The first class was graduated in 1849, and the same year the fetters of traditional methods were broken, and the curriculum abandoned for a system of classification in studies, which more fairly recognized the ability and attainments of the student. The new charter had discontinued theological instruction, and no effort has been made to revive it.

Marked prosperity attended the decade from 1851 to 1861. During these years a scheme of enlargement in every department was inaugurated. The endowment grew to the respectable proportions (for those days) of $80,000. Ampler buildings were provided. The attendance of students reached an enrollment of 161. In the domain of instruction it was provided that Latin and Greek should be divided and each given its separate professor. In 1859 it was decided that "a certificate of proficiency be given to a student who has satisfactorily completed the studies of any department." The degree of A. B. was conferred for "proficiency in the departments of Latin, Greek, mathematics, natural science and moral science, with the privilege of substituting one modern language or Hebrew for the Calculus." The degree of A. M. was conferred for "proficiency in the whole course except Hebrew."

A DISASTROUS PERIOD.

In 1861 came suspension. Richmond was a military camp. Inter arma silent leges. Silent also were the voices of science and literature. During the war period and extending to the close of the year 1865, there was fearful loss in every direction. The endowment became almost wholly worthless. The grounds and buildings were seriously injured, the apparatus was a wreck, and the excellent library was robbed of every volume. So that when the trustees assembled to confer as to what might be done, they found only desolated grounds, defaced buildings, and a ruined treasury.

REORGANIZATION.

A few brave and generous spirits threw themselves into the herculean task of reorganizing the college. Gradually the hopes of its friends were revived and it was determined to start afresh upon the work of rebuilding. Rev. Robert Ryland, D. D., who had presided over the institution from its origin, resigned, and a new faculty of young men of acknowledged ability was selected. The trustees, supported by the Baptists of the State, collected what money could be raised from an impoverished people, and used it in making the college home as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, and in providing for such equipment as was absolutely necessary. The first session opened in October, 1866, with the gratifying enrollment of 90 students, and a faculty of 5 accomplished men.

CHANGES INTRODUCED.

With the reorganization came conspicuous changes in the old order of things. Among these the following should be especially noticed: (1) The system of independent schools was established, with a diploma of graduation in each school; (2) the English language was put upon its proper plane as of equal dignity with Latin, Greek, French, or German; the "School of English" was established and has been, maintained from that time, with its separate professor; (3) discipline was put upon the high ground of honor and personal responsibility; (4) attendance upon religious services was made voluntary; (5) the "messing system" in boarding was inaugurated.

These changes in administration have proved to be salutary and have grown into the life of the college.

The past twenty years have witnessed vigorous growth. In 1870 a strong and effective movement for increased endowment was begun. In 1873 a financial secretary was put in charge of the work of securing funds and preserving them by judicious investment. About the same time the main edifice, which was begun in 1855, was further improved. Cottage dormitories and boarding houses were added, and a more complete system of committee work in the several departments was inaugurated. At this writing the following statement will indicate the present status of the institution:

The property of the corporation consists of a beautiful campus of 12 acres, well set in grass and trees, upon which stand an imposing main edifice, the residences of ED 93-106

the professors, the cottage dormitories, the dining hall, and gymnasium. The main building affords ample room for the chapel, lecture rooms, society halls, library, and museum. Here may be seen some of the handsomest public rooms in the South. Upon the campus ample grounds are provided for students' sports. The entire premises are thoroughly drained and amply provided with all conveniences of gas, water, and sewerage. The property is without incumbrance of any sort.

The endowment has grown to $300,000 of interest-bearing funds. This belongs to various departments. Among these are two endowed schools, philosophy and law. The scholarships are separately endowed.

The library rests upon a foundation of its own. The public lectures stand upon an ample fund, which is independent. The current expense account has its own guaranteed income. While the endowment is far short of the future requirements of a growing college, its past increase and security have been matters of constant congratulation and attest the fidelity and liberality of the friends of education.

The department of instruction embraces nine separate and distinct "schools," Latin, Greek, English, modern languages, philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, law. Each school has its separate professor, who is responsible to the trustees alone for its efficient conduct. There are entrance examinations, elective studies, intermediate and final examinations, four degrees. The standard of graduation is very high, based upon numerical valuation in examinations and class standing. Eighty per centum is required before graduation is allowed.

SPECIAL FEATURES.

The library, so ruthlessly destroyed at the close of the war, has 12,000 volumes. It is provided for in the Jeter Memorial Hall, a spacious apartment well adapted to its work, and is so conducted, without charge to the student, that it provides the highest inducements to literary and scientific research. Liberal provision is made to secure to professors and students the latest and best works in every department. To the library a well equipped reading room is attached. The college is building a museum of attractiveness, interest, and value. An elegant hall, named for the late James Thomas, jr., awaits its successful mounting. Paintings, statuary, and valuable specimens on lines of ethnology, paleontology, geology, and mineralogy are displayed. The college has for many years maintained, among other lectures, a course on Biblical themes. This is perhaps the first college in the South to introduce the systematic study of the Bible.

LECTURES.

To a vigorous course of lectures delivered each session by the professors of the college along the line of university extension, and open to the public, there is an annual course of public lectures provided for under a special endowment known as "The James Thomas Museum Lectures." This is a course of rare interest. The conditions provide that the ablest men in our own and foreign countries shall be secured and that the public shall have the privilege of enjoying them. The subjects embraced are science, art, philosophy, and literature.

The Geographical and Historical Society was founded in 1891 for the purpose of research. It has a growing membership of professors and students and its issues are valuable. By authority of the trustees there has been established under the auspices of this society a day to be known as Historical Day," devoted to excursions to places of historic interest.

Two literary societies, with a joint monthly magazine, are maintained. These are devoted to the cultivation of the art of speaking and writing. A generous rivalry exists, which is further stimulated by medals and public exhibitions.

Physical culture receives due attention. Regular gymnasium training and drill are systematically pursued. Encouragement is given to field sports, to which honors are attached. These are awarded on the regular field day exhibition.

THE STUDENT BODY.

The highest attendance ever reached during a single session is 207. Of the annual matriculates Virginia contributes the far larger share, larger than to any other college in the State, but other States and other countries contribute a goodly quota. The average age is 19 years. The conduct of the students is marked by a high degree

of application to work, the bearing of Christian gentlemen, a distinct sense of personal honor. The test of standing is not family or money, but personal worth and successful study. The day's exercises are invariably opened with devotional exercises, conducted by one of the professors. Societies for the cultivation of religious life and usefulness are encouraged. The city affords many advantages for personal culture and social pleasures, which are cordially embraced by the students.

THE AIM AND THE OUTLOOK.

One high aim has ever been kept in view by the college management: Not to gain numbers by the sacrifice of scholarship, but to lay deep and broad the foundations of solid learning, and to make the diploma a veritable evidence of accurate and generous scholarship. So thorough has been the training that not a single graduate has failed of success in the various competitive examinations before military or naval boards and civil-service examiners, or before the universities to which they have gone for advanced work.

These high purposes of trustees, professors, and students are interwoven with all the history of the institution, and will be scrupulously maintained.

With an unsurpassed location, a beautiful, unencumbered property, a full and vigorous faculty, a growing endowment, an interested constituency, and fair patronage, with a generous course of study and high standard of graduation, and with a long line of useful and honored sons interested in her welfare, the future of Richmond College would seem full of promise.

WEST VIRGINIA.

EDUCATION IN WEST VIRGINIA.

By Rev. A. D. MAYO, M. A., LL. D.

[From advance sheets of the biennial report of the State superintendent of free schools of West Virginia for the year 1893-94.]

It had been my intention for more than one season during a ministry of education of fourteen years in the Southern States, in which I had visited every State ever called by that name, to give a period of several months to an educational tour through West Virginia. For various reasons, with the exception of one midsummer attendance on the State convention of teachers, this had not been accomplished. A partial arrangement to spend a portion of the winter and spring of 1883 in the State failed. It was only on April 1, 1894, that I was able to accept the urgent invitation of the State superintendent of free schools, Hon. Virgil A. Lewis, and, at Charleston, the capital city, began an educational visitation of two months which will be remembered as one of the most interesting of all similar experiences since the commencement of my educational work in the South, in the early months of 1880.

This tour was necessarily brief, being closed by the ending of the public school year in early June in many of the places to which I was invited. I soon learned that the educational people of the Mountain State were in the condition of mind represented by a jolly editor in Spartanburg, S. C., who accompanied an invitation to visit the people of that enterprising little city with the postscript: "You'll find there's nothing mean about us. You can lecture every hour in the day, if you want to, and we will give you the biggest hall in town and all come to hear what you have to say." "Taking account of stock," on reaching Washington June 1, I ascertained that, during this visitation of two months, including a dozen of the leading educational centers of the State, three of the six State normal schools, the State University, and Bethany College, with an unusual opportunity of meeting many of the most conspicuous educational and public men, clergymen, professional men, and friends of education, I had delivered a larger number of popular lectures, always to generons audiences, than the number of days in my tour; carefully inspected the schools of all the cities and districts visited; been given the most ample opportunity for a front, rear, and side view of all things going on in educational affairs; and, as

far as the most confidential expression of opinion was concerned, placed in possession of an amount of information requiring a longer time to digest and put in shape for quiet consideration than was spent in its acquiring.

And a longer time than this-I trust as long as I remain in the flesh-will be required to disentangle myself from the mood of enthusiastic appreciation of all I saw and heard and felt during those memorable weeks; the magnetism of great crowds of school children, each a blossoming flower-garden a little lovelier than the last; the crowded and eager public audiences that everywhere welcomed my free and easy talks on universal education; the congregations that filled the largest churches on Sunday afternoons and evenings, in the most populous towns, where I was impressed into the service of preaching the gospel according to education; the pleasant greeting of teachers in the city, village, and rural schools to listen to addresses on the fundamental American profession; the earnest listening at the normal schools and the hearty welcome at the State University; with every where the offer of the most friendly hospitality; all woven into a "long sweet song" by the children, everywhere singing: "Oh, the West Virginia Hills."

But all this, instead of being an obstacle to an honest and impartial judgment of educational affairs in the State, was itself but an indication of a remarkable educational interest among the people, who seemed to me prepared to "shake hands" with anybody who appeared, properly certified, inviting them "to come and reason together" on the theme that lies at the foundations of our American civilization.

I therefore accept with pleasure the suggestion of State Superintendent Lewis not only to resume my visit to West Virginia during the coming autumn and winter, but also to furnish an informal report of my observations during my first journeying through the State. Of course I understand the meaning of the distinguished metropolitan editor, lately returned from a three months' tour in Europe, who said to his interviewer: "A railroad journey of three months through central Europe and Russia hardly qualifies a man to talk at large on public affairs in Europe.' Still, after an experience of fourteen years journeying through all the Southern States, in the especial interest of common school education, everywhere afforded the most ample facilities for looking upon both the educational fatness and leanness of the land; reenforced by a long and diligent study of the industrial, religious, social, and public conditions of this section of the country at all periods of its development; with attention specially devoted to the effect of environment upon the educational department of these sixteen States; I feel that even the hasty investigation possible during these crowded weeks has left a deposit of fact and awakened a depth of feeling which may be a qualification to accept the suggestion of the State superintendent of free schools.

Certainly there could be no justice or propriety in making this essay a criticism or commendation of school teachers and schools in the different communities visited. All that was of use in this direction was fairly given to the proper authorities at the time. But there is nothing to forbid an impartial record of the observations of a stranger who has studied with the deepest interest the entire history of this State, and been awakened to a thorough appreciation of all he has heard and seen of its past and present condition. An intimate acquaintance with every one of the oldtime slave-holding States may also add to the value of my estimate of the work done in West Virginia since 1863 in behalf of universal education; the trend of the currents of educational activity; what has been well begun; what has already been accomplished; on what lines there seems to be the greatest present necessity for vigorous action; and what should be the grand aim of the educators of the Commonwealth in laying deep and broad the foundations for a future that only the most inexcusable folly and obstinacy can hinder from its great fruition.

I am more encouraged to accept the invitation from the fact, not yet explained to myself, that, of all the more important States of the old South, West Virginia has, educationally, been the last to be introduced to the public attention of the great line of Commonwealths that stretch from the Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic Coast. The explosion of patriotic congratulation, thirty years ago, when these 54 northwestern counties of the Old Dominion broke loose from their mother State and boldly committed their destiny, as a new Commonwealth, to the salvation of the Union; with the few months of "short, sharp, and decisive" warfare which threw their territory into possession of the Union armies until the close of the war; was soon overwhelmed by the absorbing interest of the great campaign on the Potomac and James and the Mississippi. At the close of the great conflict West Virginia was already a fully organized State of the Union, and stepped to her place, as the child of the great conflict, with a vigor and confidence that left the impression that no special sympathy or aid was required from any quarter. The insignificance in numbers of her colored population was a reason for the lack of interest in the great body of Christian and philanthropic organinations of the North which, after experimenting for thirty years, are now learning that the most effective way to lift up the seven millions of American negroes is to aid in the education of the ten millions of

white folk who form the next social strata above. The estrangement of the people of the ex-Confederate States prevented any considerable immigration from that quarter to this new Commonwealth, although a million young men have left the Old South for the Northwest and the Southwest since 1865. The sparse population, in 1865 scarcely reaching a third of a million; the poverty of the great majority of the people; the lack of home capital and of reliable information concerning the resources of the new State; all these may in a measure account for the fact that no Commonwealth of anything like the importance of West Virginia is to-day so in need of the higher species of advertisement for a genuine understanding by the whole American people. Therefore, it is not so much for any supposed advantage to the educators and people of West Virginia that I write out this hasty sketch of my observations. Rather do I look to the great outward public, which needs information concerning the wonder and prophecy bound up in these 24,715 square miles of mountain, valley, mine, and forest. And especially is the educational experience of West Virginia so peculiar that it may be said to have woven the vital cord between the education of the old and the new South; her entire educational life as the "mountain pasture" of the Old Dominion being in itself an education especially fitting her people for their remarkable coming to the front in 1863 as the first Southern State that of itself organized universal education according to the plan of the American common school. It is not difficult to understand the source of the characteristic State pride of the superior class of the Old Dominion, when the vast extent of its great territory from the beginning of the seventeenth to the eighteenth century is taken into account. Apart from the wonderful development of public ability at the outbreak of the Revolution, and the powerful influence of the leading class of Virginia up to the beginning of the civil war, there is a fair cause for pride in the feeling that Virginia has never been more notably the Mother of Presidents than the Mother of States. As late as 1775 the province of Virginia included the Territory of Kentucky, the five original Northwestern States, and the present Virginia and West Virginia. In 1860 Virginia was still one of the larger States of the Union, containing 67,000 square miles. But with its magnificent seaport, its splendid system of rivers, its broad realm of fertile fields, its prodigious treasures of minerals, timber, and waterpower, and the excellent strain of its original Anglo-Saxon population, it remained the wonder of the nation that it had so little improved its great opportunity for material wealth and industrial power. Up to a period considerably later than the Revolution, the great drama of life in old Virginia had been wrought out in a region little larger than the State of Massachusetts, the narrow margin between the Atlantic Coast and the Alleghany Mountains; even the Shenandoah Valley and the wonderful reaches of Southwest Virginia have had but small influence in public affairs. The original people that came to this "God's Country," beyond the Blue Ridge, made haste to get away from it and poured through the mountain passes into Kentucky and the new Northwest, leaving their own superb land behind and quite neglecting the area of nearly 25,000 square miles at the north, now known as the State of West Virginia. Later the movement down the Ohio River generally gave this territory the cold shoulder, and pushed on to the Ohio and the more distant Territories, leaving behind a straggling population along the 50 miles of charming valley where are now situated the larger cities of the Commonwealth. The new Erie Canal and the opening of steam navigation on the Great Lakes still further diverted the stream of eastern emigration from this country, and there was little to attract the thronging multitudes of Europe to its wilderness of opportunity. Hence, at the breaking out of the war in 1861, this region remained still away in the rear of the proud Old Dominion, scarcely attracting attention by its secession from the Mother State. In 1860 the population of this area, three times the extent of the State of Massachusetts, was not larger than that of Boston to-day-less than 270,000; no town having the requisite population to entitle it to a city organization in Massachusetts.

In addition to this, we must take into consideration the singular neglect that had befallen this portion of the State from old Virginia. It was not so much any special hostility to the development of this portion of the State as the inevitable result of its social and industrial organization that left the people of this far-off country in a growing state of estrangement from their neglectful mother. As the writer of The Mountain State says, "The early days of West Virginia were not conducive to the rapid advancement of the State. In the old State that part west of the mountains had always been looked down upon as a wilderness, and little attention was ever given to it. The people complained, for years, that they were permitted by the State to do nothing but pay their taxes. Their representation in the councils of the State was small and, by the Old Dominion, that portion of her domain west of the mountains was practically ignored." The superior class of Virginia, until 1860, devoted its energies far more to the problem of the leadership of the entire South, in all essential ways then drifting toward a decisive conflict with the Union, every year more threatening, than to developing its own splendid domain and educating its