ministration, that his hope of a closer UNION WITH THE STATE was realized. In the earlier years, in spite of his urgent desire for such a consummation, the College was occasionally the subject of malicious comments in the public press, of pamphlet attacks, and of memorials to the legislature, of the same general type as those in President Clap's time, though without a similar infusion of personal spite.

Finally, in 1792, when substantial aid seemed absolutely essential to enable the institution to go on, on the favorable report of a committee which had conferred with the Corporation and had been given every means for a full knowledge of College affairs and their management, the Legislature adopted a plan suggested by the Hon. JAMES HILLHOUSE, the Treasurer of the College, by which in return for a grant of money from the State Treasury (eventually amounting to $40,629) the Governor, the Lieutenant-Governor, and the six senior members of the Upper House for the time being, became ex-officio members of the Corporation. This met the outside demand for State oversight of the College, and was at the same time acceptable to the President and the clerical Fellows; the new arrangement took effect by the ratification of the old Corporation in June, 1792, and its wisdom was sufficiently justified by the advantage experienced.

As the first result, the want of more accommodations for students was met by the erection in 1793-94 of a new College dormitory, the present

SOUTH COLLEGE; and in October, 1794, the long dormant Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy was filled by the appointment of JOSIAH MEIGS, Esq., a graduate of 1778, who had just returned from a residence in Bermuda as a practitioner of the law, and who while tutor in the College some years before had shown special aptitude for these studies.

In the midst of this returning prosperity, Dr. Stiles's career was ended by an attack of fever, on May 12, 1795, in the 68th year of his age. He had devoted his matured powers unremittingly for seventeen years in a difficult time to the service of the College, and had seen it advance steadily in solid usefulness and in popular reputation.

Though genuinely simple in his private character, he was punctilious about the details of official dignity, and fostered in the true antiquarian spirit all the traditional orders and ceremonies of the place. His religious character was peculiarly humble and charitable; but he was distinctly less rigidly orthodox than President Clap, and had delayed his acceptance of the Presidency until the elaborate tests exacted by the Corporation (who were much of Clap's way of thinking) from College officers, should be modified to a simple assent to the Saybrook Platform.

President Dwight's Administration, 1795-1817

HOUGH the death of Dr. Stiles was sudden,

THO

the Fellows were prompt in agreeing on a successor, one to whom, indeed, the friends of the College instinctively turned at this juncture. This was the Rev. TIMOTHY DWIGHT, D.D., now in his 44th year, who had served with unprecedented success in the tutorship for the last half of Dr. Daggett's Presidency, and at the ensuing election but for his youth would have been a leading candidate for the vacant office. He had now been for twelve years pastor of the church at Greenfield Hill, Connecticut, and for almost the whole time had conducted a flourishing academy, in which the course of study was not merely preparatory to but parallel with the College course of that day.

Dr. Dwight accepted the election, and entered on his office at Commencement, 1795. His predecessor was a typical scholar and divine of the ancient Puritan stamp, an autocrat in his little kingdom, who clung to all the forms and usages of earlier generations; .and the change to Dr. Dwight was like the passage from a type of the eighteenth century to an earnest of the nineteenth. In illustration of this change may be adduced the spirit of the revision of the Laws for the students, in 1795, which recognized for the first time as a vital part of the College government the action of the FACULTY, i. e., of the Profes

sors and Tutors sitting in consultation with the President. At a later date (1804) the ancient system of fagging was abolished, and a little later the system of pecuniary fines as a mode of punishment was also given up. A man of grandly impressive personality, most stimulating as an instructor, and movingly eloquent as a preacher, Dr. Dwight's direct influence on the students was much more powerful than that exerted by any of his predecessors. It was not the intention, when he was chosen President, to commit to him also the College pastorate; in fact, as an ardent exponent of the theology of his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, he was not quite in harmony with the prevailing views among the Fellows who had elected him; but delays occurred in filling the Professorship of Divinity, and meantime the President had temporary charge of the duty, and the vast influence for good which thus opened before him began to be exercised and appreciated. Popular infidelity was met and vanquished; the feeble life of the College church was revived and built up; and the result was that after having officiated by temporary arrangement until 1805, he was then formally invited to the chair of Divinity, which he held with the Presidency till his death. Besides these duties he gave the full attention expected from the President to the usual studies of the senior year in philosophy, and also did much to create a new department of instruction, that of Rhetoric and English Literature, for which he had shown special adaptation as early as his tutorship.

While he thus most powerfully impressed himself on the students before him, he was quite as successful in perpetuating his influence by a rare sagacity of insight into the capacities and promise of those whom he selected for permanent positions in the Faculty. This was most strikingly illustrated by the careers of three young men whom he called around him early in his term of office :-Jeremiah Day, appointed Professor of Mathematics in 1801 at the age of 28, Benjamin Silliman, Professor of Chemistry in 1802 at the age of 23, and James L. Kingsley, Professor of Languages in 1805 at the age of 27. Of these, the first retired from active service in 1846, the second in 1853, and the third in 1851; but between the dates of Dr. Dwight's death and their withdrawal, Dr. Dwight lived again in their control of the policy of the institution. The same principle appeared in the brief career of Ebenezer Grant Marsh, in the gift to the Medical School of Eli Ives and Jonathan Knight, and may perhaps also be traced in the promotion after the President's death of such a band of his favorite pupils as Nathaniel W. Taylor, Josiah W. Gibbs, Eleazar T. Fitch, Chauncey A. Goodrich, Alexander M. Fisher, and Denison Olmsted.

Akin to this activity in the discovery of promising talent, was Dr. Dwight's zeal in welcoming the advent of new departments of undergraduate study, and in the expansion of the usefulness of the College by the organization in connection with it of professional schools.

At his entrance on office he found but one Pro