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He would hardly know whether Lowell was in jest or earnest when he 
sold Dr. Walker that “a university is a place where nothing useful is 
aught ” ; nor would he be quite sure what Garfield meant when he said, 
n substance, that “a log with Mark Ilopkins at one end of it and a 
student at the other would be a seat of learning.” 
About fifty years ago, one of the most gifted and one of the most influen- 
-ial men produced in this country projected what might be called a uni- 
versity of hisown. Naming several of his associates, Ralph Waldo Emerson 
said to a correspondent: ‘Do you not see that with one or two chosen 
persons we might make a puissant, faculty and front the world without 
>harter, diploma, corporation, or steward ? Do you not see that if such 
1 thing were well and happily done for twenty or thirty students only at 
first, it would anticipate by years the education of New England ?” All 
shis, from a European point of view, is abnormal, untraditional, and 
anconstitutional. It is hardly comprehensible by those who are only 
‘amiliar with the ways of their own lands. They know the difficulties 
ancountered in securing a charter for the Victoria University in England, 
or in establishing a teaching university in London, and the close restric- 
sion of the term university in France, and the orderly government and 
affiliations of the universities of Germany. Undoubtedly (the friendly 
observer might remind us) there is in this country much wasteful expen- 
diture of force, much overlapping, much rivalry, much error that might 
be avoided, much misleading of the public. and even much injury to the 
rising generation. 
With criticisms like these, the leaders of higher education in this coun- 
try would probably concur. In rejoinder, they might ask the intelligent 
observer from other lands to remember that the diversity which seems to 
him like confusion is almost an inevitable result of that local self-govern- 
ment upon which all our institutions depend. If our universities arc 
suffering from excessive spontaneity, they are free from every form of 
intellectual despotism. Separate institutions may indeed be governed by 
the enactments of a legislature or the regulations of a religious denomina- 
tion, but, as a whole, the higher education of this country is absolutely 
free from political and ccclesiastical control. Any attempt to regulate 
the universities by forces outside of themselves would certainly be 
thwarted—could hardly be thought of. Americans prefer the lesser to 
the greater evils. At the same time it is unfortunate that there should 
be so much reduplication. Every one knows to what extent in his own 
neighborhood this manifolding process has gone on. It is like the paral- 
leling of railroads, where the doctrine seems to be, “If a line is doing a 
good work, duplicate it, even if you ruin it, so as to get a share of the 
profits.” Many years ago, President White, of Cornell University, in an 
address which ought to be kept in constant circulation, urged that there 
should be concentration upon a few strong universities, not multiplication