. .
Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won
This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame.
What the University meant to Lanier can be realized only by those
who have noted the eager spirit with which he responded
to every great influence brought into his life, and who realize
what "those early days of unbounded enthusiasm and unfettered ideality,"
characteristic of the newly founded University, meant to
the American educational system. Her sister institutions have in later days
gone far beyond Johns Hopkins in equipment and in opportunities
for research, but students of American education can never forget
the pioneer work of the University in the line of graduate study.
Fortunately its benefactor had left a board of trustees
absolutely untrammeled by any condition or reservation,
political, religious, or literary. A body of unusually strong men,
they were fortunate in securing the services of Daniel Coit Gilman,
whose experience in educational matters had commended itself
to the judgment of the four leading university presidents of the country
to such an extent that each of them without consulting with the others
advised his election. The newly elected president and the trustees
were accessible to ideas, and finally decided that the wisest thing
that could be done was to make possible what had been previously wanting
in American universities, a graduate school with high standards.
American professors had studied in German universities
and distinguished European scholars had been called to chairs
in American universities, but neither had succeeded in essentially modifying
the type of higher education.
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