My immediate connection with the University of Michigan as resident professor of history lasted about six years; and then, on account partly of business interests which resulted from the death of my father, partly of my election to the New York State Senate, and partly of my election to the presidency of Cornell University, I resided in central New York, but retained a lectureship at the Western institution. I left the work and the friends who had become so dear to me with the greatest reluctance, and as long as possible I continued to revisit the old scenes, and to give courses of lectures. But at last my duties at Cornell absolutely forbade this, and so ended a connection which was to me one of the most fruitful in useful experiences and pregnant thoughts that I have ever known. PART IV AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT CHAPTER XVII EVOLUTION OF ``THE CORNELL IDEA''--1850-1865 To Trinity Hall at Hobart College may be assigned whatever honor that shadowy personage, the future historian, shall think due the place where was conceived and quickened the germ idea of Cornell University. In that little stone barrack on the shore of Seneca Lake, rude in its architecture but lovely in its surroundings, a room was assigned me during my first year at college; and in a neighboring apartment, with charming views over the lake and distant hills, was the library of the Hermean Society. It was the largest collection of books I had ever seen,--four thousand volumes,--embracing a mass of literature from ``The Pirate's Own Book'' to the works of Lord Bacon. In this paradise I reveled, browsing through it at my will. This privilege was of questionable value, since it drew me somewhat from closer study; but it was not without its uses. One day I discovered in it Huber and Newman's book on the English universities. What a new world it opened! My mind was sensitive to any impression it might make, on two accounts: first, because, on the intellectual side, I was woefully disappointed at the inadequacy of the little college as regarded its teaching force and equipment; and next, because, on the esthetic side, I lamented the absence of everything like beauty or fitness in its architecture.