College, a flourishing Baptist institution, demonstrates the possibilities of this municipal environment for an institution of learning.

William and Mary College should have changed its base immediately after the civil war from Williamsburg to Richmond. It should have utilized the historic prestige of the capital of the Old and New South. In spite of all legal quibbles, the legislature could have as easily modified the geographical provision of the charter as the Board of Visitors changed the chancellorship from the Bishop of London to George Washington after the war of the American Revolution. Even now this change of base from Williamsburg to Richmond is a grand possibility of life for the old College of William and Mary. Against manifest fate, against isolation, poverty, and desertion, President Ewell and no man can struggle with success. But with the favoring current of history and politics, of public opinion and common sense, it is pos sible for even one individual to guide an institution, or an idea, to some worthy end.

Whatever may be the destiny of the College of William and Mary, her influence upon higher education in Virginia and throughout the South can never be lost.

"She cannot die! Amid the flame,

Which like a death-shroud binds her in its fold,

Her spirit walks serene in deathless fame,

Like to the martyred Israelites of old.

The fire but purifies the virgin gold,

Frees the rough ore, and burns away the rust.

Then, ere the burnished metal waxes cold,

With reverent hearts her children must

Renew her ancient impress, 'WISE AND TRUE AND JUST.'"1

PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM THE HISTORY OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

It is impossible to study the past experience of institutions of learning without deriving useful lessons for the present. Among the ideas suggested by the history of William and Mary College are the following: (1) like Harvard College, it was originally a State institution, supported by government appropriations and by taxation, as well as by private

1 From the poem of St. George Tucker, read February 19, 1859, on the occasion of the 166th anniversary of the founding of William and Mary College, a few days after the conflagration which destroyed the college buildings. See Southern Literary Messenger, March, 1859, p. 238. This magazine contains three excellent articles on William and Mary College: (1) March, 1855, vol. 21, No. 3; (2) October, 1856, vol. 23, No. 4; (3) March, 1859, vol. 28, No. 3.

The College of William and Mary has been destroyed by fire, either wholly or in part, four different times: (1) in 1705; (2) in 1781, by the French; (3) in 1859, when it was restored within a year's time; (4) in 1862, substantially restored in 1869 by private aid. The damages wantonly caused by Union soldiers in our late civil war have never been settled by the United States, although the French Government, more than a century ago, set us a memorable example by immediate compensation for damages accidentally caused by their troops during the occupation of Williamsburg.

philanthropy; (2) like Harvard again, it was founded in the interest of the church and of liberal education; (3) it was early associated with the best political, religious, and social forces of Virginia in a municipal environment; (4) the college-capital flourished so long as Williamsburg remained the political and social centre of Virginia; (5) when the capital of the State was removed to Richmond, the life current of the college became feeble, for it ceased practically to be a State institution, and remained only a church institution in a decaying borough, whose vitality had fled; (6) the survival of its ecclesiastical character in a State where dissenting Interests were in the majority, actually prevented the college from becoming the University of Virginia, according to the original plan of Jefferson; (7) non-sectarianism was the corner-stone of that rival State institution, which, founded in a rural environment on the outskirts of Charlottesville within sight of Monticello, speedily rose above old William and Mary College, prevented its removal to a better municipal vantage-ground in Richmond, and drew away its strength and prestige; (8) persistent refusal to remove to a more healthful and favorable municipal environment, after the disasters of the civil war, when there was everything to gain and comparatively nothing to lose, was a mistake second only to the defeat of the first project for removal to Richmond in 1821; (9) the most practical of all lessons to be derived from the history of William and Mary is the possible renaissance, in the educational policy of our States, of the original Williamsburg idea of a college-capital, or at least of higher education, in a municipal rather than in a rural, or even suburban, environment; and (10) the revival of that close connection between education and good citizenship which made the College of William and Mary a seminary of statesmen. The last two ideas the writer proposes now to consider, more specifically with reference to the greatest educational need of our time—the application of historical and political science to American politics.

THE HIGHER EDUCATION IS DEMOCRATIC AND REPRESENTATIVE.

The proposition that this country stands in need of the practical ap plication of the lessons of history and political science to the solution of great problems in administrative reform-municipal, State, and national, in tariff reform, in agrarian reform, in social reform, in labor reform, and in the repression of anarchy and crime, will hardly be denied by any thoughtful citizen. Reflection will also convince fair-minded

The attraction of the new university for Virginia youth, at an early period, is indicated by an article which the writer recently noted in the New York Times, circa December 20, 1886, on "A statesman of the past," the Hon. Alexander H. H. Stuart, of Staunton, Va., the trusted friend of Webster and Clay. Mr. Stuart is now about eighty years of age. In his day he has had as much influence upon Virginia politics as ever Tilden or Seward or Marcy enjoyed in the State of New York. In an interview with a visitor Mr. Stuart related the fact that, sixty years or more ago, he was a student at William and Mary College, but that he graduated in the University of Virginia. This one case shows how the educational tide was turning.

men that, in order to apply such lessons to politics, economics, and society, there must be proper avenues of influence, proceeding primarily from the people and leading through institutions of learning to the very issues in question. In a republic like ours, no reforms are possible which are not demanded by public opinion and common sense. When these great forces begin to move in society and in the state, something greater than a mouse is likely to come forth from the mountain.

It is certainly a reasonable and democratic idea that the highest educational privileges of a state should be brought within the reach of representatives of the common people. Thomas Jefferson was a farmer's son, trained in Virginia schools for the College of William and Mary, and by that institution for the governorship of Virginia, for the presidency of the United States, and for the founding of the University of Virginia, where the sons of that State were trained even better than were their sires. In the entire United States there is to-day no institution more democratic than the University of Virginia, either in its student representation or mode of government. The sons of Virginia farmers and planters are educated there without the payment of a dollar for tuition. The higher education is as free as air. The university receives all who are able to come, and allows them to stay as long as they can do so with profit to themselves; but the university reserves its honors for the men who can pass its examinations. Ability and character are the sole standards of promotion in the higher education, and that is precisely what this country needs in its public servants. The people endeavor by their votes to secure the best man for President, and sometimes they succeed. While all privileges and all offices are and ought to be accessible to the people, it is well understood that this is a representative government, and that there is some sense in preferring one man to another, else we should all raffle for the presidency and cast lots for the offices in his gift. In other words, fitness is the true principle in the choice of popular representatives for office or for honors in the higher education. It is true even in politics that many are called but few are chosen.

The representative principle is as valid in the higher education as it is in the higher walks of politics. While all the sons and daughters of the people should enjoy common school privileges, as all men enjoy the right of suffrage, it does not follow that all should receive a university education at the people's expense. One might as well expect that all voters should be sent to Congress. There must be in the higher education, as in politics, some principle of natural selection and a survival of the fittest.

The State universities of this country are open to the sons of the people in the freest, fairest way. Like the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan,' and the University of California, nearly all State

The Higher Education: A Plea for Making it Accessible to All. By James B. Angell, president of the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, 1879.

universities afford free tuition to students dwelling within the borders of their respective States who are able and willing to profit by the higher education. Some of the State universities, for example, that of North Carolina, pursue a more economical plan, and accord free tuition to representative students, appointed for merit from each county or election district. Until 1876, this was the method of the University of Virginia, the faculty of which annually selected for merit one student from each of the fifty senatorial districts in that State. These appointees alone enjoyed free tuition. The State University of Alabama still receives, free of charge, one student from each county. There is a manifest tendency, in some parts of the South, to return to this more economic and discriminating system, for the sake of increasing university revenues by money arising from tuition. In general, it might be said that this method is not only good economy, but good educational policy, for the higher education is always better appreciated when it is paid for, whether by money, merit, honorable service, or some quid pro quo. A university career should not be beyond the reach of the poor, but it should be an honor rather than a charity, a recognition of ability rather than of poverty.

THE MERIT SYSTEM IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF NEW YORK.

The most healthful, suggestive, and fully developed method of connecting university life with the people is that now in vogue in the piv otal State of American politics, the State of New York, where Cornell University, in return for the agricultural college land grant, affords free tuition to one student each year from each Assembly district, who is appointed for merit by the county commissioners of education. This method of appointment makes the higher education a prize and an honor, both to the successful student and to the high school or academy which trained him. It strengthens the secondary schools by the natu ral effect of competition, and it recruits the university from popular sources, which supply all vigorous currents in the life of a state. The university can, if it pleases, apply its own educational tests and send back deficient appointees for further preparation, or it can accept, at discretion, the certificates of local examiners. It has lately been recommended by the Cornell alumni that vacant or unimproved district scholarships shall be filled from districts where applications are in excess of the allowance, after the manner of appointment to State normal schools.1

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

The educational experience of the State of New York is a most valuable and suggestive guide for the regulation of schools, colleges, and universities within State limits. In New York a uniform standard of Historical and Statistical Record of the University of the State of New York, 1885, page 303.