Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 364]

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356

It was my privilege to participate in the services of that great day—to sketch the history of that long series of efforts which had culminated in the great act of Congress of July 2, 1862 and in the acts of our General Assembly of January, February and March, 1867, locating and organizing this University—to indicate the principles upon which it was proposed to conduct the Institution—to point out the elements wherein it was to be and to remain radically sepaarate and distinct from all other existing State Institutions, and to invite to it the support and confidence of the public. Three years and a-half have come and gone—years of arduous toil, of struggle and trial and peril, of the most painful vicissitudes of hope and fear—and to-day we meet again. And for what do we meet? To acknowledge the failure of another experiment in behalf of the higher education of the industrial classes? To mourn over abandoned plans and perished hopes? To put the Illinois Industrial University into bankruptcy, inventory and sell its assets, and dissolve forever this grand partnership of labor and learning? . Nay, verily, but to lay the corner-stone of a new University building, the best adapted and planned edifice of its class on the continent, with class-room accommodations for over one thousand students; and to celebrate the opening of a new Mechanic and Military Hall, of corresponding proportions. These are the objects for which we meet—these the auspices under which we assemble to-day. I am not unacquainted with the history and progress of all the Agricultural Colleges established on the foundation of the public lands granted by the act of Congress of July 2, 1862, and I affirm that no other has accomplished so much within the same period from the opening of its doors for the admission of students, as has ours. And if reference be had to the number and nature and continuance of the obstacles and difficulties encountered, the progress of this Institution is altogether remarkable. In a little more than three years of actual working time, order has been evoked from confusion ; the departments have been defined and organized; the landed estates have been pushed rapidly towards a symmetrical development; the old building has been made to seem even more unsightly by contrast with the orderly beauty of the grounds in which it now stands; specimens of philosophical and other apparatus of finished workmanship and improved construction have attested the efficiency of the mechanical department; series of experiments of great practical value to farmers, horticulturists and stock-raisers, have been inaugurated; attention has been widely drawn to the courses of public lectures on practical subjects, given at the University, and elsewhere under its auspices; the libraries have been enriched by rare works, carefully selected by the Regent and Faculty, from the treasures of both Europe and America; the department of chemistry already challenges the attention of recognized masters in that most splendid of the natural sciences; similar institutions in Europe have been visited and studied, and such improved methods and principles as were found to be applicable here, have been introduced to enrich and perfect our own system; the number of students has more than quadrupled, while the average attainments of applicants has advanced in nearly an equal ratio, thus supplying better material for the forces of the University to work upon; the atmosphere of the Institution is wholesome and bracing, producing an earnest and manly average tone of student life; through all the departments and classes of the University the freshest and most inspiring breezes come from the fields and meadows, from the facts and objects of the outer world, and not from books, and the trend of the Institution is already very powerful in the direction of those pursuits and ends for which it was established; and, finally, the current of public sentiment now sets, strong and steady, towards the University, and the people of the State, through their representatives, have recently put the seal of their approbation and confidence upon it, by appropriating the funds wherewith these structures are now rising to completion. Are not these hopeful results to be achieved in forty-two months? ^nd do they not prophesy a great future? Who that stood with us in March, 1868, dared even to hope for what is reality 0-day?