at beauty could not exist were there not
ugliness for contrast, this building may have its uses; certainly, after
a glance at it, one looks back with renewed delight at the structures of
the central group.

Most superb of all, always there hangs at night, above the buildings and
the tree-tops, a glorious full moon. At least I suppose it always hangs
there, for though it seemed to us very wonderful, every one else seemed
used to it.

Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by
moonlight. There could not have been a finer moonlit night, I thought,
than that cold, crisp one upon which my companion stood for two hours
beside the rotunda, gazing at the lawn and drawing it, its frosty grass
and trees decked with diamonds, its white columns standing out softly
from their shadow backgrounds like phosphorescent ghosts in the luminous
blue darkness. Until I was nearly frozen I stayed there with him. That
drawing cost him one of the worst colds he ever had.

The university ought to have, and has, many traditions, and life there
ought to be, and is, different from life in any other college. Jefferson
brought from Italy the men who carved the capitals of the columns (the
descendants of some of these Italian workmen live in Charlottesville
to-day), and when the columns were in place he brought from Europe the
professors to form the faculty, creating what was practically a small
English university in the United States. Never until, a dozen years ago,
Dr. E.A. Alderman became president, had there been such an office;
before that time the university had a rector, and the duties of
president were performed by a chairman of the faculty, elected by the
faculty from among its members. This was the first university to adopt
the elective system, permitting the students, as Jefferson wrote,
"uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall attend," instead of
prescribing one course of reading for all. No less important, the
University of Virginia was the first college to introduce (1842) the
honor system, and still has the most complete honor system to be found
among American colleges. This system is an outgrowth of the Jeffersonian
idea of student self-government; under it each student signs, with
examination papers, a pledge that he has neither given nor received
assistance. That is found sufficient; students are not watched, nor need
they be. With time this system has been extended, so that it now covers
not only examin