The Chautauqua University, (projected several years ago), was incorporated by act of the Legislature of the State of New York in the spring of 1883. The section of the act giving its object reads as follows: “The leading object of said corporation shall be to promote liberal and practical education, especially among the masses of the people; to teach the sciences, arts, languages and literature; to prepare its patrons for their several pursuits and professions in life, and to fit them for the duties which devolve upon them as members of society; such instruction to embrace all departments of culture which the board of trustees may deem useful and proper.” In further elucidation of the idea, the Chancellor of the University, Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., has said: The design of The Chautauqua University is to aid the following persons in the acquisition of a liberal and practical education: (1) Worthy young people not able to go to college; (2) those who, having begun a college course, have been compelled to abandon it by circumstances beyond their control; (3) a class of more mature men and women who, at the maximum of their mental power, desire to make amends for the educational omissions of the earlier years.

The wisdom of the men who have devised this plan is apparent to any observer. The proportion of those who are able to reap the advantages of a college education is small, and of these there are two distinctly marked classes. First, are those who, from choice and natural taste, with means to gratify that taste, seek a higher education, giving to the pursuit an earnest and untiring devotion. From this class come the scholars, professors and specialists of the hour. Second, are those who are put within the sphere of college training by external influences, and who are carried to the completion of their prescribed duties only under authority. Outside of the small number embraced in these two classes is the vast multitude of our citizens—elderly men, in active life, who look backward with regret to the unimproved opportunities of early days; middle aged men, longing to drink at the fountain of eternal youth which sends forth its delightsome streams through the fields of knowledge; young men, with aspirations and throbbings of conscious power if only opportunity can be found to give their endowments play; boys on farms, behind counters and in shops, who look with half concealed envy at their more fortunate play-fellows of the earlier years, who are in school, academy or college, while for them, daily toil with scanty remuneration is the price of support for daily life; matrons sighing over life’s burdens, and mourning over the fate which has shut to them the doors of education; young women, whose fingers, guided by a gifted brain, might have wrought marvels in art if only they had been taught how; and who long even yet to know—only to know. Of all such the world is full, and they can not go to college. Again must “Mahomet go to the mountain.” As they can not go to the university, say the incorporators of this Chautauqua University, the university shall go to them. We will make a people’s university which shall cover the widest possible scheme of study. We will make it eclectic, so that each seeker for knowledge can work in lines best suited to his own endowments. We will make it possible for the man who has been taken out of his college course before its completion, to finish it to his own satisfaction, in his own way, and in the station where Providence has placed him. We will enter every open door with our fireside college. We will make no restriction as to age or sex. We will make no limitation as to the time occupied in the completion of the work which we demand. We will make a Universal University.

The Chautauqua University thus outlined is as an institution unique. Its local habitation is an office in the city of Plainfield, New Jersey. Its name is as given above. New England mountain ranges, the fertile hills and valleys of the Middle States, the prairies, the caÑons and ranches of the broad West and the wide-spreading plantations of the South, are its campus. Its dormitories are the homes of the land; its chapel the Church of Christ, in its most catholic spirit and form; its curriculum is as wide and comprehensive as are the fields of knowledge; its text-books are standards, whether in the department of classics, ancient or modern, mathematics or science, art, or the humanities; its chairs are filled by specialists, men of ability in their respective realms; its library is the most magnificent in the wide world, being the aggregate of all the books of all the homes out of which our students shall come, and all public and private libraries to which they have access. Its examinations will be as thorough, rigid, critical and impartial as the severest scholarship can wish. Its diploma will be awarded only after a successful passing of all the examinations prescribed, and will be a well-earned guerdon of conscientious labor—a diploma which will be an honor to its holder, and will command the respect of even the highest of the already established universities.

Such is the non-resident Chautauqua University; a university complete in all its purposes, perfect in its plan of organization, its constituency the largest in the world, its dome the o’erarching blue, its center Chautauqua, the grandest educational outgrowth of the century. The means by which advancement in the Chautauqua University shall be attained is correspondence. This idea, though not entirely new, nor confined exclusively to Chautauqua, is yet recent enough in its American adaptations, to come as a novelty to the majority of those who will become students in this university, and will through university channels achieve a practical realization, which will make Chautauqua the home of its adoption. This correspondence presupposes earnest, unflagging, indefatigable study. The class-room finds its chief work to be the testing of results—the detection of false methods of investigation; the correction of faulty application of principles, and the stimulation to better efforts in the light of better information.

The part thus assigned to the class-room can be performed with equal worth by the correspondence system, and the only proviso for the largest success is in the regular, systematic, daily devotion to study of a fixed portion of time, and such a student, though he may never look into his teacher’s face, may become in the lines which he has chosen as successful and eminent as his more fortunate neighbor, whose privilege it may be to sit day by day in the presence of the same teacher in his distant college class-room. The means by which this correspondence and inter-communication is to be accomplished is the central office of the University at Plainfield, N. J. Students desiring to avail themselves of its privileges, upon the simple stating of the fact by letter addressed to The Chautauqua University, will receive full details of the courses of study, the books required, the essential particulars of the workings of the institution, and all information necessary to matriculation. When the student has been once fully entered in the University course he is put into communication with one or more professors, for the beginning of his work. From that time his progress will depend solely upon the nature of his own efforts. The department professor will furnish directions for study, with instructions how to use the required books, outline memoranda which shall be filled and returned to the professor, and lesson papers for occasional and free interchange, by which an exact record of progress can be obtained.

The office of the University will be in charge of a registrar, part of whose duty shall be to keep an accurate knowledge of the advancement and proficiency of each student, to develop the university spirit among the students, and to bring the different departments into harmonious and concurrent relations.

What we have written will, of necessity, come under the eye of every member of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. To each of you we appeal. Give to this preliminary statement as wide a currency as possible. Representatives of the classes we have described are in every community where the C. L. S. C. exists. Bring this article to the notice of such. Let the Chautauqua spirit, to which you are debtor, through you be communicated to those around you, and thereby aid in the work of a broader and better culture for the nation.

R. S. Holmes,
Registrar Chautauqua University.

Plainfield, N. J., September, 1884.