maintain the large toleration and the lofty patience, without which his plea may convict, but will never persuade.

For the rest, it is a pleasant relief from the negative extreme of recent criticism to listen to a positive word from an every-way competent pen, defining the limits of honest negation, and indicating a wholesome re-action against the devastating mania of prurient neology. It is worthy of note, that the actual discoveries of Biblical investigation of late years have been all against the assailants of the Canon.

"To have awakened doubts in the learned as well as the unlearned, to have been the occasion of denial to many, is unquestionably among the achievements of that spirit of scepticism which has reigned for the last hundred years; nevertheless, in the collective literature of antiquity, there are few examples of so grand an historical verification as our Gospels, if we seek it in sincerity, really possess."-p. 69.

ART. III.-STATE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University of Michigan. With a Statement of the Courses of Instruction in the Various Departments. 1866. Ann Arbor: Published by the University. 8vo. pp. 88.

THE popular idea of Western Universities and Colleges, the name of which is Legion,-in this Eastern part of our land, is that they are only ordinary schools with sounding names, sectarian in purpose, encumbered with debt, and as unlike such institutions as Yale or Harvard, as the Londons and Romes of the New World are unlike the London and Rome of the Old World. They send periodically, asking for alms: but, when we go to visit them, we find only an ugly, unfinished building, two or three dispirited teachers who eke out their scanty salaries by speculations in bread-stuffs, houselots, or petroleum; and a few dozen boys and girls, young men and women, in a "preparatory department." That this

idea is not absolutely accurate, and that there is one Western college at least fully entitled to the name University, is proved by the remarkable document which we have placed at the head of this article. An octavo pamphlet of eight-eight pages, many of them printed in small type, is required to give even a condensed statement of the officers and students, the methods and privileges, of an institution, the earliest graduates of which are still young men. The present year exactly completes the first quarter of a century since the University of Michigan was organized and opened to pupils. The catalogue just published gives the names of thirty-two professors and instructors, and one thousand two hundred and five students, in the various departments, a number more than one-fourth larger than Harvard University, in the record of its best year, can show; and even this large number is understated, some twenty more having entered since the Catalogue went to press.

And, if the residences of this vast number of students are noted, the University of Michigan is more than a Western Institution it is a national University more than any other in the land; and not national only, but cosmopolitan. Sixty of the students are from foreign lands,- from Canada West and East, from New Brunswick, from Nova Scotia, from Ireland, and from England. Two hundred of them, a number in itself sufficient for a respectable college, come from the States east of the Alleghanies. Every loyal State on this side of the Rocky Mountains is represented in the list, except Delaware and Maryland; and there are even a few students from States lately in. rebellion. From Maine to North Carolina and to Kansas, from the North and the South, the East and the West, they come flocking here together, like doves to their windows. Of course, the largest number from any one State is from Michigan. The University is not without honor in its own home. But the number of students from Michigan, though very large, is considerably less than a third of the whole number. Ohio sends 163; Illinois, 143; Indiana, 115; New York, 107; Wisconsin, 57; Pennsylvania, 52; and Iowa, Kentucky, and Missouri together contribute 65

to the grand number. Twenty-eight States and provinces in all are represented in this almost endless list of names.

The growth of the University of Michigan, from its small beginning twenty-five years ago, is hardly less wonderful than the growth of the city of Chicago in the same short period. The first band of students were hardly more than the famous triad of Harvard "when the college first begun," celebrated in the centennial verse of Holmes,

"Two nephews of the President,

And the Professor's son."

Yet the "General Catalogue" (or "Triennial," as we should call it), published in 1864, gave the mystic number of 999 as the exact tale of graduates in all departments; and the next catalogue will increase this number by several hundreds. It began as a simple State institution, with only a literary department. It has now, with the exeption of a Theological School, all the parts of a complete University,- a department of science, literature, and the arts; a department of medicine; a department of law; and an astronomical observatory. With the exception above named, the theory of the University is as perfect as in any institution in the land.

The University of Michigan has grown to its present proportions within one generation. But more than two generations have passed since the first appropriation was made for its support. Sixty-two years ago, in 1804, the foundation of the college was virtually laid by the act of Congress, granting a township of land for its support. At that time the "Pleasant Peninsula" was almost an unbroken wilderness, and white men were fewer in its borders than were white men in New England when Harvard gave his legacy to the school at Cambridge. The University was provided for, long before the territory itself was organized; and though trustees were appointed in 1821, and another township was given by Congress, twenty years more had to be passed before the system of public education had reached the point where the higher institution was fairly called for. Rapid as the growth of the institution has been, it was not hurried into being, but was

a

a long time in the making. It was already rich and thoroughly endowed before any teacher was chosen in its staff, or any stone was laid upon its grounds.

The University of Michigan is at the apex of the pyramid of State education. It is a creation of the State, controlled by the State, and is as "secular" as the common schools, of which it is only the completion. No State in the Union has a more admirable and well-adjusted system of public instruction than the young State of Michigan. The fantastic device on the State seal bids the inquirer, if he would see a pleasant land, to look around him; but the objects of the land which will first attract his eye, and will longest hold it, are the school-houses. For grandeur of proportion, and in grace of style and ornament, no building in the peninsula will compare with these stately and imposing piles. In church and house architecture, Michigan has not much to boast. Most of the edifices that make pretence of beauty are unfinished, and are monuments of mistaken ambition. But, in the building of school-houses, Michigan could give a useful lesson to Massachusetts. Every large town, and almost every considerable village, has a structure in this kind that the economy of New England would pity as wasteful extravagance. The city of Ypselanti has a population of some six thousand, yet the chapel of its Union School building has seats for twelve hundred persons, and within its various schoolrooms more than a thousand pupils can be comfortably cared for; and the school-house of this city is a fair type of the similar buildings in the other cities of the State, and a fair illustration of the spirit in which public education is fostered.

The "Union Schools" of Michigan are the "preparatory schools" of the University, obviating the need of any special preparatory department in the college itself. They are supported by taxation, and are free to all residents in the town or city where they are placed. But they are not merely local schools, and there is no jealous exclusiveness in their management. Pupils from other towns, from other States even, are admitted to their privileges, with the payment of a

moderate tuition fee; and none are rejected while there is room for their accommodation, no matter where they come from. In all the larger Union Schools, a considerable portion of the pupils are from abroad; and the tuition-money which they bring, helps largely to swell the school revenue. There are some disadvantages in this liberal practice; but, on the whole, the people are satisfied with it, and the teachers like it. They believe that it helps them to keep up the standard of scholarship, and that it shows a better result of their labor. It certainly prevents much of that selfishness which the district system of New England encourages, and hinders the jealousies of place and neighborhood, besides stimulating a wholesome rivalry. Each city is urged to add to its facilities in the hope of winning more pupils, and the general cause of education is so served in the end. Perhaps it is as much rivalry as real public spirit which has brought this large development in education and its resources, so amazing to one accustomed to the tardy and halting movements of New-England towns.

These Union Schools are the feeders of the Normal School and of the University. The Normal School of Michigan deserves a special notice, for the thoroughness of its teaching, and the abundance of its material; but we have not room to speak of it here. It is really only a branch of the University, in which young women can gain the same instruction and training that are given to the other sex. It is better entitled to the name of University than many of the sectarian seminaries that take the title, if we consider what is taught in it, and who teach in it. Indeed, the Normal School of Illinois, in which there are more than five hundred students, is called the "Normal University," and its Principal is a "President." This is in better taste than the name of "Normal" which has been given to the village where the school is placed.

The University of Michigan, the keystone of the arch in the system of State education, has its home in Ann Arbor, an inland city some thirty-eight miles west of Detroit, and, by the arrangement of the railroads, conveniently and centrally situated for the settled portions of the peninsula. The region