New-York tribune., 1901-10-13

Importance have been invited to send delegates
and. with hardly single exception, they will
be represented. From California to NewYork
ard from Michigan to Texas will come uni
versity presidents and leaders in educational
work, and, besides these distinguished guests.
will come government officials, including Presi
dent Roosevelt and Secretaries Hay and Root,
Justices of the Supreme Court. jurists. foreign
diplomats and leading men of letters and sci
Yale will signalize her bicentennial by
comforting honorary degrees upon fifty of the
distinguished men Of this country and
Europe. In the literary and musical pro-
grlmme, in the spectacular features to be con-
tributed by the undergraduates and graduates.
in the historical exhibits. and in the general
congratulations which Yale and Yaie's prcsi-
dent will receive. the celebration will be the
most remarkable Of university functions in the
history of the country.
The two hundred years which Yale is to cele-
brate cover a period of growth that is re-
markable Nothing. perhaps. in modern Amer
lea except the great latter day mechanical and
business progress is such tribute to the ad-
vance made by this country since 11Ol as the
development of such a university as Yale. The
rise of Yale has been coincident with the de
velopment of the country. has shared its intel
lectual and economic awakening, and has grown
with it from proVincialism to national charac-
ter. and from a poverty stricken. wandering
Collegiate School" to a comparatively wealthy
and magnifcently developed university. And
this is only the beginning of the things that
are to come
How Yale started is buried in the records of
the seventeenth century. 1t had its beginning
in the strong ambitions of group of New
Haven colonists that some day college might
stand upon the soil of the colony of Old
England In 100 Harvard the only insti-
tuition to which NewEngland lad with a
desire for culture might go for an education
All through Connecticut the college educated
men Harvard graduates. if they were not
English university men. 1t was an early ambi-
ton of New Haven to have college, the Rev.
John Davenport advocating such a plan when
the New-Haven Colony was only ten years old.
Three times attempts made to establish
such a school here. and each time they failed.
In 1647 land was set aside for college build
ing. but the plan was abandoned because of the
failure of a New-Haven trading post on Della
ware Bay, which had been captured and burned
by the New-York Dutch. In 1850 Governor
Hopkins left money for such a school, but Hart
ford interfered and. while collegiate institu-
ton was actually established, it languished and
finally became a grammar school. which it has
continued to be to this day. But by 1867 the
Rev. James PierpOnt. Davenports successor In
the NeW-HaNen CNufcn, look up tIS SUBJECT
in earnest. called meetings of the clergymen in
the neig ghborhood-the clergy men were the only
college graduates in those remote days-and by
1909 had actually launched the institution.
In 11O1 a final meeting held in Branford,
a charter secured. and in November. 1IOl. or
ganization effected at meeting held in
SaybroOk
The new college, called THE Collegiate School
of Connecticut" in sense rival of
Harvard, did it spring from any theological
differences with Massachusetts educators, as
has been averred 1t was organized chiefly be-
cause Cambridge hard to reach for the
poor youth of Connecticut, and because there
were enough young men IN this colony who
desired a college education Abraham Pierson
was the first rector at Saybrook, and he IN
structed twelve youths one of whom. Jonathan
Dickinson. 1905. afterward the first presl-
dent of the College of w-Jersey. at Prince
ton. But the Saybrook home of Yale was uH-