One of the most important institutions in the Mississippi Valley, and one that exercises a decided influence upon the intellectual and social life of St. Louis, and is a fair measure of its culture and the value of the higher education, is the Washington University, which was incorporated in 1853, and was presided over until his death, in 1887, by the late Chancellor William Green-leaf Eliot, of revered memory. It covers the whole range of university studies, except theology, and allows no instruction either sectarian in religion or partisan in politics, nor the application of any sectarian or party test in the election of professors, teachers, or officers. Its real estate and buildings in use for educational purposes cost $625,000; its libraries, scientific apparatus, casts, and machinery cost over $100,000, and it has investments for revenue amounting to over $650,000. The University comprehends an undergraduate department, including the college (a thorough classical, literary, and philosophical course, with about sixty students), open to women, and the polytechnic, an admirably equipped school of science; the St. Louis Law School, of excellent reputation; the Manual Training School, the most celebrated school of this sort, and one that has furnished more manual training teachers than any other; the Henry Shaw School of Botany; the St. Louis School of Fine Arts; the Smith Academy, for boys; and the Mary Institute, one of the roomiest and most cheerful school buildings I know, where 400 girls, whose collective appearance need not fear comparison with any in the country, enjoy the best educational advantages. Mary Institute is justly the pride of the city. The School of Botany, which is endowed and has its own laboratory, workshop, and working library, was, of course, the outgrowth of the Shaw Botanical Garden; it has usually from twenty to thirty special students. The School of Fine Arts, which was reorganized under the University in 1879, has enrolled over 200 students, and gives a wide and careful training in all the departments of drawing, painting, and modelling, with instructions in anatomy, perspective, and composition, and has life classes for both sexes, in drawing from draped and nude figures. Its lecture, working rooms, and galleries of paintings and casts are in its Crow Art Museum—a beautiful building, well planned and justly distinguished for architectural excellence. It ranks among the best Art buildings in the country.