presidency; and while Dr. Logan presided with admirable judgment over the college, Dr. Blanton threw all his energy into the work of consolidating and broadening the financial basis of the institution. His wise methods and cheerful words soon restored the fullest confidence in the future of the university. Generous contributions to the endowment again began to flow in, and the institution has gone steadily forward, increasing every year in patronage, lifting higher every year the standard of instruction and scholarship, until now it stands abreast of any similar institution in the country, and is regarded as one of the chief ornaments of the Commonwealth.

Lindsey Hughes Blanton, D. D., was born in Cumberland Co., Va., July 29, 1832, and was graduated at Hampden Sidney College; also at Danville Theological Seminary, in Kentucky. His services have been with the Presbyterian Church at Versailles, at Salem, Virginia, and as chaplain in the Confederate army. In 1868 he was pastor of the Paris church, Kentucky, which was greatly increased and strengthened under his ministry. The number of students in attendance upon its various colleges for the year 1894-95 was seven hundred and fifty-four, distributed over many States. Its faculties of instruction, in the colleges at present in operation, are those in literature, in medicine, in dentistry, and in theology.

The university is particularly fortunate in its chancellor, to whom it owes in large measure its present influence and prosperity. Though comparatively a young man, he has developed the highest qualities as an educator. An able and popular preacher, an erudite and accurate scholar, he combines with these gifts large and liberal views of the subject of education, and that rare executive and administrative ability which enables him to carry out his ideals as an educator, giving them practical form.

A provisional class in theology was organized and instructed until the permanent establishment of the college at Louisville, in 1893, under the style of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Auxiliary schools are provided to be established in the State, in the charter of Central University; two are located, one each at the sites of Elizabethtown and Jackson.

The reports of the Southern Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, for some years, give us proximately the following statistics of interest: Total com

municants, fifteen thousand; Sunday-school scholars, ten thousand. Of the sums contributed for various purposes annually, we have enumerated: For sustentation, seven thousand dollars; evangelistic fund, fifteen thousand dollars; invalid fund, fifteen hundred dollars; foreign missions, ten thousand dollars; education, seven thousand dollars; publication, fifteen hundred dollars; pastors' salaries, sixty-two thousand dollars; congregational purposes, seventy-five thousand dollars; and miscellaneous, seven thousand dollars; a total of two hundred and ten thousand dollars.

After the separation of the North and South divisions of the church, venerable Centre College, with all its possessions and prestige, remained under the auspices and management of the old assembly, at Danville. So much does it enter into the educational history of Kentucky that we have elsewhere treated of its origin and relations to other great institutions of learning of the past. Chartered in 1819, it was under State control until 1824, when the synod of Kentucky purchased its franchises and control.

Centre College is thus shown to be one of the oldest institutions of learning in Kentucky, or in the South or West, having sent out its first graduating class in 1824. It has been prosecuting its work successfully, and without interruption, from that day to this. No year has passed that it has not sent its graduates into the field. Among the alumni are many, both of the living and the dead, who have greatly distinguished themselves in their

respective professions, and have attained the highest positions of honor and trust, especially throughout the South and West, where they chiefly reside, or where they did reside while they lived.

Centre College has educated seventeen college presidents, forty-one college professors, fourteen representatives in Congress, four United States. senators, five governors of States, one vice-president of the United States, one justice of the United States Supreme Court, twenty-four circuit judges, state and national, thirty-seven editors, etc. No institution in Kentucky has sent out, year by year, a class of graduates reflecting more credit and honor on their Alma Mater.

Of its distinguished presidents, no other was so long and prominently identified with its history, during the ante-bellum period, as John Clark Young. This distinguished minister and scholar has left the impress of his character and work, as a leading educator, as widely and indelibly upon the educated mind of the present and preceding generations of the South and West as any other man in our history. He was a transplant from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, in the year 1828. He had been thoroughly trained in a classical school, Columbia College, in New York city, and graduated in Dickinson College, Pennsylvania; after which he spent four years of study in Princeton Theological Seminary, twice graduating with honors. But two years in Kentucky, he accepted the presidency of Centre College in 1830, and served with that success and favor which have made his name and administration so much a part of the most attractive features of the peaceful and progressive history of the Commonwealth, until his death in 1857

His

twenty-seven years. In the year of his death, there were in attendance on the college and its academy two hundred and fifty-two pupils and forty-seven graduates. He was a firm and uniform advocate of emancipation, and signalized his devotion to the cause by his able writings and addresses upon this exciting topic. style of speaking was most effective from the tenderness, power, and fascination of his appeals to the heart and conscience, in which he excelled, as well as in the freshness, originality, and force of his illustrations and logic. He was always superior as a public speaker, rising often to the plane of most attractive and pleasing oratory. Few men were more beloved while living, or died more lamented.

JOHN CLARK YOUNG.

It is a fitting tribute to the name and worth of this eminent educator, that his son should succeed to the presidency of this venerable and honored institution. On the death of Dr. Ormond Beatty in 1890, William C.

CENTRE COLLEGE STILL IN FAVOR.

547 Young was chosen to the vacancy occasioned thereby. He reluctantly accepted, amid the protests and appeals of the members of the Presbyterian church, in Louisville, to whom he had endeared himself by years of faithful ministry. As president of Centre College, and as a minister of great power and popularity, the mantle of the father is worthily worn by the son. President Ormond Beatty was born in

Mason county, Kentucky, in 1815, and became a student of Centre College in his seventeenth year, graduating in 1835. His rare abilities and proficiency as a student led to his appointment to the professorship of natural science in his Alma Mater before his graduation. He accepted on condition that he be allowed to spend a year at Yale College.

In

From this chair he was transferred, in 1847, to that of mathematics, but in 1852 was restored to his original chair. 1870, he was elected president of the college and to the chair of metaphysics. His versatile, thorough scholarship enabled him

to fill all these positions with ability. Thus, PRESIDENT ORMOND BEATTY. it will be seen that Dr. Beatty acted as president and professor in Centre College for half a century. He was also, several times appointed.commissioner to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and served under appointment of that body and others in positions of highest trust and responsibility. He was a delegate to the first general council of the Presbyterian alliance in Edinburgh in 1877, and also to the second meeting of that body in Philadelphia in 1880. In 1882, he was elected the first president of the College Educational Association of Kentucky. In 1883, he represented the trustees of the Theological Seminary at Danville, before the General Assembly at Saratoga, to show reasons for not disturbing the relations and control of that institution.

Dr. Beatty was a man of great natural ability and a profound scholar, possessing a mind singularly logical and practical. A man of remarkably equable temper and a speaker of rare force and clearness. He had few equals as a public debater. His death occurred June 24, 1890.

Though colleges of a high grade have successfully multiplied in the South-west since the civil war, Centre College continues in favor with the patronizing public. In the college and academy for the session of 1884-85, the attendance of students was two hundred and eight.

The financial status of the college is set forth in the report of the financial agent for 1885, as follows: General fund, in bonds, stocks, and notes, in productive real estate, in endowment of the chair of vice-president, and

other funds, $189,709; in buildings and grounds, library, apparatus, etc., $70,500; total, $260, 209.

In May, 1885, the strength and resources of the old Synod of Kentucky are represented in the statistics of the official report of that date, showing three presbyteries, sixty-one ministers, eighty-nine churches, two hundred and forty-four elders, and one hundred and sixty-nine deacons. There were added to the church, on examination, five hundred and twenty-five; on certificates, two hundred and twenty-five, making a total membership of sixtythree hundred and seventy-four. Of baptisms, there were one hundred and ninety-two adults and one hundred and fifty-four infants. There are fifty-two hundred and ninety-eight Sunday-school members. The contributions for the year ending May, 1885, were: For home missions, $6,687; foreign missions, $3,641; education, $652; publication, $326; church erection, $5,837; relief fund, $638; freedmen, $636; aid to colleges, $6, 189; sustentation, $231; General Assembly, $415; congregational, $99,450, and miscellaneous, $13,354; total, $138,056.

1 The Roman Catholic Church, in 1800, had no bishop and but two priests in Kentucky. There were two churches and eleven stations, with a membership of about two thousand. In 1884, the statistics of the church show the Catholics to have two bishops, one hundred and ninety-three priests, two hundred and fourteen churches and chapels, five colleges, fifty-two academies and select schools, one hundred parochial schools, sixteen thousand three hundred and forty-four pupils in charge, nine asylums, four hospitals, and a following of two hundred thousand. The church has preserved a wonderful unity and steadiness throughout the century of its existence, and seems to be solidly and permanently grounded for its work in the future. It has passed through many trials and vicissitudes in this time, but in all these the management of its interests appears to have been in skilled, prudent, and discreet hands. equal to all emergencies. Its greatest shock received was, perhaps, during the

"Know Nothing" political movement of 1855, which spent its violent and proscriptive force within a year or two in an organized assault upon the foreign element of the country and the Roman Catholic Church, which embraced the great body of these in its folds.

It was

an organization against the antecedents and declarations of our republican institutions, and needed but the sober thought of reconsideration to reverse its purposes and policy by public sentiment. During the turbulent and violent excite

1 Webb's Catholicity in Kentucky, p. 580.