Law Professor and Preparatory Department of Wm. & Mary

A meeting of the visitors of the College was held on the evening of the 4th July, partly for the purpose of appointing a Law Professor, and establishing in connection with the College a Preparatory School. As professor of Law the Visitors elected Mr. Charles Morris, of Hanover county, Va. From what we can learn, this was a judicious selection. In a letter to the Visitors from Hanover co., we find the following: “Mr. Morris is a distinguished A.M. graduate of our University, and since he received some ten years ago the highest honors conferred on her favorite sons, by his Alma Mater, has been a faithful student and practitioner of the law. The characteristic of Mr. Morris’ mind, which we think peculiarly entitles him to your consideration, in the discharge of your important duty, is the power of lucid statement and analysis, the basis of the ars dotendi, or faculty of teaching, without which, though he were as learned as a Coke or Sugden, he would be perfectly useless in the Professor’s chair. The moral quallifications [sic] of Mr. Morris – which of course you will consider as not less important than the intellectual; are joined in happy combination with literary endowments, which together make a man in every way suited to be the successor of Minor, Tucker, and the host of worthies who in times past have been associated with the fame of the noblest monument of our forefathers’ zeal in behalf of education. At our last Count, our bar unanimously endorsed all that I have said in behalf of Mr. Morris.” In restoring this school, which has been suspended since the death of the late Professor Lucien Minor, the Visitors were encouraged to believe that they were only responding to the unanimous sentiment of the Alumni, to ensure to the school, as now restores, the same success which rendered it in former times so distinguished. – Wm. & Mary is already prospering and progressing; and it only needs the active sympathy and support of her numerous and gifted Alumni to secure the future. As instructor in the Preparatory Department, Mr. Thos. P. McCandlish, of this city, was elected, who is a gentleman well qualified for that position, – bearing equal with the other Professors the high distinction of A.M