railroads, hotels and theatres, parks and cemeteries—all organs and institutions of society, all expressions and instruments of civic life, found in him uniformly a foremost champion and often a single-handed promoter. Neither was he content with devoting so large a part of his time and attention to the advancement of the general weal. He was not only a well-wisher, but also a well-doer; and not only to the people at large, but also to countless particular persons in private. He coveted, perhaps even to excess, the admiration and affection of his kind; the applause of the multitude was music to his ears, their testimonials of gratitude were as light to his eyes. But he sought to win favor always by first deserving it, and his love of approbation became a powerful incentive to virtue. It was not only Lathrop and Read and the staff of the University that leaned upon him so trustfully; his generous arm upbore many another. Applications for counsel, for all kinds of assistance, financial and other, would stream

in upon him. His correspondence, which was enormous and must

have been most burdensome, bears ample testimony both to the great number, the warmth, and the intimacy of his friendships, and also to the exceedingly high esteem in which his opinion, his abilities, and his character were held by the most distinguished men of the State and of the nation, among whom it is enough to mention the Blairs, the Clays, the Shermans, Benton, Bates, Glover, C. F. Burnam, and Professor Bartlett. These letters, often of a very personal and confidential nature and not seldom voluminous, discover in more than one case a feeling of the liveliest gratitude on the part of his correspondent for some valuable service already rendered, and, what is far more, an unquestioning faith that no opportunity would be allowed to slip by for a further extension of such friendly offices. The instance of General George C. Bingham is particularly noteworthy. This man was an artist of very unusual endowments. Born under another sun, in France or Germany, he would have won a most enviable rank among the greatest of contemporary painters. But he was not merely skilful with the brush; he wielded the pen with almost equal dexterity. The defects of early culture he had far more than made good by extensive reading and by wide and close observation. His sympathies and intellectual interests were remarkably broad and varied, his understanding was capacious and virile. More than all, however, his moral nature was cast in a mold almost heroic. He

was noble and generous, strangely unpartizan, incorruptibly honest, and romantically courageous. To be the peculiar friend of such a man was in itself a distinction, and according to his own express declaration it fell to Rollins. His letters to the latter reveal a most tender attachment, a confidence utterly unreserved, and a sense of irremovable obligation that is never once felt as a burden.

The domestic life of Major Rollins, which stretched itself through more than half a century, was one of unbroken harmony and of singular happiness. On the 6th of June, 1837, he received in marriage the hand of Miss Mary E. Hickman, who survives him in a widowhood comforted with every fragrance of memory, with the richest overgrowth of family affection; and in this felicitous union was laid the foundation of a blessedness imperturbable by the accidents of political fortune. Nor this only, but whatever success attended his manifold undertakings Rollins always attributed in large measure, justly and generously, to the sagacity and unwearied vigilance, the energy and administrative ability, the patient self-sacrifice and unswerving devotion of his consort by the hearthstone; qualities that might be safely left to guard extensive private interests, while his own attention was absorbed in matters of public concern. Eleven children were born unto this well-matched pair, and the brood at home was always regarded with the utmost tenderness and with more than paternal pride by Rollins. To this fondness he would indeed sometimes give expression in his public addresses, with a certain naïveté that touched some and amused others in his audience. But even the pleasures of home and the fireside demand inexorably their own requital, and the untimely death of four children, especially of his son Frank, a youth of unusual promise, slew his peace as the arrows of only such afflictions can slay.

One child, however, was left behind him not subject to the ordinary decrees of mortality: the University of the State of Missouri. The distinguished title of Pater Universitatis Missouriensis was formally conferred by proper authority, but even had it never been recognized, the fact of such illustrious paternity, in the light of the foregoing history, would be hardly less conspicuous. His claim to such an august cognomen may, indeed, be disputed, but on grounds how utterly unsubstantial has already been shown. Granted that the germ of a university was imbedded in the Constitution; in itself

it was sterile there it was dead already, abiding alone. Some vivifying energy from without was absolutely necessary to fertilize it, and that impulse to life and growth was supplied by Rollins. It is no answer to say that if he should not have done it, somebody else would. Very probably. And if Newton had not discovered the law of gravitation, somebody else would have discovered it. If Stephen had not begun, if Paul had not completed, the universalization of Christianity, yet by some means it would have been universalized. But herewithal the glory of Newton, of Stephen, and of Paul is in no measure abated. Nevertheless, such considerations as these do not yet touch the heart of the matter. What is it after all that constitutes true fatherhood? It has been pithily said,

Assuredly not.

Is it mere engendering?

Das Vaterwerden ist nicht schwer,
Das Vatersein dagegen, sehr!

To be a father, to discharge the manifold and difficult duties of such a relation, truly hic labor, hoc opus est. And it was not solely nor mainly because Rollins was foremost in inaugurating the University that the Board conferred upon him such high distinction, but because for so many years he had played the part of its father at a sacrifice continually of private interest and, finally, of honorable political ambition. If such services as are now familiar to the reader do not ground a just claim to the title in question, then it is hard to see how any such claim could ever be justly grounded. No one disputes the boast of Jefferson, inscribed on his tomb, that he was "Father of the University of Virginia." Yet will any one equate for a moment the services of Jefferson to the services of Rollins? What indeed was the work of the former? By tongue and pen, with exhaustive argument, he recommended the idea of a university to the people of Virginia; through his friend Joseph C. Cabell in the Legislature he secured an appropriation of $300,000 for edifices and a yearly support of $15,000; he traced out the general organization of the University and personally superintended the construction of the buildings. Splendid services these to culture and to American citizenship, and for them he has his reward. But who will liken them to those of Rollins? What did the Virginian do which the Missourian did not do in equal or in larger measure? In

organization the work of the latter kept pace with the former's, in administration it surpassed, in promotion and benefaction it distanced. Rollins gave largely of his means to the University; Jefferson gave nothing, being nearly bankrupt, with nothing to give. He "began to interest himself in the University in 1817" at the age of seventyfour, and maintained his interest for nine years, dying in 1826; Rollins, on the other hand, espoused the cause of the University at the age of twenty-seven, and was active in its behalf through more than forty-five years. Jefferson found "in the establishment of a University" (see his letter to John Adams under date of October 23, 1823) a "hobby against this tedium vita" fit for an "octogenary rider." But Rollins found in establishing a University not the diversion of age, but the engrossing employment of youth and manhood. True, the work of the sage of Monticello has been blessed apparently far beyond that of the statesman of Columbia; but whatever the craft of the workman his product will depend on the material at hand; however planted, however watered, it is earth and sky that shape flower and fruitage. Nor let us forget that the University of Virginia is nearly a score of years the elder; and as to the University of Missouri twenty years from now-it doth not yet appear what it shall be.

The services of Rollins to the cause of higher education, more particularly to the State University, undoubtedly ground his chief claim to immortality and uprear the central pillar of his fame. Yet his political achievements were very far from inconsiderable, though they fell short both of his own just deserts and still more of the confident expectations of his admirers. Here again the fault lay not so much in the chisel as in the marble, which proved refractory in its intimate structure and refused to take upon itself the highest polish. It is a fact that confronts us at more than one turn of events that time and place had conspired against him, and they performed their vow. Had the stage of his action been shifted through three degrees either in latitude or in longitude, his political career would have been far less chequered. Had the meridian of his life, which traversed the troublous times of the Kansas agitation, been displaced by ten years either backwards or forwards, his political development would have been true to itself and his elective affinities would not have been thwarted. As it was, he

found himself a Whig in the decadence of Whiggery; a leader of his party when that party had begun to disintegrate; a slaveholder, but in heart unalterably opposed to the institution of slavery; a conservative when conservatism was impossible; and a preacher of peace when war was inevitable. The dissolution of the Whigs left him without any firm partizan anchorage; at a time when the political elements were undergoing rapid polarization and rearrangement, he found himself still beneath the strong coercitive magnetism of the great Apostle of Compromise, repelled alike by either polar extreme and buffeted by the contrary currents that so often vex mid-lying equatorial regions. Nature had formed his mind and temper for the "era of good feeling," and then, with that bitter irony, in that grim mockery that she loves, had flung him into the maëlstrom of sectional strife and partisan hatred. It is surely no wonder if the tempest whose first blasts stranded far from their haven such heroic crafts as Clay and Webster should wreck or engulf at the height of its fury even the sturdiest of their epigoni. Rollins himself was wont to find solace for the miscarriage of his aspirations in the just observation that in minorities, where his lot was so frequently cast, there is generally to be found more than a due proportion of virtue and wisdom, of patriotism and intelligence. To this we may add the further reflection that disappointment is not failure, and may really be the guise of some higher and unhoped for success. Had Rollins been a more famous, perhaps he might have been a less useful man; had his career been crowned with greater good fortune, perhaps it might have been filled with less beneficence. From its highland fastness, from its homestead in the hills, its undiscovered sources, the stream of his life broke forth with glad and strong and impetuous current. Swift and bright, deep-flowing and abundant, it rushed onward through half its descent to the main. Then it was that the sands, sluggish and heavy, began to choke it and drain off its brimming wave and dull the mirror of its surface. Yet through the desolate tract it held on its slow and toilsome and circuitous course, and at last, having redeemed and blessed with fertility a long wide stretch of the desert, it emerged, though with contracted flood, "from out the mist and hum of that low land," to hear the waves dashing on the destined shore and to mingle its own murmur in the eternal anthem of the sea.