THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Living in Paris at this very time, and mentioned by Quesnay among the supporters of the proposed Academy, Jefferson must have been familiar with this early project for introducing the higher education of France into his native State. He looked upon the project with favor, otherwise he would not have allowed his name to be so prominently used in connection with Quesnay's scheme, which was, moreover, supported by some of the best men in Virginia. Indeed, Quesnay's idea was similar to that afterwards cherished by Jefferson himself when, in 1795, he began to correspond with George Washington about the feasi bility of removing bodily to Virginia the entire faculty of the Swiss College of Geneva, which was thoroughly French in its form of culture. In this connection it is interesting to find among the associates of the Richmond Academy M. Pictet, "citoyen de Genève," probably the very man with whom Jefferson afterwards corresponded with reference to removal to Virginia. Jefferson himself says that he met some of these Swiss professors in Paris. Undoubtedly it was in that polished circle of learned men, within which Quesnay and Jefferson moved, that the latter's ideas of university education began to take cosmopolitan form. His original idea of a university for Virginia was to develop the curriculum of his alma mater, William and Mary College; but we hear nothing more of that idea after Jefferson's return from Paris. The idea of distinct schools of art and science, which is so prominent a characteristic of the University of Virginia to-day, is the enduring product of Jefferson's observation of the schools of Paris and of his association and correspondence with their representative men.

FRENCH CULTURE IN AMERICA.

If circumstances had favored Quesnay's project, it is probable that the University of Virginia would never have been founded. There would have been no need of it. The Academy of the United States of America, established at Richmond, would have become the centre of higher education not only for Virginia, but for the whole South, and possibly for a large part of the North, if the Academy had been extended, as proposed, to the cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Supported by French capital, to which in large measure we owe the success of our Revolutionary War, strengthened by French prestige, by literary, scientific, and artistic associations with Paris, then the intellectual capital of the world, the academy at Richmond might have become an educational stronghold, comparable in some degree to the Jesuit influence in Canada, which has proved more lasting than French dominion, more impregnable than the fortress of Quebec.

Nothing is so enduring, when once established, as forms of culture. If French ideas had really penetrated Virginian society, they would have become as dominant in the South as German ideas are now be

coming in the State universities and school systems of the Northwest. French ideas survived in Virginia and in the Carolinas long after the Revolution, and long after the French Government had ceased to interfere in our politics. It was one of the most difficult tasks in Southern educational history to dislodge French philosophy from its academic strongholds in North and South Carolina. It was done by a strong current of Scotch Presbyterianism proceeding from Princeton College southwards. In social forms French culture lingers yet in South Carolina, notably in Charleston.

FAILURE OF QUESNAY'S SCHEME.

Quesnay's scheme was not altogether chimerical; but in the year 1788 France was in no position, financial or social, to push her educational system into Virginia. The year Quesnay's suggestive little tract was published was the year before the French Revolution, in which political maelstrom everything in France went down. If it had not been for one copy of Quesnay's Memoir, picked up years afterward among the drift-wood of the Revolutionary period by President Andrew D. White, it is doubtful whether the project for a French academy in Richmond would have found its present place in the educational history of Virginia.

Provisional arrangements had been made by Quesnay in 1788, after a year or more of social propaganda, for instituting the following "schools" of advanced instruction in Virginia: foreign languages; mathematics; design; architecture, civil and military; painting; sculpture; engraving; experimental physics; astronomy; geography; chemistry; mineralogy; botany; anatomy, human and veterinary; and natural history. The selection of suitable professors, masters, and artists was intrusted to a committee of correspondence established at Paris, and consisting of Quesnay, founder and president, of the Academy, or of his representative; of a permanent and assistant secretary, a treasurer-general, and nine commissioners elected from prominent members of the Academy. The prospect of appointing a numerous faculty seems to have become darker with the approach of the Revolution in France.

The committee of correspondence was organized, but when it met it appointed only one professor. His name was Dr. Jean Rouelle. He is described as a profound scholar and an experienced traveller, having a wide acquaintance with the natural sciences. He was elected (significantly enough from a French economic view) mineralogist-in-chief of the Richmond Academy. He was also to be professor of natural history, chemistry, and botany, thus combining the leading natural sciences in one comprehensive chair. He was engaged for a term of ten years, and was instructed to form cabinets and collections for distribution in America and Europe. It was arranged that he should sail for America early in October, 1788; but it is doubtful whether he really went.

Quesnay's brilliant project attracted brief admiration and then sank into oblivion.

FATE OF THE RICHMOND ACADEMY.

The building which he founded in Richmond was, however, completed. It served a purpose which entitles it to a monumental place in 1 Quesnay's French Academy was early converted into a theatre, the first institution of the kind Richmond ever had. Dramatic art found its first American recognition at Williamsburg and Annapolis; but Richmond early became one of its favorite seats. The "Old Academy," in Theatre Square, was destroyed by fire; but a new theatre was erected in the rear of the old. This new building was also burned. Samuel Mordecai, a contemporary observer, says this theatre was "the scene of the most horrid disaster that ever overwhelmed our city, when seventy-two persons perished in the flames on the fatal 26th of December, 1811, where the Monumental Church now stands, and its portico covers the tomb and the ashes of most of the victims." This terrible holocaust and the memorial structure, piously erected upon the spot, will doubtless serve to remind the reader of the historic site of Quesnay's academy, in the beautiful city of Richmond, which is set upon hills.

Quesnay's curious and interesting Mémoire concernant l'Académie des Sciences et Beaux Arts des États-Unis d'Amérique, établie á Richemond, from which the above sketch is chiefly drawn, was first mentioned to the present writer by Mr. George L. Burr, instructor of history in Cornell University. Voyaging through the Thousand Islands, up that ancient river route by which the teachers and traders of France first penetrated Canada, we fell to talking of William and Mary College and of the educational history of Virginia, upon which the writer was then engaged. Mr. Burr, who had with him some of the proofs of the catalogue of the Andrew D. White Historical Library, now belonging to Cornell University, suddenly called to mind in that collection a French tract upon the Academy of Richmond. The writer's curiosity was immediately aroused, and he begged to have the tract forwarded to Baltimore for examination. A careful reading of Quesnay's Memoir proved conclusively that a current of French influence was beginning in the last quarter of the eighteenth century to penetrate Virginia. Representing science and culture rather than religious or economic zeal, this Virginia current was different from the original French influence which crept into Canada by way of the St. Lawrence; and yet it is very interesting to note what a practical direction French science took in relation to the discovery of our natural resources. Not without significance was Quesnay's casual suggestion of the propriety of establishing "une Chapelle pour les Catholiques Romains épars en Virginie."

Samuel Mordecai, the Richmond antiquary, who must have seen in his youth the "Old Academy," had access to Quesnay's Memoirs in preparing his chapter on Richmond theatres. He says of the tract: "The writer is indebted to a gentleman of literary taste and research for the use of an exceedingly rare little volume (in French), entitled Memoir and Prospectus concerning the Academy of Fine Arts of the United States of America, Established at Richmond, the Capital of Virginia, by the Chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire, Founder and President." More than a generation has passed away since Mordecai thus expressed his obligation to a gentleman of literary taste and research. The present writer can not better thank President Andrew D. White for the use of his copy than by repeating the words of the Richmond antiquary. Recent inquiry has developed the fact that Mr. Charles Poindexter, the State librarian of Virginia, whom the writer met with Mr. Burr among the American librarians upon the river St. Lawrence, presented a copy of Quesnay's tract some years ago to the State library in Richmond, and also the fact that, within a year or two, a copy of the same rare little book was bought for a private library in Baltimore at an auction sale in the capital of Virginia.

the history of Virginia architecture. It was the place of assembly for the Virginia convention which, in 1788, ratified the Constitution of the United States. There, in the building designed to be the Academy of the United States of America, the statesmen of Virginia met, day after day, to discuss the greatest question which was ever agitated by any American academic or deliberative body since the Declaration of Independence. It was the question of Federal union. It was decided after long and earnest debate, in which such men as James Madison, John Marshall, James Monroe, George Wythe, Edmund Randolph, George Mason, Pendleton, Nicholas, Grayson, Innis, Lee, and Patrick Henry took their respective parts. It was, after all, a nobler national academy than that which the Chevalier Quesnay had conceived, nobler because it was American and not French. However admirable French science and the fine arts may have appeared to the Virginians at that time, it must be acknowledged that it was far better for their Commonwealth that the introduction of these excellent gifts should have been deferred until a later period, when Jefferson was able to give Virginia the ripened fruit of a long life of observation, inquiry, and reflection in that noble university which bears Virginia's name.

CHAPTER II.

JEFFERSON ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND COMMON

SCHOOLS.

POPULAR EDUCATION AND SELF-GOVERNMENT.

Jefferson's ideas of university education in Virginia were closely connected with thoughts of instituting local self-government for the sup port of common schools. As early as 1779 he introduced into the General Assembly, among other useful measures, a bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge. The means proposed to accomplish this desir able end was the annual election in every county of three so-called aldermen, who should proceed to divide their respective counties into hundreds. This old English territorial division, which originated in the distribution of land to military groups comprising one hundred settlers, of whom ten families constituted a tithing, was now suggested by Jefferson as a suitable territorial basis for school districts. Jefferson's bill provided that the electors within every hundred should be called together to "choose the most convenient place within their hundred for building a school-house."

Since the days of the Germanic folk-mote of armed warriors there has been no better object for primary assemblies of the people. In ancient days freemen assembled in mass meeting to elect chieftains for tribal forays. The noisy clash of arms and the talk of war accompanied these local elections. In times of peace the distribution of land for tillage and rules for the herding of cattle and swine occupied village attention. In modern days higher interests have developed in our agrarian communities. The local organization and support of churches, the maintenance of common schools, roads, and bridges, and, more recently, ideas of village improvement,2 have come to the front in the local councils of American freemen.

That Jefferson was not altogether unconscious of the historic significance of his proposed "hundreds" is clear from a letter to a writer on the English Constitution, Major John Cartwright, written June 5, 1824, when the project of subdividing the counties into wards was again under consideration. Jefferson said the hundreds should be "about six miles square, and would answer to the hundreds of your Saxon Alfred."

2 Village improvement associations now flourish from Maine to Georgia. Among the earliest were those in Berkshire County, Mass., notably the Laurel Hill Association, at Stockbridge, Mass., which is well described by N. H. Egleston, in his Villages and Village Life.