Laval University

“ Of the ecclesiastical teachers, 808 are Roman Catholics and 8 Protestants; of the certificated lay teachers, 250 are Roman Catholic and 105 Protestant; the proportion of schools is four to one. It must be kept in mind that in the French schools it is French literature that is cultivated. In the Laval University, at Quebec, English literature is as purely an ornamental study as French literature would be in Yale. The Laval University, which has a branch in Montreal, is a strong institution, with departments of divinity, law, medicine, and the arts, 80 professors, and 575 students. ”

“ Constant fires have proved nearly ruinous to the buildings erected by the original settlers; and those which have been subsequently built are not remarkable for beauty—indeed, I may say that the Laval University is one of the plainest buildings it has ever been my lot to behold. ”

“ Laval has power to confer degrees in law, medicine and the arts, but not in theology, and did not receive all the rights of a canonical university until 1876. In 1870 the faculty of medicine was affiliated to the Royal College of Surgeons, London, England. In 1897-8 a bacteriological laboratory was installed, in 1899 one for experimental chemistry. The cabinet of physics contains thousands of instruments. The university has eight large and valuable museums. ”

“ John-Hopkins University in Baltimore, Michigan University, and Cornell University, are illustrations of the desire to enlarge the sphere of the education of the people. If we had the German system in this country, men could study classics or mathematics, or science, or literature, or law, or medicine, in a national University with a sole view to their future avocations in life. It is true, in the case of law and medicine Laval, Toronto, McGill and other Universities in the provinces have organized professional courses ”

“ But the average boy gains more from running the college paper or fraternity house than by writing Latin verses or even reading the innocuous literature prescribed by the College Entrance Examination Board. Certainly both college students and college teachers could be more usefully employed than they are at present; but it is odd that the president of Princeton should rub this in.
Mr. Lowell had undertaken to give the Phi Beta Kappa at Columbia before he was elected to the presidency of
Plan of the University of Pittsburgh. ”

“ It has come about, healthy and strong, in the growth of the country—let us even say in the improvement of the world.
Presidents Quincy, Everett, Sparks, and Walker were all engaged in promoting the evolution of the university. After the close of that series come Thomas Hill and Charles William Eliot, the present incumbent, to whose energy, foresight, and courage so much of what may be called this revolution is due. I have already made some notes here of Mr. Quincy and Dr. Walker. It was in Walker’s administration that Lowell returned to the college as Smith professor. ”

“ Harvard and Columbia Universities have for several years maintained an exchange of professors with the Prussian government, and both universities have recently made similar arrangements for Paris. Columbia has had at least one visiting professor from Copenhagen, and Wisconsin has recently obtained a Karl Schurz endowment for German professors. Each of our leading universities has lectureships which are frequently filled by foreign men of science and scholars; and there are certain extra university courses, such as the Lowell lectures in Boston and those of the Brooklyn Institute. ”

“ It now furnishes lectures on practical and scientific subjects to workingmen, under the auspices of the Wells Memorial Workingmen's Institute.
As the University Extension Lectures carry the college to the people, so more and more the Lowell fund is carrying helpful and practical intelligence to every nook [Pg 16] and corner of a great city. Young people are stimulated to endeavor, encouraged to save time in which to gain knowledge, and to become useful and honorable citizens. ”

“ If it were a mere recording instrument of conventional opinion and average information, it is hard to see why the University should exist at all. To clasp hands with the common life in order that it may lift that life, to be a radiant center enkindling the society in which it has its being, these are primary duties of the University. ”

“ It was thanks to Lowell even more immediately than to Longfellow that Cambridge had its papers—though if I find myself putting that word into the past tense it is perhaps because of the irresistible admonition, too (proceeding so from a thousand local symptoms) , that titles embodied in literary form are less and less likely, in the Harvard air, to be asked for. That is clearly not the way the wind sets: we see the great University sit and look very hard, at blue horizons of possibility, across the high table-land of her future ”

“ The result is a repetition of the old story of the house divided against itself. It is just this condition, we believe, that has led to such restless, groping questionings as, “What is Yale for?” The definition of a university as being one body of which there are many members admirably illustrates the point. For the college to-day is in the anomalous position of attempting to perform the duties of two members where it formerly functioned as one. Such a state of affairs is not conducive to the health of any organization whatever. ”

“ Whenever a college has a chair to fill, it is necessary to hunt far and wide for a suitable person to fill it. The demand is not from the old places alone. Almost every year a new college is founded. Every year the old ones grow. In twenty-five years Harvard has quadrupled its staff. Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Yale, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania,—indeed almost every strong college 118 in the country,—shows an immense advance. ”

“ The statement will stand impregnable, that, from the time John Harvard founded our little College in the wilderness, to this hour, when it is fast becoming a great University, with its schools in every department, and its lectures covering the whole field of human knowledge, the graduates have always attained a longevity surpassing that of their generation. ”

“ It is, indeed, the one great institution of modern times that works to no ulterior end and is controlled by no consideration of expediency beyond its own work. Typically, normally, in point of popular theory, the university is moved by no consideration other than "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." ”

“ The creation and maintenance of such a College of Commerce, on such a scale as will make it anything more than a dubious make-believe, would manifestly appear to be beyond the powers of any existing university. ”

“ It is not necessary that all departments should be equal to make the university real. It was enough at Harvard to have Agassiz and Gray, Lowell, Goodwin and Holmes to justify the name of the university. Silliman and Dana made a university of Yale. Such men are as rare as they are choice, and no university faculty was ever yet composed of them alone, and none ever yet had too many of them. ”

“ Yet such a society, situated in what was undeniably a difficult position, could not be expected to escape every imperfection.
The activity and the intelligence of Mgr. de Laval made themselves felt in every beneficent and progressive work. He could not remain indifferent to the education of his flock; we find him as zealous for the progress of primary education as for the development of his two seminaries or his school at St. Joachim. Primary instruction was given first by the good Récollets at Quebec, at Tadousac and at Three Rivers. ”

“ A real university, or any other institution of learning, is made up of the men and the women who form its student and its teaching bodies. The character of the institution, its very life blood, is drawn from them. Their points of view, their motives, their scholarships, their visions, their aspirations, make it what it is in every instance.
You recall that ex-President Garfield's description of a university included only two factors as essential—the teacher and the student. The external equipment—buildings, libraries, laboratories—what not—is merely a tool in their hands. ”

“ So, too, with the most eminent men at the other universities. What sum will draw them to us from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the University of Virginia, and the University of Michigan? An endowment twice as large as ours would be unavailing.'' Therefore it was that I broached, as a practical measure, in my ``plan of organization,'' the system which I had discussed tentatively with George William Curtis several years before, and to which he referred afterward in his speech at the opening of the university at Ithaca. ”

“ The very fact, moreover, that in spite of these large numbers and other factors that we shall call attention to in a moment, comparatively so few disgraceful stories of university life have come down to us, and the other and still more important fact that the universities could be kept so constantly at the attainment of their great purpose for such numbers, is itself a magnificent tribute to those who succeeded in doing it, and to the system which was gradually evolved, not by the faculty alone but by teachers and students for university government. ”

“ The directive hands, too, under whose discretionary control each of these establishments entered on its adventures and attained its distinctive character, were men who, at one point or another in their administration of academic policy, entertained a sincerely conceived scholarly ambition to create a substantial university, an institution of learning. ”

“ At any rate I can at least claim that my acquaintance with the British university is just as good a basis for reflection and judgment as that of the numerous English critics who come to our side of the water. I have known a famous English author to arrive at Harvard University in the morning, have lunch with President Lowell, and then write a whole chapter on the Excellence of Higher Education in America. I have known another one come to Harvard, have lunch with President Lowell, and do an entire book on the Decline of Serious Study in America. ”

“ A natural reply to the statement of Lowell is that great numbers of fathers every year, at a pecuniary sacrifice, send their sons to college with the idea of fitting them better to earn their living, in obedience to the general sentiment of men of this country that there is a money value to college training. But the remark of Lowell suggests another object of the University which, to use the words of Huxley again, is “to catch the exceptional people, the glorious sports of nature, and turn them to account for the good of society.” ”

“ As is well known, Harvard was founded by a minister, Yale by ten ministers, Hamilton College, Rutger's College, Dartmouth, The Woman's College at Baltimore, Willamette University, and a multitude of others were founded by ministers. For many years scarcely others than ministers furnished the chief executives for the institutions of higher learning or took high rank in their teaching forces. ”

“ Boynton, chaplain of the House of Representatives, is President of the Board of Trustees.
St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y., a university still very young, graduates both men and women, on precisely the same conditions. Civil engineering [381] and political economy are the only optional studies with the women. It reports one theological student. Lombard University, Galesburg, Ill., does the same; but I know nothing of its standard of scholarship. It is only within the last year that I have been able to visit the most conspicuous colleges in this country in which women are taught with men. ”

“ By this arrangement the college -- undergraduate department -- falls into the position of an appendage, a side issue, to be taken care of by afterthought on the part of a body of men whose chief legitimate interest runs -- should run -- on other things than the efficient management of such an undergraduate training-school, -- provided always that they are a bona fide university faculty, and not a body of secondary-school teachers masquerading under the assumed name of a university. ”

“ While, then, we honor the universities of which New Eng [Pg 952] land has been the mother, let us remember that New England owes its being to a university. In remembering this, we shall be prepared to follow in the steps of our fathers, and to be mindful of what we ourselves owe to our own institutions of learning.
In respect to the rivalry between Yale and Harvard, which was noticed in the sentiment to which I speak, and in reply to the suggestions which have been offered by the President of Harvard, I will venture a single remark. ”

“ Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to the ideal of a true University than any of the other types. Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal learning, have assimilated some German features, and have combined successfully college routine and discipline with mature and advanced work. ”

“ Before deciding, he wrote to three eastern colleges, amongst others to Yale, the only American university which by its buildings and surroundings can lay any claim to compare, even at a long distance, in beauty and associations, with the least among European universities. ”

“ About fifty professors and fifteen hundred students compose the faculty and attendance of this famous university. It was founded in 1477, and has but one rival in Sweden, that at Ludd, founded in 1666. The expense of a student’s education, including board, fees, &c., is about three hundred dollars a year.
No one can be admitted to practise in any of three professions,—law, medicine, or divinity,—without taking his degrees at one of the two universities. ”