America, was published in two volumes, in 1828, a work of diligence and authority which has always commanded the respect of the profession. The American Medical Biography, by Dr. Stephen W. Williams,* may be regarded as a suppleinent to this work.

COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

FROM an intimation in the records of Trinity church it would appear that, as early as the year 1703, it was the intention of the colonial government, then represented by Lord Cornbury, to provide a site for a college on the island of New York. The subject appears further to have occupied the attention of Bishop Berkeley when his Bermuda plan had failed. In 1746 a provincial act was passed for raising money for the purpose by lottery; and in the next few years a sum gathered in this way of more than three thousand four hundred pounds, which was placed in the hands of trustees, a majority of whom were members of the Church of England, and a part of whom belonged to the vestry of Trinity church. The opposition to this Church of England interest for a long time thwarted the plans of the college. It was led by Mr. William Livingston, who agitated the subject in his periodical, "The Independent Reflector," striving to defeat the proposed royal charter, and substitute another institution, under an act of Assembly, to take possession of the funds. The charter of King's College was, however, granted on the 31st of October, 1754, and Livingston again bent his efforts to set up his own plan of a college. His opposition ended simply in diverting one half of the funds set apart to the city corporation, by which the college was so far the loser. Dr. Samuel Johnson had been in the meantime invited from his parish at Stratford to take charge of the new institution. A better choice could not have been made. A native of Guilford, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale, he was one of the young clergymen of that region who accompanied President Cutler to England for Episcopal ordination. He returned to Stratford a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He had become the friend of Berkeley, whose theory of Idealism he

Samuel Johnson.

American Medical Biography: or Memoirs of Eminent Physicians, embracing principally those who have died since the publication of Dr. Thacher's work on the same subject. Svo., Greenfield, Mass. 1845.

adopted, and invited his liberality to Yale. The University of Oxford had conferred on him the degree of doctor in divinity. Dr. Franklin was anxious that he should take charge of the University of Pennsylvania. With such honorable associations he arrived at New York in his fiftyeighth year.

Bishop Berkeley, who was acquainted with the wishes of the friends of learning for a college in New York, wrote from his see of Cloyne to Johnson, in 1749. Anticipating the future speciality of the college, its attention to classical studies, he impressed upon the man marked out for its president, that "the Greek and Latin classics be well taught. Be this the first care as to learning!" To this he added an injunction for the principal care of "good life and morals;" recommends that the institution should start well, with the infusion of "a good taste into the society," by a handsome provision for its president and fellows, and suggested that "small premiums in books, or distinctions in habit, may prove useful encouragements to the students."*

The college was organized in May, 1755, when Trinity church conveyed to its governors the land inclosed by Church, Barclay, and Murray streets to the Hudson river. The only conditions of the gift were that the president should always be a member of the Church of England, and that its liturgy should be used in the service of the college. Beyond this there was to be no exclusion for religious opinion. The college seal was adopted from a device prepared by the president.

Application was made to England for funds. James Jay went over as applicant, and associated with Dr. Smith, provost of the college in Philadelphia. A large sum was collected for both institutions. On the 23d of August the first stone of the college building was laid by the governor, Sir Charles Hardy, who had favored the object at the outset, on his first arrival. The first Commencement was held in 1758. The original building, the central portion of the present edifice, was completed in 1760. The president, soon contemplating retirement from age, made application to Archbishop Secker, in England, for an assistant, who might succeed to his office. Myles Cooper, a young graduate of Oxford, a man of learning and of some taste in poetry, was selected. Dr. Johnson retired to Stratford, when Cooper became president, in 1763, and passed his days in his ministry, till his death in 1772 at the age of seventy-five. He wished at the close of his days that he might die like his friend Berkeley, to whom death came suddenly in the quiet of his home, and a similar end was vouchsafed him.t The poetical inscription on the monument over his remains at Stratford, was written by Dr. Cooper :

If decent dignity, and modest mien,

The cheerful heart, and countenance serene;

If pure religion and unsullied truth,

His age's solace, and his search in youth; In charity, through all the race he ran, Still wishing well, and doing good to man; If learning free from pedantry and pride;

The letter is in the Appendix of Chandler's Life. + Chandler's Life, p. 124.

If faith and virtue walking side by side;
If well to mark his being's aim and end,
To shine through life the father and the friend;
If these ambition in thy soul can raise,
Excite thy reverence or demand thy praise,
Reader, ere yet thou quit this earthly scene,
Revere his name, and be what he has been.

Johnson's life was written by his friend Dr. Chandler, the zealous advocate of episcopacy, but did not appear till 1805.*

Besides a number of discourses and other writings on church topics, Dr. Johnson published, in 1746, a System of Morality and a Compendium of Logic and Metaphysics, treatises with which Benjamin Franklin was so pleased that he printed them together in a volume in 1752, which was reprinted in London, where also a third edition appeared in 1754, corrected by the author, with a preface by Dr. William Smith, afterwards provost of the College of Pennsylvania. An English and Hebrew Grammar, being the first short rudiments of the two languages taught together, to which is added a Synopsis of all the Parts of Learning, appeared from his pen in London, in 1757.t

The name of the second president, Myles Cooper, being somewhat prominently connected with the Revolutionary era in New York, and his story furnishing several notable anecdotes, it may be of interest to state particularly what is known of his life and writings.

Myles Cooper came over to America in 1762. He brought a letter from Archbishop Secker, who had chosen him, at the request of the college, as a competent assistant and successor to President Johnson. The amiable and useful friend to America, Dr. Fothergill, had a hand in this appointment. He was then but twenty-seven years of age; a youthful incumbent of so grave an office, in which he was fully installed the following year. Cooper was born in 1735. He took the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Oxford in 1760, and the next year published a volume of poems by subscription at that city. They are occasional verses, amatory and bacchanalian, full of the spirit of the old English gentleman who sang of Chloe, Delia, and Silvia; put old stories of cuckoldry into epigrams, and wrote heroic little poems on ladies' gaiters; at times subsiding into tranquillity in an ode to Contentment, or some touching lines to a Singing Bird in Confinement, and rising-if it be rising into dull stanzas on sacred subjects; for all of these things did Myles Cooper in his salad days at Oxford, before he came to America to confront" sons of liberty" on the Hudson. It is not likely that he brought many copies of his

*Thomas Bradbury Chandler was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, and was a graduate of Yale. He was ordained in England in 1751, and became rector at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, on his return. He died at the age of sixty-four, in 1790. His chief writings were controversial, against Chauncy of Boston, in defence of Episcopacy.

+ An Historical Sketch of Columbia College, in the City of New York, 1846, by N. F. Moore, late President. A small volume compactly filled with important information. We have been greatly indebted to its faithful narrative throughout this notice.

M'Vickar's Life of Bard, 29.

Poems on Several Occasions, by Myles Cooper, M.A., of Queen's College, Oxford. Spes est animi nostra timore minor. -OVID. Oxford. Printed by W. Jackson. 8vo.

Myler Coopers

It was one of the doctor's notions in his book that power, bower, tower, should be printed when they made one syllable in poetry, powre, bowre, towre, and he modestly states in his unsettled, apologetic preface, that some of his poems were imitations, and others were written by his friends.

In this old British period the young president's manners and convivial habits were much admired. He was a member of a literary club, which, "like those of modern days, mixed up a little literature with a great deal of conviviality."*

On the breaking out of the Revolution, Myles Cooper, with Seabury and Auchmuty, were active on the Tory side in writing and scheming. Cooper is said to have had a hand in the tract, a publication of the times-A Friendly Address to all reasonable Americans, on the subject of our Political Confusions; in which the necessary consequences of violently opposing the King's troops, and of a general Non-Importation are fairly stated; which one of his pupils, the young Alexander Hamilton, who had matriculated at the college in 1774, answered with signal ability. He is twice mentioned in M'Fingal.

Cooper became exceedingly obnoxious to the

people, as one of the Tory plotters, and in April, 1775, he and his friends received a significant hint from a published letter, signed "Three Millions," to "fly for their lives, or anticipate their doom by becoming their own executioners."*

66

On the night of May 10, of that year, after Hamilton and his youthful companions had destroyed the guns on the Battery, and one of their comrades had fallen, the mob became incensed, and proceeded to expel Dr. Cooper from the college. Hamilton and Troup, students, ascended the steps, and, to restrain the rioters, Hamilton addressed them "on the excessive impropriety of their conduct, and the disgrace they were bringing on the cause of liberty, of which they professed to be the champions." Dr. Cooper, who mistook the case and thought he was exciting the people, cried out from an upper window, "Don't listen to him, gentlemen; he is crazy, he is crazy" -but Hamilton kept them engaged till the Tory president escaped. He made his way half-dressed over the college fence, and wandered about the shore of the Hudson till near morning, when he found shelter in the old Stuyvesant mansion in the Bowery, where he passed the day, and was at night taken on board the Kingfisher, Captain James Montagu, an English ship-of-war in the harbor, in which he sailed to England. He kept the anniversary of these events next year by writing a poem, full of the circumstances, which he published in the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1776. It is a favorable specimen of his poetical powers.

STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE EVENING OF THE 10TH OF MAY, 1776, BY AN EXILE FROM AMERICA.

To thee, O God, by whom I live,
The tribute of my soul to give

On this eventful day,

To thee, O'God, my voice I raise;
To thee address my grateful praise,
And swell the duteous lay.

Now has this orb unceasing run
Its annual circuit round the sun,

Since when the heirs of strife,
Led by the pale moon's midnight ray,
And bent on mischief, urged their way.
To seize my guiltless life.

At ease my weary limbs were laid,
And slumbers sweet around me shed

The blessings of repose:
Unconscious of the dark design,
1 knew no base intent was mine,
And therefore feared no foes.

When straight, a heav'n-directed youth,
Whom oft my lessons led to truth,

And honour's sacred shrine,
Advancing quick before the rest,
With trembling tongue my ear addrest,
Yet sure in voice divine:

"Awake! awake! the storm is nigh-
This instant rouse-this instant fly-
The next may be too late-

Four hundred men, a murderous band,
Access, importunate, demand,

And shake the groaning gate."

Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, ii. 889.

+ Life of Hamilton, by John C. Hamilton, vol. i. Prest. N. F. Moore's Historical Sketch of Columbia College, p. 61, and Appendix.

I wake-I fly-while loud and near,
Dread execrations wound my ear,

And sore my soul dismay.
One avenue alone remained,
A speedy passage there I gained,
And winged my rapid way.

That moment, all the furious throng,
An entrance forcing, poured along,
And filled my peaceful cell;
Where harmless jest, and modest mirth.
And cheerful laughter oft had birth,
And joy was wont to dwell.

Not e'en the Muses' hallowed fane*
Their lawless fury can restrain,

Or check their headlong haste;
They push them from their solemn seats,
Profane their long revered retreats,

And lay their Pindus waste.

Nor yet content-but hoping still
Their impious purpose to fulfil,

They force each yielding door;
And while their curses load my head
With piercing steel they probe the bed,
And thirst for human gore.
Meanwhile along the sounding shore,
Where Hudson's waves incessant roar,
I work my weary way;
And skirt the windings of the tide,
My faithful pupil by my side,

Nor wish the approach of day.

At length, ascending from the beach,
With hopes revived, by morn I reach
The good Pale:non's cot;
Where, free from terror and affright,
I calmly wait the coming night
My every fear forgot.

"Twas then I scaled the vessel's side,
Where all the amities abide,

That mortal worth can boast; Whence, with a longing, lingering view, I bade my much loved York adieu,

And sought my native coast.

Now, all composed, from danger far,
I hear no more the din of war,
Nor shudder at alarms;
But safely sink each night to rest,
No malice rankling through my breast,
In Freedom's fostering arms.

Though stript of most the world admines,
Yet, torn by few untamed desires,

I rest in calm content;
And humbly hope a gracious Lord
Again those blessings will afford

Which once his bounty lent.

Yet, still, for many a faithful friend,
Shall, day by day, my vows ascend
Thy dwelling, O my God!
Who steady still in virtue's cause,
Despising faction's mimic laws,

The paths of peace have trod.
Nor yet for friends alone-for all,
Too prone to heed sedition's call,
Hear me, indulgent Heav'n!

He alludes to the college edifice converted into a military hospital, and which a note on this passage intended for his English readers describes as-"an elegant edifice, since converted into common barracks."

+ The Kingfisher, Captain James Montagu.

O may they cast their arms away,
To Thee and George submission pay,
Repent, and be forgiven."

Upon his arrival in England Dr. Cooper became one of the ministers of the English Chapel in Edinburgh,* in which capacity he died at that city, suddenly, May 1, 1785. The epitaph which he wrote for himself is characteristic:

Here lies a priest of English blood,
Who, living, lik'd whate'er was good;
Good company, good wine, good name,
Yet never hunted after fame;
But as the first he still preferr'd,
So here he chose to be interr'd,

And, unobseur'd, from crowds withd: ev
To rest among a chosen few,

In humble hopes that Sovereign love
Will raise him to be blest above.

His portrait, which hangs in the college library, was engraved for a biographical article in the American Medical and Philosophical Register. It exhibits his happy constitutional temperament.

Upon the flight of Dr. Cooper in 1775, the Rev. Benjamin Moore was appointed president pro tem., but the college education was soon entirely interrupted by the Revolution. The building was taken possession of as a military hospital; the library, containing many valuable works from the University of Oxford and other sources, was removed and almost destroyed, but a few of the books coming to light many years afterwards in a room of St. Paul's chapel. There were consequently no graduates from 1776 to 1784. On the

restoration of peace the iron crown was removed from the cupola of King's College, which henceforth, by the act of 1784, and under the new organization of trustees established in 1787, became Columbia College. The first student who presented himself after the Revolution was Dewitt Clinton; one of the last who left the college before it was Alexander Hamilton. John Randolph, of Virginia, appears among the early students of the restoration.

A new president was appointed in 1787, William Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, son of the first incumbent. He was fifty years of age at the time, was a graduate of Yale and Harvard, had been a delegate to Congress of 1765 at New York, and agent of Connecticut in England, where he formed the acquaintance of such men as Secker, Berkeley, Lowth, and others, including the leviathan Dr. Samuel Johnson, who became his correspondent on his return to America. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and had the degree of doctor of divinity from Oxford. Among other honors and offices he was delegate to the Convention of the Constitution of the United States, and exercised an important influence in its deliberations. While Congress sat in New York he represented his native state in that body, assisting with Ellsworth in the formation of the judiciary, and on its removal to Philadelphia resigned his senatorship, and occupied himself exclusively with the government of the college till his withdrawal in 1800 from the infirmities of years. He

Arnot's Hist. Edinburgh, p. 286. Vol. iii. 29.

died in Stratford, in 1819, at the age of ninetytwo. Verplanck has applied to his retirement the lines of Dr. Johnson:

The virtues of a temperate prime,
Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime
And age that melts with unperceived decay,
And glides in pious innocence away;
Whose peaceful day benevolence endears,
Whose night congratulating conscience cheers,
The general fav'rite as the general friend,
Such age there is, and who shall wish its end?*

The Rev. Charles Wharton, of Philadelphia, was elected his successor, but immediately resigning, the Rt. Rev. Benjamin Moore was chosen, and held the office from 1801 to 1811.

The Rev. William Harris succeeded Bishop Moore for a period of eighteen years, till 1829. For the first six years of his administration Dr. John M. Mason was in a manner associated with the office, with the title of provost, an officer who, in the absence of the president, was to supply his place.

The Hon. William A. Duer, elected at the close of 1829, discharged the duties of the office till 1842.

William Alexander Duer was born September 8, 1780, at Rhinebeck, Dutchess county, New York. His father was Commissary-General for the Northern Department, and a member of the Committee of Public Safety. After the declaration of peace, 1783, he began the study of law with the eminent Peter S. Duponceau, in Philadelphia, and continued it with the late Nathaniel Pendleton of New York. During the quasi war with France of 1798, he obtained the appointment of midshipman in the Navy, and served under Decatur. On the adjustment of the French question he resumed his law studies with Pendleton, and being admitted to the bar in 1802, shortly afterwards formed a connexion in business with Edward Livingston, who was thea district attorney and mayor of the city, which continued until the latter's removal to New Orleans. He then formed a professional partnership with his brother-in-law, Beverly Robinson. About this period he made his first essays in authorship as a contributor to a partisan weekly paper, the Corrector, conducted by Dr. Peter Irving, and enlisted in the support of Burr. It was a temporary affair, and the parties engaged in it were by no means committed subsequently to any disaffection towards the high character of General Hamilton. Mr. Duer shortly after joined Livingston at New Orleans, and devoted himself to the study of the Spanish civil law. He was successful, but was induced by the climate and his marriage with a lady of New York, the daughter of William Denning, a prominent Whig of the Revolution, to resume his practice in the latter city. In his new position he contributed literary articles to his friend Dr. Iving's newspaper, the Morning Chronicle. He next opened an office in his native town, Rhinebeck, and in 1814 was elected to the State Assembly. In this position he was appointed chairman of a committee on colleges, academies, and

* Quoted in Verplanck's Art. on Prest. Johnson in Knapp's Am. Biog.

other interests of science and literature, and succeeded in the passage of a bill which is the original of the existing law on the subject of the common school income. He was also chairman of the important committee which arraigned the constitutionality of the state law vesting the right of river-navigation in Livingston and Fulton.* He continued in the legislature till 1817. During this time he bore a prominent part in laying the foundation of the present canal legislation, and employed his efforts to check abuses growing out of the old lottery system. In 1822, with the adjustment of the courts under the new constitution, he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court in the third circuit, and held the office for seven years, till his appointment to the presidency of Columbia College. In his new administration he soon arranged a better distribution of college studies, and added one hour daily by the system to the time of instruction, taking charge himself of the exercises of the Freshman class in English composition, and delivering to the seniors a course of lectures on the constitutional jurisprudence of the United States. These "outlines" were published in 1833, and subsequently revised and issued in Messrs. Harper's "Family" and "School District" libraries. Dr. Duer's presidency of the college, which closed with his retirement in ill health in 1842, was marked by his high-toned and gentlemanly administration of its affairs. His courtesy, while it called for little exercise of di-cipline, secured him the respect of the students. During this period, at the request of the corporation, he delivered a eulogy upon President Monroe, which was pronounced in the open air from the portico of the City Hall. Since his retirement President Duer las resided at Morristown, New Jersey. His restored health and leisure have given him opportunity for literary pursuits, which he has availed himself of to write the life of his maternal grandfather Lord Stirling, which has been published as a volume of their collections by the Historical Society of New Jersey. In 1847 he delivered in the college chapel an address before the literary societies of Columbia, which has been published; and in 1848 an historical address of interest before the St. Nicholas Society, in which he reviews his early reminiscences of New York, and describes the scenes connected with the inauguration of Washington. This was published, and forms a valuable contribution to American historical memoirs.

Judge Duer was succeeded by Nathaniel F. Moore, who held the office till the autumn of 1849, when he resigned it and retired to private life.

Nathaniel F. Moore was born at Newtown, Long Island, on the 25th of December, 1782. His father, William Moore, removed to New York in the following autumn, and there continued to reside in the practice of his profession, a3 a highly respected physician, until 1824. Nathaniel was prepared for college by Mr. Samuel Rudd. He pursued his studies at Columbia College, and took his degree of A.B. in the year 1802,

Art. Fitch's and Fulton's Stean-Navigation.-Putnam's Monthly Mag., Jan., 1855.

during the presidency of his uncle, the Rt. Rev. Bishop Moore. On this occasion he delivered the salutatory addres, with an oration, De Astronomia Laudibus. After leaving college Mr. Moore studied law under Beverly Robinson, and was admitted to the bar in 1805. In the year 1817 he was appointed adjunct professor of the Greek and Latin languages in his alma mater, and soon after, in 1820, he succeeded Dr. Wilson as professor in the same department. In 1825 he received from Columbia College the degree of LL.D., which in this conferred on him another mark of her approbation of his faithful and valuable services. In 1835 he resigned his professorship and made a visit to Europe. On his return in 1837 the college purchased his valuable library, and appointed him librarian, an office which he held only long enough to reorganize the library, incorporate his own books therewith, and make a catalogue of the whole collection. In 1839 he again went abroad, and, on this occasion, he visited Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land. Dr. Moore has not been a voluminous writer, but he has made some very valuable additions to the classical publications of this country, particularly in the work entitled Ancient Mineralogy. He published also Remarks on the Pronunciation of the Greek Language, in reply to a pamphlet of Mr. Pickering's on the same subject; Lectures on the Greek Language and Literature, and An Historical Sketch of Columbia College, besides several smaller pamphlets and essays.

The successor of Dr. Moore in the presidency, Charles King, the second son of Rufus King, was born in the City of New York, March 16, 1789. His mother was Mary Alsop, of an eminent family of the state. He removed with his family to England in 1796, when Rufus King was appointed by Washington minister to the English court. He received there the principal part of his education. After passing a year or two at a preparatory school, near London, he was sent with his brother John A. King to Harrow, one of the large public schools of England. After five years spent at that school, where among the companions of about his own age were Lord Byron and the late Sir Robert Peel, he went to Paris, and passed a year at one of the chief schools in that city, a school under the special patronage of the Empress Josephine, two of whose nephews, the Tascher de la Pageries, were among the scholars.

At Paris he witnessed the early scenes of the Empire, the review of the troops, and the departure for the campaign which was decided at Austerlitz. From these scenes of war he was withdrawn on the return of Rufus King to the United States, to take his place, in pursuance of an arrangement made with Sir Francis Baring of London, the eminent banker and friend of his father, as a clerk in the house of Hope & Co. at Amsterdam. At the close of the year 1806 he returned to his native country after an absence of ten years, and was soon admitted a clerk in the mercantile house of Archibald Gracie. 1810 he married the eldest daughter of Mr. Gracie, and became partner with him in his eminently prosperous career of commerce, which terminated disastrously, however, in 1823, when the partnership was dissolved.

In