to build for the present. It has been my fate to see great educational
funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar, in the petrifying springs
of architecture, with nothing left to work the institution they were
intended to support. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and
called it peace. Administrators of educational funds have sometimes
made a palace and called it a university. If I may venture to give
advice in a matter which lies out of my proper competency, I would say
that whenever you do build, get an honest bricklayer, and make him
build you just such rooms as you really want, leaving ample space for
expansion. And a century hence, when the Baltimore and Ohio shares are
at one thousand premium, and you have endowed all the professors you
need, and built all the laboratories that are wanted, and have the best
museum and the finest library that can be imagined; then, if you have a
few hundred thousand dollars you don't know what to do with, send for
an architect and tell him to put up a facade. If American is similar to
English experience, any other course will probably lead you into having
some stately structure, good for your architect's fame, but not in the
least what you want.

It appears to me that what I have ventured to lay down as the
principles which should govern the relations of a university to
education in general, are entirely in accordance with the measures you
have adopted. You have set no restrictions upon access to the
instruction you propose to give; you have provided that such
instruction, either as given by the university or by associated
institutions, should cover the field of human intellectual activity.
You have recognised the importance of encouraging research. You propose
to provide means by which young men, who may be full of zeal for a
literary or for a scientific career, but who also may have mistaken
aspiration for inspiration, may bring their capacities to a test, and