I had a very pleasant journey, after leaving you, to Syracuse, with Mr Fisk. What a nice, excellent fellow he is! I should think he would [be] of great value to you, but I confess I hope that you will spare him to Hartford a little longer. He would do a world of good there if he could remain a year or two.

On the train we had the pleasure of meeting of Mr Wilcox. I found that he was not at all prejudiced against either shifting your line of buildings to the Southward, or forming them en echalon. The first plan he thought Mr Cornell would object to because it would require him to give up his wife’s reserve. The second he said he had always thought would be better, as the buildings would group much better & would be much better accommodated to the ground. That is my judgment very decidedly. If you place them as you propose, you will have made the same mistake which all the large colleges of the country are now repenting. We have twice been consulted within the year as to the possibility of recasting the general ground plan of college buildings from a straight quadrangular system to a more free, liberal, picturesque & [194] convenient one, without demolishing the old buildings. You ought to anticipate such a growth of the University as will eventually require ten times the building accommodation that is provided for in your present plan. Do you doubt that far finer buildings than any you are now proposing to construct will be erected for University purposes in the course of a century or two? I do not. And if so,—that is to say if the University is to be a great success—is to have a healthy, steady growth, is to draw out the affections, the gratitude—the patriotism & benevolence of other noble men & women besides its founders, then your proposed line, complete in itself, or the “quadrangle” (which is not a quadrangle) complete in itself & with but one front of dignity, will be simply another monument of shortsightedness, inconsideration & complacency with our little present, like those at Yale & Amherst. The Treasurer at Amherst told me that the founders of the College took a very fine site for their buildings and put them in a line upon it, where a magnificent view was commanded, but when by bequests new buildings were required, no suitable place could be found for them except by entirely disregarding the plan of the founders and destroying the effect which they valued. Accordingly the plan of the present edifices as something as follows: the shaded blocks being the older brick buildings, the others new & mainly of stone. Now they have a bequest of $100,000 which is the basis of a fund for a chapel, and another large sum for another buildg, both of which are intended to be much more dignified than any of those now standing. One of the professors strongly advocated placing the largest one of them at the point X entirely ignoring the old line & the half suggested quadrangle. Being the finest building it should be put before all but what would go to the rear; certainly it should not be put on the back side of buildings so much inferior to it as those in the line would be. But X is on the slope of the hill—lower than the old line—so he asked me if a terrace could not be built out there thirty feet high as a foundation for it. You see how in placing the building A which has been lately the pride of the college, the formal effect has been given the coup de grace at one blow. The position very closely corresponds to yours, except that the declivity is steeper & the scale smaller. This is for your eye alone & I shall say nothing of it, professionally, having been informed that it was no longer open to debate, but the more I think of it the more I am impressed with the conviction that you are making a great mistake, & between ourselves, I feel it a duty to tell you so. Your Trustees it appears have decided the question contrary to the judgment, if not to the advice, of their architect. They take a grave responsibility in doing so, for if your architect is fit for his duty at all, his judgment ought to be almost controlling on such a question. If it is open to reconsideration, and your suggestion of shifting the whole line to the Southward indicates that you may consider that it is, I [195] would advise you to call a council of architects & if you please of artists. It is a point of great importance & you had better delay another year rather than make what will hereafter possibly be always felt as a fundamental mistake. Don’t, I beg of you, if you can possibly avoid it begin by tying yourself to formality & straight lacing. It is obvious already that you will not, would not if you could, carry out the theme consistently. You are deliberately proposing to arrange half a dozen initiatory buildings formally and to arrange everything else informally. The result will inevitably be unhappy. You can yet secure picturesque unity, but if you go on, a year hence neither unity nor picturesqueness, in high degree will be possible. You will have a little important formality & a great deal of helter skelter. I don’t mean to say that the result will be positively bad, on that point there will probably be difference of opinion, but that a great opportunity will have been wasted, and unless the progress of taste in the U. S. gets a set back, or the university fails of a great success, I will lay you a wager payable tother side of Styx that within two centuries some of your buildings will be demolished in order to break up the line and allow new buildings to group in with the hill top and with such old buildings & trees as will be allowed to remain in a manner which shall be just to the architecture of the age and consistent with the comfort of the public eye.

These frankly are my views on that point, and now I have done with it; I have said what I have now & so strongly, in order to get past that point, before I again see Mr Cornell, from whom I hope next week to receive definite & final instructions as to the limits within which my imagination will be free to work, and with whom I do not propose to discuss the question of site of buildings, which must be the most important of these limits.

Please not to forget to send me sevrl copies of the Plan of Organization, as I wish to send it to England.

I found Norton here on my return; he is greatly interested in your enterprise & wants much to see you. He may come to Ithaca with me later in the summer. I shall probably visit him at Cambridge in July. Is there any chance of you being there?

I trust Mrs White reached home the better for her journey.