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So he set about to plan and prepare for a home of all the arts and sciences and of literary culture in the southern States. July 1st of this year will mark the centennial of Bishop Polk's letter to his fellow bishops in the southern dioceses outlining his grand scheme. Nothing strictly comparable to his design for a Christian university to be created at once, "like the birth of Minerva, full panoplied from the head of Jupiter", is to be found in the entire previous history of higher education. Of his generalship in the campaign to clothe his idea with substance Bishop John Henry Hopkins of Vermont wrote to Mrs. Polk: "He brought with him to Sewanee at that time (1859) a large box entirely filled with the result of correspondence with the leading men in Europe, and the scholastic institutions of the Old World, as well as laborious and thoroughly digested projects for a southern university which, when completed, was to be the noblest and best-endowed in Christendom.... I was amazed and delighted at the combination of original genius, lofty enterprise, and Christian hope with the utmost