There are no daily public prayers at this institution, 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 worship is purely voluntary; and, as might be expected as a consequence, it is regular and complete.
This institution 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 assuredly 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 anticipation." 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 institution under your care, and an assurance that it will not be wanting."
The following passage 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, Coke-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 constitution, 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 fashion, 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 institution are to the leader who, in order to uphold slavery, would, to judge him by himself, establish a Lacedæmonian 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 class. 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-worship, 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 passed 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 class 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 quantity 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.