most of the States, became in time for the New York university the source of millions. Large as was Mr. White's share in securing for it the charter and the land grant, what was peculiarly his own was the educational shaping of the new institution. He was its spiritual founder not less than Mr. Cornell its material—a fact too much obscured, perhaps, by the name which he, against Mr. Cornell's protest, gave to the university. It was he who wrote all but the financial clauses of its charter; he who drew its plan of organization; he who took all steps looking to the selection of its equipment and the choice of its faculty. It is not strange that when, in 1866, a head was to be found for it, Mr. Cornell insisted that Mr, White must accept its presidency.
It was to turn his back on political ambitions to which he had earned a right. It was to sever his connections with Michigan, where, in the hope that he might yet return, the chair of History was still his. Just now, too, there had come from Yale an invitation to take up his home in the "City of Elms" as director of its School of Fine Arts; and this, if he must leave his political career, was the life most tempting to a man of his tastes and means, and was especially attractive to his family. But his choice was soon made, and was made once for all. Entering at once upon his executive duties, he remained President of Cornell for nearly twenty years, until ill health compelled his retirement in 1885.
The features in which the new university, as planned by him, differed most notably from others of its sort were: (1) Its democracy of organization, uniting the humanities, the sciences, and the technical arts in a single faculty and in common classrooms under precisely like conditions, and this so effectively that their parity at Cornell has never been questioned; (2) its freedom from all sectarian control—"at no time shall a majority of [its trustees] be of one religious sect, or of no religious sect," and "persons of every religious denomination, or of no religious denomination, shall be equally eligible to all offices and appointments"; (3) its parallel courses and its large individual freedom of choice among studies—in this, too, it was a pioneer in American education; (4) its vital connection with the public schools of its State through the establishment of free scholarships, to be awarded by competition in each Assembly district; (5) its large recognition of the worth of the modern languages and literatures, both as practical and as disciplinary studies; (6) its system of nonresident professorships, by which it sought to bring both its students and its faculty in touch with eminent scholars whose permanent services it could not hope to win; (7) its assumption that its students are not children, but grown and earnest men, and its attitude toward them as such.
