should protrude itself into the centre of the cotton-growing region, and be happily surrounded by all the other requirements of a large institution. This consideration, therefore, forced the choice of the Board within still narrower limits

But there was likewise another point to be weighed, the question of social intercourse for the Professors and Students likely to be assembled at such a point. Could we have found within these limits a city of from fifty to one hundred thousand inhabitants, combining with the refinement of large towns the facilities which cities afford for the conduct of life, and offering the University undoubted healthfulness, the Board would probably not have hesitated in selecting that as the best location for the University. But no such city offered itself, and the question was left to be decided between the neighborhood of a small town, or the creation of a social atmosphere of its own around the University. When it was reduced to this alternative there was but little hesitation about the decision, and the Board almost unanimously agreed that it would be preferable to create a society around the University which should receive its tone from the University, and be, in a measure, dependent upon the University. To make this a matter of easy performance, some locality must be selected which should combine attractive scenery and picturesque variety, with a temperate summer climate. If these could be found, in conjunction with accessibility, with an abundance of water, with good building materials, and surrounded by a farming country, affording in plenty the necessaries of life, the Board concluded that it should have met with the locality which its cireumstances demanded.

POSITION, NATURAL ADVANTAGES, SCENERY, ETC.

All these things are combined in the location which the Board has chosen at Sewanee. It lies within the limits in which the Board was circumscribed by the primary action of the Bishops at Philadelphia, being neither so far west as McMinnville, nor so far south as Huntsville. It stands upon the elevated plateau of the Cumberland Mountain, about 1,900 feet above the level of the ocean, possessing a climate equivalent to that of Flat Rock, in North Carolina. It is above the level of all intermittent disease, and is abundantly blessed with the purest water, flowing from under the sandstone capping of the Cumberland Ridge. It is covered thickly with excellent timber, oak, chestnut, and walnut. It has all over it the very best building stone, and can command. by easy approach, the limestones and marbles in which Tennessee abounds. It has coal mines at its very door, opened at great cost by a wealthy company of New-York, providing fuel at very reasonable rates. There lies at its foot, connected with it by railroad, one of the richest farming countries of the West. Nothing is wanting to render it every way suitable to our purpose, and there can be no objections to it, except they arise from its being a mountain location, or from inaccessibility, or from disease.

When a lowlander hears of a mountain location, he at once conceives of a lofty peak, covered over with rugged rocks, whose summit is to be reached by severe and toilsome labor. Was this conception of his correct, he would be right in arguing that it was unwise to place a University in such a position. But the Cumberland plateau does not answer, in any particular, to this conception. It is not a series of rugged peaks, but a wide table-land, having upon its summit a level area of from two to twenty miles in width, upon which a railroad is now running for fifteen miles, and might be extended for a hundred; upon which stage roads are made. as smooth and easy of grade as any in the middle counties of South Carolina or Georgia; upon which farms, county towns, and watering-places, are located, and which is as well timbered as any part of the country except the heavy river swamps. This plateau is reached by an easy ride of half an hour upoň a railroad, built in the most substantial manner, and laid with a T rail, which traverses the whole extent of the University lands. In addition to this railroad, the citizens of Franklin county, which lies at the base of the lands upon which the University is to stand, have guaranteed the building of a turnpike from some point on the Chattanooga and Nashville Railroad, to the site of the University, so that we shall be connected with the lowlands at our base, by both rail and turnpike, giving the University the fullest scope for the easy procurement of all its supplies. When this

summit has been reached, there spreads out before the eye an area with just enough undulation to make it picturesque, covered with large timber, with a rich underbrush of grass, and with springs of freestone water, yielding four hundred, five hundred, and in one case one thousand gallons of water per hour. From this summit the visitor is delighted with scenes of unsurpassed beauty, with points of the mountain running in fantastic shapes into the valleys, like promontories into the ocean, with wooden slopes stretching down into the cultivated lands, and mingling the wildness of nature with the improvements of man, with fat valleys, rich in the bounties of Providence, with an almost boundless horizon, spreading away toward the far West. And these views vary at a hundred points of the University lands, for it is the peculiarity of this sandstone formation to break into gorges, and to open up new scenery at every turn. The soil, too, is capable of producing the very best vegetables, specimens of which were submitted to our inspection, and which might bear comparison with any in our city markets.

This Cumberland plateau seems to have been formed by God for the benefit and blessing of the valley of the Mississippi, and the cotton-growing regions of the Southern States. Forming the eastern limit of that immense valley, stretching, with this peculiar formation of a sandstone table-land, for one hundred miles across the State of Tennessee, easy of access at many points, it must become the summer resort of those wealthy planters, who desire to recruit their families during the summer months, and are yet unwilling to be far separated from their planting interests. The time is not distant when this whole plateau will be covered over with villas, and cottages, and watering places, and will teem with the most refined society of the South and West. This will be the place of meeting of the South and West, and Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, will here shake hands with Mobile, New-Orleans, Nashville, and Memphis, and cement the strong bond of mutual interest with the yet stronger ones of friendship

and love.

ACCESSIBILITY OF SEWANEE-A RAILROAD CENTRE.

Because, when Sewanee was chosen as the site of the University, the name was unknown, it was at once concluded that it was remote and out of the way. This is the usual reasoning of the world, and was as false in this instance as it is in most others. Sewanee, as will be seen by the accompanying map, is in connection by rail and electric telegraph with every portion of the South and West. The railroad of the Sewanee Mining Company passes by the door of the University, and five miles from it unites at Chowan with the Chattanooga and Nashville Railroad. This gives direct access, on the one hand, by rail to the capital of Tennessee, and thence by turnpike to Kentucky and Ohio, and, on the other hand, by rail to Chattanooga, there uniting with that network of roads which run through Dalton and Knoxville to Virginia, and through Atalanta to Montgomery, Columbus, Macon, Savannah, Augusta, Charleston, Columbia, S. C., Charlotte, N. C., and Wilmington. At Stevenson the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad connects with the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, which brings Sewanee into immediate contact with Memphis and Arkansas, and when the NewOrleans and Jackson Railroad (now in rapid progress) is completed, with the whole of Mississippi, West Alabama and New-Orleans. The Wills Valley Railroad also connects with the Chattanooga and Nashville Railroad, and brings North and Middle Alabama into close proximity with the University, so that instead of being out of the way, it can be reached from any and every point of the ten dioceses, Texas excepted, within forty-eight hours, and from many of the large cities, thirty hours will be sufficient for the journey. When to this is added the chain of electric telegraph, which passes the foot of the plateau, there are but few parents who might not hear within a few hours of the welfare of their children, and who might not reach them in any case of necessity, within from one to two days' travel. So far then from being remote, it is almost an equi-distant centre, not in miles perhaps, but certainly in means of communication, from the Dioceses forming the confederation.

SUMMER AND WINTER CLIMATE.

The salubrity of the climate is beyond all question. It is free from fevers of all kinds-it is above the region of cholera-the thermometrical range in summer

seldom exceeds 80o, and the winter climate is not nearly so severe as that of the Northern colleges to which our sons are freely sent. One remarkable feature of this plateau is its dryness, which is evinced by the lack of lichens upon the trees, by the entire absence of moss or parasites living upon humidity, and by the freedom from decay of the fallen timber. After a tree has fallen for years and the bark separates from it, it separates without any decay of either bark or wood. Pleurisy and pneumonia are almost unknown. Strict examination was made of persons having no interest in the matter, who testified, one and all, that there could be no question upon the subject of its healthfulness. But whatever may be the severity of the winter climate, it need not be encountered by the students. It is well known that October and November are two of the most delicious months upon these plateaus, and our vacation can be so arranged as to dismiss the University about the middle of December, and, allowing the usual period of vacation, work would not be resumed until the middle of March. This throws out the only three months which might be too severe, and returns the young men to their homes, as we said before, during the season in which their parents will be most glad to see them, and when they will keep up the habits of life which are to be theirs in the future.

We feel almost ashamed to say anything upon the silly cry of milk sickness which has been so pertinaciously urged against this locality. Like everything that is distant and mysterious, it seems to be dreadful. Because nobody knows what it is, it is invested with additional horrors. It is magnified until fond parents imagine it to be an epidemic like yellow fever, or cholera, or small-pox, sweeping off its hundreds and desolating neighborhoods But the moment you

approach it, it vanishes! Even when it did exist, a generation back, it was as rare as a rattlesnake bite or a spider sting. But it always goes out with population and cultivation, and physicians of the highest standing assert that they have not seen a case for the last twenty years, although their practice lies all through the coves in which it is said to exist. Since the Board have come upon the spot, nobody has dared to mention it. It did very well for a war-cry at Montgomery, but at Sewanee and Beersheba, not a word is said about it. And for the very best reason, because gentlemen of the highest respectability are cultivating those very coves and living in them with their families, because all the cattle of the valleys is sent into these coves and upon these mountains to range during the summer months, and because nobody hesitates to eat freely of the beef and butter which is offered him here, and to drink the rich milk as if it was water. At Beersheba Springs, at Altamont, at Tracy City, at Chowan, at Winchester, (which places surround the University site,) everybody partakes, without scruple, of any food that is set before him, and the residents would as soon expect to find arsenic in their water as poison in their milk and beef. The charge is simply ridiculous, and the students of the University would have about as much to dread from milk sickness as from the Indians who once roamed over these hills and swarmed in these valleys.

A SOUTHERN LITERARY CENTRE.

All these advantages of climate, accessibility, healthfulness, proximity to the cotton-growing region, offer to the friends of the students strong inducements to settle around the University, and form, for the summer months at least, a fine society for the professors and students. These families will attract others, and very soon, as much society will be gathered about the University as shall be advantageous to the young men. Every facility will be afforded by sale and leasehold for the building of ornamental cottages and villas around the University, and it will exhibit the same aspect as West Point does in the summer, with this superiority, that, besides the transient visitors who will take this place en route for the Southern springs and the Northern cities, there will be a much larger settled population spending the summer months among the mountains. The chances are that there will be too much rather than too little society.

Such are the reasons which have induced the Board of Trustees to adhere to their choice of Sewanee as the fittest site for the University. They have had but one object in view, the best interests of the Institution which they are endeavoring to create for the benefit and blessing of the Southern States. Could they have been swayed by any mercenary or short sighted motives, inducements

of a pecuniary kind would have directed their attention elsewhere. But they were acting under a solemn sense of the deep responsibility which rested upon them in this matter. They felt that they had volunteered to perform for the South a work which was to bless it for ages to come, which was to mould its morals and its learning, which was to raise its trailing banner from the dust and plant it upon an equal height with those of other civilized people. If they failed, the scheme was likely to fail with them. Its very magnitude would prevent others from undertaking it, and there would be no hope of high scholarship engendered among ourselves. We should continue to be dependants in this as in everything else. We should continue to import teachers, clergymen, professors, and literary men from other lands. We should return nothing to the common stock of literature and science, and should be aliens from the commonwealth of letters. We should leave our institutions with the stigma resting upon them of degrading instead of elevating our social condition. All these conse quences were before us when we made our choice, and in full view of them, with a holy pride for the elevation of our homes, with a becoming zeal for the moral culture of our people, with a love, passing the love of woman, for the land of the sun and the slave, we were willing to stake our judgments upon the selection and leave it to time to vindicate its soundness.

APPEAL TO SOUTHERN MEN.

And we call upon the men of the South to rally around us; not upon churchmen only, but upon all good men and true of whatever name and profession, We have undertaken this thing as a Church, because there was no other way of doing it. The government of such a University must be a unit, harmonious in its principles, views and feelings. But it is in no sense intended to be sectarian. Its curriculum will extend through every branch of learning and scienceits doors will be open to students of every name and sect-its conduct will be catholic in the very highest sense of the word. If the States could have done this work, we should have let it alone. But they could not accomplish it, for there can be no unity in a State Institution. In can be accomplished only through a body whose principles are settled, whose basis is immovable, whose officers are permanent, whose spirit, while determined, is large and comprehensive. Confident in our possession of these things, we have undertaken this task. We have shadowed forth our ideal-we have laid the foundations broad and deep. It remains for you to rally around us, and by your wealth, your counsel, your active co-operation, to enable us to build up a University which shall offer your sons the highest literary culture, which shall surround your homes with the refinement of scholarship and piety, and which shall vindicate the Southern States from the obloquy of ignorance and barbarism.

We are pleased to learn that this institution is now in a flourishing condition It was incorporated in 1844, and opened in 1848. The fund devoted to its support from public lands, independently of State aid, amounted in 1856 to $874,324 49.

A Mr. Keyes, of Carrolton, Miss., in a letter to the New-Orleans Delta, says of the practical workings of the institution:-The trustees could not have made a better selection to fill the law chair than the present incumbent. Gifted, VOL. I.-NO. III.

7

generous, genial, Professor Stearns is admired and loved by all who know him As a writer and lecturer he has few equals in the State. Indeed, I regard him as among the most learned jurists Mississippi, or even the South, has ever produced. This may be thought by some an unwarrantable and undeserved panegyric, but those who are acquainted with his knowledge of the law will bear testimony that it is scarcely his just meed of praise. Nor do I admire his legal learning more than the noble virtues which dwell within his bosom. Inspired by a love of the profession in which he has long been a shining light, and by a desire to promote the interests of his adopted State, he left a practice far more lucrative than the chair he fills so well, to place himself in a wider field of usefulness. Affording, as this school does, facilities far superior to those found in any lawyer's office, and the candidates for the Mississippi bar facilities superior to those of any other law school in the Union, students are repairing thither from every portion of the State.

The Faculty of Arts is equal in learning and ability to that of which any college in the United States can boast. Its worthy head, President F. A. P. Barnard, is reputed, not only in America, but in Europe, as one of the first scientific men of the age, and his subordinates-each and every one-possess a reputation among the learned, worthy of the ambition of the most ambitious.

The chemical and philosophical apparatus, of the most important and costly kind, are amply sufficient to illustrate every subject of these useful sciences; while the collection of minerals, shells and fossils (amounting to nearly forty thousand in number), adequate to the illustration of the more recent and more important sciences, are unsurpassed by any college in the Western world. In short, every facility requisite to the attainment of a thorough education is now to be found in the University of Mississippi, and I hope the day is not far distant when this fact will become known far and wide throughout the Sonthwestern States-for not till then will this institution be properly appreciated.

It is, indeed, painful to know there are not a few narrow-minded individuals, here and elsewhere, who seek to detract from the rising reputation of our University; but, despite their strenuous efforts to the contrary, it moves onward upon its lofty mission. Each succeeding year brings to its halls increasing numbers of students, and such will be its destiny-rising higher and higher in public estimation-until the colossal strength of its hold upon the affections of the Southern people will silence forever the piteous howls of its

enemies.

It is a mystery to me why the people of the South, and especially of Mississippi, continue to disregard the educational advantages and facilities provided in their midst, and patronize the colleges of the North.

All will acknowledge the many temptations an atmosphere polluted by the foul breath of Abolitionism throws around the Southern student-all acknowledge the safety and policy of educating the Southern youth at home-all acknowledge that the Abolition fanatics have laughed and grown fat" at the stupidity of the South-yet they continue to send their sons afar off in these hotbeds of Abolitionism, and still lick the hand that smites them." Why is it so? I cannot conceive unless it be they regard it as a higher honor to have it said their sons graduated “a way off yonder," or to have it recorded in their son's biography that he graduated at one of the oldest colleges," with no advantage superior to the University of Mississippi, except in distance from home, in age, and in numbers of alumni and under-graduates. And in those so much solicitude is not felt for imparting a thorough knowledge in the arts and sciences, as for inculcating the youth intrusted to their instruction with anti-slavery sentiments. Text-books most condemnatory of slavery are used; professors interlard their lectures with anti-slavery dogmas, and, through their unbounded zeal, even the chapels erected and consecrated to the worship of God, are desecrated by these apostles of Higher-lawism. Under such influences the Southern youth would be liable to imbibe the political tenets repugnant to the teachings of his father, and hostile to the highest interests of his section, from which, if once deep-rooted by the fiery zeal of a corrupt fanaticism, not even the strong ties and fond associations of his boyhood, nor the thousand endearing charms which cluster around his childhood home, could dissuade him. It is a duty we owe to the memory of our fathers-a duty we owe to humanity-to be vigilant in our