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HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.
$150,000; a museum, $100,000; an academy dormitory, $30,000; three dormitories for women, $150,000; two dormitories for men, $100,000, to which several important additions were made during 1896 and '97. The faculty embraces over 150 instructors, selected with reference to their fitness for their respective departments from among the most eminent scholars in America and Europe. Women are admitted as students and graduated upon an equality with men. The -work of practical instruction began in October, 1892, with 589 registered students, coming from nearly every Northern State, and including 250 graduates from other institutions, to which accessions were made, during the year, raising the aggregate to over 900. The second year the number exceeded 1,100; the third, it rose to 1,750, and the fourth (1895-96), to some 2,000, including representatives from every State of the Union, besides many from foreign countries. Special features of the institution include the admission of graduates from other institutions to a post-graduate course, and the University Extension Division, which is conducted largely by means of lecture courses, in other cities, or through lecture centers in the vicinity of the University, non-resident students having the privilege of written examinations. The various libraries embrace over 300,000 volumes, of which nearly 60,000 belong to what are called the "Departmental Libraries," besides a large and valuable collection of maps and pamphlets.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO (The Old), an educational institution at Chicago, under the care of the Baptist denomination, for some years known as the Douglas University. Senator Stephen A. Douglas offered, in 1854, to donate ten acres of land, in what was then near the southern border of the city of Chicago, as a site for an institution of learning, provided buildings costing 8100,000, be erected thereon within a stipulated time. The corner-stone of the main building was laid, July 4, 1857, but the financial panic of that year prevented its completion, and Mr. Douglas extended the time, and finally deeded the land to the trustees without reserve. For eighteen years the institution led a p
