and who, though not many years resident | into legal existence, was drawn up by him, here, yet, as the first Protestant pastor settled in Michigan, and as the first President of the University of Michigan, left lines of influence in religion and culture not effaced even yet. All these were forceful men, and they have to be taken into account in any attempt at accounting for the early inception of the University. Undoubtedly, however, the man who alone had the most to do in giving form and character to the primal development of society in Michigan, and especially to its first scheme for a university, was the Chief-Justice of the Territory, Augustus B. Woodward. His name, at least, is not likely ever to perish in Michigan, for it designates the principal avenue of the principal city of the State; but Woodward himself is now but a pale tradition among us, and is likely to remain so until the coming of those ages when the people of Michigan shall find time to get acquainted with their own history. He was by birth and nurture a Virginian; and, arriving in Michigan in 1805 as its chief judicial officer, he continued in that service for nineteen years. He was a man of great mental activity; a master of his profession; of a personality somewhat aggressive and eccentric; not a little vain, besides, of his classical scholarship, which seems to have been rugged and miscellaneous rather than nice. But he truly loved and honored learning, and it is probable that he was considerably in advance of his contemporaries in zeal for the early establishment in Michigan of a higher institution PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. and bears unmistakable and even comical marks of its origin in his thorough-going, bold, and fantastically erudite mind. It is REV. HENRY P. TAPPAN, LL.D., FORMER PRESIDENT not usual that to the "unedified and laic rabble" legal documents form amusing literature; but this particular legal document has a wealth of pleasantness that is all its own. One might now suppose that for the description of a frontier high school, even the word "university" would have appeared somewhat too pretentious; but not so dreamed the glowing soul of Mr. Justice Woodward. To him even "university" failed to express the vastness and splendor of his own conception of the young college, and he illustrated at once his learning and his hopefulness by coining for it the majestic name of "Catholepistemiad." The word "Michigan," likewise, was too common and familiar, and under his touch it passed into the statelier form of "Michigania." A professorship was a "didaxia;" and what common people have been content to call simply "the chair of natural history," or "the chair of literature," Mr. Justice Woodward deigned to describe by no phrase less tremendous than "the didaxia of physiognostica," or "the didaxia of anthropoglossica." And so on through all the learned mazes of the statute for the creation of " the Catholepiste of learning. It was under his special advocacy that the University took its rise in 1817, and the Act of the Territorial Government, by which the University was then brought | miad of Michigania." But, from these symptoms of literary lunacy in Judge Woodward, dens, laboratories, and other useful literary it would perhaps be unsafe to rush to the and scientific institutions consonant to the conclusion that he was really one whom | laws of the United States of America and much learning had made mad, or that the plan | of a university which he thus clothed in a fool's garb was itself foolish. On the contrary, stripping from it the pedantic fopperies in which it seems to us so grotesque, we get down to a project that has in it not a few elements of good sense and of foresight. First of all, his plan rested upon a great principle, which is even yet so far from being commonplace, that Mr. Matthew Arnold finds it necessary still to argue for it before the public of England-the principle, namely, of the solidarity of all educational interests in the State, up and down the scale of culture; the need of good primary and secondary instruction to furnish materials for higher instruction to work on; the need of higher instruction as a goal for primary and secondary instruction to work up to; the need, likewise, of a center of common and wise control, to insure a nice articulation, and a mutual understanding between the several parts of the system. This center of control Judge Woodward fixed in the President and Faculty of the University, whom he made, in fact, the responsible Education Council of State, conferring upon them the power and the duty of creating and of directing the educational work of the entire community, establishing "colleges, academies, schools, of Michigan," and ap- In Astronomy; seventh, of Chemistry; eighth, of Medicine; ninth, of Political Economy; tenth, of Ethics; eleventh, of Military Science; twelfth, of History; thirteenth, of Mental and Moral Philosophy. The Professor last named was to be the Vice-President of the University. These Professors were to receive their appointments directly from the chief executive officer in the State, and were to draw their salaries each quarter directly from the treasury of the State. It was not intended that instruction should be free; but a provision was made for remitting the charge for tuition in the case of such students as needed the indulgence. Finally, the expenses of the institution were to be borne, not merely by funds derived from the lands already received from the nation in 1805, but by the increase of the public taxes to the amount of fifteen per centum. Such was the University of Michigan as organized in 1817; and this organization, let it be noticed, while never made a practical reality, was from the first moment a legal reality. A corporation was thus established perfect in all the attributes of a corporation, which at once performed all the necessary functions of its being, and which has transmitted its life and authority in libraries, museums, athenæums, botanic gar- | unbroken current to the present. Of course, the firsi duty of the Governor of Michigan in 1817 was to put the University corporation in motion, by appointing a President and a Faculty; and this he accordingly did. As these officers were to be the authoritative ministers of public instruction, and as their duties for many years would consist in making a university at some time possible by making preparatory schools at once actual, it was thought best to divide the nominal professorships among but two men. These two men were the two remarkable clergymen of whom I have already spoken, the Reverend John Monteith and Father Gabriel Richard, who, though of fiercely opposing sects, yet behaved toward each other with a kindliness which ought not to astonish us when we consider that both of them were Christians. Mr. Monteith received seven Professorships, including the Presidency of the University. Father Richard made himself quite happy with the remaining six Professorships, an instance of academic pluralism which will hardly excite in us any suspicions of corruption, when we learn that the total emoluments of each Professorship were but $12.50 a year. As already stated, the first business of the Faculty of the University of Michigan was to institute a system of public education in the Territory, in the form of primary and higher schools; to prepare for a university rather than actually to open one. And to this modest but most wholesome function the University authorities continued to be limited during the subsequent twenty years, the whole remaining period of the Territorial history of Michigan. During that period, indeed, important changes took place in the form of the University organization. In 1821 Judge Woodward's law was revoked, including all its preposterous nomenclature, including also the provision for bestowing upon the University the proceeds of a territorial tax. All the offices of the Faculty were likewise abolished, and many of the high powers attached to them were transferred to a Board of twenty-one Trustees appointed by the Governor, and consisting of the most prominent men in the community, not omitting the two clergymen who had been for the previous four years the sole depositaries of the great trust. Another notable fact belonging to this period ought not to be overlooked it is a fact relating to the endowment of the University. In 1826 Congress doubled its university land grant to Michigan, making it to consist of 46,080 acres of wild lands; and it REV. ERASTUS O. HAVEN, LL.D., FORMER PRESIDENT gether memorable in the history of Michigan and of its University. In the first month of that year Michigan became a State, and among the earliest proceedings of its Legislature were those relating to education. A new and a more vigorous life was at once given to the organization of the University. And now it began to be manifest that the twenty years of existence which it had already lived as a mere legal corporation had not been wasted years. An earlier practical development of the University, it is probable, would have been disastrous, since it would have been premature. During all these years Michigan had been getting ready for a university; the idea of it and the hope of it had been growing familiar; the resources for it had been accumulating; its students had been getting born or imported; the means of preliminary training for it had been increasing, in short, it had been precipitated into a visible reality, not before society had got ripe for it, and needed it, and could deal with it. How far to this long period of deliberate and slow preparation is due the happy fortune which has since attended the University of Michigan, as contrasted with the lamentable fate of so many other State universities in JAMES B. ANGELL, LL.D., PRESIDENT OF THE the West, is a question which might bear thousand dollars (an amount, however, never realized, owing to the cruel interference of the State Legislature by its lawless laws for "releases," "remissions," and the like); and with the help of a loan from the State of one hundred thousand dollars in cash, the Regents began the erection of the University buildings intended for classrooms, dormitories, and the homes of the Professors. Students could not be received until houses should be built to put them into; but meantime the Regents kept in sight the great principle, that higher education can only be reached through lower education. To lower education, therefore, they at once gave great encouragement. In leading towns throughout the State they established classical academies. In 1838 the Regents elected their first Professor, Dr. Asa Gray, now the distinguished botanist of Harvard University, who then accepted the Chair of Botany and Zoölogy in Michigan, and was commissioned to go to Europe for the purchase of a library. In September, 1841, the necessary buildings being ready, the University in silence and obscurity opened its doors, having on the ground only two Professors-Mr. George P. Williams, a graduate of the University of Vermont, and the Rev. Joseph Whiting, a graduate of Yale College. The scheme of the University provided for three departments-first of Literature, Science, and the Arts, second of Medicine, third of Law. GENERAL LIBRARY. a Only the first of these departments could be formed at the outset. In due time, as will be soon mentioned, the others came into having for its first class less than a dozen | age as well as sagacity and enterprise. students, the University adopted subjects and methods of instruction as nearly as possible like those which prevailed in the two New England colleges in which its two Professors had received their own education. In 1844 the number of the students rose to fifty-three; in 1846 to seventy; in 1848 to eighty-nine. Then, and for the next four years, there was a steady and serious decline in the number of undergraduate students. The year 1850, however, was celebrated by the opening of the medical department, which at once added ninety students to the University lists. In the year following, the number of medical students was nearly doubled; and thenceforward the rate of numerical progress in that direction has been probably about as rapid as was wholesome either for the University or for the public. In 1867 this department alone had five hundred and twenty students; and since that time the average number upon the ground has been not less than three hundred and fifty. But, although in 1850 the medical department sprung into such vigorous life, and did so much to swell the aggregate number of students in the University, the literary department, as has been intimated, was now languishing. The causes of this cannot be gone into here. But, at about that time, the State adopted a new Constitution, by one provision of which the Regents of the University were reduced in number to eight, and Their wisest and happiest act was almost their first; it was the choice of a president. Guided by the advice of George Bancroft, they called to the head of affairs a man of such extraordinary splendor of talents, of such capacity for organization, of such breadth of knowledge and experience in education, that almost immediately the University sprang forward into the large, efficient, and marvelously prosperous career |