college; and the third had for eight years held a Professor's chair in the same institution. It may be said also that when the institution at Ithaca was established it called to one of its best chairs an ex-professor of this same Ohio college, and an ex-student of the same delivered the first valedictory in the new institution. These incidents are of no importance in themselves, but have a little significance as a commentary on the sweeping remarks to which allusion has been made.

There are doubtless more colleges in our State than necessity requires. Probably this is true of every State. Within my own recollection Massachusetts and Connecticut have each trebled its number of colleges. In a recent article a professor in a State university condemned the establishment of the institution at Syracuse, N. Y., as unnecessary, especially as there was a State college at Ithaca. But the latter antedated the former by only three years, and in the judgment of many the question of its necessity was quite as pertinent. Not long since an Ohio professor bewailed in a public journal the multiplication of our colleges, apparently in blissful forgetfulness that he himself hailed from the latest born of the group. Here as elsewhere there are differences in the quality of the work done by colleges, and here as elsewhere they will come to be judged more by their individual character and less by their State or the class to which they belong.

Let me speak for a moment of three institutions which may fairly be called representative colleges of Ohio. With a single exception they are the oldest in the State, having gone into operation about the same time, in the decade between 1820 and 1830. They are located in widely-separated localities; Miami University in the southwest, Werstern-Reserve College in the northeast, and Kenyon College near the centre of the State. They also represent the three classes of colleges as distinguished with regard to the constitution of their boards of trustees: Miami being under State control, the trustees of Western-Reserve filling the vacancies in their own body, and Kenyon being under denominational, though not strictly under ecclesiastical, control.

Miami University owes its establishment to a clause in the contract made by John Cleves Symmes with Congress for the purchase of land, by which one township was to be set apart for a literary institution. In the end, however, the college township did not come from Symmes's Purchase, but was granted directly by the general Government. There are eighteen trustees, chosen by the legislature, to serve for nine years each. What is its record as an institution of higher education? What kind of men has it trained? No one at all acquainted with the public men of Ohio for the last forty years can be at a loss for an answer. The graduates of Miami University have honored the institution and the State. Especially at the bar and in public life have they been pre-eminent, while they can show many distinguished names in the clerical and medical professions. I do not believe there is a college in the land, East or West, that has a larger percentage of eminent men among its graduates. Were I to begin to name them I should not know where to stop.

Western-Reserve College, at Hudson, was established as an independent

institution, free from ecclesiastical control as well as the control of the State. The charter made its board of trustees a close corporation with power to fill all vacancies. This College has been quiet and unobtrusive, free from all efforts to gain popularity by factitious methods, and giving itself to honest, thorough work. It was well and truthfully said by the writer of the article on "Higher Education," in the Centennial educational volume: "The institution was to be in character and methods a copy of Yale, and so thorough and genuine has been the instruction afforded that no one can say that there has been any blur in the copying." From the first it has gathered into its faculty able men from the best of the older colleges. A finer list of professors than those who at different times have occupied chairs at Hudson cannot be shown by any college in the West. Very recently the college of New Jersey looked over the whole land for three new professors, and for its chair of Astronomy selected one who a few years since filled the same department at Western-Reserve. And the venerable college at Hanover, N. H., has just elected a former professor of the same college to her presidency.

Kenyon College, at Gambier, is connected with the Protestant Episcopal Church. Of the board of trustees the diocesan conventions elect six, the alumni four, the trustees themselves elect eight, and three-the two Bishops and the President of the college-are trustees ex officio. Thus the trustees and the alumni elect a majority of the board, so that the col. lege can hardly be said to be under ecclesiastical control, though it is a denominational institution. There is no question among educated men in Ohio as to the high literary character of Kenyon. Her list of officers and her roll of graduates are sufficient proof of her excellence. Any college might be proud of a record which could show among its alumni such names as Henry Winter Davis, Stanley Matthews, Judge David Davis, and Rutherford B. Hayes.

These three colleges, taken as established in the same decade, and having each completed its first half-century. are representative institutions. The succeeding decades saw other colleges established which, though with fewer years of labor, have not been unfruitful. It is noticeable that the great intellectual conflicts of our times are sure to bring Ohio men to the front, and Ohio men for the most part means men trained in Ohio colleges. In the celebrated impeachment case of Andrew Johnson a distinguished son of Miami was deemed second to none in the ability and eloquence of his argument. Among the lawyers employed to argue before that most unique court, the Electoral Commission, one of the gravest and most important questions which a body of men was ever called to decide, each of the three colleges I have named had its representative. At the great case in Cincinnati, in the fall of 1869, concerning the Bible in the public schools, Western-Reserve, Kenyon, and Denison, furnished three of the six advocates. While Cincinnati rejoices that one of her citizens was the Director-General of the Centennial Exhibition, the college at Marietta may speak of him as one of her graduates.

In the address at Detroit it was represented that there was no freedom for the professor in any but a State college. In other institutions his energies would be cramped by the sectarian spirit, and whatever his ability

he would be farther from the truth. Nothing shows more unmistakably than this assertion the narrowness of spirit that dictated it. In the vast majority of cases the true teacher will do good work no matter what may be the peculiar organization of the institution with which he is connected. Does my friend, Dr. Tappan, feel any more cramped now in a denominational college than formerly in one controlled by the State? Have we any doubt of the quality of his work in either case? Were President Schuyler to teach in a State college would you not expect the mathematicians and logicians he would send out to be of the genuine type? (What a pity, by the way, that the writer of the Detroit paper had not studied Schuyler's Logic more and Ben. Butler's Rhetoric less.) My venerable friend and colleague, Professor John Kendrick, was a professor for eleven years in the denominational college at Gambier, and for thirty-three years in the undenominational one at Marietta. Nearly every president of a State university is a graduate of a non-State college, and most of them have been professors also.

In the matter of organization we have our preferences. Mine is for an undenominational college, but I hope I am above the narrowness of seeing no excellence in one controlled by the State or by a denomination. Wherever I see good, thorough, honest educational work I will rejoice in it. And I believe that every genuine teacher, of whatever grade, will be glad to see others accomplish as much as himself, and more also. When we are told that nothing can be done in collegiate education save in State colleges, that all work done elsewhere will be of necessity imperfect and one-sided, when we hear the silly talk concerning Baptist Mathematics and Methodist Chemistry, we are at no loss to determine to whom belong the one-sidedness, the narrowness, the bigotry. We are sure that such a spirit is no characteristic of most of those who are connected with the State colleges. It is a mortification to believe that any cherish it.

The Detroit address made but two classes of colleges-State and nonState. And the latter was spoken of as "sectarian." But there are very few sectarian colleges save among the Roman Catholics. Many which may properly be called denominational are not under ecclesiastical control. We have seen that at Gambier only six trustees in a board of twentyone are elected by the diocesan conventions. Congregationalists and Presbyterians have generally preferred that colleges should be independent of ecclesiastical as well as of State control. The Congregational colleges of New England are without exception of this character, and the oldest and most successful Presbyterian colleges, like Princeton and Hamilton, are not controlled by Presbyteries or Synods.

Institutions of these various types are in operation and will continue, doubtless. Time must determine which class will prove the most efficient. A truly catholic spirit should characterize all who labor in them, whether they be State or non-State. Were it asserted that our friends from Gambier, Granville, and Delaware, were insisting that all loyal Episcopalians, Baptists, and Methodists, must send their sons to these institutions respectively, and that their presidents were urging the ministry to warn the people from the pulpit against sending to other institutions, and insisting that the ministers themselves should set the example and make it a mat

ter of conscience to send their sons to these colleges in preference to all others, despite convenience of location and other advantages, were this asserted, we should not hesitate to denounce it as a calumny. When any college in Ohio shall furnish ground for assertions of this nature it will not be one as well established and with so high a character as these I have named. Should the officials of a Protestant college quote approvingly the doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome in the matter of collegiate education, we could hardly avoid the suspicion that its church relation was its chief merit.

The excellence of any particular school or college does not depend on its number of students or its annual expenditure. In the educational department at the Centennial Exhibition there were statistics from certain localities, showing how the amount expended had increased from year to year, and making the expenditure the criterion of interest and of excellence. The new State House now in process of erection at Albany, N. Y., is a case in point showing the insufficiency of such a rule of judg. ing. When the effort was made a few years ago to establish in this State a great university, we were told that we must have something worthy of the great State of Ohio; that an income of not less than $150,000 a year would be necessary to support an institution commensurate with the dignity of so noble a State. You heard what was just said about the very moderate income of the German universities. It is not the richest colleges in America that do the most or the best work. The College of New Jersey had scarcely any endowment at the close of its first century, and a dozen years ago that of Williams College was less than half the sum declared to be necessary for a year's income for our proposed university. Some of our American colleges are already overgrown, and the probability to the student of a safe and successful four years' course in them is less than in some of the smaller institutions. In an article respecting one of the best, though by no means one of the largest, of the Eastern colleges, a writer in a Boston paper says: "It is not desired that the college shall increase much in the attendance of students. No more students are desired than can be thoroughly handled by the Faculty, without making division of a class. The only ambition of the Institution is to do the work of a college most thoroughly, and as the wealth of the college increases not to increase in the number of students but in the quality of the work done."

All the colleges deemed the most successful have had a very slow growth, both in number of students and in pecuniary resources. The first class in Harvard was graduated in 1642, and the number of alumni in forty years was 243. In the first forty classes at Yale there were 427. Shall Marietta be dissatisfied with 435 in her first forty classes? The number of colleges in the United States with 200 classical undergraduates is very small. With a very few exceptions the forty colleges at Oxford and Cambridge in England-constituting the Oxford and Cambridge. Universities have less than 100 undergraduates each. It is greatly to be deplored that our educational statistics are so little worthy of reliance. A report on Education in the United States, made at the Vienna Exhibition and published in a Congressional volume, mentioned two Western insti

tutions as having more than 1,000 students each, and one Eastern one as having 500. Yet the last named had between two and three times as many bona fide college students as one of the others, and more than four times as many as the other.

The real excellence of a college is not determined then, by the size of its catalogue or the length of its balance sheet on the one hand, nor by the fact of its being or not being a State college on the other. Let us give its full meed of praise to every institution that does honest, thorough work. I have great respect for the university at Ann Arbor, for its able and excellent President and for its earnest professors, but I shall certainly use what influence I may have in opposing any effort to establish such an institution in Ohio. What I have said of the excellent work of Miami University and the remarkable body of men graduated by it has been said in all sincerity; yet I am equally sincere in the expression of the hope that no legislature of Ohio will make appropriations for the support of that institution, whether in land or money.

What is the relation of our public schools to the State? Do the funds for their support come from the State treasury, the proceeds of a general State tax? By no means. Of the amount raised each year by taxation, about one-fifth comes from the State, and four-fifths from local taxation. It is the merest modicum of education which the State furnishes, and the townships, towns, and cities, provide the rest. How much they will provide, how far the pupil may carry his education at the public school, each community decides for itself. Whether there shall be a High School or not, and how much shall be done in the lower schools, are questions for local determination. The propriety of all this no one calls in question. But for the State to assume at its own expense the support of one or more colleges, while it throws upon the towns and cities four-fifths of the cost of the present public-school education, would be a most extraordinary and inconsistent act. The State would then charge itself with the cost of the two extremes of the educational work, and leave the great middle portion of the people themselves in their local organizations. Manifestly, the first step towards a uniform system that would include the college, is to provide for the support of the High Schools by State tax. At first this would increase the State tax only about five-fold, though, if it should become ten-fold it would not be strange, as when the State pays the bill good teachers and good school edifices will be in great demand. Having taken this step, extending the system by another step so as to furnish at State expense a collegiate education to every one desiring it would not be liable to the charge of inconsistency, however objectionable it might be for other reasons.

How a State college is to unify the school system so as to bridge the chasm, real or supposed, between the high schools and colleges, is not evident. If a chasm exists it is because the preparation in the school is insufficient to admit to the college. The chasm is to be bridged by increasing the preparation or by lowering the requirements. The conditions of the problem are the same whether the college is State or non-State, or whether the school is a public high school or a private school or academy. Various non-State colleges will admit students from schools in whose