Volume I Part 13 (1/2)

Professor Warner, Anatomy and Surgery, forty-four pupils. An extensive museum is attached to the Medical Department, and the anatomical school is regularly supplied with subjects, from which the lectures are delivered. The advantage claimed for this, above all other medical schools in the country, is that its session lasts ten months instead of four.

Professor Tucker, Moral Philosophy, sixty-seven pupils, who are divided into two cla.s.ses; the examinations of the junior cla.s.s being in Rhetoric, Belles Lettres, Logic, and Ethics, from the professor's lectures, Blair's and Campbell's Rhetoric, and Stewart's ”Active and Moral Powers.” The senior cla.s.s studies Mental Philosophy and Political Economy; and the examinations are from the professor's lectures, Brown's Lectures, Say's and Adam Smith's Political Economy.

Professor Davis, Law, forty-eight pupils. The students of this school have inst.i.tuted a Law Society, at whose meetings the professor presides, and where the business of every branch of the profession is rehea.r.s.ed.

Three honorary distinctions are conferred in this University; a certificate of proficiency, conferred by the faculty on any proficient in a particular branch of study; that of graduate in any school, for proficiency in the general studies of any school; and the third, of Master of Arts of the University of Virginia, is obtained by graduation in the schools of Ancient and Modern Languages, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chymistry, and Moral Philosophy. All these are obtained when deserved, and not in consequence of any prescribed term of study having been gone through. The t.i.tle of Doctor of Medicine is conferred on the graduate in the Medical Department. The certificates and diplomas are delivered in the presence of all the members of the University and of the public on the last day of the session, in the Rotunda, amid many observances and rites.

It will be observed that there is no Theological Professors.h.i.+p. It was noticed by the religious North at the time of the foundation of the University, that this was probably the first instance in the world of such an establishment exhibiting this kind of deficiency, and the experiment was denounced as a very hazardous one. The result seems to have been, that while theological instruction has been obtainable elsewhere, a greater number and variety of young men, of different religious persuasions, have been educated at this inst.i.tution than would have been likely to resort to it if it had, by the choice of a theological professor, identified itself with any single denomination.

The reasons for the omission of a Professors.h.i.+p of Divinity are stated in the first Report of the Commissioners who met in August, 1818, at Rockfish Gap, on the Blue Ridge, for the purpose of organizing the plans of this inst.i.tution. Jefferson was understood to be the author of the report, which contains the following pa.s.sage:

”In conformity with the principles of our const.i.tution, which places all sects of religion on an equal footing; with the jealousy of the different sects, in guarding that equality from encroachment and surprise; and with the sentiments of the legislature, in favour of freedom of religion, manifested on former occasions, we have proposed no Professor of Divinity; and the rather, as the proofs of the being of a G.o.d, the Creator, Preserver, and Supreme Ruler of the universe, the Author of all the relations of morality, and of the laws and obligations these infer, will be within the province of the Professor of Ethics; to which, adding the developments of those moral obligations, of those in which all sects agree, with a knowledge of the languages of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, a basis will be formed common to all sects. Proceeding thus far without offence to the const.i.tution, we have thought it proper at this point to leave every sect to provide, as they think fittest, the means of further instruction in their own peculiar tenets.”

There are no daily public prayers at this inst.i.tution, but there are regular services on Sundays, administered by clergymen of the four denominations, in turns of a year each. These clergymen officiate on the invitation of the professors, officers, and students. The attendance upon public wors.h.i.+p is purely voluntary; and, as might be expected as a consequence, it is regular and complete.

This inst.i.tution may well be called Jefferson's University. The first conception was his; the whole impulse and direction; the scheme of its studies, and the organization of its government. His letters to his intimate friends during the last five years of his life breathe a rational ardour about this enterprise which is very animating to those connected with the university, and which affords a fine stimulus to the students, who are daily reminded of what they owe to him, and what were his expectations from them. ”I fear not to say,” he writes, ”that within twelve or fifteen years from this time (1825), a majority of the rulers of our state will have been educated here. They shall carry hence the correct principles of our day; and you may count a.s.suredly that they will exhibit their country in a degree of sound respectability it has never known, either in our days or those of our forefathers. I cannot live to see it. My joy must only be that of antic.i.p.ation.” In his last letter to Madison, a few months later, he says, ”And if I remove beyond the reach of attentions to the university, or beyond the bourne of life itself, as I soon must, it is a comfort to leave that inst.i.tution under your care, and an a.s.surance that it will not be wanting.”

The following pa.s.sage in the same letter renders strangers curious to learn the politics of the university. ”In the selection of our Law Professor, we must be rigorously attentive to his political principles.

You will recollect that, before the Revolution, c.o.ke-Littleton was the universal elementary book of law students; and a sounder whig never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the British const.i.tution, or in what were called English liberties. You remember, also, that our lawyers were then all whigs. But when his black-letter text, and uncouth but cunning learning got out of fas.h.i.+on, and the honeyed Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the student's hornbook, from that moment that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers are now of that hue. They suppose themselves, indeed, to be whigs, because they no longer know what whigism or republicanism means. It is in our seminary that that vestal flame is to be kept alive; it is thence to spread anew over our own and the sister states.” On inquiry I found that, out of the 206 students, seven held the principles of the democratic party. There seemed to be little or none of the federalism of the North, but a strong attachment to Calhoun on the part of the majority in the establishment. The evil influences of slavery have entered in to taint the work of the great champion of freedom. The political attachments of this once democratic inst.i.tution are to the leader who, in order to uphold slavery, would, to judge him by himself, establish a Lacedaemonian government throughout the South; making every white man a soldier, in order to preserve a false idea of honour, and to obviate danger from the oppressed servile cla.s.s. To observing eyes it appears plain that the hour is approaching when these young men must, like all other American men, choose their part, and enter decisively into struggle to maintain or overthrow the first principles of freedom.

It will then be seen whether ”the vestal flame” has been kept alive, or whether the name of him who cherished it has been honoured with mere lip-wors.h.i.+p, while the labours of his latter years have been despised and undone. The eyes of the world will be fixed on Jefferson's University during the impending conflict between slaveholders and freemen.

To return to our Sunday afternoon. It was known that we should soon arrive at the University with our letters of introduction, and a truly hospitable welcome was prepared for us. We called first at Professor Patterson's, where we found ourselves, in half an hour, as much at home as if we had been acquainted for months. We were obliged to decline taking up our abode there at once, but promised to return the next morning, and remain for as long a time as we could spare. Professor Tucker, long known in England, and at present more extensively so through his very acceptable Life of Jefferson, was recovering from an illness which confined him to his room, and sent to ask me to visit him there. I was glad that he was well enough to see me, and that I had thus the benefit of a good deal of his lively, sensible, and earnest conversation.

A great disappointment awaited our rising on the Monday morning. On the Sunday afternoon the sun had been so hot that we threw off our shawls.

The next morning we looked out upon a snowstorm. There was, from the beginning, no hope of our getting to Monticello. Jefferson's house upon the mountain was actually in sight, and there was no possibility of our reaching it, and we were obliged to satisfy ourselves with the traces we found of him about the University. Professor Patterson's carriage came for us early, and we pa.s.sed a morning of the liveliest gossip with the ladies and children of the family, while the professors were engaged in their duties. The frankness of the whole society was particularly winning, and so was the cordiality among themselves; a degree of mutual good understanding which is seldom found in the small society of a college, village-like in its seclusion and leisure, with added temptations to jealousy and censoriousness. The ladies of Professor Patterson's family gave me a spirited and amiable description of their arrival as strangers at the University, and of the zeal and kind consideration with which they were welcomed and aided on every hand. Two facts struck me in the course of our feminine talk on the subject of housekeeping; that chickens are there to be had for a dollar a dozen, plump fowls ready for the fire; and that Mrs. Patterson's coachman, a slave, could read. These ladies, seeing apparently only domestic slaves kindly treated like their own, spoke lightly on the great subject, asking me if I did not think the slaves were happy; but their husbands used a very different tone, observing, with gloom, that it was a dark question every way.

Four of the professors and two or three students, fine, well-mannered young men, joined us at dinner, and many ladies and others of the professors in the evening. I was amused and gratified by the interest shown in the living authors of England, especially the ladies. Every particular that I could tell about Mrs. Somerville and Mrs. Marcet was eagerly listened to. The Herschel family, Mr. Malthus, and many more, were fully and affectionately discussed. The great treat of the evening to me was a long conversation with Professor Hamilton on the German language and literature, and on the mutual criticism of the Germans and the English. He offered a comparison of the genius of the Greek and German languages, which, for want of sufficient learning, I do not pretend to appreciate, but which impressed me strongly with admiration of his powers of conversation.

One of the ladies took an opportunity of asking me privately to request leave to attend a lecture with the Natural Philosophy cla.s.s in the morning. Ladies are excluded by rule; but she thought that the rule might for once be infringed without injury in the case of foreign ladies. The professor kindly made no difficulty, and my prompter highly enjoyed her single opportunity.

We breakfasted before eight, and went immediately to survey the large building, the Rotunda. First we saw the library, a well-chosen collection of books, the list of which was made out by Jefferson. The students read in the Rotunda, and take out books by order. In the gallery above the books, the mineralogical collection, belonging to Professor Patterson, is arranged, and open to observation. Higher up still is a whispering gallery. The lecture to which we were admitted was on Heat. It was clear, fluent, and entertaining. The young men appeared to be good listeners; some wrote down almost all they heard, and many asked questions of the professor at the conclusion of the lecture.

Mr. Tucker begged us to go to his chamber to luncheon, as he was still unable to venture out of it. We had a delightful hour there. The sick gentleman's room was crowded with guests, all busy with question and remark, our time being short, and the quant.i.ty we had to say, like old friends in a brief meeting, being inexhaustible. A serious request was made to us that we would stay a month, giving up a portion of our southern journey in exchange for the good offices of the University. We could not possibly do this; but there can be no doubt of what our enjoyment would have been during a whole month of intimate intercourse with such stirring people as this graceful, kindly little society is composed of. Having said all that so many tongues could, in an hour's time, about the Theory of Rent, Colonel Thompson, and Mr. Malthus; the value of public censure and eulogy; Mrs. Somerville again, Philadelphia ale, American politics, and a hundred other things, we were obliged to go. Keepsakes of the ladies' work were put into our hands, and packets of sandwiches into the carriage; and a party escorted us to our inn, bad as the weather was. Letters of introduction were hastily prepared and sent after us, and during our whole visit nothing was omitted which could concern our comfort or enhance our pleasure. As I cast my last look from the window of the stage towards the University, it was with less regret than pleasurable astonishment at my own experience of the speed with which it is possible for foreign minds to communicate, and lasting regard to be established.

COUNTRY LIFE IN THE SOUTH.

”For Nature here Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will Her virgin fancies.”

MILTON.

”These views of the degradation of the Southern States receive a melancholy and impressive confirmation from the general aspect and condition of the country, viewed in contrast with its former prosperity. With natural advantages more bountiful than were ever dispensed by a kind Providence to any other people upon the surface of the globe, there is, from the mountains to the seacoast, one unbroken scene of cheerless stagnation and premature decay.”--_Southern Review_, vol. ii., p. 513.

There was no end to the kind cautions given me against travelling through the Southern States, not only on account of my opinions on slavery, but because of the badness of the roads and the poverty of the wayside accommodations. There was so much of this, that my companion and I held a consultation one day, in our room at Was.h.i.+ngton, spreading out the map, and surveying the vast extent of country we proposed to traverse before meeting my relatives at New-Orleans. We found that neither was afraid, and afterward that there was no cause for fear, except to persons who are annoyed by irregularity and the absence of comfort. The evil prognostications went on multiplying as we advanced; but we learned to consider them as mere voices on the mountain of our enterprise, which must not deter us from accomplis.h.i.+ng it. We had friends to visit at Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; and Mobile. At Richmond we were cautioned about the journey into South Carolina; at Charleston we were met with dreadful reports of travelling in Georgia; in Georgia people spoke of the horrors of Alabama, and so on; and, after all, nothing could well be easier than the whole undertaking. I do not remember a single difficulty that occurred all the way. There was much fatigue, of course. In going down from Richmond to Charleston with a party of friends, we were nine days on the road, and had only three nights' rest. Throughout the journey we were obliged to accommodate ourselves to the stage hours, setting off sometimes in the evening, sometimes at midnight; or, of all uncomfortable seasons, at two or three in the morning. On a journey of many days, we had to inform ourselves of the longest time that the stage would stop at a supping or breakfasting place, so that we might manage to s.n.a.t.c.h an hour's sleep. While the meal was preparing, it was my wont to lie down and doze, in spite of hunger; if I could find a bed or sofa, it was well; if not, I could wrap myself in my cloak, and make a pillow on the floor of my carpet-bag. I found that a sleep somewhat longer than this, when I could go to bed for two hours, was more fatiguing than refres.h.i.+ng. The being waked up at two, when I had lain down at midnight, was the greatest discomfort I experienced. But little sleep can be obtained in the stage from the badness of the roads. It was only when quite wearied out that I could forget myself for an hour or two amid the joltings and rollings of the vehicle. In Alabama, some of the pa.s.sengers in the stage were Southern gentlemen coming from New-York, in comparison with whose fatigues ours were nothing. I think they had then travelled eleven days and nights with very short intervals of rest, and the badness of the roads at the end of a severe winter had obliged them to walk a good deal. They looked dreadfully haggard and nervous, and we heard afterward that one of them had become incessantly convulsed in the face after we had left them. It is not necessary, of course, to proceed without stopping in such a way as this; but it is necessary to be patient of fatigue to travel in the South at all.

Yet I was very fond of these long journeys. The traveller (if he be not an abolitionist) is perfectly secure of good treatment, and fatigue and indifferent fare are the only evils which need be antic.i.p.ated. The toils of society in the cities were so great to me that I generally felt my spirits rise when our packing began; and, the sorrow of parting with kind hosts once over, the prospect of a journey of many days was a very cheerful one. The novelty and the beauty of the scenery seemed inexhaustible; and the delightful American stages, open or closed all round at the will of the traveller, allow of everything being seen.

The American can conceive of nothing more dismal than a pine-barren on a rainy day; but the profound tranquillity made it beautiful to me, whose rainy days have been almost all spent in cities, amid the rumbling of hackney-coaches, the clink of pattens, the gurgle of spouts, and the flitting by of umbrellas. It is very different in the pine-barrens. The sandy soil absorbs the rain, so that there is no mud; the pines stand meekly drooping, as if waiting to be fed; the drip is noiseless; and the brooks and pools are seen bubbling clear, or quietly filling, while not a wing cleaves the air, each bird nestling in the covert of its domestic tree. When the rain ceases towards evening, the whole region undergoes a change. If a parting ray from the west pierces the woods, the stems look lilach in the moist light; the vines glitter before they shake off their last drops; the redbird startles the eye; the b.u.t.terflies come abroad in clouds; the frogs grow noisy, and all nature wakens up fresh as from her siesta. The planter may be seen on his pacing white horse in a glade of the wood, or superintending the negroes who are repairing the fence of his estate. One black holds the large dibble, with which the holes for the stakes are made; others are warming their hands at the fire which blazes on the ground; many hands to do slovenly work. While any light is left, the driver is apt to shorten his road by cutting across a knoll instead of winding round it; and then the wheels are noiseless on the turf; the branches crash as the vehicle is forced between the trees; and the wood-pigeons, frightened from their roost, flutter abroad.

When the sun has gone down all is still within the stage; the pa.s.sengers grow drowsy unless hunger keeps them awake. Each one nods upon his neighbour's shoulder, till a red light, gradually illuminating all the faces, and every moment growing brighter, rouses the dullest. Each tells somebody else that we are coming to a fire in the woods. First there are lines of little yellow flames on each side the path; the blazing up of twigs too dry to have been made incombustible by the morning's rain.

Then there is a pond of red fire on either hand, and pillars of light rising from it; tall burning stems, throwing out jets of flame on all sides, or emitting a flood of sparks when touched by the night breeze.