languages and literature. His place as tutor was filled by Stephen H. Carpenter. A Sophomore class was formed in September, 1851, a Junior class the next year, and a Senior class in 1853. In 1854 the first class— two young men-was graduated.

Buildings.-There was not sufficient interest and faith in a State University to secure a State appropriation for needed buildings. The regents were consequently obliged to have recourse to a loan of twentyfive thousand dollars from the principal of the University Fund. This was, in reality, an illegal measure, as it was the income merely of the Federal grants that were to be applied to the support of a University. It became necessary to apply the income of the fund, which should have been appropriated solely for the salaries of professors and to the increase of library, cabinet, and apparatus, to the repayment of the loan. The University was thus seriously crippled for many years. But with the loan, in 1851, North Dormitory, the first University building, now known as North Hall, was constructed. Some of the rooms were used for lectures, recitations, library, and apparatus, and others afforded apartments for study and lodging for from fifty to sixty-five students.

The foundations for a second structure, intended for the use of the nor mal department, were laid at the same time, but lack of means prevented the continuance of the work for several years. Finally, a loan of fifteen thousand dollars from the principal of the University Fund was authorized by the Legislature, and the South Dormitory was ready for use in the fall of 1855. Again the fatal policy of making the cost of these structures lie as a dead weight on the income of the University Fund was seen. The cost of the work exceeded the amount of the loan by three thousand dollars. This deficit was swelled by the cost of superintendence, furnaces, and fitting up of public rooms to four thousand five hundred dollars. The diversion of large sums to extraordinary uses compelled the regents to defer the appointment of a professor of modern languages, and the enlargement of the library, cabinet, and ap paratus.

Nevertheless the regents were full of hope. An additional grant of seventy-two sections of land was made by Congress in further endow ment of the University. It has already been shown in what glowing terms the regents in their report for 1854 pictured the future of the University, and how these bright prospects were soon overclouded. A further loan for a building that was finished in 1859 added to the embarrassments already mentioned.

Agriculture and Mechanics.-As early as 1851 the regents had urged the need of a department of the practical applications of science, and also of a school of agriculture. These were then subjects of intense and wide-spread interest throughout the country, and public opinion was forcing the colleges to take measures for providing facilities 'for scientific and technical studies. The report of 1851 was, therefore, largely taken up with the subject, and year after year the hope was ex

pressed that by means of national or State bounty the University might be able to comply with the public sense and demand in these directions. But it was not until 1854 that the first slight advance was made; in that year the regents were able to provide specially for the teaching of natural science. In May S. P. Lathrop entered upon the duties of professor of chemistry and natural history. A small appropriation of one. thousand dollars for chemical and philosophical apparatus was expended in judicious purchases by Professor Lathrop. He died in December, 1854, and a year passed before his place was filled by the appointment of Dr. Ezra Carr to the vacant position. Professor Carr delivered a course of lectures on agriculture, chemistry, and the applications of science to the useful arts, but the limited time, the lack of appliances, and the limitation of the instructional force to one professor made the work in mechanics and agriculture entirely superficial and inadequate. This was due, not to any lack of ability or fitness in the professor, but to the very necessities of the case in the infant institution.

Completion of the College Faculty.-During the collegiate year 1855-56, the College Faculty was completed by appointments to all the remaining professorships, as provided for in the plan adopted six years before. Dr. John P. Fuchs, previously employed as tutor, was appointed to the chair of modern languages and literature; Daniel Read, LL. D., was made professor of mental philosophy, logic, rhetoric, and English literature; and Dr. E. S. Carr, as above stated, professor of chemistry and natural history.

Normal Department.-In addition to his collegiate appointment, the regents elected Professor Read to the normal chair in the department. of theory and practice of elementary instruction." Professional instruction was "to be rendered in the art of teaching, during the sum mer term of each year." Thus the first step was taken in the longcherished project of normal training. The experiment was continued only to the extent of two courses of lectures by Professor Read. The first, beginning in the latter part of May, 1856, continued through the eight remaining weeks of the term. Eighteen students attended these lectures. The second course, in 1857, was attended by twenty-eight students. Several years passed thereafter before a special course for teachers was revived.

Attendance and Growth.-Meanwhile the number of students was steadily increasing. The hostility of a large portion of the public to the new institution was, however, but slowly overcome. There was little popular appreciation of State universities. Chancellor Lathrop, in his report of December 25, 1851, thus indicated the state of the public mind: "Were the funds of the institution in a productive form and now adequate to its liberal support, there would not be, in my judg ment, any lack of liberal patronage arising from any supposed bias in the mind of the community against a University under the control of the State, and constituting a part of its educational system. If a preju

dice of this kind ever existed, it is fast disappearing before more enlightened views of the duty of the State to make the range of its institutions of learning co-extensive with the entire educational wants of the community.

"In a new country, and among a pioneer population, there is not, generally, the same appreciation of a liberal education as prevails in older communities. The immediate objects of men in the formation of new settlements do not so manifestly require high intellectual culture. From the operation of this cause, the patronage of a new University in a new State is not likely, during the first generation, to keep pace with the progress of wealth.

"It is also true in a new country, that in proportion to the popula tion, there are fewer families than in older communities who are able to send their sous from home for the prosecution of a liberal course of study.

"There is another cause which has greatly retarded the growth of western institutions. There is, not unnaturally, a disposition on the part of those of our citizens who have been most successful in the ac cumulation of wealth to finish the education of their sons at eastern institutions, with whose reputation they had been familiar from their earliest years.

"From the operation of these causes it cannot be expected that the classes which pursue the whole collegiate course through to graduation will be large for the first ten years. This has been the universal experience of western institutions; and the most that can be reasona bly expected of the University of Wisconsin is, that it should not fall behind, in the number of its graduates, the most successful of the new institutions of the like grade."

The whole number of students up to 1852 was but 46; the attend. ance in 1852-53 was 66, and, with the exception of two years, we find a steady increase. In 1858-59 the attendance was 243. There were five graduates in 1857, the largest number until 1859 and 1860, in each of which years there were eight.

A Critical Period.-Yet, this increase in patronage was in spite of the growing feeling of hostility which has already been noted. Criticisms upon the University were rife, and there were constant charges of general mismanagement and failure to meet the wants of the people. But the fortunes of the University had been so largely taken out of the control of the regents by the action of the State that the Board was powerless to accomplish more than it did. From authorizing loans from the principal of the University Fund the Legislature had gone on to the assumption of complete control; and the idea was fostered and spread abroad that the State might do as it pleased with the trust reposed in her. "Indeed," says Professor Carpenter, "many members of the Leg. islature came to the capital ignorant of the fact that the University was supported by a trust fund; and looked upon the funds used in its main.

tenance as so much taken from the State treasury (as it was by the fiction of the law of 1854), and therefore so much added to the burden of general taxation. The denominational colleges sent up petitions asking that the University Fund and its income be divided among them, and the State University be abandoned. Many names were attached to these petitions, and the local press favored the measure, until a pressure was brought to bear upon the Legislature that was almost irresistible."

"On the 19th of March, 1855, a member of the Board of Regents (elected on the 15th) introduced a bill into the Assembly to repeal the charter of the University, distribute its funds, and give its income to the denominational colleges of the State. This was looked upon as such a manifest betrayal of his trust as a regent that his proposition met with but little favor, and he obtained permission to withdraw it. The next year (in March, 1856) a bill was introduced into the Senate for an act to regulate the disbursement of the income of the University Fund.' The reasons assigned in support of this measure were the general mismanagement of the institution, and its alleged failure to meet the wants of the people. The temper of the Legisla ture is shown by the fact that the Senate ordered the document printed at the expense of the State, and two thousand copies were scattered over the State."

In order to obviate some of the criticisms, the Board of Regents proceeded to organize the departments of law and medicine. The latter of these was established in 1855 with eight professorships, to which incumbents were named. But the medical school only existed for a short time, on paper.

Professors of law were elected in 1857, but, owing to lack of funds, this attempt at organization of a department of law came to naught.

But an outcry against the additional expenditure involved in the small appropriation made by the regents for the support of the law and medical schools caused the Board to rescind their action at a meeting called specially for the purpose. Soon after a bill for the total reorganization of the University was presented in the Legislature, and finally failed of passage only by not being reached in the last hours of the session.

As a result of the agitation the regents were compelled to yield to the popular demand by voluntarily adopting substantially the same plan as was contained in the defeated bill. The following communication from Chancellor Lathrop to the Board of Regents, in June, 1858, indicates the points wherein the failure or inefficiency of the University was conceived to lie: "The agitation of the University interest in the late Legislature developed two ideas connected with the adminis tration of the institution, of sufficient importance, in the opinion of sev eral members, to justify a call of the Board.

"The first is, that the time has arrived for a full development of the

normal department of the University. As the regents of normal schools indicate a disposition to co-operate with the regents of the University in this behalf, I would recommend this subject to the favorable consideration and action of the Board.

"The other idea is, that in the administration of the department of 'science, literature, and the arts' in the University, a more distinct bias should be given to its instructions in the direction of the several arts and avocations as they exist among men; that the practical should take rank of the theoretical in the forms as well as the substance of University culture."

These two points, in fact, had been specially prominent in the popu lar demand from the very beginning. In the plan proposed in the Leg. islature the departments were enumerated as follows: (1) Normal instruction; (2) agriculture; (3) commerce; (4) civil and mechanical engineering; (5) natural science; (6) philosophy; (7) jurisprudence; (8) philology; and doubtless these were enumerated in about the order in which the supporters of the bill conceived they should take rank. The Legislature also broke over the ancient college tradition in proposing to admit women to the full benefits of the University.

In the plan of reorganization adopted by the Board of Regents there was a somewhat different arrangement of departments, or schools: Philosophy, philology, natural science, civil and mechanical engineering, agriculture, polity. The order in which these departments are named is significant of the opinion held by the regents as to the proper place of the humanities in the college curriculum, as contrasted with the views put forth in the Legislature.

Immediately after this reorganization Chancellor Lathrop resigned, and was elected to the chair of ethical and political science. But this position, too, he resigned soon after, and withdrew entirely from the University, in order that the institution might not be embarrassed by any odium which had attached to him, though unjustly, on account of his part in the late struggle. This crisis in the history of the University is thus summed up by Professor Carpenter: "Thus ended the long and eventful struggle between the University and its critics. In the end the justice of much that was urged against its management was acknowledged by the substantial acceptance of the proposed plan by the Board of Regents, and by the fact that with its adoption all legis lative interference ceased, and a firm and generous friendship took the place of the old coldness and lack of confidence."

The University was yet to pass through a period of trial and decline; but it was not again obliged to contend for its very existence; it did not again have to meet such extreme and virulent hostility.

The Chancellorship.-Dr. Henry Barnard was chosen as successor to Chancellor Lathrop. In addition to the presidency of the University, Doctor Barnard received an appointment as agent of the normal school board, to conduct institutes and deliver educational addresses. Great