century; third, in history, which, for the ethical value of its records and for the philosophical significance of its deductions and for the inspiration of

its nobler epochs to the growing student, has at last been recognised, in spite of the hostility of many, as a true humanity; fourth, in political economy, a new science, dismal as it was thought to be in some of its earlier and depressing conclusions, but in the last decade of the century pervaded by a warm philanthropy and promising to prove the handmaid of the purest ethics; fifth, in the English language, which, as an instrument of expression and in its literature and historical development, has taken on dimensions in the modern college of the highest importance. The advance in the first four departments named has been, as it were, the growth of germs, the irresistible, self-guided progress of certain great forces at work in educated minds. I think it not too much to say that the immense strides in the study of English are largely due to the prescience and persuasion of one man, who for more than a quarter of a century, from the presidential chair of the first institution in America, has exerted a commanding influence in favour of educational reform.

It is almost impossible to estimate fairly the immense revolution which the introduction of these departments has created in liberal education in the United States. The consideration of the changes caused by the expansion and invasion of natural science alone are bewildering. The announcement of the Darwinian laws, the introduction of the spectroscope, the detection of new chemical elements, and kindred discoveries gave, about the middle of the century, a great impulse to scientific study. The rapid development of our Western States, the building of railroads and bridges, the opening of mines, all the applications of science to new processes of manufacture and the arts, emphasised the importance of practical education. The splendid careers to which business suddenly opened the way added attractiveness to the new studies. The Civil War in this country and the European wars later,