Public education made notable progress in Minnesota during the half decade beginning with Governor Austin’s administration. The services of Horace B. Wilson as superintendent of public instruction during the period advanced the good work begun by his predecessor. Both felt obliged to argue the cause of public schools to be kept free from ecclesiastical meddling. It was not, however, till 1877 that the amendment to the state constitution, forbidding the use of any public funds or property for the support of sectarian schools was adopted by the electors. Spite of much unreasoning prejudice against the state normal schools, they prospered, but were inadequate to supply the demands of over three thousand common schools for trained teachers. The faculty of the University of Minnesota, who in September, 1869, enrolled a small handful of freshmen, saw that dwindling till but two survived at the end of the four-year course, to be graduated as bachelors in June, 1873. The time of the teachers was spent and well spent on the preparatory students who were later to fill the college classes. The first commencement was celebrated with no little circumstance, and had its effect on a public not yet certain that the state had any concern with college education. That question was much debated in those years, and there were plentiful outpourings of orthodox denunciation of the state university as hopelessly and necessarily “infidel” and “godless.” The regents were affected by this respectable opposition, and unduly moderated their requisitions for appropriations. Upon the advice of the president of the university (the author of this book), the regents in 1870 prematurely adopted a novel plan of organization. The underlying principle was the fact that the work of the first two years in American colleges is “secondary” in its nature, and according to any scientific arrangement should be performed in secondary institutions. They therefore merged the studies and exercises of the freshman and sophomore years with those of the preparatory years into a so-called “Collegiate Department.” The plan was approved by the highest educational authorities of the country, but the faculty, conservative and indisposed to break away from tradition, could not give it a united support. There were but trifling difficulties of operation, but when a new administration came in, with its differing interests, the plan was allowed to lapse. The principle has since been recognized by two leading American universities.