In her special and selected studies, Michigan is as merely practical as Swift‘s University of Brobdingnag; but, standing far above the ordinary arts or science courses, there is a “University course” designed for those who have already taken the Bachelor‘s degree. It is harder to say what this course includes than what it does not. The twenty heads range over philology, philosophy, art, and science; there is a branch of “criticism,” one of “arts of design,” one of “fine arts.” Astronomy, ethics, and Oriental languages are all embraced in a scheme brought into working order within ten years of the time when Michigan was a wilderness, and the college-yard an Indian hunting-ground.
Michigan entered upon education work very early in her history as a State. In 1850, her legislature commissioned the Hon. Ira Mayhew to prepare a work on education for circulation throughout America. Her progress has been as rapid as her start was good; her natural history collection is already one of the most remarkable in America; her medical school is almost unequaled, and students flow to her even from New England and from California, while from New York she draws a hundred men a year. In only one point is Ann Arbor anywhere but in the van: she has hitherto followed the New England colleges in excluding women. The State University of Kansas has not shown the same exclusiveness that has characterized the conduct of the rulers of Michigan: women are admitted not only to the classes, but to the professorships at Lawrence.
This Northwestern institution at Ann Arbor was not behind even Harvard in the war: it supplied the Union army with 1000 men. The 17th Regiment of Michigan Volunteers, mainly composed of teachers and Ann Arbor students, has no cause to fear the rivalry of any other “record;” and such was the effect of the war, that in 1860 there were in Michigan 2600 male to 5350 female teachers, whereas now there are but 1300 men to 7500 women.
So proud are Michigan men of their roll of honor, that they publish it at full length in the calendar of the university. Every “class” from the foundation of the schools shows some graduates distinguished in their country‘s service during the suppression of the rebellion. The Hon. Oramel Hosford, Superintendent of Public Instruction in Michigan, reports that, owing to the presence of crowds of returned soldiers, the schools of the State are filled almost to the limit of their capacity, while some are compelled to close their doors against the thronging crowds. Captains, colonels, generals, are among the students now humbly learning in the Ann Arbor University Schools.
The State of Michigan is peculiar in the form that she has given to her higher teaching; but in no way peculiar in the attention she bestows on education. Teaching, high and low, is a passion in the West, and each of these young States has established a university of the highest order, and placed in every township not only schools, but public libraries, supported from the rates, and managed by the people.
Not only have the appropriations for educational purposes by each State been large, but those of the Federal government have been upon the most splendid scale. What has been done in the Eastern and the Central States no man can tell, but even west of the Mississippi twenty-two million acres have already been granted for such purposes, while fifty-six million more are set aside for similar gifts.
The Americans are not forgetful of their Puritan traditions.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.
WHEN the companions of the explorer Cartier found that the rapids at Montreal were not the end of all navigation, as they had feared, but that above them there commenced a second and boundless reach of deep, still waters, they fancied they had found the long-looked-for route to China, and cried, “La Chine!” So the story goes, and the name has stuck to the place.
