Graduating from Harvard in 1853, at the age of nineteen, he devoted his attention principally to chemistry, and, after some years of teaching, and of study in Europe, was, in 1865, appointed professor of chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The same year, a revolution occurred in the government of Harvard, which was transferred from the state legislature to the graduates of the college. The effect of the change was greatly to strengthen the interest of the alumni in the management of the university, and to prepare the way for extensive and thorough reforms. Considerable time was spent in searching for the right man for president and finally, in 1869, Prof. Eliot was chosen. That the right man had been found was evident from the first. "King Log has made room for King Stork," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, then professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, to John Motley. "Mr. Eliot makes the corporation meet twice a month instead of once. He comes to the meeting of every faculty, ours among the rest, and keeps us up to eleven and twelve o'clock at night discussing new arrangements. I cannot help being amused at some of the scenes we have in our medical faculty--this cool, grave young man proposing in the calmest way to turn everything topsy turvy, taking the reins into his hands and driving as if he were the first man that ever sat on the box. "'How is it, I should like to ask,' said one of our members, the other day, 'that this faculty has gone on for eighty years managing its own affairs and doing it well, and now within three or four months it is proposed to change all our modes of carrying on the school? It seems very extraordinary, and I should like to know how it happens.' "'I can answer Dr. ----'s question very easily,' said the bland, grave young man. 'There is a new president.' "The tranquil assurance of this answer had an effect such as I hardly ever knew produced by the most eloquent sentences I ever heard uttered." The bland young man's innovations did not seem to do much harm to Harvard, for under his administration, her financial resources have been multiplied by ten, as has the number of her teachers, while the number of her students has been multiplied by five. Dr. Eliot has grown into the real head of the educational system of this country; his influence has wrought vast changes in every department of teaching, from the kindergarten to the university. It was his idea that common school education and college education ought to be flexible, ought to be made to fit the needs of the pupil. The result has been the broad development of the elective system--broader than Josiah Quincy ever dreamed of. The same system has changed the whole aspect of the teaching profession, resulting in the demand for a competent training in some specialty for every teacher.