Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/102

 even larger, have been given to found and rear institutions by rich men who had no ideas, either new or old, which they desired to perpetuate in a peculiar college system. Other colleges which have not adopted the Harvard system—except so far as some elective courses in a college curriculum may be said to be an adoption of the system—have also received bountiful gifts. During the last fourteen years the amount of gifts made to the university of Yale, either already delivered over or in the process of delivery by executors, exceeds $2,066,000; of this sum $928,400 stands upon the treasurer's books as cash paid in to the treasury since 1871; the remainder has gone into the "plant" of the university. During the same time the sum of more than $460,000 additional has been secured by bequest, to be paid into its treasury on the termination of certain lives. Meanwhile, its library has increased by 83,000 volumes. This more than two and a half millions may not, indeed, equal the sum given to Harvard during the same period. But it bears comparison with that sum so well as to raise the inquiry whether the prestige of the New Education with the long purses of the country is beyond question.

The increase of students is a more direct and appreciable argument. It certainly does go for something in showing how the popular favor is setting, at least for the immediate time. I can