Francis Wayland, the American Baptist clergyman, educator, and moral philosopher, was one of the central figures in the modification of American collegiate education. As president of Brown University (1827–1855), he introduced proposals to ease the rigidity of the classical curriculum by an approximation of the later elective system. With his mentor, Eliphalet Nott of Union College, Schenectady, New York, Wayland approved of the substitution of modern language study for at least some of the required Greek and Latin, encouraged training in science and its practical application, and advocated a more professional faculty employed for longer terms. To some degree his interest in these reforms was the result of his Jeffersonian philosophy of democracy. He was completely in accord with Thomas Jefferson's insistence that a republican government can flourish only if the voters are well educated. He argued, too, that native talent was widely diffused and...