282 History of Universities
institution. He wanted Indian students if they could be had,
but above all Dartmouth College must live and grow. In a
century and a half it has become the most popular liberal
arts college in the northern United States; and the Indian
race has had a very neat and appropriate revenge in the
mural decorations of the new Dartmouth Library by José
Clemente Orozco.
Thus, higher education had an excellent start in the
Thirteen Colonies. Nine colleges were founded as a basis
on which universities could be built, and two of them—Phila-
delphia and King’s—had made good steps toward university
status before the Revolution. Largely for religious motives
and under ecclesiastical auspices, selected groups of young
Americans were given the privilege of a liberal education;
and so abundantly did colonial college graduates, as lawyers,
physicians, statesmen, and divines, repay community sacrifice
and individual benevolence, that one of the first results of
American Independence was the multiplication of colleges.
Samuel Eliot Morison.