For the next thirty years, Mr. Jefferson was in the constant service of the National Government, which taxed all his faculties, and yet his correspondence shows that he never in a single year, while abroad as Ambassador, or at home as Secretary of State, Vice-President, or President, and the acknowledged head of a great political party, struggling for the supremacy in the National and State Administration, did he lose his interest, or cease his efforts to promote the establishment of schools and other agencies for the advancement of education in its higher as well as in its more popular forms. Indeed, in this education we find the inspiration of all his hopes, and all his efforts for the good of his state and country. Removal of Geneva Professors to Washington or Virginia.

In 1791, he communicated to President Washington a proposi tion from M. D'Ivernois and his colleagues in the Academy of Geneva, Switzerland, to remove in a body to the United States and inaugurate here an institution of learning of the most comprehensive character, and suggests that 'the accession of such a body of professors would at once give to the National University (which Washington had recommended, in his first Message to Congress, in 1790, and which he subsequently had intimated to Mr. Jefferson his intention to aid by a testamentary devise) such solid advantages as would insure a very general concourse to it of the youth from all our States, and probably from all parts of America.' In a subsequent letter (1799), he addressed another letter from Monticello, in which he suggests: For a country so marked for agriculture as ours, I should think no professorship so good as one of agriculture, who, before the students should leave college, should carry them through a course of lectures on the principles and practice of agriculture; and that this professor should come from no country but England,' and names Young (author of Letters on the Agriculture of France and England) as the man to be obtained. This is one of the earliest suggestions of a Professorship of Agriculture in this country. While calling President Washington's attention to the proposition of Professor D'Ivernois', and introducing a number of learned professors into a National University, he writes (in 1794) to Wilson Nicholas and others, to ascertain the feeling in the Assembly of Virginia, as to the possibility of securing such a corps of scientific teachers for Virginia.

In a letter to Wilson Nicholas, Esq., Nov. 22, 1794, he writes:

The sum of his proposition is to translate the Academy of Geneva in a body to this country. You know well that the colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva, as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe; while Great Britain and America give the preference to the former; and all other countries give it to the latter. I am fully sensible that two powerful obstacles are in the

way of this proposition. 1st. The expense. 2d. The communication of science in foreign languages; that is to say, in French and Latin; but I have been so long absent from my own country as to be an incompetent judge either of the force of the objections, or of the dispositions of those who are to decide on them. The respectability of Mr. D'Ivernois' character, and that, too, of the proposition, require an answer from me, and that it should be given on due inquiry. He desires secrecy to a certain degree for the reasons which he explains. What I have to request of you, my dear sir, is, that you will be so good as to consider his proposition, to consult on its expediency and practicability with such gentlemen of the Assembly as you think best, and take such other measures as you shall think best, to ascertain what would be the sense of that body, were the proposition to be hazarded to them.

In 1795 (Feb. 6), he writes to M. D'Ivernois :—

Your proposition, however, for transplanting the College of Geneva to my own country, was too analogous to all my attachments to science, not to excite a lively interest in my mind, and the essays which were necessary to try its practicability. This depended altogether on the opinions and dispositions of our State Legislature which was then in session. I immediately communicated your papers to a member of the legislature, whose abilities and zeal pointed him out as proper for it, urging him to sound as many of the leading members as he could, and if he found their opinions favorable, to bring forward the proposition; but if he should find it desperate, not to hazard it; because I thought it best not to commit the honor of our State or of your College, by an useless act of eclat. It was not till within three days that I have had an interview with him, and an account of his proceedings. He communicated the papers to a great number of the members, and discussed them maturely, but privately, with them. They were generally well-disposed to the proposition, and some of them warmly; however, there was no difference of opinion in the conclusion, that it could not be effected. The reasons which they thought would, with certainty, prevail against it, were—1, that our youth, not familiarized but with their mother tongue, were not prepared to receive instructions in any other; 2, that the expense of the institution would excite uneasiness in their constituents and endanger its permanence; and, 3, that its extent was disproportioned to the narrow state of population with us.

In 1810, he writes from Monticello to Governor Tyler, who had expressed a wish to see him in the Legislature:

This is impossible. I have, indeed, two great measures at heart, without which no Republic can maintain itself in strength. 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it. But this division looks to many other fundamental provisions. Every hundred, besides a school, should have a Justice of the Peace, a Constable, and a Captain of Militia. These officers, or some others within the hundred, should be a corporation to manage all its concerns, to take care of its roads, its poor, and its police by patrols, &c., (as the selectmen of the Eastern townships). Every hundred should select one or two jurors to serve where requisite, and all other elections should be made in the hundreds separately, and the votes of all the hundreds be brought together. Our present Captaincies might be declared hundreds for the present, with a power to the courts to alter them occasionally. These little Republics would be the main strength of the great one. We owe to them the vigor given to our resolution in its commencement in the Eastern States, and by them the Eastern States were enabled to repeal the embargo in opposition to the Middle, Southern, and Western States, and their large and lubberly division into counties which can never be assembled. Several orders are given out from a center to the foreman of every hundred, as to the sergeants of an army, and the whole nation is thrown into energetic action, in the same direction in one instant and as one man, and becomes absolutely irresistible. Could I once see this, I should consider it as the dawn of the salvation of the Republic, as say with old Simeon, 'nunc dimittas Domine.' But our children will be

as wise as we are, and will establish in the fullness of time those things not yet ripe for establishment. So be it, and to yourself health, happiness, and long life. Mr. Parton, in his 'Life of Thomas Jefferson,' remarks :—

In his endeavors to reconcile the people of Virginia to the cost of maintaining a common school in each 'ward' of every county, he showed all his old tact and skill. His 'ward' was to be 'so laid off as to comprehend the number of inhabitants necessary to furnish a captain's company of militia,'-five hundred persons of all ages and either sex. The great difficulty was to convince the average planter that he, the rich man of the ward, had an interest in contributing to the common school, the teacher of which was to receive a hundred and fifty dollars a year, and 'board round.' Jefferson met this objection in a letter that still possesses convincing power. And his argument comes home to the inhabitants of the great cities now rising every where, and destined to contain half of the population of this continent. What are they but a narrow rim of elegance and plenty around a vast and deep abyss of squalor, into which a certain portion of the dainty children of the smiling verge are sure to slide at last? How eloquent are these quiet words of Jefferson, when we apply them to our own city! Would that I could give them wings to carry the passage round the world.

And will the wealthy individual have no retribution? And what will this be? 1. The peopling his neighborhood with honest, useful, and enlightened citizens, understanding their own rights, and firm in their perpetuation. 2. When his descendants become poor, which they generally do within three generations (no law of primogeniture now perpetuating wealth in the same fami lies), their children will be educated by the then rich; and the little advance he now makes to poverty, while rich himself, will be repaid by the rich to his descendants when they become poor, and thus give them a chance of rising again. This is a solid consideration, and should go home to the bosom of every parent. This will be seed sown in fertile ground. It is a provision for his family looking to distant times, and far in duration beyond that he has now in hand for them. Let every man count backwards in his own family, and see how many generations he can go, before he comes to the ancestor who made the fortune he now holds. Most will be stopped at the first generation; many at the second; few will reach the third; and not one in the State can go beyond the fifth.

Like Franklin, he was not content with appealing only to the higher motives. State pride was a chord which he touched with effect. He reminded Virginians, that, before the Revolution, the mass of education in Virginia placed her with the foremost of her sister colonies; but now 'the little we have we import, like beggars, from other States, or import their beggars to bestow on us their miserable crumbs.' He pointed to Virginia's ancient friend and ally, Massachusetts, only one-tenth as large as Virginia, and the twenty-first state in the Union in size. But she has more influence in our confederacy than any other State in it.' Why? From her attention to education unquestionably. There can be no stronger proof that knowledge is power and that ignorance is weakness.'

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

Jefferson was forty years in getting the University of Virginia established. Long he hoped that the ancient college of William and Mary could be freed from limiting conditions and influences, and be developed into a true university. As late as 1820 he was still striving for a 'consolidation' of the old college with the forming institution in Albemarle. It was already apparent that the want of America was, not new institutions of learning, but a suppression of one-half of those already existing, and the survival of the fittest,' enriched by the spoils of the weak. But William and Mary, like most of the colleges of Christendom, is constricted by the ignorance and vanity of 'benefactors,' who gave their money to found an institution for all time, and annexed conditions to their gifts which were suited only to their own time. Nothing remained but to create a new institution. In 1794 a strange circumstance occurred, which gave him hopes of attaining his object by a short cut. Several of the professors in the College of Geneva, Switzerland, dissatisfied with the political condition of their canton, united in proposing to Mr. Jefferson to remove in a body to Virginia, and continue their vocation under the protection and patronage of the legislature. On sounding influential members, he discovered that the project was premature, and it was not pressed. The coming of Dr. Priestly, followed by some learned friends of his and other men of science, revived his hopes. A letter to Priestly in 1800 shows that the great outlines of the scheme were then fully drawn in his mind. He told the learned exile that he desired to found in the center of the State a 'university on a plan so broad and liberal and modern as to be worth patronizing with the public support, and be a temptation to the youth of other States to come and drink of the cup of knowledge, and fraternize with us.' He proposed that the professors should follow no other calling; and he hoped to draw from Europe the first characters in science by considerable temptations.' He asked Dr. Priestly to draw up a plan, and favor him with advice and suggestions. During his presidency, he still embraced opportunities to increase his knowledge of such institutions. After his retirement, the war of 1812 interposed obstacles; but, from the peace of 1815 to the close of his life, the University of Virginia was the chief subject of his thoughts, and the chief object of his labors.

Compiled from Parton and Randall Biographies, and the authorities cited by them. The most exhaustive history of the University in its early stages will be found in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, with Mr. Jefferson's original Bill, and a biography of Mr. Cabell-528 pages. 1856.

In 1814, an effort was made to revive the Albemarle academy, located at Charlottesville, and on the suggestion of Mr. Jefferson, whose coöperation was invited, the plan of studies was enlarged into the usual college curriculum, and the administration confided to a Board of Visitors. The total subscription collected in the central counties of Virginia was about $40,000, toward which Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, Mr. Monroe, George Divers, John Harris, Reuben Lindsay, John H. Cocke, Joseph C. Cabell, John Patterson, Wilson C. Nicholas, each gave $1,000. Under the presidency of Mr. Jefferson, the institution was incorporated by the name of the Central College; and the establishment of an efficient system of public instruction embracing colleges, academies, and schools, to to diffuse the benefits of education throughout the commonwealth, with Central college as the university, was agitated in the legislature of that year. A plan drawn up by Mr. Jefferson, and closely resembling the plan drawn up by him in 1779, was submitted at the session of 1817, which passed the House of Delegates, and was postponed by the Senate, that the public might be better informed of its features, to the ensuing session, in February, 1818. To effectuate this, by a joint resolution of both Houses, the report, which preceded the bill, the bill itself, and the proposed amendments, Mr. Jefferson's original bill of 1779, and his letter to the president of the Albemarle academy in 1814, proposing an expansion of that institution into a college as part of a State systemwas ordered to be printed and distributed throughout the State.

At the session of 1818, an act was passed appropriating from the revenues of the Literary Fund forty-five thousand dollars per annum for the primary education of the poor, and fifteen thousand dollars per annum for the support of a university, on a site and on a plan to be fixed by a commission consisting of twenty-four members, one taken from each senate district. The commissioners assembled at Rockfish Gap, August 1, 1818, and after a session of five days, located the university on the site of Central college, which institution was thereby merged in it, and decided on the plan of a building; the branches of learning to be taught; the number and description of professorships; and certain general principles of administration to be incorporated into the organic law. The report embodying the action of the commission, drawn up by Mr. Jefferson, whose recommendations were substantially adopted, was submitted to the legislature; and in January, 1819, the law organizing the university was enacted.

In February, 1819, the first Board of Visitors was chosen, and it