AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT
CHAPTER XVII
EVOLUTION OF ``THE CORNELL IDEA''--1850-1865To Trinity Hall at Hobart College may be assigned whatever honor that shadowy personage, the future historian, shall think due the place where was conceived and quickened the germ idea of Cornell University. In that little stone barrack on the shore of Seneca Lake, rude in its architecture but lovely in its surroundings, a room was assigned me during my first year at college; and in a neighboring apartment, with charming views over the lake and distant hills, was the library of the Hermean Society. It was the largest collection of books I had ever seen,--four thousand volumes,--embracing a mass of literature from ``The Pirate's Own Book'' to the works of Lord Bacon. In this paradise I reveled, browsing through it at my will. This privilege was of questionable value, since it drew me somewhat from closer study; but it was not without its uses. One day I discovered in it Huber and Newman's book on the English universities. What a new world it opened! My mind was sensitive to any impression it might make, on two accounts: first, because, on the intellectual side, I was woefully disappointed at the inadequacy of the little college as regarded its teaching force and equipment; and next, because, on the esthetic side, Ilamented the absence of everything like beauty or fitness in its architecture.
As I read in this new-found book of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, and pored over the engraved views of quadrangles, halls, libraries, chapels,--of all the noble and dignified belongings of a great seat of learning, --my heart sank within me. Every feature of the little American college seemed all the more sordid. But gradually I began consoling myself by building air-castles.
These took the form of structures suited to a great university:--with distinguished professors in every field, with libraries as rich as the Bodleian, halls as lordly as that of Christ Church or of Trinity, chapels as inspiring as that of King's, towers as dignified as those of Magdalen and Merton, quadrangles as beautiful as those of Jesus and St. John's. In the midst of all other occupations I was constantly rearing these structures on that queenly site above the finest of the New York lakes, and dreaming of a university worthy of the commonwealth and of the nation.
This dream became a sort of obsession. It came upon me during my working hours, in the class-rooms, in rambles along the lake shore, in the evenings, when I paced up and down the walks in front of the college buildings, and saw rising in their place and extending to the pretty knoll behind them, the worthy home of a great university. But this university, though beautiful and dignified, like those at Oxford and Cambridge, was in two important respects very unlike them. First, I made provision for other studies beside classics and mathematics.
There should be professors in the great modern literatures--above all, in our own; there should also be a professor of modern history and a lecturer on architecture.
And next, my university should be under control of no single religious organization; it should be free from all sectarian or party trammels; in electing its trustees and professors no questions should be asked as to their belief or their attachment to this or that sect or party. So far, at least, I went in those days along the road toward the founding of Cornell.
The academic year of 1849-1850 having been passed at this little college in western New York, I entered Yale.
This was nearer my ideal; for its professors were more distinguished, its equipment more adequate, its students more numerous, its general scope more extended. But it was still far below my dreams. Its single course in classics and mathematics, through which all students were forced alike, regardless of their tastes, powers, or aims;its substitution of gerund-grinding for ancient literature;its want of all instruction in modern literature; its substitution of recitals from text-books for instruction in history--all this was far short of my ideal. Moreover, Yale was then far more under denominational control than at present--its president, of necessity, as was then supposed, a Congregational minister; its professors, as a rule, members of the same sect; and its tutors, to whom our instruction during the first two years was almost entirely confined, students in the Congregational Divinity.
Then, too, its outward representation was sordid and poor. The long line of brick barracks, the cheapest which could be built for money, repelled me. What a contrast to Oxford and Cambridge, and, above all, to my air-castles! There were, indeed, two architectural consolations:
one, the library building, which had been built just before my arrival; and the other, the Alumni Hall, begun shortly afterward. These were of stone, and I snatched an especial joy from the grotesque Gothic heads in the cornices of the library towers and from the little latticed windows at the rear of the Alumni Hall. Both seemed to me features worthy of ``colleges and halls of ancient days.''
