f the men
employed on the place, who told us that when people were allowed to
roam about at will, there had been much vandalism; ivy had been pulled
from the walls, shrubbery broken, pieces of brick chipped out of the
steps, and teeth knocked from the heads of the marble lions which flank
them.

Of recent years there has been on foot a movement, launched, I believe,
by Mrs. Martin W. Littleton, of New York, to influence the Government to
purchase Monticello from its present owner. It is difficult to see
precisely how Mr. Levy could be forced to part with his property, if he
did not wish to. Nevertheless public sentiment on this subject has
become so strong that he has agreed to let the Government have
Monticello "at a price"--so, at least, I was informed in
Charlottesville.

CHAPTER XV

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime
importance for the higher education in the whole country, and
really marks a new era.

--CHARLES FORSTER SMITH.

Like Monticello, the buildings of the University of Virginia are those
of an intellectual, a classicist, a purist, and, like it, they might
have been austere but for the warmth of their red brick and the glow of
their white-columned porticos. But they are cheerful buildings, which,
individually and as a group, attain a geometrical yet soft perfection, a
supreme harmony of form and color.

The principal buildings are grouped about a large campus, called the
Lawn, which is dominated by the rotunda, suggesting in its outlines the
Pantheon at Rome. From the rotunda, at either side, starts a
white-columned arcade connecting the various houses which are
distributed at graceful intervals along the margins of the rectangular
lawn, above which loom the tops of even rows of beautiful old trees.
Flanking the buildings of the lawn, and reached by brick walks which
pass between the famous serpentine walls (walls but one brick thick
which support themselves on the snake-fence principle, by progressing in
a series of reverse curves), are the "ranges": solid rows of one-story
student dormitories built of brick and fronted by colonnades which
command other lawns and other trees.

With a single exception, restorations and additions to the university
have been made with reverence and taste, and the Brooks Museum, the one
architectural horror of the place, fortunately does not stand upon the
lawn. Since it is said th