conservatism; but we need constantly to remind ourselves that conservatism is the mother of progress, and that all true radicalism is a great conservator; that progress in the future grows naturally and normally out of the past; and that a root which has in it no growth and a branch which has lost its vital connection with the root are equally in the way that certainly leads to death. The function of a great university is to learn from the past the lessons which experience teaches, and teach them to new generations; it is to discern beneath the ever-varying phenomena of life the eternal reality of which they are the manifestation. It is, therefore, at once scientific and religious scientific because it ascertains and interprets the laws which phenomena reveal; religious because these laws are themselves expressions of God, and a comprehension of them is a comprehension of him, and his presence and authority in the world. Thus the evolution of great universities is itself the evolution of the community in which they live and which they influence. The university which is true to itself is at once an inspirer of progress and a conservator of truth, a leader toward a better future, but a cautious and wise leader, never forgetting the lessons of the past. In the university shines that light of experience which Patrick Henry so eloquently characterized as the only true light upon the pathway of a safe progress.

Thus the great university is the especial need of a democratic country and a democratic age. For the peril of democracy lies in its passions and its self-conceit. Great bodies do not always move slowly; on the contrary, great masses of men, acting collectively, are very apt to be governed by their prejudices, to be impatient of the delay necessary for deliberation, to take impulse rather than reflection as their guide, and to be led rather by the impassioned and imaginative orator than by the cautious and sober-minded statesman. And this tendency to undeliberate and impulsive action is intensified by the spirit of self-conceit which democratic institutions tend to foster in the unthinking. That all power is vested in the people, that their will is supreme, that they can do whatever they will, is constantly told them by press and from platform. Under such teaching there is a tendency to imagine that majorities are both infallible and omnipotent. Said Professor Felix Adler in his sermon last Sunday morning: "We cry to the other civilized nations, Watch! Copy! Follow us. We have nothing to get from you, but you must come and learn from us. Alienists call this the delusion of grandeur.' Democracies are always susceptible to this "delusion of grandeur," and our remarkable growth since the formation of the Union has intensified this dangerous susceptibility in America. The remedy is that at which Professor Adler has also hinted. We must learn that " our assertions are not borne out by the facts. We have drawn on the old nations for all the best they have and the best we have. Our culture, our art, our literature, is determined by them."

This double service the university renders to the community it restrains the passions and it mitigates the selfconceit of democracy. It sends out every year into the community men prepared, by their education, their social position, and in many cases by the very nature of their profession, to be leaders of the people-men who have thoroughly learned that every question has two sides, that unregulated impulse is a dangerous guide, that all experiments are hazardous and the greater the nation the greater the hazard, and that no progress is possible which is not preceded by deliberation and counseled by caution; men, too, who know that to older nations we owe all the best we have, that the lessons of their experi

ments cannot be safely disregarded, that the people are neither infallible nor omnipotent, that their suffrages cannot change the operations of God's laws, which are inexorable, eternal, and immutable. This effect he who has been observant of university life has often seen produced on individual students, who have entered the university, as the phrase is, "very fresh," and who graduate, after four years of university influence, with the enthusiasms of their youth unabated, but moderated, controlled, and directed by the lessons of historic experience.

The growth of universities and colleges in the United States is, therefore, one of the encouraging signs in our National life. The growth of Princeton from a body of students 268 in number in 1868 to 1,100 in 1896 is a typical fact. Analogous growth would be disclosed by a similar history of the other great universities of our land. But this growth in number of students is the least important fact. The standards of education have been improved, the methods advanced, and the equipment enriched in equal or greater proportions. That we have in the United States to-day upwards of 66,000 students who are pursuing the highest education, the great majority of them under competent instructors, and with measurably adequate facilities in books and apparatus, who are going out to be the teachers, preachers, jurists, and let us hope editors and political leaders, of the Nation, is a fact full of hopeful augury for the future.

We need not add here any eulogy of our own to the eloquent and well-deserved panegyric which Dr. van Dyke has written with a self-restraint more eloquent than any abandon could be. The history of Princeton is—with differences of detail the history of every university of equal or nearly equal age, and will be in time the history of every more recently endowed university. The glory of Princeton is one which every college graduate, nay! every patriotic American, shares; for it is a part of the glory of the Nation, to whose highest and noblest life Princeton has so richly ministered.

Why Not?

To the Editors of The Outlook:

I wish to make a suggestion which possibly has come to you from many directions. Can we not add force to the movement in America and England respecting the Armenians, by asking the leaders of religious thought to appoint a day for this subject? Here is our Thanksgiving, close at hand; soon, too, our Christmas. How dreadful it is for us to sit in peace, and let this destruction go on unheeded! On some Sabbath before Christmas, the sooner the better, there ought to be a sermon preached upon the Armenian question in every church in the land-in every church in Christendom.

Now, it seems to me that The Outlook could take this up, and that such men as Dr. Hale, Washington Gladden, Dr. Parkhurst, Albert Shaw, and fifty other people whom you can reach, could help to begin this thing properly, and give it the preliminary organization. If such a thing can be started, let me know what I can do to help in California. The old-fashioned " day of fasting and prayer" would seem to fit the case, but there ought also to be a good deal of fighting spirit infused into the movement. It is time that the Turk was hurttime for another crusade, on a much better basis and with more reason than in the Middle Ages.

day of '94, and heard the story from the lips of a brakeman who helped to rescue the survivors. How the people of this lumber town succeed in making a living now that the forests are destroyed, and what is the present raison d'être of Hinckley, are mysteries which the Spectator cannot perfectly comprehend, but the fact of recuperation seems evident.

The "handsomest street in the country" is to be found in almost every thriving city; but, local pride aside, the Spectator would have little difficulty in giving his decision in the competition. It would be the last one of these streets that he has seen. Is this a trifle ambiguous? It were better to remain so. But no one can fail to place Summit Avenue, St. Paul, near the head of the list of beautiful residence streets. It has charming cottages and stately mansions

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so have other streets; it has broad sidewalks, smooth lawns, and fine trees-and so has many another aristocratic thoroughfare; it has a repose and a quiet dignity that belie its years-and wealth and exclusiveness have given these qualities to other residence quarters. But few streets have the natural advantages of situation that characterize Summit Avenue. It is within and yet seemingly without a great city; placed so high above the city that it seems to be apart from while yet of it; overlooks the busy marts of trade, and beyond them gives the tired eye and brain restful visions of river, woods, and fields; furnishes that delightful combination of city life and country scenery, of man's art and of nature's bounty, that seems to form the ideal outward setting for human happiness. There may be lovelier streets than this of St. Paul, but the Spectator doesn't wish to see them just yet. He will be satisfied for a while to have his memory of Summit Avenue undisturbed.

RINCETON is one of the three great historic American colleges which have done so much to mold the character and direct the development of this Nation. A century younger than Harvard, and nearly half a century younger than Yale, Princeton yet dates back, like them, to the formative period of American history. The celebration of its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary is an event of national importance, and, we may justly claim, of international interest. The record of its prosperity and growth is the record of an incorporated idea faithfully and beneficently applied to the conditions of American life.

The College of New Jersey was founded in 1746 to meet a condition and to embody a principle. The condition. was the urgent need of more preachers of the Gospel in. this new land-a need caused by that religious movement called the "Great Awakening," among whose leaders were George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, the Tennents, and other "New Light" divines. The principle was that the best way to meet this need, and to serve both Church and State, was to provide more freely for the liberal education of young men on a foundation definitely Christian and as distinctly non-sectarian.

Princeton is not now and has never been a denominational institution in any exclusive sense. It is true that the bulk of the money to support it has come from Presbyterian sources; but that is because the Presbyterian Church has always believed most strongly in liberal education. It is true, also, that Princeton in its turn has rendered a very large service to Presbyterianism in training men for the ministry; but this is no more than a fair return for the support which has been received. All the loyal sons of Princeton hope that this mutual relation of generous support and fruitful service between a great church and a great college will always be continued. But Princeton is so far from being a sectarian school that it is the first academic institution in America in whose charter the principle of religious liberty was distinctly embodied. The charter especially provides "that no person be deprived. of any of the privileges of the said college on account of any speculative principles of religion; but those of every religious profession shall have equal privilege and advantage of education in said college." The first board of trustees of the College contained representatives of the Episcopal Church and of the Society of Friends. Among the graduates of Princeton there have been distinguished ministers of almost all religious denominations. The names of Bishops Hobart, Meade, McIlvaine, and Johns among the Episcopalians, and Doctors Manning and Smith among the Baptists, will indicate the quality of the contributions which Princeton has made to other churches than that from which she drew her chief support.

The College was at first established in the house of its earliest President, the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson, of Elizabethtown, N. J. It was then removed to Newark under the presidency of the Rev. Aaron Burr, the noble father of a notorious son. It was under his administration that the College was finally fixed at Princeton, in the year 1756.

Largely through the warm interest and liberal patronage of Governor Jonathan Belcher, of the Province of New Jersey, Nassau Hall, its first college building, and one of the finest and most substantial structures of the kind in the American colonies, was erected. Under the first five Presidents, Dickinson, Burr, Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Davies, and Samuel Finley, the energies of Princeton were chiefly directed to supplying the need which called it into existence. The average size of the graduating class for the first twenty years was fifteen; and one-half of each class entered the Christian ministry. But in 1768 a new President, the Rev. John Witherspoon, was called from Scotland; and new conditions gave a new direction to Princeton's energies, and a new application to the formative principle of its life. The great struggle for liberty and national independence came upon the American colonies, and Princeton became in a peculiar sense a nursery of patriotism and a fountain-head of republican ideas. Witherspoon, although (or perhaps we might say because) he was born in Scotland, was peculiarly fitted to give clear and powerful and philosophic expression to such ideas. He was an ardent patriot, a wise councilor as well as "a

high son of liberty," and the only clergyman and college professor among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Under his administration of twenty-five and a half years, extending from 1768 to 1794, 489 students graduated.

Of

these 120 entered the ministry; among the remaining 369 graduates we find the names of 1 President of the United States, 1 Vice-President, 3 Judges of the United States Supreme Court, 1 Secretary of State, 1 Postmaster-General, 3 Attorney-Generals, 2 foreign ministers, 12 members of the Continental Congress, 24 members of the House of Representatives, 13 Governors of separate States, 20 officers in the Army of the Revolution, and at least 43 who took arms in defense of the liberties of their country. In the Convention which framed the American Constitution there were 55 members; 32 of these were college men. London, Oxford, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen contributed 1 each; 5 came from William and Mary, 1 from the University of Pennsylvania, 2 from Columbia, 3 from Harvard, 4 from Yale, and 9-the larg est number of all-from Princeton. The two plans which

were presented to the Convention were both the work of Princeton graduates. The large State plan was prepared by James Madison; the small State plan was the work of William Paterson; and the compromise which was finally adopted was suggested and supported by Oliver Ellsworth and William R. Davie, who were both Princetonians. In view of these facts, it is not too much to claim that the

and identified himself in citizenship and all other interests with his new home. He was a commanding personality, a man of mark, ardent in spirit, generous in heart, profound in intellect, clear and simple and strong in Christian faith. He came to Princeton with a firm resolve and a distinct policy. The College must be kept true to its ancient traditions as a Christian institution of sound learning and

influence of Princeton in the formation of the United States was greater than that of any other college.

The record of Princeton during the middle period of its history, under the administrations of Presidents Samuel Stanhope Smith, Ashbel Green, James Carnahan, and John Maclean, is one of slow and steady growth and unfaltering devotion to the cause of liberal, Christian education.

Two points are deserving of particular mentionthe influence of Princeton as a mother of other colleges; and its attitude towards science as a necessary part of academic training. Of thirty-two colleges which were established in this country between the years 1746 and 1810, the founders or the principal supporters of seventeen were alumni of the College of New Jersey. Brown, Union, Hamilton, Washington, Hampden Sidney, Cumberland, and many other institutions of learning, drew their life and their principles from Princeton. Princeton was also the first of the American colleges to recognize the full importance of natural science, and to introduce the study of chemistry as a distinct branch of academic study. Dr. John Maclean was called from Scotland in 1795, as Professor of Chemistry; and his successors, Henry Vethake and Professor John Torrey, kept up the high standard of work which Dr. Maclean had begun. In later years the course of scientific instruction at Princeton was greatly enriched and enlarged. The John C. Green School of Science was founded in 1872: At least three Princeton professors have won an international fame as scientists-Joseph Henry, in Electricity; Arnold Guyot, in Physical Geography; and Charles A. Young, in Astronomy.

The history of modern Princeton begins in 1868. Just one hundred years after the arrival of President Witherspoon, a second Scotchman and an equally great one, James McCosh, was called to the presidency of the College. He also was an American "born out of his native country." He threw himself as promptly and as thoroughly as his great predecessor had done into the conditions of American life,

patriotic culture. At the same time it must be developed and enlarged to meet the new conditions of American life, and to become, as rapidly as possible, a modern university, with the fullest equipment for education in philosophy, science, and the liberal arts.

President McCosh was himself a philosopher, and his influence impressed upon Princeton the stamp of a distinctly philosophic spirit in regard to all the problems of scholarship and education. He was one of the first of orthodox divines to recognize, and to say publicly, that the theory of evolution was not necessarily hostile to religion. He held that the spiritual philosophy could only prove its right to exist by dealing frankly and fairly with all facts actually discovered by science. He was a firm believer in the liberty of scholarship. He taught his pupils to weigh conclusions rather than to take sides. The practical effect of his teaching and of his example was to lead men into an attitude of profound reverence toward truth and unshaken confidence in the verities of the Christian religion.

He introduced wide and fruitful changes into the college curriculum, but he introduced them in a conservative rather than in a radical spirit. The first two years of the academic course were still to be devoted almost entirely to required studies arranged very largely upon the old basis of the classics, mathematics, natural science, and philosophy. But with the third year of the course elective studies were introduced and given an increasing prominence and

VIEW OF FRONT CAMPUS

a wider range. The teaching force of the College was rapidly enlarged. New branches of study were introduced with almost every year; post-graduate courses and special schools were established; and the College moved forward swiftly toward a university basis. The increase in the number of students and in the influence of the College was remarkable, and has continued without intermission to the present time. At Dr. McCosh's accession the number of students was 268; at the present time Dr. Francis L.