WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY. EMERSON O. STEVENS, ADELBERT COLLEGE, CLEVELAND, OHIO. THE American University has supplanted the American College The institutions of character which have been founded for the higher education within the last twenty-five years, have been not colleges but universities. Of the older institutions, those which have made the most rapid and substantial progress have had their development along university lines. Except in the case of a very few universities which have sprung into existence at the fiat of some ich man, the evolution of the universities of this country has been from a classical college as a nucleus. Gradually, by the addition of professional schools or the development of some department of the college into a separate school, the institution has acquired university powers, and has eventually assumed the formal title of university. The ideal of the American University is not the ideal of the English or the German University. It is not, like the former, a federation of colleges, or like the latter, a collection of professional schools. The ideal of the American University is rather that of an institution where a student may secure a broad general training of the highest character, and also the special training which shall fit him for his chosen profession. A classical college is a better college for being a member of a university. A professional school is a better school for being more or less intimately associated with a classical college. The four oldest and highly respected educational institutions of this country, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, are institutions of this character, where the classical department and the professional schools co-operate to a greater or less extent by using the same books, the same apparatus, and the same buildings, and re-act upon each other to the advantage of both. These universities have all developed from a classical college and in them all the classical department is an important, if not the most important, department. Among the older institutions which have made a rapid advance in the development of the university idea within the last few years, an honorable place is to be accorded to Western Reserve University. The last catalogue of this institution shows an enrollment of nine hundred students, with a teaching force of eighty-five professors and instructors, and an endowment aggregating $2,000,000.00. This efficient teaching force and this generous endowment entitle Western Reserve University to an important place among the educational institutions of the country. A consideration of the component elements of the university will show that the quality of its work also entitles it to such a place. Like the older and larger institutions mentioned above, Western Reserve University has developed from a classical college. Also, as with those institutions, the classical department is still the most important member of the university. The nucleus about which Western Reserve University has been built and is still building, is Adelbert College. This college is one of the oldest colleges west of the state of New York, having been founded in the year 1826 at Hudson, Ohio, as Western Reserve College. A well-known writer speaks of the value to a college of tradition as a quickening and ennobling influence upon its students. Western Reserve College has a past of which she may well be proud. The oldest college of Northern Ohio, Western Reserve College was founded, not in the interest of any sect or schism, or to perpetuate any one man's name, but in the deliberate wisdom of far-seeing men who knew the value of science and learning to the community. For more than half a century the college was the exponent of the best life and thought of the Western Reserve. The Connecticut Western Reserve, comprehending the fairest portion of the State of Ohio, in its settlement by New England men became a newer New England. Its settlers brought with them all that was best of the civilization of their old home. Bancroft, in his history, alludes to the settlement of the Western Reserve as "the compact establishment of the culture of New England." The idea of a college which these men entertained was of such an institution as they had been acquainted with in the East. The college which they founded was consequently a New England college upon Western territory. Western Reserve College has always been an Eastern college in tradition and method. Her teachers have been largely Eastern men, and her standard of scholarship has always been equal to that of the best New England colleges. Her students who have gone to Eastern colleges to complete their college course or to pursue graduate studies have invariably taken high rank as scholars. A true story, which old Western Reserve graduates are fond of telling, is that of a student who, being third in a class of ten in his Junior year at Western Reserve, went to Yale and graduated first in a class of over fifty, afterwards to become one of the supreme judges of the United States. It may be said by the way that Yale has always been an absorber of Western Reserve talent. Her faculty at the present time includes four Western Reserve men, three of them at the head of the important departments of Philosophy, Greek, and German. Some years ago, President Bodine of Kenyon College remarked, "Western Reserve College has perhaps not been so widely known as some of the other Ohio colleges, but from the first she has been one of the very best colleges in the country." If we pause to consider what constitutes a good college, we shall find that, desirable as they are, fine buildings and elaborate equipment are not the most important element, but rather an able faculty presenting a strong course of study. If, in her early days, Western Reserve Col lege had been asked wherein lay her wealth, she, like the Spartan king pointing to his soldiers in response to the inquiry for the defensive wall of his city, would have proudly pointed to her faculty. Among the professors on the Western Reserve faculty have been such men as Elias Loomis, a mathematician and scientist of worldwide fame; President Bartlett of Dartmouth; President Chadbourne of Williams; Professor Charles A. Young, the Astronomer, of Princeton; Professor Hickok of Union and Amherst; Professor Barrows, the distinguished Hebraist, of Andover, and many others of equal eminence. Dr. N. P. Seymour, the distinguished classical and English scholar, to whom Professor Hadley submitted the entire manuscript of his Greek Grammar for revision and correction before publication, was a member of the Western Reserve faculty for over half a century. It was said by a prominent educator that during the decade of 1840-50, on account of the celebrity of the scientific men on its faculty, Western Reserve College was better known in Europe than Yale itself. The nephew of the first president Storrs, Dr. Richard S. Storrs of Brooklyn, pronounced Western Reserve College "the noblest column in the propylæa of Western Colleges." It was to the memory of President Storrs himself that Whittier wrote his poem beginning: "Thou hast fallen in thine armour, Thou martyr of the Lord! With thy last breath crying 'Onward'! Probably the highest honor ever conferred upon a college west of the Alleghanies was conferred upon Western Reserve College when the first alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society west of the mountains was established there by the unanimous vote of the oldest and most distinguished colleges of America-an honor conferred before the college was twenty-one years old. Western Reserve College has never been a large college in point of numbers, and for an Ohio college this has perhaps been a benefit rather than a misfortune. She has never striven for numbers at the expense of thoroughness. There has been no angling for students by a lowering of standard. Her motto has ever been multum rather than multa. But though rich in scholarship, the college was for many years poor in funds. When, therefore, in 1880, Mr. Amasa Stone, a citizen of Cleveland, offered the college the munificent sum of $500,000.00 provided it would remove to Cleveland and assume the name of Adelbert College of Western |