the "Taft" stands to-day), and asked to be directed to the new college. Probably they were sent on to the house of the Reverend Mr. Noyes, the minister, who lived on Elm Street just below the east corner of the great square. But they could not have been many hours in the town before being shown the field (where Osborn Hall now stands) upon which the trustees were eagerly planning to put up a college house. It was this house for which two years later the name "Yale College" was to be proposed, in honor of a certain wealthy old man in England, who had given something, and vaguely promised more, to the young institution.

An institution it scarcely was as yet, in any modern sense; rather a group of scholars, younger or older, with serious but narrowly academic ambitions. No college house yet existed, no center for the students except the lodgings of Tutor Johnson and the house of Mr. Noyes. The Commencement, that year and for many years after, was held in the meeting-house on the Green.

Such, then, were the conditions that met the Yale Freshman of 1716: a little town of farmers and mechanics, an absent rector (Mr. Andrew, living at Milford), two tutors to work under, and a few dozen books to work with, chiefly Greek and Latin classics and theology. And his equipment matched these conditions. He had himself grown up to his present fifteen or sixteen years on some Connecticut farm, and his “all-round training" might have challenged comparison with that of the modern Yale boy, but his academic preparation would seem to us narrow. Narrow-and solitary. He had usually received it, if he came of a line of scholars, from his father, or if not, from some nearby clergyman. Besides learning to read and write English-by no means a general achievement then-he had studied Greek and Latin and perhaps Hebrew, had read some Latin theological books and some logic and rhetoric, and a little mathematics. Of natural science, as we understand the term, he had none, for the "physicks" of that day was chiefly a compendium of popular superstitions. Certain of Sir Isaac Newton's books-author's copies may indeed have been sleeping on the shelves in Dr.

Buckingham's house at Saybrook. Two of them, the Principia and the Optics, were in Tutor Johnson's possession, but he did not know enough mathematics to understand them, and was spending such leisure as he had in trying to supplement the defects of his early training.

When one surveys the character and circumstances of this little scholar-group at New Haven, it would seem to have promised little more as the center for a great cultural institution than did the other scholar-groups at Wethersfield and at Saybrook. But for those gifted with the "prescience of the eve," and there were those so endowed,—the promise was clear. Already the first college building was being eagerly planned, a building large enough to hold sixty-six students, large enough to hold the great Saybrook library, large enough to hold, in its assembly room (31 feet by 22), the Commencement throng of students, tutors, trustees, and invited guests. Two years from this time the structure was completed. It was a very long building, very narrow (165 feet by 22), three stories high, and tradition insists that it was painted blue. But tradition also insists that it was a dignified and impressive building, indeed, one of the most dignified and impressive in New England.

To the trustees, to the tutors and the students, it must have been much more than an impressive and dignified building. It was the great Connecticut College. It was the outward and visible sign of their loyalty, their hopes, and their ideals. To us, looking back, it is Yale University.

THE EXPANSION OF YALE

INTO A UNIVERSITY

By

WILLIAM BEEBE

One of the first acts of President Stiles after his election was to draw up a plan for a university. The manuscript of this plan, which has never been published, is in his own handwriting and begins as follows:

PLAN OF A UNIVERSITY

Dec. 1, 1777

A Seminary for the Educa of Youth in the Latin & Greek Classics only, is but a Grammar School: when furnished with academical Instruction or Tuition as in Logic, Geography, Philosophy, Astron', Ethics & the rest of the Liberal Arts & Sciences, it becomes a College: when in addition to the Languages & Liberal Arts, it exhibits Instruction in higher Learning & espy in the 3 Learned Professions of Div' Law & Physic, it rises into a University. Yale College would be furnished with Advantages for an Educ2 in universal Literature, if the following Plan should be completed. Officers of Instruction

The President &

Three Tutors

}

for Languages, Ethics, Lib' Arts & Sciences.

Professor of Divinity-Revd Dr. Dagget

Professor of Ecc. History-President

Professor of Law

Professor of Physic

Professor of Maths & Nat' Phil. Revd W. Strong

Professor of Hebrew & the Oriental Languages

Professor of Oratory & belles Lettres & civil History

Instruction in all these Branches of Literature has hitherto been given in Yale College, except in Law & Physic. It is greatly to be desired that

the Utility of these two professorships might appear to the public in so strong a Light as to induce either the State or Individuals of Opulence & Liberality to make the Endowments necessary for their Support, regulating such additional Institutions to the mutual Satisfaction of the Corporation & the Founders and consistent with the original Constitution of the College.

Nearly a century passed and four presidents fulfilled their terms of office before the plan of President Stiles received official recognition as an accomplished fact. In March, 1872, five months after the inauguration of President Porter, the following resolution was passed by the Corporation:

Whereas, Yale College has, by the successive establishment of the various departments of instruction, attained to the form of a university: Resolved, that it be recognized as comprising the four departments of which a university is commonly understood to consist, viz., the Departments of Theology, of Law, of Medicine, and of Philosophy and the Arts.

The University which was thus officially born after a prenatal period of 170 years did not receive baptism until the first year of President Dwight's administration, when in March, 1887, an Act passed the General Assembly of the State authorizing the use of the title "Yale University" instead of that previously used, "The President and Fellows of Yale College," but without invalidating the former title. The one marked step of progress toward the University goal taken during Porter's administration was that of establishing the elective system in the Academic Department, a step whose importance was realized by few of either its supporters or its opponents in the long and ardent discussion that preceded its adoption. The curriculum of the Sheffield Scientific School was from the first well suited to the University idea, but that of the Academic Department was not, and as the elective system developed at Harvard the discrepancy between the two departments became continually more embarrassing. By this change in the Academic Department, inaugurated in 1884, the