The Study of History at Columbia College.

Columbia College, in New York, may fairly claim the honor of being the first American institution in America to recognize history as worthy of a professional chair. The institution was founded, as King's College, under the royal patronage of George II. in the year 1754. Arrangements appear to have been made in the original faculty of arts for the teaching of law and history.

As early as 1773 we find "Johannes Vardill, A. M., Socius," appointed professor of natural laws. In 1775 he was made professor of history and languages. Undoubtedly both appointments represented the revival of the old English connection between law, history and classics. As the Jus Naturalis, then taught in European universities, was but the continuity of Roman ideas of philosophical jurisprudence, so history was regarded. primarily, as the history of Greece and Rome, and as a mere supplement to classical culture.

After the Revolution, Columbia College, having dropped its royal name and patron as well as its Tory president and Tory professors of history, took a fresh start under American auspices. An old broadside, preserved in the Columbia Library, contains the statutes of the college for 1785 and a "Plan of Education," whereby it appears that history was first taught in what was then a unique way for America. The Rev. John Gross, Professor of German and Geography, from 1784 to 1795, taught the sophomore class three times a week, in a course which was characterized as a "Description of the globe in respect of all matters: Rise, extent and fall of ancient empires; chronology as low as the fall of the Roman Empire; present state of the world; origin of the present States and Kingdoms-their extent, power, commerce, religions and customs; modern chronology." This was history with an ancient and geographical basis, but with a modern political outlook. It was a highly creditable course-the best that the writer has found in the annals of any American college-at that early period. It savored, however, more of German than of English origin. John Gross, professor of German and Geography, evidently represents a European current in American college instruction. Side by side with historicogeographical studies at Columbia ran the old scholastic course in Greek and Roman antiquities, which had probably been taught from the beginning of the college, in connection with the classical department. Classical History has really been the life current of historical instruction at Columbia, as in every other American college. It was often a feeble, sluggish current, but it was constant; and it sufficed to keep history from dying out in the student-consciousness. It would be unprofitable to follow this little classical stream through its meanderings to its present deeper and wider flow; it is enough to say that it began to expand during the tutorship of Charles Anthon, who was called to teach classics at Columbia in 1820. Later on he divided this department with Professor Drisler, but remained at the head until 1867, when he died. Without this steady current of classical and antiquarian instruction which he represented at Columbia for nearly fifty years, it is doubtful whether such an impetus would have been given to historical and political studies as came in 1856 by his direct force.

The call of Francis Lieber to Columbia College in 1857, marks the first recognition by a northern college of history and politics as properly co-ordinate sciences. At the College of South Carolina, Lieber had taught history, political economy and philosophy, as a homogeneous group. The presence of the latter subject in his professorship betrays a survival of the old scholastic connection between metaphysics and politics, a connection which lasted long at Harvard, Columbia and many other colleges. There is a valuable and suggestive idea in Lieber's first combination of history and politics which ought to influence all American colleges and Universities in the proper co-ordination of these studies. If, for economic or other reasons, there must be a grouping of various subjects under one administrative head, history ought rather to be yoked with political science than with language, literature or philosophy. The nature of history and political science determines their ultimate relation, if not necessary co-ordination. "History is past politics, and politics is present history." Political science is the application of historical experience to the existing problems of an ever-progressing society. History and politics are as inseparable as past and present.