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(Letter to Bishop Elliott from Bishop Polk January 31st, 1857)

hope of inducing to give three perhaps four times that sum, indeed
it is agreed on all hands if the persons chiefly concerned in this
movement will push the matter, now it is warm, any amount of money
that may be reasnnably asked for will be forthcoming. I had a long
conversation with J.no. Preston of So. Ca. the other evening in re-
gard to it. He fully endorsed it and accepts it as a scheme
worth of the efforts of us all and will without doubt aid it
liverally. He says it is the thing the south should take up and
carry through upon the broadest scale and that there is no measuring
its influence for good on the interest of the whole country. He
has just returned from Germany where he has been to place his boys
at Gottingen, and gave me some useful hints as to the organization
and making of European Universities. Two points he would have us
especially guard against Ist putting up expensive buildings (e. g.
College and Smithosonian Institute) and at making the
faculties dependant of fees. Both which we had already determined
against. This last in I find universally regarded as of the
first importance to make the Faculties independent absolutely,
is indispensable to ensuring discipline.

I hope you will be able to make out this scrawl and
at all events that you will let me hear from you on reply to so
much as you may decipher.

How are Mrs. Elliott and the young fry. I hope very
well. Please present my kind and respecful regards to her and
remember me affectionately to the boys.

Mrs. Polk who I thought might follow me in a month
or six weeks, is still in Pha. I sent back Fanny to bear her