The enterprise, as far as Tennessee was concerned, would have
utterly failed, and the grand opportunity would have been lost, or
at least have been indefinitely postponed, had not the ancient
University of Nashville come to the front at that moment.
This is not the fitting time to present a history of this well-
known institution, now approaching its hundredth anniversary;
and, in the light of her action, then and since, it is unnecessary
to descant upon the far-reaching wisdom and most liberal spirit
exhibited by her distinguished Trustees. It is enough, that the
General Agent of the Peabody Board was not suffered to leave
the city, after his failure with the State, without an interview. The
result was offer and agreement on the one side and the other, by
which the University of Nashville gave the use of its grounds,
buildings, and funds to the proposed school, as represented by the
newly formed State Board of Education, one of whom was the
Judge Watson of whom I have already spoken ; another, the Presi-
dent of the University Trustees, and an early graduate ; its Chair-
man, Governor Porter, a graduate and a Trustee ; and a fourth,
a graduate, a son of the second President and former Chancellor,
and for a long time an earnest, unwearied, and eloquent advocate
of such a school. So that I venture to presume that the act of
thus making over, to some extent, for two years, the use of the
property and income to that Board, must have seemed to the Trus-
tees at the time not much unlike placing it in the hands of a
committee of their own number, with instructions to make the
Normal School experiment. The transaction was not, however,



28o APPENDIX.
