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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH

We are very happy, as will doubtless be a great number of our read-
ers, to learn that, under the active and energetic management of Rt. Rev.
the Bishops (Polk and Elliot,) of Louisiana and Georgia, the General Comm-
issioners of the Trustees to canvass for subscriptions, some $340,000 of
the required $500,000 has already been obtained for the commencement of this
great enterprise. This amount is almost daily increasing, and there is every
reason to warrant the assurance that within a very few months, if not weeks,
the entire sum will be made up. This $340,000 has been subscribed by some
fifty or sixty individuals, in sums of from $1000 to $40,000, among them
the last named amount has been subscribed by ex-Governor Henry Johnson, of
this State. Several gentlemen in Louisiana and in other States, have sign-
ified their intention, we understand, over and above their liberal subscript-
ions, to provide the necessary funds for the endowment of professorships,
when the proper time for arranging the working of the institute shall have
arrived.

This is an undertaking of ten of the Protestant Episcopal Dioceses of
the South -- Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida,
South and North Carolina, Arkansas and Texas -- to establish in a central
Southern location, a first-class University, where the best collegiate ed-
ucation may be obtained. The plan is based upon the postulate that the South
needs, more than ever, men of the very highest education, who shall prove,
by their ripe scholarship, that our institutions are not adverse to the loft-
iest culture, and who shall be prepared to maintain truth and right against
all comers, not merely by the force of genius, but with the resources of
learning and the traditions of the world. Its projectors assume that, under
our peculiar form of government, where opinions and policy vary with the
caprices of the moment, we can hope for such scholarship only from an organ-
ization independent of the popular will for its revenues, and with a found-
ation of a character that shall warrant the fullest confidence in its per-
manence and its ability to be useful. And the course taken by those engaged
in the enterprise has been such as to secure all this.

Taken in hand by the bishops and other clergy, and the great body of
the laity of a religious connection which includes within its ranks a very
large proportion of the intellectual culture, their personal and social in-
fluence, and the pecuniary wealth of our section of the Union, and made,
emphatically and inherently, the work of that body, its basis is so broadly
laid as to insure its permanency, while the declaration of the fundamental
principles on which the proposed university is to be consituted, needs only
to be referred to to secure universal confidence in its adaptability to the
present needs of the South.

In former articles upon this noble undertaking, we have gone more par-
ticularly into detail, as to its objects, its character and its history,
than it is now necessary to do. Our single design at present has been to
speak, to "report progress," and by showing what has already been done, and
is doing, under thecactive agency of the Rt. Rev. Commissioners, to incite
others to come up to the aid of the good work.

The site selected and received, under the most favorable circumstances
for the University of the South, is the Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga,
in the State of Tennessee. On the 4th of July 1857, with appropriate cere-
monies and services, this spot was consecrated to the high purpose for
which it had been fixed upon. All considerations seem to combine, in the
most felicitous manner, to render this the most eligible location that
could have been made. We have already alluded to thses, and shall content
ourselves with referring to the reports of the trustees upon the subject,
which are very full and satisfactory upon these points.

The appeal made by the Commissioners, Bishops Polk and Elliot, for