of such an office there was ample room for choice of policy. He might choose, from love of ease or from uncertainty of conviction, from lack of clearly elaborated ideas or from want of interest in a duty unrelated to his own happiness or success in life, to discharge it in a rather perfunctory manner, to drift listlessly with the stream of events, to affect a cautious laissez faire, to make of himself a mere parliamentary convenience or even a mere machine to register and execute helplessly the will of another; and against such a worldlywise election of policy it would be difficult to make any severe criticism hold fast. On the other hand, he might take his duties altogether more seriously; he might magnify his episcopate of higher culture; he might conceive of his trust as a high and holy and most important one; he might lay all its cares close to his heart and bind them about the neck of his memory; he might mark out distinctly a line of policy and might rack his brain daily to advance the University along it. It was natural, yea, inevitable that Major Rollins-such were his antecedents-should take this latter more earnest view of his functions, and through the half-generation of his incumbency he maintained it consistently. Perhaps no other University in the Union has ever enjoyed for so long a period uninterruptedly in its general extra-scholastic administration the assiduous fostering and nurturing care of one man so thoroughly competent and so entirely devoted; certainly no other has ever needed it more. It is the single, towering, isolated peaks, the Matterhorns, the Everests, the Chimborazos, that catch the eye, that engage the interest, that enthrall the imagination of artist, of savant, and of poet. Yet, after all, these are but small and insignificant fractions of the whole mountainrange that lifts them clearly into ether on its shoulders; the great mass of elevation lies scarcely noticed only a little below, amid nameless plateaus and countless humbler summits. In estimating the average of altitude, it is these latter that control and regulate; the glittering minarets count but little in the vast cathedral of nature. So, too, it is the lofty deeds of legislation for the University that fasten the gaze in contemplating the career of Rollins, and that transmit his name and fame to posterity. Yet these form but the merest fraction of the grand bulk of his services, which, like the Andes, stretch broad and long through the whole history of that seminary. It is these,—the daily solicitude, the nightly watch-care, the unwearied vigilance, the

unresting concern that trod many ways in the windings of thought, the ever-wise counsel, the always ready assistance lent in plenteous measure freely and to all alike, but above all the inextinguishable ardor of devotion which consumed brain and heart,-it is these, all long since fused into one undistinguished whole, that constitute the mass of his services and that raise their general level so exceeding high. In all his manifold relations to the personnel of the University he seems to have borne himself far above all considerations of private preference, of partisan prejudice, of political or ecclesiastical affiliation. Such feelings were certainly as native to his breast as to another's; otherwise he had been more or less than human. But they were held in check and submissive to an all-dominating zeal for the advancement of the University. The relation of a man to the University was the important one that swallowed up all others. The views, political or other, of the chief members of the instructing or the governing staff might have been, and in fact sometimes were, directly counter to his own; their modes of thought and of action might accord ever so little with those he most approved: all of these things, however, could move him not greatly nor disturb the deeper harmony of that common interest that to him was supreme. “What then?" he might say with the Apostle; "only that in some wise, whether by this or by that, the University is furthered; in this, it is, I rejoice, yea, and rejoice I will." Such a complete subjection of natural impulses to a single emotion would scarcely have been possible, even with the best intentions, to a man more zealous as a partisan, of a narrower intellectual horizon, or of less liberal mood than Rollins. The devotion, the tireless industry in the pursuit of the University's good here claimed for him was a matter of common notoriety in his lifetime; it is a possession of memory inalienable among his surviving contemporaries; it has been repeatedly recognized distinctly and impressively, officially and otherwise; and now to attempt to set it forth more clearly in evidence would be a superfluous argument, to prove at midday that the sun does shine. Let it suffice, then, to remark that both Lathrop and Read, throughout their administrations, leaned confidently upon him as upon an "unbending invincible pillar"; his home was their constant and familiar resort; and in separation their intercourse with him by mail was almost daily and of the most unreserved and intimate nature. In the case

of Dr. Read, the affectionate trust, the absolute reliance he had so long placed in Major Rollins assumed at last a form that was positively pathetic. This eminent teacher, a Nazarite from the womb of his Alma Mater consecrated wholly to the cause of culture, whose contributions to the theory and the practice of University education, extending through full half a century, if reckoned in all dimensions, have hardly yet been surpassed by those of any other man in the Mississippi Valley,- Dr. Daniel Read survived by two years his resignation of the Presidency of the University. During this time he traveled much over the United States, from St. Louis to Boston, but his heart tarried all the while with Rollins in Columbia; and so accustomed was he to divide every hope and fear, every joy and grief, every doubt, conjecture, and reflection, every care and responsibility, with his faithful yoke-fellow, that the habit, become a second nature, pursued him everywhere, and found a partial satisfaction only in a most voluminous and elaborate correspondence, which lays bare the inmost recesses of his soul, even to the thoughts and intents of his heart, and while clearly revealing the noble and majestic proportions of his character, at the same time exhibits him as clinging with more than fraternal tenderness and tenacity to Rollins, even as the vine is wedded indissolubly to the elm. This latter, meanwhile, though broken in health, and laden with bodily infirmity, was rendering an equally hearty, vigorous, and effective support to the administration of Dr. Read's successor, President Laws,- for whom, in the year 1881, he secured an appointment on the Board of Visitors to the United States Military Academy at West Point, to report on its condition, who spent evenings on evenings, untold in number, in conversation with him touching the general management of the University, and whose letters are strewn with such epithets as "indomitable" and "amazing," applied to the energy with which he would further the interests of the University, no less than with expressions of friendly concern lest his zeal should quite outrun his physical endurance.

But while Major Rollins had thus withdrawn his well-worn mind and body from the battle of public life, and was dedicating the remainder of his days more and more exclusively to the worship of his earliest love, the University, must we infer that he had lost interest in national politics, and that the circle of his sympathies con

tracted with the natural shortening of his span of life?

Far from

it! This was the day of the "Missouri Policy." Several men of very great ability, of lofty and patriotic ambition, of wide sympathies and of restless energy, had obtained the ascendancy in the politics of the State, and were potent ferments in the politics of the nation. Conspicuous among them were Gratz Brown, Carl Schurz, and that brilliant Harry Hotspur, Frank Preston Blair. This latter had been one of the most valiant officers in the Federal army; by his courage, his decision, his energy at the outbreak of the Civil War, he had helped as almost no other man to retain Missouri in the Union against the strenuous efforts of her Governor, Claiborne F. Jackson. But he looked with horror and indignation upon the Congressional policy of Reconstruction, which seemed to give full validity to the "Ordinances of Secession," which treated the Southern States as out of the Union, as conquered provinces, as Territories to be readmitted into the higher sisterhood only on hard conditions. Blair had long glowed, in war and in peace, with fierce ardor against the "nullifiers"; he could never concede that the Union he had fought so long and valiantly both with tongue and with sword to preserve and perpetuate had been dissolved either de jure or de facto, and it was that higher consistency, which sometimes seems inconsistent, that now forced him into the Democratic ranks, where his name had once been a terror. There he reaped the honors of defeat as VicePresidential candidate with Seymour in November, 1868. Not only this, but the disfranchisement of a large part of the citizens of Missouri by the Drake Constitution of 1865 had balked the Senatorial aspirations of General Blair and had returned its author to the upper House of Congress. Thus all considerations united to drive this Prince Rupert of politics into the sharpest antagonism to the dominant radicalism, and to spur on his generous and impetuous spirit to the intensest warfare against it. Meantime there developed within the Republican ranks themselves a Liberal faction, whose leaders were Schurz and Brown. These waged uncompromising battle with the odious provisions of the Constitution, and demanded, instead, "universal amnesty and universal enfranchisement." With this rallying cry and under such puissant chieftains the Liberals and Democrats carried the State of Missouri, and this success thus achieved propagated itself like an electric shock throughout the Union and

precipitated into being the National Liberal Republican Party. This organization, which would now be called Mugwump, and which contained in disproportionate measure both the head and the heart, the intellectual ability, and the moral integrity of the Republican party, was able in two years, on the first of May, 1872, to send nearly 700 delegates to a most imposing convention assembled in Cincinnati. The contagion of independence and patriotism had everywhere attacked the noblest minds of the nation, the Liberal revolt had assumed majestic proportions, the defection from the Republican ranks was widespread, and nothing seemed-nay, in fact, nothing was-wanting to insure the success on a stupendous scale, at the national election, of the "Missouri policy" but a judicious nomination for President of some high-minded patriot who could command the acceptance of the Democratic Convention and the suffrages of the Democratic party. Thus far the movement had been conducted with great wisdom and foresight, but in an evil moment the seven demons of fatuity invaded the convention, overmastered nearly three-fourths of the delegates, and nominated Horace Greeley for President!—a man of all men, a name of all names, peculiarly distasteful to the inveterate Democrat. It was Missouri that had initiated this daring enterprise, the splendid captaincy of her statesmen-sons had carried it to the very gateways of complete success, and her prowess was recognized in the nomination of Gratz Brown for the second place on the national ticket. But no union of abilities and virtues in the Liberals could ever recommend the editor of the Tribune to the average Democrat; the convention did indeed accept him with the lips, but the great heart of the party remained far from him, and he was crushed into the grave by Democratic indifference in November.

In this the first great popular effort in the latest period of our history to reform politics, to substitute ideas and principles for party names and prejudices as watch-words and battle-cries, Major Rollins was fitted by his political antecedents, by his existent party affiliations, by his temperament and his abilities to be a natural leader. And he did indeed act a prominent part. He was in constant communication with Frank P. Blair, who conferred with him at every move in that high game upon that national chess-board, and whom he had nominated for the Senate (January 18, 1867) in a speech singularly happy and appropriate. When in 1871 General Blair appealed to the