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This aristocratic organization of society was, however, permeated by an intense love of liberty, and when the crisis came, the voice of Virginia and the voice of Massachusetts sounded with equal distinctness the call to arms, and put vitality and courage into the other colonies. Social conditions in Virginia bred men of great force and power of leadership, and of the five men who are commonly regarded as having had the greatest influence in giving American institutions their final form it is significant that four were Virginians. The Commonwealth was full of

Woodrow Wilson, a representative graduate of the University of Virginia, has made us feel, not only the charm, but the reaction on character of a manner of living in which the emphasis was thrown upon action as definitely as in New England it was thrown upon meditation. Before the tide-water district was settled, Virginians were exploring the region beyond the mountains; Washington blazing a way into the wilderness and becoming a conspicuous forerunner of Clark.

The earliest hero of the State, whose life, in the light of the latest research, has

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men who were politicians by instinct, with a few leaders at the top who were statesmen by training as well as by genius.

In the later colonial times the best books were read in Virginia, and the traditions of classical scholarship were never suffered to die out; but the chief interest was in public life, and it was in statecraft rather than in literature that the genius of old Virginia expressed itself.

The early Virginians were active, daring, full of the mingled courage and audacity evoked by the opportunities and perils of the New World, lovers of sport, and accomplished out-of-doors men. In his spirited life of Washington Professor

taken on an epical dignity and range of action, typified the temper of the colonists of the old Commonwealth. Of Captain John Smith it is recorded that, on his return in 1600 to Willoughby, after three years of fighting against the Spaniards in the Netherlands, "within a short time, being glutted with too much company, wherein he took small delight, he retired himself into a little woody pasture a good way from any town, environed with many hundred acres of woods. Here, by a fair brook, he built a pavilion of boughs, where only in his clothes he lay. His study was Macchiavelli's 'Art of War' and Marcus Aurelius; his exercise a good horse, with

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lance and ring; his food was thought to be more of venison than anything else."

From such a people, with their instinct for good social usage, their passion for action, and their love of the manly virtues, came the charming gentlewomen and gentlemen of whom Mr. Thomas Nelson Page has drawn such admirable portraits, and the daring adventurers whose sword-play has been heard of late in the brilliant stories of Miss Mary Johnston.

The love of letters bore fruit early in the history of the colony, and the college of William and Mary is second only to Harvard in the long chronological list of American colleges. It was opened in 1693, but it was planned three-quarters of a century earlier. In 1622, while Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar were on the very point of establishing the college, the colony was devastated by an outbreak of Indian rage against the settlers, which almost obliterated the struggling communities. Seventy-one years later, in the old capital of the colony, which still keeps its old-time dignity and charm, the College of William and Mary began a career which has left its impress on the educational life of the entire South.

Among its graduates was Thomas Jefferson, a man of marvelously clear intelligence, of wide and varied interests, whose genius, not only for generalization in the region of political ideas, but for the discovery of new ways of doing old things and the working out of new methods in practical affairs, was so extraordinary that, more than any other man on this continent save Franklin, he seems to have thought his way consistently

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through life and to have applied his intelligence habitually to all its details. No one can note the devices for economy of time and strength introduced by Mr. Jefferson at Monticello and study the extraordinary minuteness with which he worked out, not only the organization of the university at Charlottesville and its plan of work, but the details of its architectural scheme, without gaining a fresh impression of the extraordinary genius of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Jefferson's attention was turned to the educational needs of Virginia at a very early time in his career; in a letter written in 1818, ten years after his retirement from the Presidency, he said: "A

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system of general instruction which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the highest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest." In early life he was eager to transform the College of William and Mary into a university. The geographical disadvantages of its sit uation became more apparent, however, as the center of population moved westward, and "a new college in a more central part of the State" became the project and dream of his maturer years. Five years of residence in Europe, beginning in 1784, afforded ample opportunities for the study of foreign universities. His interest in the Italian universities was early awakened; then he became convinced that Geneva was the best place for study on the Continent; Edinburgh also evoked his admiration, and he declared that the Swiss and Scotch cities were "the two eyes of Europe." In 1794 the French faculty of the University of Geneva, finding their political environment uncongenial, proposed to Mr. Jefferson to transfer their work to Virginia if proper arrangements could be made. The great Virginian, who was a provincial only by the accident of birth, but a true cosmopol itan by the very temper of his mind, caught at the hope of establishing a center of OldWorld culture in the New World, and urged the Legislature of Virginia to make proper provision for the establishment of the Genevan faculty on an adequate foundation in Virginia. The scheme was contemporary with Mr. Jefferson's large-minded view of human affairs, but it was many decades in advance of the average breadth of vision of any legislature in the New World; indeed, it is doubtful if any legislative body in this country or abroad is to-day on a level with the Jeffersonian conception of international relations along intellectual lines. Washington understood the situation much better; he doubted the expediency of importing a body of foreign scholars, and suggested, if such a step were taken, that they ought not to be taken from one country; he was of opinion that eminent Scotchmen should be included. It developed later that Mr. Jefferson craved the society of scholars and men of science, whom he found in such numbers in Europe, and was eager to command these

higher resources of civilization at home. There are some things, however, which cannot be imported; they must be developed at home; and Mr. Jefferson, though he did not realize his dream, did much to prepare the way for its realization.

The exact date of the birth in Mr. Jefferson's mind of the idea of a university for the State of Virginia is unknown; from early manhood he meditated upon the best method of securing popular education for all citizens of the State; he had, at different times, worked out different plans towards the accomplishment of this great end; when the War of the Revolution began in 1776, the university idea had taken definite shape; through the dark years which followed he never abandoned it; during his residence in Europe he diligently sought light on university methods; while he was absorbed by the work and perplexities of the Presidency, he never for a moment lost interest in the project, and it filled and crowned the period of his retirement from active political work. For forty years, through every medium of influence, he strove to awaken interest in education in Virginia; he wrote for the press; he conducted a voluminous correspondence; he laid the matter before hosts of people in personal interviews. In the end he created a widespread interest and prepared the way for legislative action.

The most difficult and trying part of the work was still to be done, and in this final stage Mr. Jefferson had the eager and effective aid of Mr. J seph C. Cabell, who deserves to be remembered as a cofounder of the university. Through manifold perplexities, in the face of apparently insurmountable difficulties arising from local jealousies, the opposition of other schools, the apathy in which such efforts are often suffocated, these two tireless servants of the higher education pushed their great enterprise to completion. By an act, passed by the Legislature in 1816, Albemarle Academy was enlarged in scope to become Central College, of which the Governor of the Commonwealth was to be the patron, with a board of visitors which included Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Joseph C. Cabell, and the corner-stone of the college was laid in the autumn of 1817. There was still another stage to be taken in the remarkable evolution of a university which

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