creative of them and had a wide adoption. His second was College Algebra, 1889; five more were published in the next two decades.
From 1888 to 1891 the curriculum included engineering, taught by William C. Eaton, ’69, son of President George W. Eaton. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a member of the Navy’s engineering corps, he had been detailed for this assignment. Apparently for lack of interest, engineering was dropped after his departure.
Perhaps the most cultivated faculty member was the Professor of Civil History, English Literature, and Oratory, John James Lewis, whom colleagues and students alike loved and admired. An intense and zealous Welshman, he won the reputation of being, in the words of the faculty’s resolution passed at his death in 1884, “a competent and rare instructor.” In addition to his skill, industry and patience in teaching public speaking and composition, he grounded his students in literature and gave lectures on architecture, sculpture, and painting, which he supplemented at least once by a field trip to an “Art Gallery”
in Utica in 1878. His courses in English, European, and American History, the first of their kind at Madison, had a good student response, particularly those in American history which were introduced in 1880-81. This year also saw the appearance of his course in international law.
Professor Lewis’s successor was Benjamin S. Terry, ’78. The youngest member of the faculty in 1885, genial, witty, scholarly and progressive, he with Professor McGregory and a few others took the lead in modernizing the curriculum. After his first year he divested himself of responsibility for rhetoric and elocution to concentrate on his real interest, history. Lectures and readings, often in reprints of original sources, took the place of recitations and he instituted seminars for advanced students which called for investigation, essays, and critical discussion. At his instigation the Bushnell Prizes were established for the best senior essays which were later published and distributed. He represented advanced approaches to instruction. To many of his faculty colleagues it must have been no great surprise that he resigned in 1892 after a year in Germany where he had earned a Ph.D. at Freiburg to go to rapidly expanding University of Chicago.
To relieve Professor Terry of his work in rhetoric and elocution, William H. Crawshaw, Class of 1887, was made an instructor in those subjects almost immediately on graduating; he had already taught a