Page:Life of Isaiah V Williamson.djvu/134

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116
Life of Isaiah V. Williamson

the human soul, and has helped to give men a better opinion of mankind." The New York Sun, assuming that the total gift to the School would eventually be from five to fifteen millions, said: "There never was anything in the Girard bequest; at its lowest figures it is fitting, therefore, that there should be nothing in history like Mr. Williamson's vast gift. It surpasses in magnitude the aggregate benefactions of Peabody; it exceeds the magnificent Girard bequest; at its lowest figures it is larger than the entire endowment of Harvard, Yale or Columbia; and at its largest limit it equals the combined wealth of these three great universities. Yet, with characteristic modesty, the donor calls his institution a School. Such figures stagger the imagination. Only two gifts in human history stand in the same rank. One is the application by Senator Leland Stanford of $22,000,000 of his fabulous wealth to found a university; and the other is the gift of 50,000,000 francs, or $10,000,000, by Baron Hirsch, the great Vienna banker, in aid of the Hebrew charities of Europe."