The History of University Education in Maryland / The Johns Hopkins University (1876-1891). With supplementary notes on university extension and the university of the future

by Bernard C. Steiner

It is obvious that in addition to the qualifications above mentioned, regard has always been paid to those personal characteristics which cannot be rigorously defined, but which cannot be overlooked if the ethical as well as the intellectual character of a professorial station is considered, and if the social relations of a teacher to his colleagues, his pupils, and their friends, are to be harmoniously maintained. The professor in a university teaches as much by his example as by his precepts.

Besides the resident professors, it has been the policy of the University to enlist from time to time the services of distinguished scholars as lecturers on those subjects to which their studies have been particularly directed. During the first few years the number of such lecturers was larger, and the duration of their visits was longer than it has been recently. When the faculty was small, the need of the occasional lecturer was more apparent for obvious reasons, than it has been in later days. Still the University continues to invite the cooperation of non-resident professors, and the proximity of Baltimore to Washington makes it particularly easy to engage learned gentlemen from the capital to give occasional lectures upon their favorite studies. Recently a lectureship of Poetry has been founded by Mr. and Mrs. Turnbull of Baltimore, in memory of a son who is no longer living, and an annual course may be expected from writers of distinction who are known either as poets, or as critics, or as historians of poetry. The first lecturer on this foundation will be Mr. E.C. Stedman, of New York, the second, Professor Jebb, of Cambridge (Eng.). Another lectureship has been instituted by Mr. Eugene Levering with the object of promoting the purposes of the Young Men's Christian Association. The first lecturer on this foundation was Rev. Dr. Broadus, of Louisville, Ky.

A few of those who held the position of lecturers made Baltimore their home for such prolonged periods that they could not properly be called non-resident. The following list contains the principal appointments. It might be much enlarged by naming those persons who have lectured at the request of one department of the University and not of the Trustees, and by naming some who gave but single lectures.

1876 SIMON NEWCOMB Astronomy.
1876 LÉONCE RABILLON French.
1877 JOHN S. BILLINGS Medical History, etc.
1877 FRANCIS J. CHILD English Literature,
1877 THOMAS M. COOLEY Law.1877 JULIUS E. HILGARD Geodetic Surveys.
1877 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Romance Literature.
1877 JOHN W. MALLET Technological Chemistry.
1877 FRANCIS A. WALKER Political Economy.
1877 WILLIAM D. WHITNEY Comparative Philology.
1878 WILLIAM F. ALLEN History.
1878 WILLIAM JAMES Psychology.
1878 GEORGE S. MORRIS History of Philosophy.
1879 J. LEWIS DIMAN History.1879 H. VON HOLST History.
1879 WILLIAM G. FARLOW Botany.
1879 J. WILLARD GIBBS Theoretical Mechanics.
1879 SIDNEY LANIER English Literature.
1879 CHARLES S. PEIRCE Logic.
1880 JOHN TROWBRIDGE Physics.
1881 A. GRAHAM BELL Phonology.
1881 S.P. LANGLEY Physics.
1881 JOHN McCRADY Biology.
1881 JAMES BRYCE Political Science.
1881 EDWARD A. FREEMAN History.
1881 JOHN J. KNOX Banking.
1882 ARTHUR CAYLEY Mathematics.
1882 WILLIAM W. GOODWIN Plato.
1882 G. STANLEY HALL Psychology.
1882 RICHARD M. VENABLE Constitutional Law.
1882 JAMES A. HARRISON Anglo-Saxon.
1882 J. RENDEL HARRIS New Testament Greek.
1883 GEORGE W. CABLE English Literature.
1883 WILLIAM W. STORY Michel Angela.
1883 HIRAM CORSON English Literature.
1883 F. SEYMOUR HADEN Etchers and Etching.
1883 JOHN S. BILLINGS Municipal Hygiene.
1883 JAMES BRYCE Roman Law.
1883 H. VON HOLST Political Science.
1884 WILLIAM TRELEASE Botany.
1884 J. THACHER CLARKE Explorations in Assos.
1884 JOSIAH ROYCE Philosophy.
1884 WILLIAM J. STILLMAN Archaeology.
1884 CHARLES WALDSTEIN Archaeology.
1884 SIR WILLIAM THOMSON Molecular Dynamics.
1885 A. MELVILLE BELL Phonetics, etc.
1885 EDMUND GOSSE English Literature.
1885 EUGENE SCHUYLER U.S. Diplomacy.
1885 JUSTIN WINSOR Shakespeare.
1885 FREDERICK WEDMORE Modern Art.
1886 ISAAC H. HALL New Testament.
1886 WILLIAM HAYES WARD Assyria.
1886 WILLIAM LIBBEY, JR Alaska.
1886 ALFRED R. WALLACE Island Life.
1886 MANDELL CREIGHTON Rise of European Universities.
1887 ARTHUR L. FROTHINGHAM, JR Babylonian and Assyrian Art.
1887 RODOLFO LANCIANI Roman Archaeology.
1888 ANDREW D. WHITE The French Revolution.
1890 JOHN A. BROADUS Origin of Christianity.

The number of associates, readers, and assistants has been very large, most such appointments having been made for brief periods among young men of promise looking forward to preferment in this institution or elsewhere.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN COLLEGIATE AND UNIVERSITY COURSES.

From the opening of the University until now a sharp distinction has been made between the methods of university instruction and those of collegiate instruction. In the third annual report, September 1, 1878, the views which had been announced at the opening of the University are expanded and are illustrated by the action of the Trustees and the Faculty during the first two years.

The terms university and college have been so frequently interchanged in this country that their significance is liable to be confounded; and it may be worth while, once more at least, to call attention to the distinction which is recognized among us. By the college is understood a place for the orderly training of youth in those elements of learning which should underlie all liberal and professional culture. The ordinary conclusion of a college course is the Bachelor's degree. Usually, but not necessarily, the college provides for the ecclesiastical and religious as well as the intellectual training of its scholars. Its scheme admits but little choice. Frequent daily drill in languages, mathematics, and science, with compulsory attendance and frequent formal examinations, is the discipline to which each student is submitted. This work is simple, methodical, and comparatively inexpensive. It is understood and appreciated in every part of this country.

In the university more advanced and special instruction is given to those who have already received a college training or its equivalent, and who now desire to concentrate their attention upon special departments of learning and research. Libraries, laboratories, and apparatus require to be liberally provided and maintained. The holders of professorial chairs must be expected and encouraged to advance by positive researches the sciences to which they are devoted; and arrangements must be made in some way to publish and bring before the criticism of the world the results of such investigations. Primarily, instruction is the duty of the professor in a university as it is in a college; but university students should be so mature and so well trained as to exact from their teachers the most advanced instruction, and even to quicken and inspire by their appreciative responses the new investigations which their professors undertake. Such work is costly and complex; it varies with time, place, and teacher; it is always somewhat remote from popular sympathy, and liable to be depreciated by the ignorant and thoughtless. But it is by the influence of universities, with their comprehensive libraries, their costly instruments, their stimulating associations and helpful criticisms, and especially their great professors, indifferent to popular applause, superior to authoritative dicta, devoted to the discovery and revelation of truth, that knowledge has been promoted, and society released from the fetters of superstition and the trammels of ignorance, ever since the revival of letters.

In further exposition of these views, from men of different pursuits, reference should be made to an article on Classics and Colleges, by Professor Gildersleeve (Princeton Review, July, 1878), lately reprinted in the author's "Essays and Studies," (Baltimore, 1890); to an address by Professor Sylvester before the University on "Mathematical Studies and University Life," (February 22, 1877); to an address by Professor Martin on the study of Biology (Popular Science Monthly, January, 1877); to some remarks on the study of Chemistry by Professor Remsen (Popular Science Monthly, April, 1877); and to an address entitled "A Plea for Pure Science" (Salem, 1883), by Professor Rowland, as a Vice-President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Although of a much later date, reference should also be made to an address by Professor Adams (February 22, 1889) on the work of the Johns Hopkins University, printed in the Johns Hopkins University Circulars, No. 71. An address by Dr. James Carey Thomas, one of the Trustees, at the tenth anniversary, in 1886, may also be consulted (Ibid. No. 50). Reference may also be made to the fifteen annual reports of the University and to the articles below named, by the writer of this sketch. The Group System of College Courses in the Johns Hopkins University (Andover Review, June, 1886); The Benefits which Society derives from Universities: Annual Address on Commemoration Day, 1885 (Johns Hopkins University Circulars, No. 37); article on Universities in Lalor's Cyclopaedia of Political Science; an address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, July 1, 1886; an address at the opening of Bryn Mawr College, 1885.