Professor Bonnycastle (Mathematics) had a large attendance, consisting of one hundred and nine, divided into five classes, beginning with the theory of Arithmetic, and concluding the course of Pure Mathematics with the Integral Calculus. There is, moreover, a class of Mixed Mathematics for such of the more advanced students as choose to pursue it, and another of Civil Engineering.
Professor Patterson undertakes the Natural Philosophy, having an attendance of seventy-three pupils. The apparatus provided for the use of this school is very extensive and complete; and an observatory, with the necessary astronomical instruments, is open to the students.
Professor Emmet, Chymistry and Materia Medica, eighty-nine pupils.
Professor Magill, Medicine, forty-one pupils.
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 classes; the examinations of the junior class 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 class 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 instituted a Law Society, at whose meetings the professor presides, and where the business of every branch of the profession is rehearsed.
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 title 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 Professorship. 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 institution 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 Professorship 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 institution. Jefferson was understood to be the author of the report, which contains the following passage:
"In conformity with the principles of our constitution, 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 God, 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 constitution, 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."