President Day's Administration, 1817-46

PRE

RESIDENT DWIGHT had filled so large a space in the public estimation, that it was more than usually difficult to select a successor. The place was first offered to the Rev. HENRY DAVIS, D.D., the President of Middlebury College, who had been a favorite pupil of Dr. Dwight; and on his declining, Professor JEREMIAH DAY was elected. It is understood that Professor Day was Dr. Dwight's own choice for the succession, but his known reluctance to taking the office led to the prior election of another. Professor Day was heartily confided in by his colleagues and former pupils; but beyond these circles, there seemed danger of a decline of prestige for the College in the substitution for so eminent a man as Dr. Dwight of the reserved, unpretentious scholar, who had long been in extremely delicate health, and was only known to the public by a series of mathematical text-books. He had not even the prestige of membership of the clerical profession; but as he had studied theology and had been licensed to preach before his appointment as Professor, and as he viewed the call to the Presidency as involving the same class of obligations as a call to the ministry, he was accordingly ordained at the time of his induction into his new office.

The chair of instruction hitherto held by Presi

dent Day was filled by the promotion of Mr. Alexander M. Fisher (Yale 1813), then a tutor. It also became necessary to supply President Dwight's place in the chair of Divinity, and to make good the loss of his instructions in Rhetoric by the creation of a new chair; to the former Professorship was appointed (after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain Dr. Ebenezer Porter, of Andover Seminary) the Rev. Eleazar T. Fitch (Yale 1810), and to the latter his classmate, the Rev. Chauncey A. Goodrich. This enlargement of the Academical Faculty, with the withdrawal of Dr. Dwight's experienced leadership, caused perhaps unconsciously an increasing reliance on government by the Faculty and the development of the principle since accepted as a fixed one in this College, that in grave matters affecting a Department the Corporation will not take action until the permanent officers have been expressly consulted, and in particular that the Corporation in filling a Professorship in any Department will await a nomination from the Professors in that Department.

The growth of the College proper, under the application of such a system, during the twentynine years of President Day's administration, was sound and symmetrical. His older associates, Professors Silliman and Kingsley, and also Professor Fitch, continued in full service through this period; Professor Kingsley's work, however, was confined to Latin after 1831, when Mr. Theodore D. Woolsey was appointed Professor of Greek; and Mr. Thomas A. Thacher was advanced from

a tutorship to an Assistant Professorship of Latin in 1842. The gifted mathematical Professor, Alexander M. Fisher, was lost on a voyage to Europe in 1822; and the Rev. Matthew R. Dutton (Yale 1808) who succeeded to the chair died three years later. Professor Denison Olmsted (Yale 1813), of the University of North Carolina, was then appointed, and in 1836 the chair was divided, -Professor Olmsted devoting himself with marked success to Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, and Mr. Anthony D. Stanley (Yale 1830), then a tutor, being appointed Professor of Mathematics. In 1839 Professor Goodrich was transferred to the Divinity School, and the Rev. William A. Larned (Yale 1826) was made Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. Dr. Goodrich continued,

however, to be in a peculiar sense the religious friend of the students in the College, and by his unofficial pastoral work and impressive personal influence did much to develop the active Christian life of the whole institution.

Great improvements were made in this long period in the course of instruction: some elementary subjects were discarded (as, English Grammar and Geography in 1826, and Arithmetic in 1830), and new subjects, as the modern languages, law, and political economy, introduced; the scope and thoroughness of the examinations for admission were constantly increased; and similar advances made in nearly every subject of College teaching.

Another most important improvement introduced in 1830, through the agency of the Rev. Dr.

Horace Bushnell, then a Tutor, was the abandonment of the system which had up to that date assigned a division of each class to some one of the Tutors, who heard all the recitations in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, for the current term or year; after 1830 each Tutor confined his instructions to a single subject, instructing in that the divisions of the class in rotation. In 1828 the question of abandoning the required study of the ancient languages came before the Corporation, and an exhaustive report on the subject was prepared by the Faculty. The effect of the discussion may be seen in the emphatic endorsement of the existing system by the division of Professor Kingsley's chair soon after, and the appointment of an enthusiastic young scholar fresh from study in Germany to the sole work of teaching Greek.

The need of additional accommodations for the students received President Day's early attention. In 1818-19 a large DINING HALL was erected, near the center of the College square, of three stories, the kitchen occupying the basement, and the upper floor being devoted to the exhibition of the valuable mineralogical cabinet acquired by Professor Silliman's zeal during the previous decade, while the former Dining Hall was in 1820 devoted to the chemical department; in 1842, however, the system of a common dining hall, which had long been unsatisfactory, was abandoned, and the rooms set free were given over principally to the uses of the department of Natural Philosophy. In 1820-21 the line of brick Colleges was extended

by the erection of NORTH COLLEGE, containing like its predecessors 32 rooms, and in 1823-24 a new CHAPEL was built (between North and North Middle Colleges), of which the upper story was divided into rooms for students, while the attic. received the Library,-the part of the Lyceum used for that purpose being converted into a rhetorical chamber. In 1831-32 the TRUMBULL GALLERY (now the Treasury Building) was erected, in the rear of the Chapel, to contain the College collection of paintings, especially those by Col. John Trumbull, which were at first deposited by the artist, and later became the property of the College. In 1842 a LIBRARY building of Portland sandstone was begun, on the western side of the square, which was occupied in 1843, though not completed (at a cost of $34,000) before 1846. The Library funds, besides smaller accessions, were substantially increased during this period by the bequest (without conditions) of $3,000 from Mr. Noah Linsly (Yale 1791), of Wheeling, Va., received in 1820-21; by the gift of $5,000 from John T. Norton, Esq., of Albany; and especially by the bequest of $10,000 received in 1836 from the estate of Dr. ALFRED E. PERKINS (Yale 1830), of Norwich, Connecticut; this last was then the largest gift received by the College from any private individual since the days of Governor Yale, and still remains the largest sum contributed to the permanent Library fund from any one source.

Mr. Norton's gift just mentioned was subscribed in connection with an effort undertaken by the